Just wanted to say – We’ve been trying for 5 years (I’m 30) gone through IVF Icsi and this was our 3rd go! WOW it worked Wife is 11 weeks and seen 3 scans all showing it’s healthy.

Obviously my priority’s change somewhat. But a question (bike related)….

Do you find time to exercise and ride? I’ve started to get faster and now racing and not doing too badly. I’m guess this will be on hold for some time? any advice?

Excellent news

Many Many Congrats

Best wishes and good luck

Congratulations!!! 😀

Get yourself some decent lights. Its riding after dark, when little Janesy is asleep, for you from now on. Night riding is ace!

Congratulations!

There was a good article on parents biking in issue 72 of the mag I think, the first fancy new one…

Congratulations 🙂

Time to MTFU and get organised 😉

It’s hard going. The first few weeks you’ll just be concentrating on trying to stay awake/existing.
My boys two and a half and I’m getting more time for riding now. Shifts dont help either. Shame we have another one due in September!
Floated the idea of a kiddy trailer a while back but the wife shot it down.
Congratulations btw!!

awesome news

Do you find time to exercise and ride? I’ve started to get faster and now racing and not doing too badly. I’m guess this will be on hold for some time? any advice?

sorry mate but your ****!

i commute every day 10 miles each way by bike, if i didnt id barely get out on a bike
the hardest thing for me is dealing with tiredness

i plan my trips well ahead and tell the missus that its a good time for the inlaws to come and stay!

Do you find time to exercise and ride?

a bit, given 2 hours ‘to yourself’ you tend to find sleep wins.

but mostly, at the beginning you just want to stay at home and gaze adoringly at the baby whilst it sleeps. Well I did, anyway.

that’s brilliant, we had our first last august and it’s been amazing. I’d worry about the excercise later, i commute more by bike, also get up up way earlier on a weekend, i’m lucky i have friends in similar position, if you want to, it doesn’t have to be that difficult. and think it’s important to get a bit of space.. 😀

Congratulations.

Get a road bike and some lights. You’ll spend a lot less time with pre/post ride faffing and cleaning.

congrats Ive posted this b4 but worth another look for prospective new parents

FOLLOW THESE 14 SIMPLE TESTS TO HELP YOU PREPARE…

Test 1 – Preparation

Women: To prepare for pregnancy:-

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.

3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children:-

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the
counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to
their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2 – Knowledge

Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their
methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance
levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest
ways in which
they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table
manners and overall behavior.
Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all
the answers.

Test 3 – Nights

To discover how the nights will feel:

1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag
weighing approximately 4 – 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some
other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to
sleep.
3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4 – Dressing Small Children

1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang
out.
Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5 – Cars

1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door MPV.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
Test 6 – Going For a Walk

Wait
Go out the front door
Come back in again
Go out
Come back in again
Go out again
Walk down the front path
Walk back up it
Walk down it again
Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of
used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
Retrace your steps
Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours
come out and stare at you.
Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8 – Grocery Shopping

1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can
find to a pre-school child – a fully grown goat is excellent. If you
intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your
sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having
children.

Test 9 – Feeding a 1 year-old

1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to land them into the
swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the
floor.
Test 10 – TV

1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney,
Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11 – Mess

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean
walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor
& leave it there.

Test 12 – Long Trips with Toddlers

1. Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mummy’ repeatedly. Important
Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include
occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13 – Conversations
1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve
while playing the Mummy tape listed above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a
child in the room.

Test 14 – Getting ready for work

1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2. Put on your finest work attire.
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work

You are now ready to have children,Good luck 😀

You’re laughing now aren’t you? Don’t! Thats actually the most accurate thing anyone has ever posted on this site 😀

tips for riding.

Be organised, always have your bikes and kit ready so, when the opportunity presents, you can just go.

Don’t plan or expect anything. This took me a while to realise but I used to be grumpy every weekend when I couldn’t ride. Now I don’t expect to go out and am therefore not disappointed. But, if I do get a chance, happy days!

Get trailer / bike seat. Not for mountain biking but for enjoying being out on the bike with family. After having kids, i rediscovered my love of just riding bikes, like you used to feel when you were a child. Enjoying bikes isn’t just about mountain biking.

and congratulations!

Congratulations!

In terms of finding time to ride, for me it was no problem in the first couple of months as a)at that age they are pretty easy to look after beleive it or not b) they sleep a lot c) if breast feeding obviously your input is a bit more limited as a bloke.

congratulations!

i am too, 11 weeks to go… not long! i’ll give you some top tips if i work any out!

