Going to Be a Father

Off Topic
1

Hello all:

Just wanted to know if there are any relatively new fathers on T-Nation & wanted to glean any insightful advice from you all in terms of what to expect… I know everyone’s advice is going to be “it’s not the same, every situation is different” but I wanted to still ask how has fatherhood changed has changed your lifting habits/goals, if any…

My wife & I are expecting our first baby this coming July (anxiously waiting to break the 3 month barrier as of next week) & she is already going through the whole morning sickness thing, increased appetite, etc.

I meanwhile am supporting her of course in any/every way I can but wanted to know from other lifters what modifications you made/are making to make sure lifting/a training regimen is still somehow taking place (if possible)

A co-worker said “face it; when the baby comes the last place you’re going to be is the gym for at least 6-9 months” Would you guys say this is a valid statement?

Hope to hear some good advice & suggestions (I’m still working on running more outdoors vs. the gym treadmill & tweaking bodyweight exercises at home vs. going to the gym)

2

Congrats.

3

May your first child be a masculine child.

But if its a girl, be prepared to protect your daughter from every douchebag wanting to take her out.

4

Purchase: jump rope, sand bag kit, tractor tire (can get these free), sledgehammer, jump stretch bands, maybe a prowler

You can have kickass workouts with those implements alone, no gym required.

5

congrats man, i just became a new dad in late december and it was the greatest thing ever.
I watched my mrs grow and felt baby move n all that good shit, seeing the pure love for our child my wife had , pushing out a 52cm 9 pound 5 oz baby with no drugs only inspired me too be better at what ever i do.

Trust me it will be the greatest day of your life.

As for lifting and gym work, its helped me immensley.
Baby wakes up round 5 am for one of her feeds and i get up which leads me to the gym to do fasted cardio.

Then after work i come home spend some family time and hit the gym again for weight training.

Dont believe the hype people go on about sleep deprivation and so on, cause regardless you handle it due to the unconditional love you have for your baby.

A general rule of thumb is if your a angry bastard and you other halves a bitch , your baby will follow suit , if your a chilled cat and so is your mrs , generally your bub will be laxed as.

Just my experience.

Congrats again dude.

enjoy the journey, talk to your seed in the womb every day and watch how they respond to your voice.

dza

6

[quote]jaybvee wrote:

My wife & I are expecting our first baby this coming July
[/quote]

Did you try hitting her?

7

Congrats, J!

Fatherhood… best thing that ever happened to me.
I admit, though, I stopped training for almost 5 years after we had him.

8

My wife and I are expecting our first child any day now. We have discussed training and have made arrangements already. Training is important to both of us and we want it stay a part of our lives.

She’s going to train in the mornings before I go to work, I’m going to go straight to the gym from work.

I think the people who say, “kiss your training time goodbye once you have kids” aren’t that dedicated in the first place. I’m sure that we’ll be tired and the baby will demand much more time than we realize, but you should be able to find 1 hour, 3-4 times a week to train.

If it’s really important to both of you, you will make it work. Good luck and congrats!

9

I knew the tried & true “Did you try hitting her” answer would come up LOL - thanks all for the fast replies…

Keep them coming…

10

Congratulations. There are a few issue, but I see no reason why it should completely interrupt your training.

First issue, sleep. Now here’s the thing. My babies mother breastfed the child. Now, there was no way I could help with that, so I slept in a different room (after all, no reason for two people to lose sleep). However, what I did do was to take care of the baby in the morning to let the mother sleep more.

I don’t know what your situation is. Is the mother taking care of the baby during the day? In that case, you should be there to relieve her in the evening.

So, squeezing in workouts could be more difficult but not impossible. Also, if you continue to sleep in the same room as the baby and mother, your sleep could get interrupted. As I said, I moved out of the room and took care of the baby at other times to relieve the mother.

