Things you wish you'd been told or advised upon becoming a dad

Date nights/weekends are a beautiful thing.

And don't take your kids to your friend's weddings, get a babysitter.

 

The mom has you by the nutz.

 

Find a good, reliable babysitter.


I live away from family and we have yet to find a babysitter after 15 months. One of us is literally always with our son, which is great, but we're lacking on our alone/date night time in the worst way possible. We've literally left him alone with someone (without one of us)for maybe 15 hours of his life. I'm ashamed to admit that.


Great thread. Many laughs.

 

They are expensive...........don't have them.....

2 out of 3 being good at school is not bad.......

Girls are HORRIBLE after the age of 11....lot more work. When they get their heartbroken, it is a NIGHTMARE that you need to let MOM handle.

Teenagers don't appreciate money or how much things cost. They break things (especially phones) like they grow on trees.

 

Boys will puff out their chest as they get order, resist the urge to collapse it with your FIST.

 

People focus on babies and children under 10. Your problems will really start when they hit pre-teen and teenage years.

 

Dad gets the lowest priority. When there are three water bottles for four people, dad goes without. He eats after he's made sure the rest of the family has food. While the rest of the family walks, he keeps them in his sight and looks all around them to make sure they're safe. He gets in line behind his family. He's always last behind them.

..and he does this without complaint, without boast, and without self-pity.

 

Awwww man. We keep the silly little munchkin cousins all the time. Best thing about it is my dogs and their kids are completely worn out when I give them back, and my woman thinks I'm some sort of amazing guy for playing with them all day.

 

Do you live near a university? When we lived in Austin, had very young kids and no one around to help, I posted an ad on hirealonghorn.com. We ended up with 2 wonderful sitters. Both were Early Childhood Education majors at UT. It was great and rarely had an issue getting them to come out to watch my kids.

I wish someone would've warned me about colic before our first. That was 3 months of a literal hell. We were lucky that it was only 3 months, too. I had a former co-worker tell me that one of his kids had it for 18 months. I'd never know what that would be like because I would have killed myself well before the end. You do not sleep. Your kid doesn't sleep. Your significant other doesn't sleep. I wouldn't wish it on my enemies.

 

Great advice. There's a very small University in our town, but I may look into that.

 

More and more Doctors are diagnosing milk protein allergies in small babies (ours had this for the first 9 months before she grew out of it. Many Docs have told me that a LOT of colic is probably actually milk protein allergies or soy protein allergies.

There’s ways to change their diet (or Mom’s if breastfeeding) to treat it. Something to look into if the baby has colic. BTW it’s cow milk protein, not Mommy’s milk that they are allergic to. The problem is that dairy and soy are in like 90% of what we eat so Mom has to go on a pretty restrictive diet for a while. If using formula the non dairy stuff will s super expensive, but ask for samples from every Doctor visit.

Also, don’t self diagnose this, make sure to run it by the Doc

 

I've survived another week of being a new father and did the "sleep when she's sleeping" during the weekend and I'm still tired AF.

How can a baby not even one month old produce so much poop?!?!