This has only just dawned on me..

[HowWillIKnow247]

I'm heavily pregnant - baby is due any day now.

Although we've joked about it, it's only just really dawned on me how DP and I will never have the life again we do now, where we can just casually decide what we want to do in the evening or at weekends.

We've had fertility treatment for years and this is a much wanted baby. We are both over the moon and are so excited this is finally happening. We're so looking forward to everything we'll get to do as a family.

But it just dawned on me .. are the days gone where we just say "fancy going cinema this weekend?"

When I mentioned this scenario to DP, the response was "well we can't really because we can't take a baby into a cinema".

It's made me think about all the other things we do and places we go quite spontaneously.
(We've been together 10 years so it's always been just us and the dog).

Are there things you still do like this that haven't been changed so much after having a baby or did everything just completely change and you can't remember what a cinema looks like?!

This very much depends on the baby. Dd2 was like this and we had a ball going out for lunches while DH was WFH and DD1 (then 2yo) was at nursery. Dd1 was a different kettle of fish, silent reflux meant she hated the pram and cried a lot, even with meds. I will never forget being bridesmaid at a wedding when she was 12 weeks, in a heatwave, she screamed all day and then poonamied and vomited on my dress at once. It was awful tbh. She was not portable in the slightest. Hated the car seat too.

Now they're 4 and 2. I'd bring the 4yo pretty much anywhere, but my sunny easy baby is now a toddler who doesn't want to sit still so we've scrapped the meals out for now except the odd brunch.

On another point, I have known several women who struggled for years to have a baby, and had a very idealised view of what life would be like. It was very very difficult for them when reality hit. I would say keep your expectations to a minimum as you have no idea what kind of baby you'll get, or how you'll feel about motherhood.

I know someone in his 80s who gets drunk on the weekend and calls his 'children', themselves a bit old, to come and pick him up in the early hours of the morning like he did for them when they were young.

make up your mind are you the selfless parents of a colicy baby who gave up your entire life to coddle them or the parent that spend the entire weekend abandoning your kid on your mother as free childcare so you can go out to nightclubs getting pissed and sleeping off the hangover?

Most babies do not scream and cry constantly, most parents can take them out and its not remotely selfish. Really its Suddahs comment that people taking kids to resteraunts being selfish based on the bullshit notion that all children just scream and cry that is judgemental.

This sums it up perfectly!

i am neither
i was incredibly resentful parent of a very unwell baby..who could not take them places easily .
I was resentful that society sells the notion of motherhood as perpetually joyful and what women should do to feel fulfilled and that you are selfish if actually you like going out clubbing at the weekends ...i was also angry at being judged because i did not enjoy motherhood and was able to articulate that.

i was not a selfless martyr but i was also not passing my baby off all the time...and so what if as a parent you do pass baby to someone else to go out partying once a week..that seems to be bad in your eyes, so perpetuating this myth that parents have to give up all things that cannot be done with baby or child in tow.

I happen to agree with Suddha ..i want to be able to go to restaurants where other peoples children are not yabbering away/running around/screeching for attentions ..i want to go to the theatre and not have someone in front of me loudly explaining the plot to their frankly bored 7 yr old ...its not screaming crying children etc...its the concept that your life is just not the same once you have a baby and telling people it will be because baby can go wherever you go is wrong.
not every baby is placid, sweet, sits nicely in a pram or sleep through a music festival

Probably depends a lot on whether you have local and willing family. We don’t so for 4-5 years our life looked drastically different. Now we are financially a bit more stable and pay for babysitters if we fancy doing something or both take a day off work together. But yes, your life will definitely change.

You can still do these things. We took DS to the pub, restaurants etc from a young age (within reason!) plus there are so many things that become so much more joyful with a baby / toddler in tow. Summers are wonderful - there are some great beer gardens near us and our toddler loves to have a wander around outside or sit with us and friends.

Life is different but so much richer.

I remember being in my early 20s and feeling really sorry for friends who had dc and couldn’t come out as they didn’t have babysitters. Then I became a parent and realised that I didn’t really miss going out every weekend to the pub and was quite happy staying at home with the dc, watching childrens films and going to the park. Thats obviously how my friends had felt. It probably wasn’t that they couldn’t get a babysitter, but that they didn’t really want to get a babysitter as they were happy with staying at home with their dc. I honestly never predicted that my outlook would change so much.

