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Hello I (dad) have my first baby due in November Are there any suggested trustworthy sources for product reviews/tips/advice/general wisdom for building a registry? I feel like google is so thoroughly corrupted about this kind of thing that I don't trust the first 10 pages of results and am hoping that real human beings who have done this before could point me in a better direction. I'm building it on babylist at the moment, which has helpfully prepopulated it with categories and suggested items (even going so far as to highlight the "essential" ones), with items for you to consider once you click through, though of course I'm not going to trust a single website with this. Unless I should? I'm still getting up to speed, this is a very new kind of life for me and I feel a bit untethered if I'm being forthright Somaen posted:
Hmm, maybe i'm doing alright after all
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Jun 27, 2023 18:56
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 17:07 |
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ExtrudeAlongCurve posted:Thought I was in the wrong thread. lol hello. I almost posted in the parenting thread before checking the OP and realizing I should be here instead but I'm glad to see a familiar face here too. Yeah the stroller is one of the ones I wanna pay special attention to. We will be city parents so I want to find something practical (ie, not so huge that I can't push it down a poorly shoveled sidewalk) but functional. I hope such things exist but am prepared for a "choose 3 things you want, settle for 2" kind of deal. "Try it out in person" is valuable advice, there is a chance that amidst the hurricane of things to worry about, I might have not bothered to do that I knew going in that babies need a lot of stuff but still managed to get surprised by exactly how much stuff. I don't know how the cavemen managed. I suppose their health was quite bad tbf
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Jun 27, 2023 19:44
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Thanks for the tips everyone--it's a lot to parse all at once (god there's so much to learn) but I will add all that to my notes!
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Jun 27, 2023 23:14
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cailleask posted:The right gear is gonna depend on your lifestyle a lot. Do you live in a city or the suburbs or the country? Do you go on a lot of walks? Runs? Do you travel a lot or are you mostly planning to stay home? Do you like order and schedules or just want to wing it? Is someone staying home with the baby and for how long? Or are you going into daycare relatively soon? Do you have strong feelings about how you’re going to try and feed baby, and who will do most of it? All good questions lol--to the extent that I feel comfortable trying to predict what this future will look like: - City (somerville, basically boston), which we are hoping to stay in, but we are still house shopping and this market is not good to say the least. That said our goal is to stay close to my wife's work in the city public schools, so for all intents and purposes we are planning to be city parents. I think I am in the post-running phase of my life thanks to my knees but I do hope to walk quite a bit. I bike too, but whenever I see someone riding around in traffic with their little kids strapped into their bikes i instinctively get nervous–even before I became a dad-to-be, much more so now (not shaming anyone for doing it mind you, i just don’t know if i’m bold enough to do it myself). I’m not gonna be riding around with an infant at least anyway, so I can probably leave that off the registry. - We’re not particularly travel-oriented by nature, so we’re expecting our lives to be quite small for the early phases at least. My mom is hoping to move closer too, so hopefully she’ll be near by. - wing it/order: it’s funny, I used to be a real wing it kinda guy, but the more pregnant my wife gets, the more I find I need to structure my time to stay on top of poo poo (one could argue that actually, I always needed to do this and just haven’t been until now), so I’m becoming a real schedule person and imagine that i’m going to be moreso once the baby’s born. - I get 3 months of paternity leave (thank you Massachusetts) and am intending to use all of it. The plan after that is for me to go back to work and for my wife to take an unpaid year off, which her job securely offers (thank you unions), so we are hoping to punt the daycare bills down the road for a little while. And obv she’ll be on paid maternity alongside me too. I’ll also add, if it matters, that I am 39 years old so maybe I should toss some speed or heart medication on there or something. I am a little concerned about what years of sleep deprivation will do to me at my age, considering how even my childfree rear end feels now if i get less than 6 hours but the brightside seems to be that I apparently will not remember it, based on what the folks in the parenting thread have been saying, so that’ll be nice
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Jun 29, 2023 16:47
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Yeah I’ve already been seeing a therapist due to just general “oh poo poo I am responsible for a baby now” stress and it’s been helpful. CBT (normal kind) and mindfulness and all that. It turns out I am prone to what doctors call “catastrophizing” so it’s been helpful to find techniques to keep healthier perspectives and cope with stress and all that. I’m glad I’m getting the practice now when I have enough energy to do it
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Jun 29, 2023 18:18
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BadSamaritan posted:My biggest piece of advice re: sleep deprivation/emotional regulation is to practice empathy and do your best to not take anything said at 3am to heart. You’re both exhausted and you will both be grumpy and snap at some point. Don’t continue the argument. Let the discussion sit until the morning because nobody will win in those early morning hours. Yeah that came up in therapy. I asked something like “what if it’s the middle of the night and we haven’t slept through the night in years and we snap at each other” to which she basically said “you will lol” (she’s a mom too) I didn’t know that that’s what I needed to hear but it absolutely was. My wife and I have open communication so I’m…not not worried about it, but I’m not worried about it if that makes sense.
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Jun 29, 2023 19:09
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Yeah, I have faith we'll be fine, it's just a thing I'm not looking forward to. But at least I won't be so surprised when it happens! Another relevant detail just occurred to me--my wife and I have about a foot of height difference (i'm 6'2", she's 5'....something low). Is that going to be a big consideration when choosing a stroller (or other gear I'm not thinking of) or are the good ones fairly adjustable? I was never able to find an exercise bike we could both use, I'm hoping strollers are a little more accommodating at least.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:05
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Any rock solid tips for waking up a newborn for breastfeeding? Ours is 3 days old and today the little bastard just wants to scream his lungs off instead of actually eat. At first I thought it was because I was waiting too long to wake him up (which tbf I think I was) but I tried getting him as soon as I saw feeding cues this time (rooting, eyes fluttering, arms wiggling) and same result. We had been waking him by changing his diaper and then putting him on the boob, which worked the first two days, but today it’s just pissing him off too much to eat. Is there a gentler way to get him up while keeping him in the right mood to eat? It is distressing my wife to no end, which ironically just makes the baby more upset and the whole thing harder. We’re still at hospital, and the nurses/consultants keep showing us tricks that work once and then never again apparently I love him but cmon, give your mom a break here
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Nov 18, 2023 00:57
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 17:07 |
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update on my post (which i'll be honest i only half remember making lol babies)--the issue was one of production, he was screaming because he was hungry and not getting enough to eat. Forever grateful to the angel/nurse who quickly figured that out and suggested we supplement with formula, everything's been fine since on that front. that was a very, very long night
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Nov 24, 2023 20:12
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