Is it really like this having a child?

No, it doesn't have to be like this. But everyone parents in a different way and individual children can have very different needs.

Depends on the child. I had lofty plans for being a cool relaxed parent who would take their baby backpacking across the world but DS had different plans! (He is autistic and our social lives now revolve around what he will and won't cooperate with)

Regardless of SEN - unless you've gone through the stress and crushing sleep deprivation of parenthood I'd hold off on the judgements. I remember looking at my sister-in-law wondering why she couldn't relax for just one night and let her hair down with her kids with a babysitter (one also had yet-to-be diagnosed SEN), but now I realise how dumb it was that I thought I was informed enough to have a view on her behaviour.

Not like that for me. My kid hated the cot/crib but loved a pram nap.

my kid had been out of the country multiple times by the time she was 1.

Of course it doesn’t have to be like that!

Because dh was working in a country with very dubious medical care at the time, I returned to the U.K. to have dd1 - and returned with her (8 hour flight) at 6 weeks. Then 3 months later did the same flight back to the U.K. for the summer - never an issue at all.

When she was 3 we had a brilliant beach holiday - another 8 hour flight away - with her, and 3 month old dd2. Again, absolutely zero problems.

Some parents just make massive issues for themselves. Please don’t let them influence you!

My DS would happily nap anywhere so we were lucky. He also liked long naps which I wasn't too bothered about when he was very young. I know some parents would wake their children as they have a strict bedtime but that didn't matter so much to me until he was older.

We've only been abroad once when he was 2. We love travelling and miss it but didn't feel it would be enjoyable until he was a bit bigger.

We don't have anyone who would babysit for us so we have never had a night out together since he was born. I wouldn't leave him with a stranger for the sake of a meal and a wine.

So everyone really is different. In the early years it's about doing what you can to make life as straightforward as possible.

It must be awful to live life so rigidly, and with so little spontaneity. Sympathy to those parents who have to do it for whatever reason.

not going abroad though, don’t understand that one! Why wouldnt you?! Especially given how shit the weather is in the uk these days!

@Handsomesquidward

I'm also interested to know if this is only your perception of things. You're surely not her only friend?

I have old friends I don't see as regularly since we all had children but that's because we live over an hour away from each other and all have kids at multiple ages and stages. Kids get sick all the time. If they're not sick, you're sick. If you're all well you still have kids to look after and every day life and jobs and a house to keep on top off. It can be hard enough prioritising each other as a couple and prioritising quality time with your family unit before thinking about various friends. Having children is hard work- maybe you'll experience it one day and understand.

Whereas in my own small town community I have a whole new friendship group of parents with similar aged children to me. We socialise with and without the children and it's easier because we all live in the same community. There's plenty to do here that's kid-friendly without a lot of planning involved: play cafés, multiple park, beach, local library, play dates etc.

Your friend may be socialising quite happily with other parents who are in the same boat and get it. She'll likely be struggling to please everyone.

Bear in mind this doesn't last forever. They are not small for long. While they're babies and toddlers then yes, on balance many parents find their lives are net easier if they stick to a routine, even if it means not going on whole-day trips or having to do naps in a certain way. It doesn't make them precious, they've just found a system that works for them. You might find you can still have rewarding time with them if you fit in with them - lunch out if baby sleeps in the buggy, perhaps; or coming to them for dinner in the evening after kids bedtime.

My daughter dropped her nap shortly before turning 3 and that was also around the age I felt comfortable leaving her with more babysitters, confident that she was unlikely to wake and need us while we were out. Got a lot of my life back then. I don't regret the sacrifices I had to make for the sake of her routine as a baby/toddler and I'm grateful for the child free friends who got it and made plans that would suit us all.

Every baby is different and every parent is different. I was quite religious about my baby's naps because she'd have endless meltdowns if she skipped one.
However, we didn't restrict our lives. We flew to Southern Europe wgen she was 8 weeks old. Took her to Asia wgen she was 11 months old. We've always loved to travel and nothing was going to stop us!

You don't get to pick the type of baby you have. Some are very portable, others are a nightmare all day if there is any deviation from their routine and exhausted parents feel it is not worth the effort.

