They grow up so fast it is scary. My 19 year has changed a lot.....
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- Thread starter Devrij
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We’re a bit younger but not much (38 this year) and have decided to have a second so that our son has a sibling. I wonder if we have left the age gap grow too big though. He is 4 at the end of May. We will probably have the next one late next year.
Is that too big of a gap?
Soldato
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It can be argued that less would be better but so what? More would be worse. Imagine if you had 3 kids, you'd likely minimum have a 5/6 year gap and oldest and youngest would still play
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Soldato
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We're in our 40's and have 5yr old and 18mth girls. The relationship seems great, but eldest was 100% bought in to being a big sister, so I think that's a factor. You never really know until you're in the middle of it whether there will be a lot of envy.
They play together all the time now.
Two is way harder than one though, especially if you lack local family support.
For me the jump from 1 to 2 kids was way more brutal than going from childless to our first kid.
They play together all the time now.
Two is way harder than one though, especially if you lack local family support.
For me the jump from 1 to 2 kids was way more brutal than going from childless to our first kid.
We are lucky that we have several outstanding primary schools close to us. Our boy is starting school in September and we did a bunch of viewings last year, two schools stood out for us.
School 1 - excellent school, the head of school being excellent and young is what swayed it for us. It's still only 5 minutes in a car, 20 minute walk in the summer over bridal paths, bit longer in the winter. It's less convenient out of the two.
School 2 - was also excellent, but the headmaster looked about 90 and I said to my wife he's got to be retiring soon. Probably 3 minutes in a car, 20 minute walk all year around.
We submitted school 1 as the top option, and school 2 as the second. We've been offered a place at the school 1.
Roll on to April well after the submissions we find out the head of school from 1 is taking over as the headmaster at school 2. Trust our luck! Now trying to decide whether to go on the waiting list or just go with it as despite the head being good, it was excellent and the executive of the head is great also. No doubt the replacement will be good as well.
School 1 - excellent school, the head of school being excellent and young is what swayed it for us. It's still only 5 minutes in a car, 20 minute walk in the summer over bridal paths, bit longer in the winter. It's less convenient out of the two.
School 2 - was also excellent, but the headmaster looked about 90 and I said to my wife he's got to be retiring soon. Probably 3 minutes in a car, 20 minute walk all year around.
We submitted school 1 as the top option, and school 2 as the second. We've been offered a place at the school 1.
Roll on to April well after the submissions we find out the head of school from 1 is taking over as the headmaster at school 2. Trust our luck! Now trying to decide whether to go on the waiting list or just go with it as despite the head being good, it was excellent and the executive of the head is great also. No doubt the replacement will be good as well.
100% agree with this, also lack local family support other than Friday childcare with grandparents during work hours. I’ve found having no ‘me’ time the biggest challenge.
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We have local family support for the second one. We didn’t when our first arrived as we were staying in South Africa.
If things go to plan (Ha!) second child will be with us around June/July ‘27 - making the gap 5 years. I think that’s OK? They can still play together when the second hole gets a bit older. And once they’re both into teens it will be fine I think.
Soldato
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I've been there too. My wife is also a bit of a worrier and is always very concerned about everything. I found it much easier to go along with her, even if I don't always agree. But sometimes I have had to bring her back down to earth.
What I actually wanted to respond to you was about how you feel. I don't think any father can really understand the stress the mother is under. For her, at this stage in the child's life, she has one drop - to keep the child alive. Given it's your (and our) firstborn child, everything is new, everything is scary, everything is uncertain. She spends so much time with the child. She will undoubtedly understand is better, and I think it's one of those things where either you master the task (I did most of the nights when our daughter was very young) or you bow to her knowledge.
I have felt exactly what you feel, and I do still feel it sometimes. Our daughter is 15 months old now. But it gets better - your wife is really stressed and I think it's part of your job as the father just to reduce the friction.
Having come through 2-3 years where I (and doctors) genuinely weren't sure if my kid would survive, there's a massive boundary between "actually dangerous" and "seems dangerous".
The problem is that becoming a parent activates all kinds of instincts in your brain that didn't exist before, and it gives you a very strong desire to protect them and avoid danger.
In my case, the danger was very real, but there was very little I could do about it so in practice I wound up trying to control things that had very little influence. Or just getting angry at them when I couldn't.
The reality is that every medication can have a positive effect or a negative one. Generally a doctor will prescribe something because there's a good chance of it having a net benefit. But it might not work, or have a negative outcome. They're playing the odds, to some degree.
An anxious parent can find the information about what might go wrong, and then panic about it. Instinctively, they're making the right decision to protect their child, even if empirically they're wrong.
