Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.

But that didn't happen. We just carried on being Jason and his partner, but with a baby in tow.

I had spent most of my 30s cramming in as much "living" as possible, to make sure I'd stocked away a lifetime supply of it. After all, I'd probably never get another chance to travel for long periods, keep up with climbing, and all that other stuff that Independent Jason could do.

But it was all for naught. We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.

Life is just as much fun as ever. But now we have some kids to play with.

> Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.

There are some huge changes.

The largest is a lack of the mental downtime where deep thought and problem solving could occur.

I can't get off work, hop on my car, and drive around for an hour mulling over technical work. I can't stay an hour past with coworkers and noodle solutions on a white board. I can't get up at 2 am to try something out that just popped into my head.

I need to be in bed by 10pm every day. I have to get up at 7am every day. On weekdays 2 meals a day need to be planned, on weekends 3 meals a day. I can't try experimenting with some random new recipe that may fail, my kid needs to eat lunch on time not 2 hours late.

Yes it is a lot of fun (theme parks! Trick or treating!), but I'm thankful I did a ton of amazing engineering work before I had a kid because there is no way I can dedicate the absurd amount of time to innovating/solving hard problems, that I used to.

> Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.

Had a very similar feeling. When my wife told me the "getting pregnant" worked I mourned a little bit. I recognize we were exceedingly lucky to have had such a wonderful kid, and it has worked out very well.

For the first 6 mos. a lot did change, but after that things seemed to skew back to a new "normal".

It will be 13 years in May since we had our daughter. I'm so glad we did it.

I know that it could have gone a lot differently, though. I'd never suggest that it'll be great for everybody.

> He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.

I was raised overseas (Dad[0] in the CIA).

Both good and bad. First, if it's just "traveling," and not "living" overseas, I suspect that it's not so bad, but military brats have common quirks, for a reason. Our lives get torn up and replanted regularly. It's hard to make friends, and we often end up having a difficult time, retaining long-term relationships, later in life.

But, man, the life story that it gives you. There's few cures for xenophobia, better than immersion.

[0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm

It happened to me and now, after more than 8 years, I find myself still in the situation where I am serving my children's needs and not having time to satisfy my personal ones.

They go to bed when I am also tired. Trying to having an hobby past their bed time means sacrifying sleep time.

Travelling is also a challenge, since they lack interesting in seeing something new, but just want to have fun playing, especially playgrounds.

> We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.

How do you keep a baby happy and quiet on long international flights? I currently have no kids but I may find myself in this situation in the next couple years. I'm dreading being the guy with a screaming infant on a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight that keeps everyone from sleeping.

I'm 6 months in and it has definitely ended my life as it was and nothing is the same. I'm pretty lucky that my wife gives me almost 16 hours of free time daily, from which 8 I work and 8 is for sleep. If I want to work out or do something else I need to steal it from the sleep time. It's pretty early though so I might be looking back in a few years and think that it was not that bad actually :)

Absolutely. Also, kids end up helping you focus on the travel, experiences and things that are truly worthwhile. You drop a lot of activities and TV and other activities that was frankly a waste of time anyways.

That doesn't appear to be a common story. I now have to schedule phone calls with my retired mother because between my sister and her partner who both work, and her, with 2 kids - one small but active that needs constant minding and one that needs chaperoning to activities - she often doesn't have one uninterrupted hour in the evening for an entire week.

Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)

You have just the one kid, right?

We were the same ;-)

Travel with a baby isn't that bad.

I think people struggle with losing their identity when they no longer get long periods of focus time or can participate in their hobbies with the dedication they would like.