You don't know what type of parent you will be until you are in the thick of it. Some parents take a grizzly baby all in their stride, others find it difficult to deal with.

Everyone is doing what they need to do to get them through.

We've been out of routine for a variety of reasons this last couple of weeks. DD is 2.5. We do try to be adaptable but her not napping at the usual time / at all, and her routine being off has had a knock on effect of none of us having slept more than 2 hours a night for the last couple of weeks. Exhausting.

As for the babysitting, I know you don't have kids but would you leave your most precious thing with just any random person? Or would you have to trust them implicitly?

In the first year we had a rigid schedule for DD with her feeding and sleep. Everything was planned around it.

I think we are a little more relaxed now DD is a toddler but still have things set in our schedule such as nap time (one a day) and wind-down for bath & bedtime.

I understand the 5 months night out. You can't expect people to babysit all the time, it's not their responsibility. There are only 3 people I'd trust.

Not going abroad is usually because travelling with babies and toddlers is a lot harder and ten times more exhausting.

But no, I have never timed anything around my 4 kids naps. They either slept in the car or pram. Some toddlers don't like sleeping outside/in the pram. Mine have never been fussy though.

I will add that some kids are actually easier than others. My first is completely different to my second. Although they were both very easy babies and I breezed through it, my first had meltdowns that were an absolute nightmare! My second and third have never once had a tantrum and even at age two I could take them anywhere. So, parents have to adjust to manage their kids expectations etc. What would be simple with one kid might not be with another. The age my fourth is now is when my first started to have meltdowns but I've not had any of that with my fourth. They've all been parented the same way!

And we don't always plan days out. Sometimes we google and pick where we're going in the morning. The baby bag is always packed though so all we do is get dressed and go. I don't really know what you'd need to plan unless it's tickets...

It doesn't have to be like that, but it's easy for it to be like that. If that makes sense.

I tried not to go five months, but I did dramatically cut down on nights out because they just weren't as worth it for me. We alternated nights doing the night wake ups for our son and our baby was very difficult. So it was never just "one night out", it had a knock on effect through the week trying to catch up the sleep (and look after baby during the day on mat leave). And being the one at home while the other went on a night out was super hard, so we didn't want to do that to each other too often.

We also decided not to take our son abroad when he was very small. Just wasn’t worth the effort to us. The type of breaks we wanted to do just wouldn’t have been worth the effort for us with a baby (city breaks, long haul travel) and we the easier package holidays didn’t appeal to us. We only took him to visit family once and to a wedding once, both very short flights and the trips weren’t massively enjoyable for us so I feel our decision was right. We’re taking him on a package holiday when he’s 3, because he can actually enjoy it properly then.

@Handsomesquidward Ive met a handful of people like this. One of our frutnds went down this route and became the most boring people and just dropped out from the friendship group. I guess they didn’t value friendships.

Our DDs had baby sitters and although you make adjustments to your life, dropping out altogether really means you don’t care much about your friends.

A neighbour would not allow baby sitters other than grandparents (lucky her) or allow dc in someone else’s car even at junior school. Most people thought they were weird. You need a certain amount of planning for a baby but dropping everyone else by making excuses is odd.

Yes this is how is has to be.

Kids need routine and sleep to be healthy.

Most won’t trust them with an unrelated babysitter when young. Nor leave them for more than a few days so without both parents until much older.

They’re also exhausting and expensive (about 10k a year per child average, much more if you use full time child care), so this can be prohibitive to nights out.

It is a lot of work and a different way of life but it’s worth it.

Enjoy your freedom to do what you like and massive amount of free time while you can.

Agree that it comes from the child first. If you're on the ball you then, as parents, tune into that and positive outcomes flow from there.

My son craves routine. So we give it. This has led to a child who is secure, happy, pleasant to other children, exceptionally polite, well behaved. Because his needs are met and we put the hard work in to maintaining the strict routines he needs. I might like the idea of having a more flexible child who can just be brought along anywhere and will cope. But that's not the child I got.

Absolutely cringing for that mother though. First time mum with a chill baby by sheer luck and she sets up a sleep consultancy business? 😬 That's embarrassing.

