Baby due in the next few days. After 38 blissful years of doing what I want I have endured months of doom and gloom from handwringers who seem to imply I will never leave the house again.

Some of you lot, worringly, have bred so I am here to listen to any sage advice 😉

xx Col.

Time to buy a turbo trainer! 👿

You wont have sex this year- wellnot with anyone else being there
You wont sleep ever again
In about 3 months time you will wonder what you ever did with your time
You will only talk about babies because its all you do
You will be tired, no one will help, you will be shattered
Thankfully slowly you start to find your feet and start to settle into a routine

Then she will be pregnant again and its even harder

ENJOY

time to buy a trailer that will take a baby seat.
did this with both mine untill they went in a seat that reclined a bit (rhode gear).
kids are tough as hell….dont worry about breaking em.
and dont shout too much….it will stress everyone…… 😀

Under no circumstances look as the baby is coming out.. its like watching your favourite pub burn down. Yes they can always re-build it, but it will never be quite the same. Its a crazy day when it arrives.. enjoy

Trick is to keep mommy sweet and try and structure your rides around sleep or quiet times. I have three jnr’s and during the winter I ride mainly at weekends but during the lighter months get out most days early doors. Also get 5 or so weekends away biking with mates each year.. My wife is ace through ( love you honey if your reading) 😛

First 18 weeks is the worst.

If you’ve got a reasonable (e.g. willing to reason) other half, apart from the first few weeks and barring any illnesses/problems, you should be able to carry on as normal. Well, by normal I mean you’ll have to adjust a lot, but you can still lead a full and interesting life while also being a father. Yes, you’ll have to put a lot of work in early on, but you should be able to find time to ride, see mates, and do most stuff you used to without too much of a problem. No, you won’t be going on a bender for quite some time (wetting baby’s head excepted), but if you’ve got supportive parents there will be times even in the first month when you can take time out and be like a couple or take off alone for short periods. Good luck!

You’ll have a blast. And NZ’s an ace place to bring up kids. My mate lives in Auckland and is bringing up two kids and as a family they’re always up to stuff. Down in Ohope at the mo playing out 18 hours a day.

Lifes not always easy but you don’t come across as a lightweight.

Enjoy it.

Bike trailer.
Islabikes website ——> that way.
Buy some good waterproofs and fleece kit for them – all in ones for little toddlers, trousers n tops for older.
Kids love being out. So get out with them.
.
It is the best and the hardest thing you will ever do.
Learn how to tag-team-teamwork with mrs_nzcol so that when it gets too much, you or she can walk away and have some time away.
Enjoy it.

Best thing you will ever do. 16 years in now and still fantastic. Get them out with you asap – decent front carrier, then backpack and then bike seat etc. As Ton says, they are really hard to break and ours bounced of the scenery more than I should admit. Good luck to you and the mrs – enjoy every bit of it, people tell you it goes too fast but you never believe them, it really does.

After 5 years the mind-numbing routine and boredom is enough to drive you to drugs. My wife has never been the same. 😉

..but the good bits are far better than you ever imagined they could be.

Good luck 🙂

Get used to talking about poo.

More than you ever thought possible.

The rewarding bits are fantastic. The downside is sleep deprivation….that and the slow realisation that you will never own a 2 seat car.

Jesus thanks for all that.

The other small piece of information is that I am off to do another expedition race on March 7th so my wife is already well adjusted to being rational about what I do. I’m equally excited/bricking myself/wondering what it will be like.

Under no circumstances look as the baby is coming out.. its like watching your favourite pub burn down.

That is funkin awesome. Thanks for that. I’ll remember it !

I’m reasonably lucky that i can come and go at work and have some lush singletrack 2 minutes from the house.

The good bits are amazing, the hard times will pass. Nothing we say or do will prepare you for it. We/they are all different.

You will be terrified of the responsibility for the helpless little creature you have created. You will be paranoid that something is wrong with them half the time until they finally can speak for themselves.

You will be exhausted. All the time. More tired than you will ever know. We lay in bed one night and calculated that we had missed 6 months sleep over that first year.

I actually started cycling to work as I was so tired I couldn’t remember the drive in and cycling seemed safer.

If your relationship is strong, it will get stronger. If there are problems, the exhaustion will magnify every little niggle into a full on disaster.

It is the wildest, craziest, most expensive and out of control roller coaster you will ever ride, and you can’t stop and get off until the day you die.

It is beyond measure Col. You’ll love it to bits.

And they really can shit across a room. Without touching the floor.

however hard your life seams, she will be having it rougher, be there for both of you and little one…

good luck, enjoy every moment (good moments and bad), the little ones grow up soooo fast.

It is beyond measure Col. You’ll love it to bits.
And they really can shit across a room. Without touching the floor.

