18 hours of labour and a few days later, we are home.

We welcomed our second, Audrey, into our household.

BC Women's had been amazing again.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Audrey is my daughter's middle name

So the fun times (and no sleep lol~) begins again.

Congrats and enjoy this truly special time! It really is precious!

Many congrats sir

https://www.amazon.ca/Puracy-Laundry...759283088&th=1

This will take care of any stain imaginable. Food. poo. urine. you name it.

For those bad items, hand wash in laundry room sink, spray some of that stuff on, let it soak a bit, the stain will turn orange as enzymes do their thing, then toss in laundry.

have anyone you gone through difficulty in conceiving?
after trying for almost 15 months, its getting to me - usually able to handle the lows of life, but this is different.

Have you consulted the dick doctors? Have you tried to be methodical and track menstruation cycles to increase odds?

You definitely don't want to downplay the mental strain this may cause -- I've seen a couple of friends gone through that difficult period, and it (the mental strain) can get really bad if you don't actively attend to it. In 2 cases, the women went into clinical depression from repeatedly failing to conceive (natural or otherwise), and that just opens up another whole different can of worms.

In this day and age, fertility treatment -- including IVF -- is a lot more common than I thought. The important thing is to not look at it with any sort of stigma.

Good luck, man~!

We didn't, but have friends that did. It's more common than you think, and I keep telling them just let it be. The more you stress about it the harder it is, and once sex becomes a chore it's no longer fun and just adds to the emotional issues.

There are always solutions:
1) get checked, both of you, to see if you guys are having viable eggs and sperm.
2) figure out if there's other problems - A couple that we know, the wife had some hormonal issues which makes it hard to conceive, they did hormone treatments and got pregnant almost right away after. They thought it would be hard the 2nd time around too and got pregnant right away.
3) there is that thing you can do where they inject the sperm into the to-be-mom at the right time to increase chances of fertilization.
4) there's always the money solution, IVF.

Ive had many many friends who had a hard time conceiving. It took me and my wife alil longer to than expected to have our kids aswell (6months ish). We tried every single wives tale to "increase" our odds and it worked for us. While i have other friends who even do IVF and yet to bring a baby to term. As others have said go get checked out asap. If money is a issue, theres other things u can do that people say got them pregnant.

And yes its very discouraging and hard mentally trying to conceive a baby, especially when potential grandparents keep asking why u havent had a baby yet. Its also hard when it seems like everyone is having a baby or is making baby announcements and u havent been so lucky thus far.

It's not as uncommon as it seems, but it's a battle that's very personal and often a secretive one that you usually end up battling alone with your partner... cause generally no one really likes sharing that info to everybody... and even if so, it can feel like you're the only one out of everyone you know that struggled. It usually catches people blindsided. We're taught more about not having accidents, making it seem common that pregnancy is a very easy thing.

Most people will try to be there for you in good intentions, but sometimes it doesn't really help since they don't fully understand the emotions if they haven't been there. There's a big difference between it not happening in several months vs several years. Especially with the buddies who had an easier time. "Just have more sex!" Sometimes people try to relate with you. "damn... hang in there, it took me 20 tries." What? 20 months? Nah dude, 20 times of sex. :seriously:

I've been through it... and I've also seen first hand what it potentially does mentally for the female partner. Let me know if you need someone to talk to even if it's just to vent.

^ It's true, because it is a very personal issue for some ppl, just like miscarriages, a lot of couples don't openly talk about it making a not uncommon problem seem even more uncommon.

Us too.

Start with your doctor who can refer you to a fertility clinic. We were referred to Olive.

Don't worry so much about which clinic they refer you to, but instead it's the individual doctor that makes all the difference. The first doctor we had was really bad. So bad that we asked for a new doctor. The new doctor was a lot better (Dr Zhang). Dr Hao also works there and she worked at the maternity clinic where we gave birth and she's good too. I recommend either.