Do you think I didn't try being flexible, napping on the go, in the pram, etc? I did. It didn't fucking work. He wouldn't sleep or he'd sleep lightly and for about twenty minutes, then completely refuse to nap again for the rest of the day, and we would all have a miserable night. I spent many a car journey yelling, "WAKE UP!" at the backseat and feeling like a maniac, because he would literally have a 5 minute nap in the car and then refuse ANY other sleep for the rest of the day. We tried the whole "stay out late on holiday and they'll nap in the buggy" thing. DIDN'T WORK. We tried the "keep them up later and let them sleep longer in the morning" thing. DIDN'T WORK. So yeah you better believe my day revolved around making sure he got his nap at home, because it was 100% not worth making all of us, including the baby, miserable, just so we could pat ourselves on the back for being flexible and chill.

We did travel and I really didn't have much trouble doing some solo evening socialising because DH was perfectly capable of being in charge. But I invite you to add up the cost of an evening out from, say, 7pm to 11pm at £12+ph for babysitting on top of the costs of drinks, food, etc. It's sodding expensive.

People do different things depending on what they’re comfortable with. Until you have children you don’t know what things will be easy for you and what won’t. Before I had children I had certain ideas about things that were completely off the mark once I actually had a real life baby in front of me.

Personally, I’ve never spent a night away from DC. The oldest is 4 and will probably do a sleepover at grandparents soon, but I’ve never used a babysitter. My parents never did either. We’ve avoided holidays as well because the amount of stuff a baby and toddler needs is a lot and I don’t fancy sterilising bottles abroad. I don’t miss holidays at the moment, I’d prefer to stay home and do days out. Other people find it easy and go abroad without much thought.

It's how it worked for us!

Having had two very different children, nothing annoys me more than parents saying "the baby is relaxed because we're relaxed". Nope, the causality goes the other way - you're relaxed because you have a calm, flexible, happy-go-lucky baby.

(PS: the one mum in our group whose baby slept well, early, set up as a sleep consultant. She did the same the rest of us did, just got lucky with hers)

I'd struggle not to make a pointed comment @LividPink . Bit like my childless friend who helpfully tells me that she would just "tell her child not to do that". Oh, I'm sorry, I should tell the two year old to behave? Why didn't I think of that?!

We don't follow timed routines, but we have rhythms.

So we can be spontaneous, have loads of fun times. When the baby is showing signs of tiredness, we sing her songs and get her washed and changed for bed. She is old enough to start singing those same bedtime songs herself too.

We take our 18 month old to festivals, camps, gigs, parties etc. We are a unit. No screens.

Having a child is as individual an experience as the two people involved. There’s no ‘standard’ method. That’s not how I lived life with a toddler. In part because I had a demanding FT job, and DH worked away most weekends, so DS and I would go with him, meaning everything couldn’t be routine-led. But some people do prioritise routines, or simply find their child is so unbearable without one that it’s an easy sacrifice. Similarly, travelling abroad. We’re not from the UK so DS was travelling to our home country and to see overseas friends, or attend conferences for my work, from a few months old, but some people don’t travel much, are anxious travellers, or have a child who reacts badly to unfamiliar surroundings/heat/ strange food. So again, it’s an easy temporary sacrifice.

It's not like that for everyone I'm sure but for me, we did schedule our lives around our children's naps when they were young. If they missed one, got over tired etc then it would really make the rest of the day harder! They napped at certain times of the day in their cot without fail, so yes it was difficult sometimes in the sense of not being able to do things, or go places but tbh I would rather have my sanity 😂

I wish I’d have been a bit more like that with my youngest, because then maybe, she wouldn’t still be a nightmare at 3 and a half who won’t sleep until 11pm.

some parents follow routines, some don’t. I didn’t with any of my 3, eldest is an adult and totally unscathed. I’ve never left any of mine with a babysitter though. We don’t have any family but dh and I have different friends anyway so go out separately so it’s not been an issue.

I couldn’t have lived my life around a toddlers nap time, but each to their own. They might find life a lot easier doing it that way.