Genius, and that coming from a man with an animal in his chest.

Under no circumstances look as the baby is coming out.. its like watching your favourite pub burn down.

I was “a bit tired and needed a sit down” during Yeti no 1, the seat was at the end of the bed, looked up to see the er, crowning moment, certainly changes the perspective a bit. 😕

Oh, and it’s different for everyone, so don’t take all of the above to heart. Don’t listen to Gina Ford! Be as easygoing as you can be, firm but fair, and things will be good.

don’t worry, babies are a piece of piss and predictable.
they’re just like a truly epic tamagotchi that gives you jetlag.
and buy baby wipes.

Don’t worry about it. Get involved. Depends what your other half is like but talk to her when you want to go riding. Mine was fine with it. But then I wasn’t out every weekend.
Being a dad is ace. But you’ll probably feel a bit left out. Try to include yourself. If you know what I mean.
Me and mrs t came to the agreement that for the most part she would get up with little t in the night because I had to go to work the next day. It never really worked out like that but neither if us particularly remember being mega tired. He could be a real pain at night though.
Be calm. The baby picks up on stress and feeds off it. Calm creates calm in our experience.
We’re about to do it again in march.

Ha ha this is great so thanks for all the words !
I’m not really that stressed about it, the way I see it there are people way more stupid than us that manage it so we should be OK. My Wife is amazing so I expect she will be equally amazing and my job is to make sure she is OK and gets enough support. Pretty simple really. Riding, running, work etc are all just things – family is something else and I am uber excited.

And Scalextric obviously – even if it is a girl !

I struggled to find any advice for the first 3 months. So this might help.

1.My strong, independant wife disappeared for a short while and was replaced by a worrying new mum. Being a complete idiot I didn’t realise that this was just hormones so didn’t keep my big shut..

2.Forget at all that BS about routine for the first 3 months.

3. Breast may be best but it’s not essential.

4. Ignore all that stuff about waiting 6 months to move em out of your room, off the breast, etc.

5. Get out on your bike even if you can’t be arsed.

Please bear in mind point 1, when applying points 2- 5!!

And be prepared for the fact that you might not want to ride your bike…

I would recommend trying to spend as much time looking after the kid as possible. The more you look after them, the more rewarding they are.

I took 3 and a bit months off from 8-11 months and was a full time dad for those 3 months and it was great. Nowadays I work 4 days a week. If financially and work-wise you’re able to do that, I’d really recommend both things; if you work long hours and don’t get much time with the kid in the week, you miss out on all the weekday things, which are often quite a laugh (like we have Twistin Tots, which is basically an hour long baby rave, with loud music and different things to wave / bang / shake for each song, complete head-**** that is!), and the social things with other parents* which often happen in the week.

I agree about the outside stuff – Rose was running (in a pram) from about 3 months, biking (in a trailer) from 6 months, biking on a balance bike from 22 months, first time playing in the snow at 7 months, tons of picnics in the woods in her first year, decent length walks in the Peak District & Lake District in a sling, and she has always loved being outside. In some ways, particularly once they’re a toddler and become self propelled, they are annoyingly slow and limit how far you can go, but I see it as a long game, you enjoy the time with them going 2 miles in a walk, because that is fun anyway, and as a bonus, you get the chance that at some point they will be fast and big enough to go on a proper outing with you. The bike trailer is brilliant though – you do 40 miles in hilly terrain with that in a day, and even with the playground / nappy stops & picnics, you still feel like you’ve done a pretty good bit of exercise.

Oh and swimming – swimming with kids is brilliant fun – we go a couple of times a week to the pool, and in summer we’ve been in the local river, the sea, a couple of big alpine lakes, she is a complete swim addict.

Joe

* other parents in the week are mostly mums, but that doesn’t matter too much – I’ve always found everyone to be friendly, I think a lot of the stories you hear about dads not being welcome is people feeling shy because they were the only guy there. Or maybe it’s a city thing, people are generally pretty friendly in our small town.

Listen to and read all the advice you can, but be prepared to reject/ignore 95% of it because it won’t apply, or will be significantly different to your own experience.

As long as baby and Mum are happy everything else is optional.

I got used to not sleeping during the “weeks of discomfort” prior to the birth, then our daughter (and mum) were kept in with meningitus horror. Didn’t get much sleep during that week between home and hospital.
When they came home it was a relief, but still the first two weeks were sleep deprevation extrodinare.

Puts lots into perspective.

The shits not too bad when its your own babys.

Choose your words carefully.

Try and be helpful.

Put the others first.

Huggies are better than pampers.
They also make cotton wool “sheets”
And their aleovera wet wipes don’t stink to high heaven.

Its actually really good fun.