On a side note, I think it is VERY IMPORTANT to have the child BREASTFED as much as possible. All of my kids were breastfed until three years old, and they have IMMUNE SYSTEMS that are nothing short of incredible. The plague could
sweep through our town and they would be immune to it! 3 y.o. might not be feasible for your child’s mother but she should do it as long as she can IMHO.

11

theres something a lil weird about breastfeeding a child until theyre 3 imo

i just about choked on my chicken breast reading that.

12

[quote]Steel Nation wrote:
Purchase: jump rope, sand bag kit, tractor tire (can get these free), sledgehammer, jump stretch bands, maybe a prowler

You can have kickass workouts with those implements alone, no gym required.[/quote]

Shit, should have just included this the first go-round:

Ross will be your friend if you want to get some home workouts in. His ebooks are well worth the small investment.

13

congrats bud
i had a baby 7 months ago… you will be amazed how easy it is to function on 2 hrs of sleep and be able to do it over and over for a month (in my experience)

what i did was cut back from 5 days a week to 2-3 and just focus on “core lifts” hit em hard hit em fast and get out… i know i wanna get home as fast as i can my daughter is my world…

14

Awesome! Congrats mate.

I have three of the little basta… I mean darlings.

Expect to be extremely nervous about dressing junior. You will instinctively assume that he/she will break if you are not soooo gentle when pulling on clothes.

By #3 you realise this is not the case and you just yank the clothes on them like you would your own.

Expect shit. I mean lots of it. Always try to avoid a direct line of fire. As well as shit, there will be wind. Wind under pressure = propulsion. From painful experience (and much to the utter delight of my older kids) I know not to be in the line of those liquid projectiles.

Have fun! It’s great.

15

I have been a father for almost 5 years. And if you have a MRS that is not on par with your training your screwwwwwwwed.

Cause soon as you walk in the door. You get handed at kid so she can take a break. Some women don’t handle having kids so well. Specially if they have post-partem(sp).

My kid slept through the night as of the 3rd day of her being home. But I know some parents that can’t get any sleep for the first 2 to 3 years of the kids life.

Congrats and good luck!

16

Everyone knows their lives are going to change, be prepared for your relationship with your wife to change as well. It doesn’t happen over night or anything. A week after your child is born you and your wife will be the same two people dealing with this new thing in your life. Two years later, on the other hand, you will be quite different people.

I’m very ashamed of how poorly I handled the changes in the relationship with my wife. At one point I told her if she didn’t get back to being more loving and affectionate I would leave her as soon as our son left home for college. I’ve since wisened up and realize what an ass I was.

17

Congrats!

My daughter arrived in July. Issues and experience:

Sleep: If she’s breastfeeding, I hope you’re a heavy sleeper or like the couch. She’ll have to get up in the night to either feed the baby or pump and it makes no sense that both of you should suffer. If she’s not breastfeeding, you should set up a plan to alternate nights of feeding the baby.

The first night your kid sleeps through the night will be great. I almost bought her a fucking pony the first night my daughter made it 8 hours.

Breastfeeding: Do it. Its hard, especially if she’s working, but its totally worth it IMO. My daughter is off the charts with her development. She was rolling over early and she took her first daddy-assisted steps at 5.5 months. She’s saying “dadada” too and has been sitting up all by herself. Its awesome. Our doctor is really impressed with her.

Reading: Read everything you can. First, it will reassure your baby-momma that you’re going to be an involved dad and be there for her. Second, it helps quell your own fear that you’ll be a shitty father. The information will sometimes be contradictory in different books. Do what you think is best - you’re the father.

Relationship: The hormones might make her a basketcase, both emotionally and mentally. Be understanding. Its not her most of the time. Cut her lots and lots of slack, especially since its her first. My wife apologized for some of the stuff she did and really appreciated the support I gave her when she was going nuts. My wife asked me not to train when she wasn’t able to. I obliged. It sucked, but I’m still glad I did it.

You two should try very hard to build your teamwork skills now, because they will be put to the test in a huge way very soon. Try listing all of your daily tasks and delegating them between the two of you. One of you will have to be available to that baby at all times.

