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Parenthood

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Noland, Dec 2, 2010.

  1. Puffman

    Puffman
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    A nightly walk will do wonders for getting the baby to sleep. I used to put one in a front carry sack and go out to walk till he fell asleep, then repeat (twins). It usually does not take too long, about 10 to 15 minutes. When all else fails as mentioned above, put the baby in the car seat and go for a drive. The trick is it has to be freeway or nonstop motion. I think the old series "Mad about You" had an episode about that titled "Speed Baby"

    Ahh good times. Now I just yell at them to unplug the Iphone and get to sleep.
     
  2. LatinGroove

    LatinGroove
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    I've got a two year old boy.

    This is some of the most solid advice. Don't bother buying a bunch of expensive shit because they grow too fast. Try to spend time with them as much as you can, but don't forget to give yourself a little "me time" as well. It'll make you go fucking crazy if you don't.

    Stinky diapers are a big deal for the first few months, but eventually you get used to it.

    ALWAYS carry a change of pants and an extra shirt both for yourself and your child. If and when they throw up or get nasty, it will get on you. You don't want to be walking around with daddy badges all day when you're out and about.

    This one was probably the biggest issue for me and I cannot stress this enough. When they are a smaller, you will feel sort of useless because you can't really do a lot of "fun" stuff. Don't sweat it. Eventually they get a little bigger and you'll be able to do all sorts of cool stuff.

    My favorite quote about not being able to have a lot of time for yourself is best summed up by an article I read the other day:

    "Children are such as a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit."

    Realize you will mess up on some things and you'll feel horrible about it. Learn from your parenting mistake, reflect on it and then move on.
     
  3. smurfette

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    Go with the flow. I have twin two year olds. My house looks like a sanatorium most days.
     
  4. Eastcoaster

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    Here's the best tip I can give you: from the second the kid is born, make sure there is something making noise. Turn on a radio and leave it on. The kid will learn to fall asleep with something making a sound. The payoff is that the kid wont wake up to noise. Otherwise you'll be those parents who have to unplug their phone, disable the doorbell and not so much as fart in the basement or little johnny will wake up screaming blood murder.
     
  5. roy jones

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    These are the following stages of fatherhood as proclaimed by Roy Jones (I have 6 year old and 2 year old boys.)

    Stage 1--Pregnancy (1-6 months)

    You are happy. Your wife is happy. A new baby will make your life complete. You tell everyone you know. You have granduous plans for your upcoming bundle of joy. You have sex more than usual because you're happy. You are going to be the perfect parent.

    Stage 2-Pregnancy (6-8 months)

    You are happy. Your wife is starting to feel crappy but is still happy. You start to buy a lot of items for this new addition, and realize your beer money is becoming thinner and thinner each week. You start talking about parenting with other parents. Your parents get a glimmer in their eyes. Sex is back to normal, and sometimes is interupted by getting kicked in the stomach by your wife's stomach. You laugh it off. You laugh at how her nipples change color, and she does too. You are going to be a perfect parent and a great provider.

    Stage 3-Pregnancy (9 months)

    Do not mention the nipples or anything else about her body. Fire will come from her eyes. It's almost time for your kid. You are rushing to put together furniture, putting together toys, painting, etc. Your wife is mad. ALOT. The question is not "if" you are going to get yelled at, it is "for what". She is going to cry. ALOT. She will cry over movies, she will cry if you are nice, she will cry if she's horny. And she'll be horny. Unfortunately, as soon as the baby moves, she won't be any more even if you are 20 minutes into foreplay. Her friends are going to drive you crazy (as well as your parents, her parents, and every other parent out there) with all of their advice. You both get ready for that magical day, and pray for it to come.

    Stage 4-Birth

    You will not look at your wife the same. Vaginas are not supposed to stretch like that. I don't care what they say. But you are happy. She is happy. Everybody comes to the hospital, visits, and brings presents. The nurses will annoy the fuck out of you and especially your wife, and she may take a swing at the lactation specialist. You are entering what I refer to as the "Skinimax" period of fatherhood. You see your wife's boobs alot, but, just like watching Cinemax late at night, there's no chance of touching those (larger and fuller) pacifiers. They are no longer yours.

    If everything has gone ok, you will be out of this place in a few days. You sneak out of the hospital to sleep at night. You make sure that everything is ready for the baby's homecoming. You think it's not so bad being a parent.

