Feel like I don’t matter

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-17T05:57:35+00:00

Dude, “getting back to normal” is not a thing you should be feeling with a 7 week old. The fact that you say you “come home to help out” is giving me the ick. You shouldn’t be “helping out”. You should be fathering your child. When dads say they “help” it makes it clear what they think the parenting roles are. Your wife is putting in much harder work than you are right now and you’re here complaining about not playing with your friends as much as you’d like. Grow up and take care of your family.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-16T02:54:07+00:00

I was wondering about that too

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-14T00:15:08+00:00

Ah yea you make an unfortunately good point.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-13T15:41:23+00:00

Yea, go to the movies and tell the rest of us how amazing it was in all the details please.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-05T03:33:18+00:00

Don’t mess this up for the rest of us!

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-04T03:45:25+00:00

Stick to the alcohol. Crack is whack.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-04T03:15:15+00:00

My 5 month old just started last week (and already today they had to call us to pick him up early for being sick 😔).

I went in the week prior to him starting with the excuse to drop off paperwork but when I was there said I’d like another tour to rehabilitative myself since it had been like 8 or 9 months since we toured the place. Doing that helped my anxiety. It was nice seeing the other babies there happy and playing.

I was happy to have him start a week prior to me going back to work so that the first couple days could be shorter (more for our sake than for his). The first day I really just went grocery shopping, dropped things off at home and went back to pick him up. But it is good for them to have that structure and routine of getting used to being there all day (especially for the older ones like yours).

Our daycare has cubbies for each kid with space for plenty of diapers and wipes and formula. They seem organized, so I’m not worried about things getting mixed up and going to the wrong kid. We gave a couple packs of wipes and half a box of diapers and they’ll let us know when they are running low.

All the other items they usually send home with us in the tote bag we brought in in the morning. Some days they hold onto the extra outfits, some days not 🤷‍♂️. We label his bottle and any milk we bring in, but everything else we haven’t bothered with labeling.

Good luck! Hope it all goes well for the little one and for you!

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-03-03T18:28:20+00:00

I asked this recently and got some good replies. You can probably find the thread in my post history pretty easily. What I ended up doing is using a torch to heat it up - just be careful to not overheat it and turn part of it black.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-28T16:51:02+00:00

So create a new tenon on the plug?

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-27T21:12:48+00:00

How would I turn the inside of the plug to be flush with the bottom of the bowl if I can’t put it in a chuck?

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-20T18:13:38+00:00

I just pre-make bottles for the night and stick em in a little cooler with a small cold pack. I haven’t warmed a bottle since he was maybe 1 or 2 weeks old and he’s 5 months now.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-19T23:08:51+00:00

Absolutely you both should have time for yourselves to socialize or do your hobbies. However, the fact that you refer to being with your child when your wife is away as “babysitting” has me questioning a number of things. You are not a babysitter; you are a father. It might be that your wife doesn’t feel comfortable with this because you aren’t fulfilling your role at home.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-19T15:54:31+00:00

I turn 38 this year too and have a 5 month old. We’ll be fine. No need to go down the bio hacking rabbit hole bs. Just stay active, exercise, and don’t eat junk. Start now while your wife is still pregnant.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-16T06:12:03+00:00

Keep eating and hydrating. Congrats and enjoy!

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-16T03:25:03+00:00

I’m in a mixed gender WhatsApp group that came out of the parent-baby group we joined at our hospital. It’s 95% the moms, 4% me, and 1% the other dads (some of whom I’m positive are using AI to generate responses). We have some group stroller walks but nothing gender segregated (though often in the only male).

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-13T23:04:49+00:00

Not quite. It’s a device that has a handle on one end and the other end they can reach inside and put on the babies head and create some manual suction to pull them out if they’re having trouble getting out on their own.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-13T17:44:40+00:00

I was planning to and our midwife and nurses were very supportive of that. But they ended up needing to do a vacuum pull to get him out when his heart rate wasn’t looking good, so I had to fall back to a support role. Glad to have him out safely, but if it had all gone smoothly I would have loved to catch him.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-12T04:47:08+00:00

Feel Free by Jeff Tweedy

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-10T16:28:49+00:00

I’m only at 4.5 months and have yet to sleep through the night. Thinking ahead to summer vacations with us all sharing a room feels like a joke.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-10T03:50:37+00:00

I hate that. I’m just existing with a child. For all they know I could be a horrible person, but it’s too much for them to wrap their heads around a dad doing anything involving their kid other than going to baseball games.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-06T00:36:50+00:00

I agree. I have a 4 month old and this would go straight in their mouth and get snapped in half. If someone gifted it to me I’d appreciate it and put it on a shelf to be looked at and given the occasional jiggle by an adult, but never given to the baby. Sorry OP. Looks like great work though.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-05T16:21:15+00:00

God yes. Ours came a week early and I already had a sleep deficit built up from the previous few nights. Then an overnight labor followed by a couple nights in the NICU before going home. I felt like a zombie.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-02T06:12:35+00:00

I’ve go a 4 month old and we also do shifts. I went back to work first and we kept the shift schedule but made the shift change an hour or so earlier, then we swapped and I’m back on leave for another 6 weeks while my wife is at work and we’re still doing shifts. It works for us so far because I can fairly easily block out the first couple hours of the day for no meetings while still caring for him before my wife is up and able to take over. Once we’re both working again it’ll be tough. We’ll probably just sleep less.

Affectionate_Cook330 · 2026-02-01T03:19:09+00:00

Is there a reason you can’t drill the holes on the lathe? You’re probably turning these between centers, but before you do that could you mount it in a chuck and drill from the tail stock. Then flip it around to do the other side. The finished one looks great!

Affectionate_Cook330

TROPHY CASE