I could go on about this for hours, but ultimately - yes i think your partner is probably being overly protective and anxious. But it's also the hormones that fire up with a baby that young, and a strong desire to protect a little bundle whatever the cost. After time, a lot of those strong emotions ease off and things transition into more of a normality. Those periods when it feels like every decision is wrong, they suck, no two ways about it. But you just have to try to get through them as best you can, keep the relationship steady, support each other, and take things on the chin when you have to.
Ideally you both recognise (when you're awake and calm!) that you're each doing your best, and that you won't get it perfect 100% of the time. But easier said that done if you're exhausted, sleep-deprived and panicking.
My partner is ridiculous as well. Perhaps not to the level of yours @Mekrel but its fundamentally different for women and men. Men don't see the same danger in the world as women and we don't move in the same circles. Theres no logic or rationale to the crazy, its just a combination of being a mother along with (what I personally think is at the root of a huge amount of societies ills) social media.
I don't know about your partner but mine is on in constantly. Funny videos, forums, groups, general social media. It shows them perfect parenting constantly. It shows them "what can go wrong when you ignore a single burp from your baby". It bombards them with the absolute crazies on the internet who will happily tell you that their parenting style is amazing and thats why their baby sleeps and yours doesn't.
All I can tell you is that from my personal experience (with identical twins) is that nature is really really really strong. Nurture is important and perhaps gets more important as they get older and you can influence them through your words more but when they are tiny, nature is far more powerful.
You can probably imagine that identical twins are treated quite similarly in almost every regard. One of them struggled horrible for the first 3 months. Didn't sleep well, horrible trapped wind, crying a lot, fractious. The other one was fine. I was sure he was going to be the trouble maker as such and the harder one....nope. Once he got over the first few months of being in the world I think his GI issues cleared up and he is the happier and easier child. Hes still emotional, perhaps more emotional than his brother at times but thats usually because he needs food.
You need to talk to your partner and get to the bottom of why she is so worried and explain that the blame that she puts on you is not helping. There are very few things that are gospel truths with babies and its very easy with the stress of it all to lash out at the only person you can. Your partner. Its easy to find fault with what they are doing because "thats not what I would have done".
I don't know about your partner but mine is on in constantly. Funny videos, forums, groups, general social media. It shows them perfect parenting constantly. It shows them "what can go wrong when you ignore a single burp from your baby". It bombards them with the absolute crazies on the internet who will happily tell you that their parenting style is amazing and thats why their baby sleeps and yours doesn't.
All I can tell you is that from my personal experience (with identical twins) is that nature is really really really strong. Nurture is important and perhaps gets more important as they get older and you can influence them through your words more but when they are tiny, nature is far more powerful.
You can probably imagine that identical twins are treated quite similarly in almost every regard. One of them struggled horrible for the first 3 months. Didn't sleep well, horrible trapped wind, crying a lot, fractious. The other one was fine. I was sure he was going to be the trouble maker as such and the harder one....nope. Once he got over the first few months of being in the world I think his GI issues cleared up and he is the happier and easier child. Hes still emotional, perhaps more emotional than his brother at times but thats usually because he needs food.
You need to talk to your partner and get to the bottom of why she is so worried and explain that the blame that she puts on you is not helping. There are very few things that are gospel truths with babies and its very easy with the stress of it all to lash out at the only person you can. Your partner. Its easy to find fault with what they are doing because "thats not what I would have done".
Thank you everyone who has offered their advice and experiences - too many people to reply to individually.
What I would say is that I absolutely understand my partner has been through a lot; I'm actually amazed what mothers go through - 9 months of pregnancy with nausea, giving up foods (she's French so loves unpasteurised butter and cheese, wine, coffee), the discomfort of carrying the weight. Then birth which for her was full on as she went into active birth off the back of 48hrs of no sleep due to a long latent birth stage. Then after birth, there's the recovery whilst looking after a baby.
Funnily enough, before he was born, she did openly discuss it might be difficult to adjust from him being in the womb, just her and him - to then being out there and he's more than just hers (not sure if I'm explaining this well). Which I absolutely understand, although being male, couldn't possibly truly understand. @fez - You're completely right about the access to information, honestly, you watch these YouTube videos about different holds and stretches as if they're guaranteed solutions. What doesn't help is she's either proactively using AI or getting the AI summary when searching, where AI can often reinforce your belief depending on how you've asked the question. For example, he's been on infacol and gaviscon infant and she's leaning to giving him neither because she's seen gaviscon can cause constipation (I can't even remember the infacol side effect she found). There's a lot of knee jerk panic buying, including a humidifier as he had a couple of nose bleeds and now it's not used because she felt the mist coming out has changed, suggesting it's probably limescale but we've been using distilled water with it. I don't mind, it was £25 (I think) so not a massive waste of money but gives a view of the mindset.