    Stage 5-The first few months (0-3 months)

    The baby comes home. People will not leave you alone. Either you or your wife will think that taking a baby out in public all the time is just fine despite being to the doctor 12 times already for "sniffles". Whoever this is, the other will disagree. You'll take off the first few days to be together, and the baby sleeps alot. He/She wakes up to eat and shit. You watch television or play on the computer. Parenting is easy. Sex is nearly non-existant for at least first month of this baby's life, and due to you seeing the elasticity of her netherregions, different when you do have it finally. It is no longer regular because of sleeping patterns. You have such a good kid. You are happy. Sure, you're not sleeping regularly. You're getting 3 hour naps at a time, but you pulled all nighters all the time before. Sometimes, you even get to escape the house with your friends. So does she.

    Stage 6-(3-9 months)

    The adrenaline rush of having a new baby has worn off. Fuck sex. You want to kill that bitch every time she yells at you. And fuck this new baby! You just want to sleep one night complete. Your wife screams at you every time she buys a nice special outfit for the baby and it immediately shits up his/her back. Fuck your parents, fuck her parents, fuck everybody that won't leave you the fuck alone so you can get some rest.

    But the baby is sooooo cute....

    So you are happy. Every time you hold him/her, a wave of calm comes over both of you. You wake up your wife at 6 in the morning because you've had him/her since 3:00 am because he/she doesn't want to sleep in a bed and finds your chest more comfortable. You go to bed, only to be woken up at 9:30 because your wife got up 12:00 am and did the same thing. You jump for joy because he/she held a toy today.

    Stage 7-Movement (10 months-2 years)

    You wake with a fright realizing that you have slept through the whole night. Your wife has too! You have survived Stage 6! And your baby is so cute. It laughs. It starts to play. You shed a tear when you hear "da" or "ma". Oh, life is good!

    You probably haven't started having sex with your wife on a regular basis because you still probably want to kill her. All those times that you made decisions before the baby came along on your own are gone. If you make a picture appointment without her telling exactly when you should do it, you are getting the cold shoulder. The baby has knocked you down the totem pole of your wife's priorities, and that's the way it is. When you do get to have sex (down to about once a month), you try to rock her world. And, of course, on those nights, the baby will wake up for some reason an hour after you are done. The next day you will both be tired, and she will be peeved at you because "you kept her up last night". You masterbate. ALOT.

    The dishes begin to pile up as you want to spend more time with your family after work versus cleaning. Once the baby starts moving, the house is no longer yours. Everything that is on a coffee table and lower is fair game to the baby. You dropped something 2 years ago that you haven't seen since? Your baby will find it, and most likely put it in his/her mouth. If you have stairs, you have to get used to stepping over a baby gate. You laugh at your friends that are about to have their first child because they have no fucking clue. Your money is stressed. Your credit cards have the highest balance they've ever had. Your wife wants another one because "they grow up to fast". She still doesn't want to have sex on a normal basis, but if you say you are ready for another, you'll have sex for 2 weeks a months every other day. When she gets her period the following month, she'll cry and you'll realize your only purpose anymore is babysitting and reproducing. You want to scrub yourself like a rape victim.

    Stage 8-Acceptance (2 years+)

    You are no longer angry. You are there. You go to work. Your provide to the best of your abilities. Your wife is just there too. You are no longer seperate. You are a team. The power of your team is much more than the sum of you two together. This makes life easier.

    You start to live a normal life again. It's easier to get out together for dates. You start to rekindle what brought you together in the first place. You laugh even harder at your friends about to have their first child, but don't let them into the joke. You view your parents differently, and can probably pinpoint the moment that "wild side" to your dad died. However, your parents will now spoil that child and laugh their asses off when your kid misbehaves because you did the same thing. That curse is true.

    If you do have a second child, the first one will go through a few stages in the first year as well. At first, Baby #1 is going to be slightly jealous until he/she realizes the new addition only lays around. When Baby #2 starts moving and getting into the older child's toys, all hell will break loose. The other big problem with the second child is you still go through the same stages as listed above, but you have to make time for the older child. You only slept 2 hours last night? You still have to get up at 7 and play trucks and be happy about it. The younger child will think the older child is the greatest thing ever and mimick everything he/she does.

