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A comment on How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers. Parent comment

Re:How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers by nostrademons on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:25AM (#20764899)
I was basically useless as a programmer at 12-16 weeks. I was also basically useless at 2-4 weeks, but that was largely because of the sleep deprivation and constant need to run around doing chores. (What they don't tell new parents: newborns spend 6-7 hours/day attached to the boob and do so in shifts of about 15 minutes on + 45 minutes off, so mommy basically has a full-time job breastfeeding and daddy has a full-time job doing everything else.)

I started to get some of my old coding mojo back around 8 months and at 18 months I'm IMHO better than I've ever been, but the newborn phase is basically a complete write-off. Parental leave exists for a reason.

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Re:How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers by ignoramous on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:47AM (#20765023)
> ...but the newborn phase is basically a complete write-off.

Good for you. The FANG (you can guess) company I worked for stack-ranked me at the bottom of the tar pit in my write-off year with zero increase in comp, followed by another quarter of intense improvement program after which they decided I still wasn't good enough. Disagreements ensued for three more quarters and then that was that. The result... unemployment.

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Re:How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers by test1235 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @04:03AM (#20765732)
Books and help manuals like to tell you newborns sleep for however many hours a day, to try and make it sound easy, but like you said - newborns only sleep for small periods at a time, including at night.

I spent an insane number of hours in the middle of the night bouncing on a swiss exercise ball, holding the baby, in nothing but my pants, in the dark, with the tv on (but muted), to coax the baby back to sleep. Honestly ... this sorta stuff needs to mentioned more to let prospective parents know what they're in for.

Since having a child, I've nothing but total admiration for any single parent - how they manage without a fulltime partner would be beyond my ability.

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