Her mother was with us for ~3/4 weeks after he was born, she wanted to be around as her other grand children were born in Canada so couldn't be around for their birth. My partner a few weeks ago mentioned she felt she was taking frustration out on me now as previously, it was her Mum taking the brunt of it, I was just unaware as the conversation would have been in French.
It's all good, I think there's a level of acceptance that she's going to need an outlet of her frustrations, especially considering she's still going through postpartum recovery, breast feeding, having him for 80% of the time he's awake.
The main challenge for me now is understanding if his behaviour is normal or not, which is a challenge in itself not having any experience to go on. The two things that concern me is his feeding, regardless if he's at the breast, or at the bottle with expressed milk, he sounds like he's never been fed. Gulping, gasping, snorting, kicking off if you remove the bottle after giving him half to burp him. I then wonder if the feeding behaviour is linked to the other issue, which is outside of feeding, he's generally just fussy/crying - it either sounds like he's pushing wind or stool, or it's fussiness just before bringing up milk. He doesn't sleep much during the day, if he does sleep it'll be for 30 to 45 mins, max twice a day, before waking up in clear discomfort but does do 5 to 6 hours overnight.
We're on either size 0 or 1 teats for MAM bottles to try and slow the rate of feeding down.
What I would say is that I absolutely understand my partner has been through a lot; I'm actually amazed what mothers go through - 9 months of pregnancy with nausea, giving up foods (she's French so loves unpasteurised butter and cheese, wine, coffee), the discomfort of carrying the weight. Then birth which for her was full on as she went into active birth off the back of 48hrs of no sleep due to a long latent birth stage. Then after birth, there's the recovery whilst looking after a baby.
Funnily enough, before he was born, she did openly discuss it might be difficult to adjust from him being in the womb, just her and him - to then being out there and he's more than just hers (not sure if I'm explaining this well). Which I absolutely understand, although being male, couldn't possibly truly understand. @fez - You're completely right about the access to information, honestly, you watch these YouTube videos about different holds and stretches as if they're guaranteed solutions. What doesn't help is she's either proactively using AI or getting the AI summary when searching, where AI can often reinforce your belief depending on how you've asked the question. For example, he's been on infacol and gaviscon infant and she's leaning to giving him neither because she's seen gaviscon can cause constipation (I can't even remember the infacol side effect she found). There's a lot of knee jerk panic buying, including a humidifier as he had a couple of nose bleeds and now it's not used because she felt the mist coming out has changed, suggesting it's probably limescale but we've been using distilled water with it. I don't mind, it was £25 (I think) so not a massive waste of money but gives a view of the mindset.
Her mother was with us for ~3/4 weeks after he was born, she wanted to be around as her other grand children were born in Canada so couldn't be around for their birth. My partner a few weeks ago mentioned she felt she was taking frustration out on me now as previously, it was her Mum taking the brunt of it, I was just unaware as the conversation would have been in French.
It's all good, I think there's a level of acceptance that she's going to need an outlet of her frustrations, especially considering she's still going through postpartum recovery, breast feeding, having him for 80% of the time he's awake.
The main challenge for me now is understanding if his behaviour is normal or not, which is a challenge in itself not having any experience to go on. The two things that concern me is his feeding, regardless if he's at the breast, or at the bottle with expressed milk, he sounds like he's never been fed. Gulping, gasping, snorting, kicking off if you remove the bottle after giving him half to burp him. I then wonder if the feeding behaviour is linked to the other issue, which is outside of feeding, he's generally just fussy/crying - it either sounds like he's pushing wind or stool, or it's fussiness just before bringing up milk. He doesn't sleep much during the day, if he does sleep it'll be for 30 to 45 mins, max twice a day, before waking up in clear discomfort but does do 5 to 6 hours overnight.
We're on either size 0 or 1 teats for MAM bottles to try and slow the rate of feeding down.
You have to understand that human babies are absolutely useless. Compared to the animal kingdom they are a joke. Compared to a potato they are not much more capable. You might imagine that something as fundamental as feeding would be inbuilt but no, no its not.