The unfortunate part is you can wait a few months before they see you.

They'll start by doing tests on both you and her. It's all covered by MSP.

Fast forward a few months, if you end up having to do any fertility treatments, this is where it can get hard. They are expensive (not covered by MSP). This place operates like a business and they treat you accordingly. Which is hard because this experience is so emotionally tough. Consider seeking counselling to help, even now.

Before jumping straight to IVF, there is something called IUI which might be an option. None of this is cheap unfortunately. My number one piece of advice is ask questions. As many a possible. About fees, hidden fees, and success rates. Otherwise they tend to gloss over this information like salespeople tend to do.

Thankfully we didn't start treatments, it worked out for us without needing them. So don't give up hope!

For now, at least start with a referral and tests, then they can see if anything is going on and what they think the cause of the infertility might be.

Just an observation from at least 3 couples I knew that really struggled to make it happen. Similar stories, trying all the Chinese stuff among a million other things and with each method not showing results the stress builds and builds. All 3 finally ended up making it happen well over a year in 1 case over 2 years later. The only common theme I saw was that all 3 couples came to a point of not stressing about it anymore and just let nature take its course with the if it happens it happens attitude. Best of luck to you all.

At the same time don't get too focused on that. Anecdotal but when we worked backwards both of my kids are from "off" days according to my wife's tracking thing.

For our newborn, we had 3 brands of NB sized diapers. Huggies, Pampers, and Hello Bello.

We found that the Hello Bello fit small AND it had a hard time keeping pee in. It kept leaking. We understand their environmentally friendly angle, but damn it can't seem to soak it up.

This sounds about right.

I knew a couple who were trying for the longest time. I advised them to take the "try to have a kid" out of the equation and proceed as normal. In the end it worked out.

Our first born took a bit of time but worked out in the end. Then our second was stress free.

Thanks to all those who replied and also responded to some PM's. Back to yall's regular conversations about the littles :)

So, the perpetual question of how to raise your kids.

Our almost 3 year old suddenly started hating sleep, after about 2 months of being an absolute marvel.

The first night she put up a stink, we told her she can sleep with us that one night.
The second night she tried the same thing, but I was stern (...I yelled :okay:) and she went to bed crying, but she fell asleep after about 5 minutes and slept through the night.

I'm usually the more strict one, but I felt terrible after seeing her going to sleep while crying. She's old enough now, and it was genuine sobbing out of sadness, not the tantrum screaming/crying lol.

I don't fully agree with the whole coddling thing and letting them get whatever they want so as to not hurt their feelings and whatever, but also she's still very young. Talking to her is a bit of a dead end these days as she pretends to listen and understand but then instantly ignores and negates everything you just told her.

There's no way to know why, nor if it's just a phase. But how do you guys deal with stuff like this?

I just have one last thing to add. Try it on a vacation. We started trying while on a Europe trip. Got pregnant I think while we were in Barcelona. Unfortunately that ended up in a miscarriage.

The reason I say try a vacation, it's because you are probably the least stressed, and mostly happy. It's helpful for conception imo.

Our 2nd did that too. Never had that with out 1st. it turned out she wanted a big girl bed, wanted out of the toddler bed. Cut the almost nightly sneaking into our bed at night down to 1-2x a month.

Previously there was mention of having a savings account for your child from money given during birthdays, CNY...etc. I have a RESP setup and have monthly contributions which already maxes out the government grants so it doesn't make sense to over-contribute to the RESP account. Instead of a savings account (as it's not generating much interest), are you guys investing the child's money somewhere else?

I have a few big things like a swing set that uses size D batteries.
Any advice on what's most efficient? Just keep buying batteries or go for some rechargeable ones?
Any recommendations on what to buy?

^i made sure we got a swing that we could plug in cause i kinda knew it would go through a ton of batteries. My kids use alot of toys that use AAA and AA batteries so i use rechargeable batteries from Amazon