My parents will be taking both DC for the October half term break (first time ever). DH and I were talking about what we will be able to do that week and realised 'wow we could actually go to the cinema?? And not need to book babysitters months in advance but actually be spontaneous??!' It was quite the emotional moment 🤣

As others have said, yes your life will change but it won't be forever. But when you emerge from the other side, you may find that the things you did enjoy doing aren't so important anymore, not when compared to getting sleep and rest! It does depend on the child you have. My DD is now 7 and if we just had her there's so much more we could do, especially as she loves staying with my parents. However, we also have DS4 and he is rather more 'challenging' so that restricts what we can do. We don't have much family support and I don't feel we are at the stage of asking friends to babysit them both, so that limits us further.

I will say that you tend to appreciate meals out, cinema trips etc so much more when you get to do them...

Should add I wouldn't change a thing. Love my DC and don't really miss my old life only when I'm really stressed

Can you really? I would have thought the noise level at a cinema, especially adult movies, was much to high for a babies ears. Or do you use ear defenders?

Hi! I could have written this myself a couple of months ago.
I've been with my husband for 10 years, and it's just been us and our dog. Had ivf after infertility problems. We were very happy and grateful to be pregnant and was due our little one any day (i went overdue so had extra time to think about everything). But at that point of waiting, the thought of our lives changing so much filled me with anxiety and sadness. I think it was just hitting me that we were actually going to have a baby and that we were so close to meeting them. We had longed so much to have a family, and i think i struggled to think/plan ahead in pregnancy because i had to take each day as it came. (This was an approach that started when having ivf to manage expectations/emotions).
Our little one arrived 8 weeks ago now, so we're only a little further down the road than you. For now, life has changed, and we can't do whatever we want when we want, (more so for me as I'm the one staying home with baby and breast feeding). But i wouldn't change it. I get to be a mum to my little girl, which i at one point never thought would happen. I feel so lucky to have her in my life. Life will be different, but we get to share it with our little ones, and it'll be richer for it ❤️ x

This.

We never tried to get ours into rigid routines, sleeping in the pram at cafes, beaches, etc was just their normal, and means you can be a lot more spontaneous. Plus side is that you hopefully get a baby that can sleep through any amount of background noise!

You’ll be so absorbed in the fun of family life you probably won’t miss things you do together now. We never did.
I go to the cinema alone with my DC now they are 15 and 16. Sometimes both sometimes 1 and mostly without DH as he’s working.
Me and the kids do loads together. I love it as they are big boys

Some babies are easier than others- I had one of each- nothing to do with parenting, babies all have different tempraments.
My daughter was easy as a baby, would sleep in a sling or buggy on a day out, and was very portable.
My son was hard- he would only sleep at home, and at 6 months while he was having morning and afternoon naps we were very tied to the house.
He would scream blue murder if he was due a nap and out at a cafe or day out- he would be noisy and hard to manage.
We went through a long stage of being tied to the house when my DS was a baby.
DD was a completely different baby- she would nod off for a nap anywhere - as long as she was fed and a clean nappy.

If you plan to breastfeed you may want to work out places that you feel comfortable in- whether that's private or public.
Breastfeeding rooms are sometimes gruesome, also used as baby changing rooms, if you are ok feeding in public you will want good comfortable seating.
Nappy changing is another consideration- there are some facilties, and you can't change a nappy in a busy indoors space.
You will learn how to nappy change on the backseat of a car, which can be like trying to put an octopus into a string bag.
Of course once you baby is moble there are fresh challenges- and eating out at all may prove to be more trouble than it is worth.
Toddlers are escape artists, may not be happy in a high chair, and have huge skills in crawing under tables/under the legs of a waitress, pulling coffee cups of tables and throwing cutlery.
Table manners are a step too far when dealing with an 18 month old.
Too young to understand etiquette or safety, and will sit for a maximum of 17 minutes in a cafe while being distracted with snacks.
It will be hard to have adult conversations in or out, because you will have constant interruptions.

