When you're younger and making less money with babies, you don't know any better about the supposed finer things in life and you grind it out with what you have.

We had a Little Tikes playgym we bought from Winners for like $30. It did the job for the first few months and we were able to use it twice with two babies.

We took our first born in my wife's mid-2000s Mazda 3 with a Britax car seat. It was the only car we had for a while. Your average 40-something new parent thinks they need a $1000 car seat from Uppababy (that's going to be thrown away in 6 months because they will only have 1 child) in some $100K luxury SUV.

I sort of get wanting to send kids to private school because money buys access to networks. But if you want your kids to go far in life, you're better off becoming politically active and getting them involved in politics at a young age.

That only helps with birthday parties when you're inviting the whole class. The rest of that stuff why would I specifically want to talk to just the 20 parents of the K+ aged kids in my kids class about it?

Yeah I can’t talk to 20 people about shit like that in a group chat setting and not get annoyed.
I’ve got a few numbers of the dads in my class where the kids are friends and I’d actually be friends with these guys if there we no kids involved, but we’d talk about that stuff over a beer or when the kids are hanging out and we are all around.

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

You forgot to mention there are plenty of couples who spend those many tens of thousands of dollars + injections multiple times a day for months at a time, only to wind up empty-handed :(. The money is one thing, the heartbreak is another. Have at least three examples of this in my circles. I'm sure there were more: people understandably don't like to talk about it.

We spent so much of our lives trying not to accidentally get someone pregnant, and then we woke up one day to find ourselves suddenly trying so hard to get pregnant lol!

Yeah but with the black and white Lovevery cards, your kids might do even better than you!! :)

So I have a habit of calling out shitty driving while I'm driving ("C'mon you idiot") and of laughing at people who can't park their cars well (especially Chinese ladies) and yesterday as we're walking to Walmart my 6 year old sees a Crosstrek struggling to back into their spot and goes, "Ugh, what is their problem!?"

Chip off the ol' block.

(My wife will also struggle to back into our 1 car garage and have to back in and out to get it in the middle but when she does it in one go my daughter will actually go "Good job Mom!")

lol dude. My 3.5 year old daughter in the backseat a few weeks ago.
“Fuckin guy, come on”
Oops.

My son is starting to pick up on my road rage as well and my wife is telling me to tone it down. I try not to swear as much but when I'm following some one slowly, he'd be like, why you so slow?

I’ve come to the unfortunate realization my kid will not be growing up in a swear free household, but that said I also think context and intent are the most important part of language so I explain to her about these words and how they are not for her vocabulary yet, how she needs to understand the gravity of these words and it’s actually worked. She knows what not to say already and follows the rules.

That's a good way to go about explaining it to the little person. I should probably try that the next time my tongue inevitably slips.

A few years ago, there was a period of several weeks when a ton of things at work and at home weren't going right, and I was consistently running on a short fuse. My kid was of course younger at the time, maybe 4? 5? and normally he is a pretty mild tempered kid, preferring to cry instead of getting angry / throwing tantrums when he is upset. But during that period one day, I noticed that he was short tempered as well, and getting angry at us and at his toys.

And then it dawned on me that he was really just mirroring his speech and behaviour *after me*. Because I had been running on a short fuse for a while, he just picked up on both my speech and behaviour, and made them his own as well.

It was really a light bulb moment, and every since then, I remember to try extra hard to act in the behaviour that I'd like my kid to be in. I am of course far from perfect, but the incident and realization were really so eye-opening that it left a last impression in my mind to this day.

(But I still catch myself cussing under my breath a lot...) FailFish

Yeah I’ve really learned the importance of staying calm. Overall, I’m a pretty calm guy in most instances, especially when shit is hitting the fan, but when I snap I absolutely fucking LOSE it. The fuse is very long but the bomb is big. I’ve gotten a lot better at controlling that, because I know the example it sets. I grew up with the bomb example in some formative years, but inclusive of a short fuse and I can see where it all came from.
We have a lot more pressure than our parents did, because I think the understanding of the construction of these neuropathways is pretty new.

Speaking of IVF, BC is offering coverage for one round of treatment up to $19K. If couples legitimately have trouble conceiving, then I'm all for this. But if it's a couple who just wants to wait till they saved up enough money and travel the world first, not sure how I feel about gov't subsidizing IVF due to lifestyle choice ... but then what do I know, maybe I'm racist towards DINKs. It is income based so that might rule out the 'let's delay having kids till we are 40's' group.

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2025/0...ications-open/

“We will fund up to $19,000 for that single standard IVF cycle, and we’ll cover 100 per cent of that for those applicants who have a combined pre tax income of zero to $100,000,” she said, adding that the funding will be reduced in steps up to $250,000 pre tax income.

The government created an environment where people can’t afford to have kids until they are in their 30s. I think it’s great, and it’s also preventative in terms of child poverty giving people an option to make educated decisions on when they should have a child while taking off some of the pressure of fertility.
Also it closes a two tier system where rich people get to have kids later in life where average people may have to forgo things like a down payment on a home to pay for IVF.
Two things kept me from having kids earlier.
1. Not knowing if I wanted to bring someone into this shit fucking world that’s swirling around in a diarrhea filled toilet.
2. Not feeling comfortable about savings, parental leave funds, a big enough home, etc.
We were still in the window, but barely.
I still wonder about 1 though.