It’s amazing, really. I can’t really remember the bad bits, and being tired isn’t that bad.

You’ll reacquaint yourself with daytime naps and wonder why you went for some many years without them.

First ‘legs up’ moment on a bike is priceless, you’ll learn how to chill out better and relax and let more things slide (think crayons on the wall!)

and mostly, everything will be better, i had an awesome trip round Aldi tonight with my little girl in the trolly chatting away the whole time about her day, twas magic 🙂

1 mourn the loss of a predictable life
2 mourn the loss of free time
3 never read a single thing about it, because nothing is what you think it will be like
4 even if you don’t like kids it’s soooo much different with your own
5 enjoy the good bits
6 always carry your sense of humour.
7 you will talk a lot about poo. My partner exclaimed in a restaurant the she hoped mini monkey hadn’t followed through on a bottom burp. Classy, but this was is starting to seem normal in conversation.

Well Col, i am 47 with my first just turned 7 months. As most say above, the little buggers can’t be pigeonholed and different parents think their way is right.
Our little fella has been breast fed since the beginning and he is a little lump of a lad, full of energy, moody, playfull, in pain with his first two teeth, loves being in the baby Poco carrier outside etc etc.
The only way to find out what is right is by trial and error.

Mrs gixer lets me know quite bluntly when i am not doing enough – i just shrug my shoulders and get on with it, no point in arguing.
Mrs Gixer is still as horny as before being pregnant, so no break for me 😯
I don’t get out on the bike much, as i try and spens time with Junior when i get back from work.
It is a brilliant feeling when wee junior starts shaking with excitment and shouts as he sees me coming in from work.

ENJOY

Teething sucks. No wonder our brains blank out the first 2 years. Calpol.

Take gazillions of photos you can’t have too many. In 6 months time you’ll be nostalgic wondering what happened to your tiny baby. But excited to see what’s coming next. Posterous.com is good for sharing photos easily.

The pooh’s not so bad, hold your breath and get it done. It’s one of those ‘pay it forwards’ chores.

Learn the stages of labour, it’s all you need from ante-natal.

You don’t truly realise how much you love them until you’re alone with them and they’re sick or need you.

You’ll be good. It’s a lot more fun than you expect, if you want it to be. And your littl’un growing is the most astounding thing you will ever see.

I’m only 3 months in so only just finding my feet but the biggest bit of advice I could give would be don’t forget Mrs NZCol, she’s the most important person of all.

oh and…

look after yourself, others wont have time to.

Reflecting on Mr Junkyards response, my perspective is…

You will have sex this year
You will sleep again – it may take time and be interrupted at periods, but you will rest again!
In about 3 months time you will wonder what you ever did with your time – so true!
You will only talk about babies because it’s most of what you do and you love them terrifically!
You will be tired, no one will help, you will be shattered – too true by half!
Thankfully slowly you start to find your feet and start to settle into a routine – yes you will
Then she will be pregnant again and its even harder – kind of
ENJOY – most people do at least some of the time 😉

don’t worry, babies are a piece of piss and predictable

This

This changes when they become toddlers. Enjoy your chaos free life while they can’t move under their own steam!

they are also a lot of fun then though!

1/ Buy a baby manual
2/ Realise that you’ve been given the standard manual and the baby you’ve got is the beta version
3/ Throw the manual away and start making it up

Seriously – from your posts on here, you come across as far from the biggest terry f**kwit I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a few in my time. And they seemed to manage to bring kids up, so I have no doubt you’ll do fine.

4/ Train your baby to be cute when in the presence of members of the female sex who are younger than you. You’re now a Dad with baby chunder down the back of your shirt that you haven’t spotted yet; you need any help you can get.

4 weeks in and it has all be awesome so far for us. Looking forward to lots of family outings with the jogger pram, hiking, bike trailers, camping etc in a couple of months.

Not sure that I would want to be away for the duration of an expedition AR; 8 hours at work and I am missing them. However the first 3 months does seem to be dad’s best chance at getting some exercise so I am riding to work as fast as I can in the hope of doing a couple of XC races soon, with the added bonus that I get home sooner.

Just buy about 50 of those muslin things, it’s not physically possible to have too many.

This sleep thing, I get told off for saying this, the look some parents give me is the same a wolf gives a deer…

But,

Our son sleeps, he slept through from 6 months, put him in his room and that was it. He sleeps from 7:30 to 8:30 every day. I go to work leaving the house fast asleep, we have to get him up!

So, it might be fine like that, you never know!

Good luck, also, they’re hilarious.

Pictonroad.. where can I pick up 50 Muslims cheaply? Bet they are a great help having that many pairs of hands around the place.. not sure how pc it is calling them things though…

Has the op s baby arrived?