That being said children are awesome- I am just glad mine are not small anymore.

I've done all of those and disturbed no one.

With my first, she was happy as a pig in mid in the sling, and I could reliably have a couple of hours of sleep from her at a time. I went to a lot of restaurants, pubs etc with her in the first 9m or so. If she so much as squeaked I'd take her out, but I'm not sure she ever did, she was that quiet (isn't any more, lol).

My second, this period lasted weeks rather than months, and I ended up ducking out of places more as she wasn't so placid. So we couldn't continue.

Again though, she wasn't crying in restaurants, she'd stir and I'd leave. When it wasn't fun any more, we stopped.

Its not selfish to go out with your young baby. What's selfish is disturbing other people if they start making noise.

Of course your life is going to change. Massively. The loss of freedom and spontaneity was the thing i found hardest to adjust to about becoming a parent but I'm used to it now and accept having to plan things and think about the logistics in advance as part of normal family life.
You can still go to the cinema, but it either needs to be a scheduled Baby Cinema event, or you need to get a babysitter, or one of you can go and the other stay home with the baby. Or you might get lucky and have one of these very low maintenance babies who will be perfectly fine sleeping and feeding like an angel through a film at the normal non-baby cinema and won't disturb the other patrons. I didn't have those babies, nor did any of my friends but MN tells me they exist.

Of course life changes. You'll have the freedom of holidays when you want for a few more years then it'll be school and you'll be limited to the school holidays for a number of years. Unless you can convince the head teacher you need a few days/weeks off outside that time. That's something I still miss, going on holiday in the summer but outside school holiday time (cheaper) was a luxury I didn't recognise at the time. Paying through the nose for the privilege of having a holiday surround by everyone else's kids can sometimes feel a bit 'meh'.

You can do Baby Cinema where they turn the sound down a bit. But, of course, that also involves other people's babies who may be a bit noisier than yours. Or you go separately - which is what DH and I did. That only lasts a few years. DS loves the cinema and we've been regulars since he was about four years old. As a teenager now we get to see more adult films with him.

Flying can be equivalent to army manoeuvres. But you soon get used to what you need for your child. Ours has been lucky enough to fly to European and US places with very little problem. My DH's family live the other end of the country so DS flew at 6 weeks old and every three months for years after that. That helped a lot as we just adapted over the years so when the first trip abroad happened, we had a lot of experience under our belts.

You'll make mistakes - not taking enough liquid on a day trip and getting stuck in a traffic jam taught us to overload food and drink for DS when he was little! You'll learn what suits you and your child. And, when they're young, they normally just do what you do. When they become a teenager and have an opinion on everything you do...I'm saying nothing!

.

Yes, life is completely different when yku have children. I really missed my old life so much when my first was born. However 15 years on I can barely remember what it was like not having someone ask me where their stuff is constantly lol

@LondonJax
🤣 yes I imagine when they become teenaged it's a whole other story!

I did think that with holidays. Now we can go whenever, and usually pick when it is much cheaper. Holidays during the school holidays are ridiculously priced!

😂😂 To be honest, I'm the one who does this now!
DP said only the other day "I'll have two people asking where their things are now!"

@speakout
One of my favourite things is going out for food. I love it so much. We were out today with friends and their two kids, one is a toddler. He was shouting and running off, so they left as soon as they'd finished eating their meal so not to disturb people.
And my other friend has a 1 year old who will just sit and play and look around, and you don't hear a peep out of her really.

@Millie029
Oh congratulations! 💛
That's so lovely.
Yes, for so long I wondered if this would ever happen for us. So I'm so glad that is it. And I do feel so much of our lives will be richer for it. We are both over the moon and excited, and know that we'll have to make lots of adjustments. It is strange to think it won't ever be just the two of us again. But we do get the opportunity to share everything with our little one.

@Cleothecat75
That's really lovely to hear. I totally get that too.
I'm looking forward to things like that. Staying in and watching a childrens film in pjs, going to parks and libraries.
We get an excuse now to do all the kids things that I didn't get much of a chance to when I was little.
And spending time with our baby is something I've been imagining and dreaming of for so long. There's lots to look forward to.