The Parenting Thread • Page 158

Yeah it's always going to be scary no matter where you are in life but I think you'll figure it all out as it comes. Being open about how you feel is the right thing to do though, it's the best way to work through it. I echo the sentiment that the best thing you can do is talk to your partner as much as possible and make sure you're both feeling ok and plan it out together.

 

Congrats!

and the panic is 100% natural. I basically went silent when my wife told me haha even though we were planning for it. It’s a lot of emotions to take in all at once

 

I also can appreciate the “it happened so soon element”

in a testicular cancer survivor and baby #1 happened within like 2 days of trying and baby #2 happened within like 15 minutes of deciding to try

Both times were preceded by “well it could take a while and we would rather be earlier than later on our timeline” lol

 

This is what I've been saying/reminding myself. I immediately went into apology mode because I know it wasn't exactly a Hallmark reaction, but my wife understood. We were both kind of immediately panicking, but started to feel more at peace the more we talked about it. As @MidDave said, there's no question it's what we were going to go for within the next year if possible, we were just shocked that it happened so immediately. There's a lot to do and a lot of changes to make if things go well. But yeah, I keep oscillating between being very happy and excited and totally mortified haha.

 

If it makes you feel better, I absolutely didn't get that "Hallmark reaction either," we found out about 15 minutes before we had 20+ people over for a party, so the immediate reaction was holy shit how do we hide this today and we didn't get to process til the day after

 

The amount of anxious hours I spent in my office spiraling down rabbit holes of life insurance policies and savings calculators instead of doing my job the first couple weeks after we found out we were expecting was wild lol. Also lost all confidence overnight in the stability of my career in entertainment going forward 10-15 years and started to spend a lot of time thinking of backup options or new skillsets to learn. My head was a mess for awhile

That pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, so by the time my wife was pregnant with our son I’d come to terms with the anxiety and instead just got really into baby gear research lol. My wife didn’t want to talk about any baby prep at all until the 12-week scan, after which she was like “okay I think I’m ready to look into strollers” and I was like cool cool and then logged into my shadow Amazon account where I had a private registry to keep track of the best options in every baby gear category lmao

 

Re the discussion earlier about holidays and parents and all that…as someone who grew up spending certain holidays with certain family members, that was one of the hardest things to adjust to. I used to do my moms side of the family and my dads side of the family on Christmas. And at my dads we’d see our cousins and uncles and aunts and friends of the family and etc. My half sisters all have kids now and I have a kid so none of that happens anymore and it makes me a little sad to think about. Now we all coordinate a day to see our dad on a day that usually isn’t actual Christmas because everyone goes to their in-laws for Christmas. So now i have a new tradition where my mom spends Christmas Eve with us at home and sleeps over to wake up Christmas morning with my son, then once we’re done doing the presents, we make the drive up to NY to her parents and see all her family, as they still do a big family gathering with all the aunts/uncles/cousins. Though Covid has disrupted that a little bit.

id even k what my point was here, just got me thinking about how getting your own family ends up changing the childhood traditions. And then I think well wow 30 years from now I probably won’t even be seeing my sisters on Christmas because well hopefully be the grandparents spending our Christmas with our children and grandchildren and etc. Kinda weird to think about

 

Also the first time we found out my wife was pregnant, she was taking a just in case test before we went out drinking with friends. Since her cycle had been non existent for 5 months (getting off years of birth control we assume), we legit had no idea or reason to think she was pregnant other than we were officially trying and were going at it pretty regularly but had no way of timing it to her cycle. So we just legit got lucky there, and she took a test and was standing in the bathroom with her sister doing makeup as they waited and all of a sudden I hear “wait…this is positive” lmao. Very unceremonious. Iirc it was her last test she had in her purse so we made her sister drive out to the store to grab a couple more to be sure

 

When we were pregnant with our first, I kept reading about false positives and all that so I didn’t want to get my hopes up right away. It was only like a couple days that she was late. So when she told me she was pregnant my response was “are you sure? Idk we’ll see”. Still havent lived that one down

 

My wife is being induced tomorrow for our second child, very excited. But also trying to mentally prepare our 3 year old as much as possible for no longer being the center of attention haha

I'm hoping our first really takes to her new sister, we'll see how it goes

 

I have found for our two that getting past the testing and stuff is really when it's easy to get excited and feel like it's all real now

 

Please keep me updated as I'll have a 2 year old and a newborn soon and this is my #1 biggest dread. Good luck this week!

 

Awesome, will do! Thanks and congrats!

I've been asking other parents at daycare and the playground about it too, I've heard all kinds of things. Some kids love their baby sibling, others don't want anything to do with them haha

One dad told me it's like "single parenting together" at first, one parent with the baby and the other with the other kid(s) so that's kind of how I'm thinking it'll go at first at least

 

One thing we did to try and mitigate any feeling of jealousy was to introduce our firstborn to his sister while she was in a car seat, rather than one of us holding her in the place where he normally would occupy. He was pretty good with her as a baby. I can't prove that it helped, but it might be worth doing anyway.

 

I've also read that introduction via holding the newborn can cause problems vs. them in a neutral space.

 

my wife just said 'I'm scared' over and over when we found out she was pregnant. Granted, she still had a huge smile on her face but the point stands

 

My wife’s reaction to our 4th was definitely not the best so I didn’t know how I was supposed to act

 

Anyone have any good podcasts to recommend for expecting parents? My wife and I just found out she’s pregnant and although we’re both teachers and have friends/family with young children, it might do me some good to listen to something other than sports podcasts to prepare me for what’s coming.

 

I took the approach of not reading/listening to anything before hand so that I wouldn’t have any expectations and that seemed to work alright.

 

It was very hard for me to find any books about what to expect that weren’t also pretty misogynistic or had dumb bro jokes throughout the entire book. Idk if podcasts would have the same issue or not.

I found one that at least had some really solid info with a smaller amount of dumb bro humor. Breaks it down week by week.

We're Pregnant! The First Time Dad's Pregnancy Handbook https://a.co/d/08RHP2RF

 

The book I read I swear dedicated like three chapters to applauding me for simply giving a shit. It was super annoying.

 

on one hand I get why it’s annoying, but on the other hand I think we really underestimate just how recently it was that society started realizing like “oh maybe dads should help do the parenting too” lol. I feel like it didn’t really start to turn until the 1980s

it makes sense why folks, especially older ones, are just amazed at any dad doing like the bare minimum

 

I would really like it if my children could stay little forever. If someone could make that happen I would be grateful.