    This is the true "What to Expect when You're Expecting". Nobody told me, but as you an anonymous message board user, I'm not obligated to hold back this information and laugh secretly knowing that your life is now going to be much more fulfilling (but not the life you are expecting).
     
  6. Misanthropic

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    All of the posts recommending buying used/consignment/Wal-mart clothing are spot on. It is pissing money down a hole to pay top dollar for brand new clothes that will fit them for maybe 3 months.

    The most important advice is to do an honest evaluation of yourself before having kids, and decide wether you could actually be a decent parent. If every pet and/or houseplant you've ever owned has been dead inside a month, do society a favor and refrain from reproducing. Now I'm going to pass on a few bits of wisdom that are things people won't usually tell you, drawn from my own experience and every other person of my aquaintance who has kids. I'll spare you all of the rainbows and sunshine crap about how incredible having kids can be. We've all heard it, and it is certainly true some of the time. But if you expect your life to be a Hallmark Channel movie you're screwed.

    1. Giving birth is messy. If you go to one of those pre-birth classes, and you should, you'll find out that that it's not unusual for women to squirt out some urine or feces while trying to push that watermelon through their vaginal canal. Then there is the blood and afterbirth . . . . yeeesh. And ladies, if you get a ceasarean, expect that your abdomen will be feel very different, even after you are totally healed, and may in numb areas that never go away.

    2. Giving birth changes a woman. From the rush of hormones, to the lack of sleep, to the realization of responsibility, women change dramatically. You (if you're a woman), your wife (if . . .duh) will be a different person. I'll speak from the guy's viewpoint. You will have to adjust to the new person that your wife has become. Everyone tells guys that having a kid changes everything, but no one mentions that large part of this is the change in the mother. I'm not saying it's Jekyll& Hyde, or that it's all bad. Just be forewarned.

    3. Infants are horrendously ill-designed. They are like larvae, all pink and wiggling, barely able to move (Note: Your wife may not appreciate if you actually refer to them as "the larvae"). Beyond the whole inability to move about and feed themselves, they also initially cannot burp, breath through their mouths properly or wake up when they are having difficulty breathing. All of which makes the first 6 months to a year harrowing.

    4. After the kid is born, and I mean their whole life not just the first couple of months, your sex life will be dramatically diminished. There will be long stretches where you have less sex than Durbanite. Is this always true? Of course not - I know women who are just as horny, if not hornier, after they had kids. These woman are the exception.

    5. Naps. Sounds great, right? After all, who doesn't like a good nap? What no one tells you, is that for a good 3 to 5 years, you will be planning your entire schedule around naps, long after you have to worry about changing diapers or getting them to eat human food. This particularly sucks on vacations and weekends.

    6. How would you feel if you were left to lie around in your own rapidly cooling shit while two assholes much larger than you argued about whose turn it was to change the baby's diaper? Change the fucking diaper as soon as you notice there is an issue. It won't kill you, and it's actually much easier if you handle it immediately.
     
  7. Noland

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    You will never feel more useless than when you are at the hospital while she is in labor. Tits on a boar are more useful. Yeah, you can say all the nice encouraging things that you're supposed to say, but either 1) she's doing this naturally and is in so much pain she doesn't give a shit what you have to say or 2) she's had an epidural and could read a magazine while it's going on.

    Epidurals are wonderful things. Not saying natural childbirth isn't beautiful and wonderful and the way God intended or whatever, but nobody has their teeth pulled naturally anymore, do they?

    I made the mistake of leaning too far forward after the first was born to be able to see him and actually caught the sight of slithering afterbirth being ejected. Lean the fuck back.

    Keep him/her warm, clean, and fed. Everything else works out pretty well after that.
     
  8. Chellie

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    I have 3 kids, aged 7, 5.5 and 3.5. In my experience, the two most important tips are these:

    Children are not little adults. They don't process information the same way and their minds don't connect the dots like yours does. They often don't see the inherent logic in your requests and rules, so keep them brief and to the point, with pertinent information only, and connect the dots for them verbally. Your kid is more likely to comply with you if they understand WHY you're asking. At first this seems annoying, but once the little bastards get used to it, you can really say 'because I said so' with less argument, and they'll pretty much just assume you have a valid reason in there somewhere.