Jansey – congratulations it is a fab journey, enjoy every second it’s a blast. 15 years in with 2 – best thing we ever did. They now ride with me and I keep fit trying to keep up (funny how tables turn).

They are not really bike friendly until they can sit up and hold their heads up comfortable – after that it’s a seat on the back and let the good trails roll.

Muke – you have just reduced the 3 dads in the office to tears. Soooooooo true!

Be organised, always have your bikes and kit ready so, when the opportunity presents, you can just go.

This is key.

And once you’ve dicovered what kind of approximate routine your newborn has you will have a rough idea of when you’re more likely to get out on the bike.

For me, it was early(ish) in the morning – up and out by 7, back home by 8:30.

If you can cycle commute then that helps getting a regular ‘fix’ of cycling, so you don’t get quite so fed up of not riding at the weekends.

I am also fortunate in that my wife understands that cycling is important to me so is happy for me to go out. Works both ways too – there’s stuff my wife does that needs time for herself.

A bit of give and take from both parents and you both get to spend time doing things you like.

(Erm, we do also do stuff together 🙂 )

Our two (IVF) girls are nearly 3 now. I think I have ridden my bike about 5 times since they were born. Some of it is lack of time, some lack of wanting to do stuff without them.

Congrats and enjoy every minute of it.

(written whilst sat at home looking after two girls, one with chicken pox, the other with tonsillitis)…

one with chicken pox, the other with tonsillitis

no doubt they’ll swap ailments for next week.

My 2 year old is mixing chicken pox and nits (4 year old has them too – thanks nursery 😕 ) with her type 1 diabetes at the moment. Life is fun.

o you find time to exercise and ride? I’ve started to get faster and now racing and not doing too badly. I’m guess this will be on hold for some time? any advice?

Yeah, do targetted training intervals. You can snatch a 30 or 45 min training session after the kid is in bed, should still keep you training if you do it right. You only need one longer ride a week, if that I reckon.

wwaswas – Member
one with chicken pox, the other with tonsillitis

no doubt they’ll swap ailments for next week.
POSTED 8 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

Of course 😐

Do you find time to exercise and ride? I’ve started to get faster and now racing and not doing too badly. I’m guess this will be on hold for some time? any advice?

We had offspring No 1 in March. I was about 12 weeks into a 30 week Triathlon training plan. The adjustment has been hard but by getting up extra early (you will be awake anyway), lengthening commute home and the occasional lunchtime session I am currently fitting in 14 hours a week.

Takes a bit of commitment and time management but is doable.

Depending on how much sleep you need nipping out when the missus goes to bed is another low impact time.

Congratulations – kids transform your life, but its mostly in a good way…

Most of what Muke posted is pretty accurate, a favorite quote from my wife was ‘can you hold Charlotte a minute while I go and wash the sick off my boobs’ –
Only thing I can add is having a second child more than doubles the pleasure of parenting!

As for time out on the bike – i’d forget it for the first few weeks, at least until you have the basis of a routine going at home.. there is lots to do everyday, making bottles, laundary, organising stuff, etc, however it does get progresively easier..

Keep an eye out for the dreaded post natal depression – my wife suffered with both kids, and I suffered after our second was born.. if you do think either of you are struggling, get some help.

Some kids sleep through the night from 6 weeks old – our oldest (just turned 5) didn’t regularly until she was three, our youngest (18 moths) probably sleeps through 3 nights a week…

Once you’ve recovered from the initial fallout try and make some time for yourself – the toughest thing Me and the Mrs found when we had our first was loosing our identities – its so easy to go from ‘Mr XX’ to just being ‘Jr XX’s Mum/Dad…’ and you’d surprised how much an hour here and there on the bike helps….

I’d also suggest trying to make a bit of time for each other once the baby has settled down aswell, even if its just a quick pub lunch while the in-laws watch the baby for an hour…

Enjoy it, being a parent really does make everything in life just a little bit more worthwhile…

Cheers guys, Seems like a mixed bag then. I work from home, so will try and use the commute argument saying that I will commute on the road bike everyday out and back home. That will give me atleast 1 hour per day on the bike. Plus will have a set of rollers that can be used during the later hours.

Tis going to be good fun!