I wouldn't say it is the gov that created an environment where people can't afford to have kids until they are in their 30's. The simple trend that is true everywhere across the world is -- the more educated women are, they later they start having children, while also having fewer children in total. We, esp those of us in Canada, live in a world where higher education / post secondary is very common.

Societal norm is also changing. In my parents' generation, most married couples are expected to have children. Nowadays, the choice to have children is really just that -- it's a choice, and a choice where many have chosen not to have children. And when we choose to have children, we also have fewer of them -- probably far fewer of them.

Personally, while I certainly view the 1 gov-covered IVF treatment to be a welcomed and progressive gesture, I also view it pretty much exactly as that -- a goodwill gesture, instead of a determined effort to really help people have children. IMO by the time someone is looking into getting IVF, their chances to successfully conceive from a single treatment seems kinda low to me.

I think both of us may be over simplifying it. Economic policy certainly has been a MASSIVE factor worldwide in terms of creating inflation and allowing housing to become a commodity first and a home second is the single biggest contributor financially to not having kids until later.
Also I’d say women becoming more educated and career focused would still allow them to have kids if men staying home was a financially viable option. 50 years ago it didn’t matter if you couldn’t afford kids, because you’d probably still have a roof and some food, albeit all quite shitty.
My mother was a single mother, with a good job and I grew up fairly well. Now one person with a great job as a single parent and you’d be absolutely scraping the bottom of the barrel lifestyle wise.

I'm not going to talk about financially, it has been debated to death. No one is ever ready, and it's always the parent's wants and not needs.

I blame 2 things a) people are trying to find unicorns so they keep giving up. b) women in the 30s are focusing on careers and asking for too much while their market diminishes.

On a totally separate note. I've asked 5 people about this and the result is still the same. Wife is starting to bag breast like in fridge. It's never first in first out, but all in the freezer.. I'm not sure if it's saving for the apocalypse but many says it reaches to a point the freezer is full and wife realizes and then throws them all away... is that true?

Sometimes we'd get a bit of a buildup of frozen milk but my daughter refused formula so it'd always clear up as her appetite grew.

We saved up a bunch of frozen milk with our first one. Eventually we mixed it all into his regular milk in a straw cup and he drank it. Neither kid took the bottle. With the second one we didn't bother.

With respect to men's support groups - there was nothing, even 10 years ago. That seems like a positive step in the right direction. Fathers still don't get a lot of respect out there... In my outings around town with my own kids without my wife, I don't see a lot of dads on their own with young kids, which is both sad and probably a reality that a lot of mothers still don't trust their own husbands/partners to take the kids out on their own.

No one selling extra milk to gullible bodybuilders who want the HGH?

For real though, I think there's a milk bank at Children's you can donate to for the babies in need.

I'm literally that guy haha but zero respect for sure. I do pick ups, drop offs, kids lessons on the weekends, on top of their schedules, sign up for their shit, cook etc all solo dolo. That said, I've definitely seen more and more dads taking the place of mom dominated roles but for sure still not a ton solo.

Something to consider if your wife is healthily producing a good amount of breast milk:

Donating Milk

Yup. We had chest freezer on our apartment balcony for costco runs... Had to clear that out for milk storage... It got to the point where I was storing milk at my parent's house since they had extra freezer space.

Leaving on a road trip to Calgary on the 19th and wondering what are some kid friendly neat sights/attractions/restaurants along the way worth stopping at to stretch our legs (I figure she'll get the wiggles every 90 mins or so) or to just have fun.

We're staying a night in Revelstoke on the way up and then stopping at Golden then Salmon Arm (might do Kamloops) on the way back (the return trip is pretty leisurely).

I think we'll visit the coasters in Revelstoke and Golden for sure and do the suspension bridge in Golden. Wife has nixed the Enchanted Forest b/c it's too creepy (but that's why I want to go).

When we drove to Calgary last year, we went to Kangaroo Creek Farm in Kelowna. It was a really nice place to visit with younger children because it mostly operated like a giant petting zoo. We were able to get up close and personal with kangaroos, wallaby, peacocks, goats, capybara, porcupine, plus a few others that I have probably forgotten. It was really interesting to touch a porcupine because I never would have thought there are petting zoos that would allow that sort of thing.

The only catch is -- the farm recommends visitors to be there before 12pm if you want to feed the kangaroos. They open at 9 or 10am, depending on the time of the year, and by the time noon rolls around, the kangaroos get fed well enough by the visitors that they become uninterested / less interested in approaching visitors to get themselves fed.

Of course, there is a small inherent risk in getting up close and personal with kangaroos / wallabies. I think the farm only lets the females out to interact with visitors, and the female kangaroos are both smaller and generally not aggressive. However, if you managed to spook them, I'm sure bad things can still happen.

I *LOVE* Station BBQ Smokehouse in Vernon. Their southern US BBQ dishes are all excellent.

FWIW, we really liked the Calgary Zoo as well.