Training: We trained up until about 6 months. We had a cesarean, so she was off her feet for a while. I agree with the above post that training is possible, but you need to make time for it in the schedule. My wife gets Monday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday to go to the gym.

I get Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The biggest challenge is staying motivated to go when you have an awesome baby at home that you want to spend time with.

Just remember that you’ll be fine. Before she was born, I was freaked out because I thought I would be a crappy dad. I just didn’t think I would know what to do. But, once you have that baby in your arms, it comes to you. That’s my experience.

Also, try not to kill people on the way home. I was carrying my daughter in her car seat and instincts took over. I perceived everyone as a threat while walking out of the hospital and almost snapped a 65 year old radiologist in half when he wanted to look at her in the elevator and got too close.

Final thoughts.
Babies cannot fall off the floor.
If you have a boy, you only have to worry about one penis. If you have a girl, you have to worry about all of them.

Girls are more expensive not because of clothes and stuff, but because of all the guns you have to buy and the moat you must install around your house.

18

[quote]dza1978 wrote:
theres something a lil weird about breastfeeding a child until theyre 3 imo

i just about choked on my chicken breast reading that.[/quote]

What’s weird about it? In traditional cultures, the women breastfeed their children until they are 3,4 or even 5.

I have read studies that suggest their may be an increase in IQ. Also I think that the improvement in immune system of breastfed babies has been verified. Another things is that you don’t have all of those damn messy bottles to clean.

It’s too bad that we in the West think that there is something weird about breastfeeding children more than a couple of months. Unfortunately the trend is changing even in more traditional cultures as people get “HIP” from multinationals beaming commercials into their homes telling them that forumula is HEALTHIER than breast milk. Nestle mounted one such campaign in the Philippines and my understanding is that it wreaked havoc.

THAT IS SAD in my book.

19

Congrats! One of my friend just had a new years baby… He said its worth it but oh so tiring…

20

Became a dad for the first time 18 mo. ago and again three weeks ago.

Dedicated/not dedicated it doesn’t matter, the only certainty with regard to your routine (life, not just lifting) is that it will change. Priorities change, physiology changes, beliefs change. Before the first kid, lifting was synonymous with showering and brushing my teeth. After he was born, I struggled to lift even weekly (my gym is in my basement).

Lifting might and probably should suddenly take a back seat to a more complete education, a better paying job, a bigger house, bigger cars, better schools, etc., etc. I think planning your lifting schedule prior to a baby being born is really naive.

My first son would eat ~50/50 breast milk and formula, took forever to get to sleep, but would sleep 6+ hrs. straight. The second drinks breastmilk, falls asleep before the bottle’s empty and is awake every 2.5 hrs. like clockwork.

I read in the ‘Jason Bourne Series’ that ‘sleep is a weapon’. It rings true as sleeping has been more strategic since becoming a parent. I easily approach the same level of cognizance without sleep on stimulants as I get fully rested but I find things like discipline, organization, and irritability tend to get worse, regardless of the stimulant.

I’d disagree with Steel Nation, sandbags and tires at home don’t really help you ‘sneak in’ a workout between work and dinner or help you in any way if the baby is colicky. 15 min. to change your clothes, fill the sandbag, and get the tire out of the garage isn’t much different than a 15 min. drive to the gym.

Jump rope, strandpulling, and bodyweight exercises are doable, but the further you get from the nursery, the harder the exercise becomes and, IMO, once you’re out the door, it doesn’t matter if you go to the garage or a nearby state.

Overall, expect a break of at least a week (for your s.o.'s sake), mine ended up being almost 9 mo., at about a month a routine should be developing if not already apparent. Promise yourself now to get back into it even though things certainly aren’t going to get any easier. The reasons are obvious and only get more numerous as you and your child(ren) grows.

The most surprising aspect of it all for me was labor/delivery. TV/Hollywood has it all wrong.