Thank you for all this. I'm an iron man and consider being able to sleep anywhere but i don't wnat to put my but in my mouth and get owned.

i do not expect my wife to take part but just to feed. She's considering hiring those chinese post birth maids to cook.

I got no say and whatever makes her happy. don't want to be the dbag husband saying things are expensive.

If you can, try to split the days/nights the first month. I took 4 and 5 mo parental for each of my kids from their birth. I tried to do all the night feeds/changes so one of us could sleep. During the days was easier as our moms would come help some.
One suggestion would be to make sure the kid gets used to a bottle feed as it can help later on. You won't know if your wife will have milk production issues or not, and it's easier to feed them if mom's not around. If she's got good milk production, pump and store some, use that for the night feed so she can get some sleep. We knew of a couple friends that had issues bottle feeding later on due to the baby preferring the boob.
Be there for your wife too. There's still a bit of a stigma for moms who can't breastfeed. The home nurse who visited made my wife feel like a failure not not being able to produce. Fed is best for the kid. Formula, breast, whatever. Locally, the breast is best push has been reduced somewhat since a local mom with post partum unalived herself, with breastfeeding as one of her triggering factors

What's the going rate on one of those now? My wife was thinking seriously about it when we had our kid 6 years ago and, like you, I was kinda like "whatever works for you" but her mom insisted that she could do most of that (Narrator: She could not).

BTW: Send me your wife's number so I can send her this post partum retreat: https://www.almacare.ca/retreat - only $20k for 2 weeks in a 600sf luxury suite. Edit: Oh, the FULL Chinese experience is $39k for a month.

More: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/hav...ight-1.7193232

This is just so so so true. If there was ever one thing that I found the whole child-birthing experience to be negative, it was the medical community's overwhelming insistence on breast feeding. I get the whole thing that breast milk is better than formula, but the insistence, the amount of persuasion, and sheer pressure coming from the nurses to breast feed can be really overwhelming. We had some production + latching issue at first, and even though le wifey knew in her head that it would have been OK to bottle feed formula, the pressure from the maternity and home nurses were so overwhelming that she still felt like a failure when we couldn't produce enough, or fed our kid enough, and that our kid lost too much weight. Add in the postpartum changes and blues, and it was a really difficult time for le wifey. (And bcos it was difficult on le wifey, it also became difficult for me too.)

We got referred to a breast feeding specialist after that, and it was an absolute relief to hear from the specialist that it was OK to supplement breast feeding with formula, or even just straight up feed the newborn with formula. In some way, I felt like the nurses went overboard on the insistence to breast feed, to the point that they might as well be demonizing bottle feeding with formula.

Breast feeding is not easy. Despite it being free milk, we both know it's not 100% soemthing you can just do. Does take time for both to learn.

Going rate for maids are $7k (live with you, cook and clean, make feed the baby). HELL i don't have that kind of money.

She and mother in law wnated the easy way out and just wanted to call.
I told them, I don't give a F who you go with a) there are single dads and moms who has to deal with this despite having only one job. b) i'm going to be forever be the D bag when they say "____ had a hard time.. told you to hire a maid" I won't ever be able to live that down.

Reality does hit cause, say if your mortgage is 5k, you are out of income for 6 mths, and if you're lucky with TOP up, you still have to pay 5k extra for the maid for few months... where does that extra 5k come from......

Wifey needs to learn to use excel and figure out budgeting. LOL

1st child I took the first few weeks off and then I took 1-2 months at the end splitting the 12 month leave with my wife.

2nd child I also took time off at the beginning but no need at the end because we were in the pandemic and I was just home all the time anyway.

I highly recommend all dads to take 1 -2 months of the 12-18 month leave that's available for parents. By the end of 12 or 18 months you can handle it without mom being there and having that 1 on 1 was truly amazing.

For the first child I had 75% top up so I took the 9 weeks off.

For the second child I was laid off right before she was born so I had 9 weeks off until I started a new job - not by choice. That was stressful AF.

If the baby is easy, great. Our first one was a super easy baby. The second one cried till the world ended. We were also a lot more chill and laid back with the first one, where I think the baby picks up your cues. With the second one, life was different and stress levels were much much higher.

Never took the second bit of time off as finances didn't allow it.

my little one is creeping up to 1 years old and all the daycares i've applied to either haven't gotten back to me, long wait list or said they are looking for 1.5-2 year olds.
couple of my friends said they got in in langley/abby area but since we both work and live in vancouver, doesn't make sense to waste so much time to drive out there and back each day.

anyone have success in getting into daycare? or ways to get their attention? open to place in vancouver/bby/richmond probably the furthest i'll go for dropoff/pickup

i have my parents as backup for daycare but would rather have my kid socialize with other kids.