Congratulations Janesy. Sounds like you both had a troubled time so I hope all goes well. I turned to biking from rock and ice climbing when our first child was nearly 2. I have found it to be far less time consuming and more fun. What everyone says about time management is true. Snatch opportunities to get out when you can. Our second child is less than 2 weeks old so we will see if that remains the case. The post about preparing for a child is also quite accurate, but you learn to switch off to things that may have annoyed you before.

firstly many, many congrats janesy

very similar to yourself 2 failed attempts at IVF ICSI and then hey presto 3rd one worked and we’re blessed with gorgeous twin girls

can’t really add much to above other than personally i ride to work so that helps me “tick over”

i love taking them out in a trailer, pulling two 4yr olds with a SS certainly is good resistance training

what worked for us was turbo training, IF the girls went down (and i wasn’t too knackered) i would nip outside and do a sufferfest. the benefit of this was that the deal we had was if they woke up i would come back inside and help out. that just meant i could still “train” but also wasn’t leaving SWMBO on her own for long periods

i’m know at the stage of getting mine proper bikes and to be honest taking them out on the local cycle path is now more appealing than SITS or MM

congrats once again

I work from home

Might struggle with that in about 6 months time!

Congratulations…. and yes Muke has it spot on.

A few additional things for the future…

Kids will totally transform your life for good and for bad in ways you have not yet dreamed of, but you will get to teach them to ride bikes, to become friends with them, to enjoy seeing them learn to do things better than you. It is great. But you don’t have to be perfect as a parent, just good enough. We have two sprogs, one 10 and one 16, and one was from IVF. Some IVF parents let their sprog(s) become “precious” and over protect them. Don’t.

Also – work hard on your relationship with your partner. The baby is going to come first for both of you for quite a while, but you need to continue a relationship between you where you are defined as lovers/partners rather than co-parents. It is easy to grow apart without realising and one day you might wake up and realise this, and then the kids leave…

but you learn to switch off to things that may have annoyed you before.

+1. Your patience and tolerance levels will reach heights you never thought existed, and selective hearing will become a skill you never thought you had. Master these two things and pretty much all the stereotypical negative stuff about having kids that people talk about will simply disappear.

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9 months in they look like this and your bike has a layer of dust on it.

Our son is 8 months old and junior and the missus have gone on holiday for a week with the mother-in-law. Its been a 7 day riding and fettle fest for me after work. Have not done a fork service in the dining room since my single days. 😆

Oh, and sleeping a lot. 😀

Congratulations! TBH, “proper” mtbing and road riding has suffered in the 11 months since our daughter was born, but I’ve learnt to put some extra effort into the commute to keep fit. Also, buy a trailer. We had our daughter in a croozer at 3 months (gentle trips up old railways paths only until junior is a bit stronger). Taking her up the Bristol railway path is good fun and great exercise (towing 50lbs of baby + trailer!).

Congratulations..! That’s some effort – very pleased for you. 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Baby North is now 20 months.

I got back on the bike to resume my commute after 6 weeks. 2 hours a day of cycling time was ace. Then spent 4 months ill, moved house, stopped riding and got fat.

It’s impossible to imagine how your life will change. But, you must also not let the change become too drastic – you can fit in riding, so long as you don’t slack off in other areas. If this means missing sleep, then that’s it.

But just enjoy being a parent first and foremost. It all makes sense when the nipper arrives.

Congrats!

To counteract the (depressing but admittedly accurate) post from muke, go read the “things that are just ace” thread and see how many people mention their kids.

Best. Thing. Ever.

You will find a way to ride your bike when you need to. +1 to the suggestion to grab a short blast when you can. The spontaneity can make it even more fun.

Mine is 11 months old.

still fit plenty of riding in, not as much but twice a week at least.

couple of snowboard trips this winter

I have a very nice wife though 😛 and still spend lots of time with my son. lucky I work 12 hour shifts so lots of days off for family time.

pretty important IMO to still have your interests – you can still be a good dad..

congratulations Janesy.
Senorita J and I are due in 11 weeks 😀 ,
same icsi crack as you. Nice one.
For what it’s worth – I’m getting a cross bike to do more commuting and adhoc local riding.
My wings are getting clipped in July – she wants me within a couple of hours for a month before – so inbetween work , decorating , building a shed and sorting out the backs I’m doing as much “interesting” riding as possible. Forest of Dean on Sunday and Wales Monday.Hurrah. (did a three day trip to wales last bank hols too!)
Downsides – I couldn’t do bonty 12/12 for nct classes or mayhem for natural birth classes!!!!

Best of luck.Between moments of sheer blind panic I’m so excited!

Muke’s post is pretty spot on.

Speaking from experience

1 child = a few weeks of adjustment then back to business as usual
2 children = a few months of adjustment then nearly back to business as usual
3 children = a few years of adjustment and your life will never be the same again 🙂

Congratulations.

Little people are cool (provided you get a good one 🙂 )

They do the funniest things and make you see every little thing in life that little bit differently.