    Pick your battles carefully. If you decide to go to war over every little thing you could possibly control, from fingerprints on the minivan window to what outfit they're wearing that day, you can't possibly win them all. Once you lose, you're done. The key step to this; learn to differentiate between kids being kids and kids being brats. If they're brats, the hammer of justice must fall swiftly and with severity in proportion to the brattiness.

    My kids are by no means perfect, but these two things have lead to a solid 'if mom says it, she means it, and she's not fucking around' attitude that wards off a lot of other issues.
     
  9. Luke 217

    Luke 217
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    I haven't seen anything posted about teenagers. Most likely because there aren't many old fuckers like me on the board. I've got a stepson that just turned 17.
    I've known him since he was about 10, but he's been living with me for about 3 or 4 years. He was raised by his single mom until they moved in with me. She did a great job, but you can tell he was raised by a single mom. What I mean to say is that he is the most thoughtful and well mannered kid I've ever met. He's also a fucking pussy because his mommy dotes on him. Which I of course immediately brought to a halt when I entered the picture.
    Are you hungry fuckface? Then make yourself something to eat. I'm not your personal chef. Don't have anything to wear because its all dirty cocksmooch? Then do your laundry. Lost your Ipod and want a new one queernuts? Get a job fucko. I'm not here to buy you shit so you can lose it again. Want to spend your weekdays trapsing all over the place with your buddies shitlips? Get C's or better in school and you can do whatever the fuck you want on the weekdays. Don't want to do your chores everyday? That's fine, I don't want to pay the heating bill, or buy you food, or not punch your face.

    Teenagers are also retarded. Here are some things off the top of my head he's done in the last month:

    He put a fork in the microwave.
    I sent him to the store for a head of lettuce. He brought back a rutabegga.
    He accidentally wore a Rammstein shirt over to his Jewish girlfriends house for Hannukah dinner last friday night.
    We were playing catch in gym a while back and he took a curveball to the melon. And he thought just because he had a bloody nose we were going to stop.
    We went to the gym and were in the locker room to change only to find out that he forgot to wear underwear or shorts under his warm up pants. I'll repeat. He forgot to wear underwear. It was about twenty degrees outside that day.
    He ate futon pizza that was in his room for five dollars. Then I laughed at him and didn't give him the five dollars.


    I only have a few set-in-stone rules with the kid.
    1. Wear a fucking condom. Everytime. Condoms, condoms, condoms. For everything. I'd even wear a condom when fingering someone.
    2. Do not drive drunk. Ever. Just pick up the phone and call me. (And do not get in a car if that person has been drinking)
    3. Are you pissed at me and wanna take a swing? Lets do this. I can't wait.
    4. You are welcome to drink my beer, or my liquor, but you will not be leaving after you do so.
    5. If you are going to do drugs. Do them on your terms, not on someone else's. It's okay to try new shit, but do it somewhere you are comfortable, and don't let anyone force them on you.
    6. You are responsible for your own actions. Your mother, me, or anyone else isn't responsible for the stupid shit you do. Own it.
    7. Take a shower every day. Because you smell like stir fried shit.


    There aren't too many generalized things that I can warn anyone about. I know one thing though. Teenage boys will eat you out of house and home.
    I'm sure every teenager is different, and as most of you can see we run a very leisure household. I'm not saying that everyone should do this with their kid, but it works for us. My parents were very strict, and is probably why I rebelled so much. I drank like a fish, did tons of drugs, and was in jail every other month when I turned 18. This kid won't be that way. Alcohol and drugs are not a faux pa in our household. They are not to be abused, but I'm not gonna be some hypocrite and preach that we never did them. Because that would be a lie, and he needs to know that its okay to experience life. He also has to learn that those experiences come with repercussions. These things cannot be taught, they need to be learned. And I'd rather have him learn them when I am around to give him advice and counsel.
    All that said,,, its not like he's allowed to get shitfaced on a Wednesday and do meth on the weekend. I think the most I saw him drink was two beers during thanksgiving. He came to us a year or so ago and was asking us about weed. Some of his friends had done it, and he wanted to try it. So we did. He's done it once since that occasion, and doesn't seem to like it.
    I can honestly say that I don't know if I'd take this approach with every kid, but it appears to be working with him.
     
  10. Crown Royal

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    How to take a 2-year-old shopping:

    fucking don't.