[sdeframond]

> the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and purpose-providing.

Depends. At 3am it's not.

[nnutter]

That's a pretty short period in the grand scheme of things. Before you know it they'll be driving and just a year or two from leaving the nest and you'll wish you could have had more time with them.

[thatfrenchguy]

Yup, but when you’re sleep deprived the months feel like years, and if unlucky and you got a bad sleeper the years can feel like decades

[Aurornis]

There’s a lot more to having kids than the relatively short window when they’re very young and waking up a lot in the middle of the night.

Before having kids I read so much about this difficult period and thought it was going to be the defining feature of having kids.

Then you go through it and one month you realize they’re sleeping through the night. Then you have an entire lifetime.

So yeah, it’s not fun. But it’s also such a tiny segment of parenthood that the emphasis on it feels pretty excessive.