How long have you been on the wait list for? I had to wait about 20 months before I got my first response (CEFA-Burnaby) and another 5 months before the 2nd one called us (Collingwood and it was only 2 days a week). I don't think that's unusual for most folks - the wait for 1-3 year olds is the longest, after that it's not hard to find spots. Spots do tend to open up as summer approaches as the kids graduate out and/or parents take the kids out for the summer - that's what happened to us. We got notified around June about our Sept opening.

I'm in this FB Childcare group and there are sometimes postings about daycare openings: https://www.facebook.com/groups/342595632570051 (you can browse for older posts about openings - I see one from yesterday for a Montessori in Burnaby for a 15m old and another around Renfrew for a P/T spot)

Worse comes to worst I would suggest you hire a P/T nanny who has the skills and experience to get your kid out to events and activities for the socialisation and structured teaching and have the grandparents cover the missing days. There are a number of those folks in the childcare group that you could probably look at using. You may want to do a nanny share for that as some are expensive - my friend pays $5k/mo for his full-time nanny.

I feel so lucky with daycare considering all your stories.

I took 2.5 months off for the 1st kid (100% paid), and right now I'm in my last few days of taking 4 months off for the 2nd kid (was 100% paid for 1.5 months, and then just EI)). Am fortunate that I got that much covered by work, we would not have survived this otherwise.

The first couple months can be tough. The level of difficulty (not just physical but mental) can really vary depending on the kid, how much patience you two have, and by how well the breastfeeding / pumping is going. I think being there and present for your wife is going to really help her out, especially since recovery / postpartum depression can be rough.

Also the disruption to sleep is going to be real. Newborns only sleep about 20-50 minutes at a time, and need to constantly be fed and held, screeching and crying the whole time. Adult sleep cycles are 90 minutes long, which means whoever is with the baby won't be getting real sleep during that time. Even if you're lucky that you guys can fall asleep instantly under any conditions (I can't, and so I can't even nap in between), it's going to be hard not to take time off, unless your job is super chill.

For the first 3 months after birth, always smile and just do whatever your wife says.

The fact is you're dammed if you do and dammed if you don't in every situation imaginable. Always defer to her. Then come to RS for your support group lol.

We had trouble with it too. Ultimately our little guy never figured it out, so we relied on pumping and formula until he started on solids.

Here's my best advice to any new dads re: breast feeding.

The public health support and hospital support is lousy.

If your wife needs help, hire a private consultant. It's worth every penny.

But most importantly, consider getting a breast pump before your baby is born, even if you never use it. You can rent them from London Drugs from $5 a day, you just have to buy the plastic pieces separately. Amazon is best for that, once you figure out which model of breast pump you end up renting.

We got home from the hospital and had trouble feeding so I was scrambling trying to find a breast pump that same day and it's not easy if you need it fast and have no clue what you are doing.

A rental is great because you can use it at home until you figure things out. Then once you decide you need to buy one, you can take time to research the one that is best for your wife.

After a couple weeks with the rental, we spent $400 on a new one, but in hindsight I would have bought it on FB marketplace.

You have to search "liquid gold extractor" because breast pumps aren't allowed to be sold on FB because they are considered medical devices.

wtf liquid gold extractor now that's some worthy tip!

If you have health insurance through work, check if it covers the breast pump. We got ours paid for through work insurance.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1MS375pEhR/

Extractor

^ We have that carpet cleaner. It's great for spot cleaning, you can forget about using it for any large areas.

Just have to refill and drain many times if it's a large area. I have the same one too. Paid over $100 like 4-5 years ago.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1F9zYsLaiA/

Another cheap one $30

Anyone done the drive up to Valemount/Jasper with a young kid? Thinking of doing a family road trip this summer to Calgary and figured I should go see the Rockies as well.

I haven't done a long trip with the 6 year old yet (longest is Seattle) so I'm trying to figure out how far I could get in a day. Valemount is 7 hours of driving and seems really ambitious but there's basically nothing between it and Kamloops (maybe I could stop at Clearwater?).

We drove from Vancouver to Calgary at roughly the same age, and my experience is -- about 7 hrs of driving per day is about the max our kiddo can tolerate. Ideally, 6 hrs or less per day, with stops at attractions and such is preferred.

Since you're going to Calgary anyway, Why don't you go through Revelstoke, the up Rogers Pass, to Lake Louise, and then head up to Jasper from there? You can stop at a lot more places, and IMO the kid(s) will do much better when it is only a 2.5 hrs drive at most between each stop. But this also means your overall trip is gonna be a lot slower / take much longer.

Also bear in mind that I think a good chunk of Jasper has been burnt down.

supa is coming to visit me? How lovely!

So glad my kid never got the COVID vaccine! :toot:

Don't worry about it, Lady Gaga and Lizard Queen Elizabeth put the vaccine in our drinking water back in 2021.

Have any of you sold a crib on FB? They randomly decided to remove my ad because they think it's been recalled. I checked the manufacturer site and the government of Canada site and there's nothing. Or course the FB options for review are completely useless.

Is this like the milk pump where I have to list it as a midget wrestling arena or something?