What you need to remember is that tiny babies have no way to communicate outside of crying. Hungry? Cry. Uncomfortable? Cry. Cold? Cry. Hot? Cry? Its a Monday? Cry. Unfortunately all the things that have a massive impact on their comfort are kind of linked together when they are little. One of ours struggled with trapped wind which meant they were crying a lot, didn't feed as well as their brother, didn't sleep as well. Unfortunately, there is little you can do beyond what you are doing. Try different things to see if anything helps but quite often I think that babies are just adjusting to life outside the womb and everything that entails and some are fine really quickly and some aren't.
I wanted to rip the heads off the people on youtube showing you "how to wind your baby when they have trapped wind". They would sit there with their slug of a baby that lets them move their legs and head etc easily until a little burp or fart comes out. Meanwhile, ours was screaming blue murder and tensing every muscle in their body as they fought anything you tried to do to help. Just remember not to be too hard on yourself and that sometimes you can't outwit a problem, you just have to suffer through it and emerge the other side. Humans are really good at forgetting awful times and you will look back in a few months and think "hey, it wasn't thaaaat bad".
Also, theres a reason the baby toot industry is so huge and worth so much money. Parents would pay a lot of money for anything that made their lives easier. If it was easy raising babies there wouldn't be 1000 different bottles all explaining how they will fix your babies feeding/gas issues.
Going along with the Mrs and also staking your own opinion is an ongoing tightrope when it comes to fatherhood. Don't be tempted to go too far in each direction, if you let her win every discussion and just go along with it you'll end up pigeonholed. But equally you have to know when to pick your battles. There are times when I was very glad I stuck to my guns, and times where swallowing my opinion turned out to be for the best. The problem is most of the time it isn't clear which is best until after the fact. Just keep trying, be logical and supportive. It's a big challenge, good luck.
Associate
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Horse: stand up and walk within 30 minutes of birth or you’ll be culled.
Shark: be the best in the womb or you’ll be eaten before seeing the outside of it.
Elephants: going to grow you inside me for 2 years, just to make sure your brain is good enough.
I find that it’s always me encouraging and pushing that ‘next step’ with a lot less coddling, a few examples would be
- the ‘tougher’ foods that require more chewing
- pushing to potty train
- generally letting my eldest make the mistakes and learn from them
The wife would panic even if we were in an open field and the eldest was more than 5 metres away from her
- the ‘tougher’ foods that require more chewing
- pushing to potty train
- generally letting my eldest make the mistakes and learn from them
The wife would panic even if we were in an open field and the eldest was more than 5 metres away from her
Soldato
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When our daughter was very little, we'd give her a rest every minute or two. She didn't ever have colic. If she gasps, it's normally because her nose is blocked.
I can't understate how important burping them is. Get good at it quickly, because it makes a huge difference
Human baby: I'm about to end this mans entire career if he doesn't rock me to sleep for 7 of the next 8 hours and despite being famished I'm going to try and latch on a collarbone. When you finally get me on that boob i'm going to latch like its my first time despite being months old.
Both our got very snoozy when breast feeding and had to be woken up constantly. We had to strip them to make them uncomfortable so they didn't doze off after 30s of feeding.
First trip away with the daughter.. 4 days up near the Cairngorms.
Beautiful and nice to get away but we got zero sleep. Between teething and her deciding the travel cot is now completely unacceptable, it was a mission.. spent way more time holding her than she did in bed.
On the last night, I ended up just sitting there in the dark holding her for 5 hours straight because I didn’t have the energy to keep trying to put her down
Frustratingly, she’d just started turning a corner and was finally sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a time.
She's brilliant, such a bright little thing, so happy in nature but can't help but feel parenting must be a completely different game when your baby sleeps properly! It's been a tough 7 months, the lack of sleep catches up with you.
Beautiful and nice to get away but we got zero sleep. Between teething and her deciding the travel cot is now completely unacceptable, it was a mission.. spent way more time holding her than she did in bed.
On the last night, I ended up just sitting there in the dark holding her for 5 hours straight because I didn’t have the energy to keep trying to put her down
Frustratingly, she’d just started turning a corner and was finally sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a time.
She's brilliant, such a bright little thing, so happy in nature but can't help but feel parenting must be a completely different game when your baby sleeps properly! It's been a tough 7 months, the lack of sleep catches up with you.
Is that a rest during feeding? How did she react? Our near 8 week old has a melt down if you take the bottle away (to burp him), even if you take it away when he's not actively sucking/having a breather.
Sometimes if you take the bottle away, he's in a milk coma like state as we're gently extending his body via his sternum to encourage a burp. Then a few moments later, he'll open his eye and almost realise he's not being fed and will kick off.
He genuinely acts like he's being starved but he's putting on a healthy amount of weight.
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