For me it's easy, or well I'm fairly certain at least. We went through IVF so they took my sperm and an egg from his mother. Some days we do wonder though, he's an amazing little bundle and it's sometimes hard to believe that WE made THAT.

So I guess your point still stands. I had to sign lots of papers though that I wanted the baby and that my wife was allowed to use my sperm to get pregnant with, so I should be safer than from just ordinary sex, at least I have a contract saying it should be mine lol

I actually struggled with straight up yelling at my kids caretaker on the kindergarten he just started at. They have one lady who's worked there for quite some time and 2 newer teachers, so the older children have already had the chance to bond with the one who's worked there longer, so when she leaves the area (in this case to go to the toilet) a few kids gets sad cus they don't really want to leave her side. And one kid got especially upset and basically stood there screaming and crying (should clearify my kid is 16 month old, the one who cried was maybe 2), tugging at the door saying he wanted to follow her in.

The other teachers basically went "He is like that, she's all that matters, he gets really upset when she leaves" and then doesn't move a muscle to try and calm him. I look over at my kid who is happily playing on the playground, so he doesn't need me at the moment, so I pop over to the kid crying and went down to his level by squatting next to him, I tell him that "I know you wanted to follow her to the toilet, but she wanted to go alone, she will be back before you know it" and he just keeps basically chanting "I wanted to follow" so I keep talking with him a bit and gets him to redirect his focus from the door and back to the playground, but he didn't want to play at all, he just wanted to stand there in front of me and lean to my chest. So I let him. The teachers were amazed that he'd find solace in anyone other than the first lady and he didn't even leave me when she got back. My kid came over to check what was happening and then ran back playing again.

What made me a bit mad and sad was that they didn't even tried talking to him, they just gave up and accepted that he only wanted her, and if they never try they'll never earn his trust. I'm a big guy in my 30's but children has always been drawn to me and I happily play with them and I can only hope that it will reflect in my kid, that he has the confidence in himself to dare to explore the world while knowing that me and his mother will always be there when he needs us. That he will always be able to come to us with his struggles and we will help him to our best ability.

I take it you didn't read the last paragraph then

We didn't even get to see how they were dressed, but as a parent I gotta say this...

Don't fucking hide bodies from your kids, if people go nude let them, if they dress however the fuck they want without trying to get to you, let them. There's a photo exhibit in Sweden now where they've photographed naked bodies "with a female perspective" and if it makes it to our town we will be going to see it and will be taking our 16 month old with us. We all have bodies, we all look different, they need to be taught that we look different and that it's ok. The taboo around nudeness is insane. Babies see nudity all the fucking time, mainly when they breastfeed or when we shower or bathe with them, it's nothing that will hurt them, forcing your morals of taboo on them will hurt them.

Rant over and just wanna say nothing in this comment is aimed to you personally even though I've used "your" in the post. I'm sure you're a wonderful person and I wish you all well in life

Also, remember that Subways bread has too much sugar in it to even be called bread in Ireland.

Yes I would, as stated above, what constitutes a "life"? Is it really just a beating heart or is it the ability to be self sustaining and feeling? We could go for round 2 but I'd say it's fairly clear none of us will change opinions in the matter

I know most don't come back from flatlining, doesn't mean that doctors won't try, that's why it's temporary until it's declared not. Well, you're using a technical level that's entirely made up, it's your opinion that that constitutes life. You are free to believe what you want, but remember that it's the strongest argument used by your opposition, that life is holy and life starts when there's a heartbeat, even though there's no scientific proof of that being the case

Temporarily dead (I've flatlined, I'd call myself alive at the moment)

But to get to that point you generally have to do other stuff first. There's more to being alive than just having a beating heart. For instance people who are braindead following an accident is often considered alive but not worth sustaining since they won't ever wake up, is it then wrong to just end it by turning off the life sustaining machines? Should that be considered murder and should we just keep them alive just to drain the families financially because their hearts are still beating?

I get that you're fixed in your opinion on this and trust me, I'm not saying you're wrong but the truth is, we don't have a fixed point at which "life begins" because nobody can prove it or quantity it.

The beating heart theory is simplistic as best as it's an easily graspable point of time/evolution and humans LOVE to seek logic in things we don't understand, but the answer may be more complicated than the simplest tangible point.

Don't really care which side you're on, the argument you chose to portray was that of heartbeat = life, so even if you don't believe in that statement, it's important to talk about since others do and may otherwise take it as true.

Well, what is really life? Is it just a heartbeat? Is it when we breathe for the first time? The first time we experience a sensation perhaps? Life is a fleeting definition and many adults would argue they've never "really felt alive, so why should we draw the line at a heartbeat when being born to an unwanting family would be so much worse for that child? It's not like foster care is easy on neither kids not society, why do we force families to go through this while complaining that there is "overpopulation" in the world?

It's insane and it's a infringement on womens rights to their own bodies and mainly their health, wanting to do an abortion but not having access to medically safe procedures always hurts the woman and in many cases the child. Some will take to unsafe medical procedures (aka clothes hangers etc) and most will try and abuse the body to make it reject the baby (aka alcohol or drugs abuse) this has been proven in countries before where a blanket ban has been precent. It's nothing new, and neither is the attempt to control womens bodies

Pretty much all our different personalities had some sort of advantage on the savannah. I for one is a night owl. I would have had the guard duty when others slept. The town idiots were useful in finding food that was safe to eat (someone must be the first to eat a berry or wonder off somewhere to see if places were safe) and the hyper focused people were great at doing their thing.

First months were the worst since your basically always checking to see if he lives or not but now he's generally ok, so now it's mainly anxiety about him not enjoying kindergarten, him growing up in a rather dark world and other fun stuff like that. He seems to be comfortable in himself though (like to explore and knowing that we are around should he need support) so that's really good.

Ah, nice. It's pretty much a perfect time of year to go north, it's a really beautiful setting up there now with the end of summer light. I wish you a nice trip and hopefully you'll love Sweden and visit our country again, we aren't a big country but we have lots of beauty through out it anyway :)

Thank you for the sweet words, one can really just try, and it's a lot of anxiety trying to raise a child.

Awesome and (preemptively) welcome to Sweden! Are you planning on visiting specific places or just traveling a bit within Sweden? :). It's quite beautiful at the moment but the nights/evenings can get a bit chilly. Not any major colds though but bring a sweater :)

So the fact that people had to grow up faster in the olden days somehow makes it ok? I mean, people generally didn't live past 30 either, so let's just kill off all religious people since they wanna live the olden way then.

Not all religious people are predators, but they do draw in lots of predators. It mostly depends on the power situation though rather than religion per se.

That's the only thing that I don't like with my "secret society", we have wizards as well and we wear those damn white robes/capes as any other secret society, but we don't march around in them and we live by the wisdom of Merlin, so no torching people either.

I'm about to become a Bard soon though so that's nice.

My wife was a crier before our kid, seems to have calmed down a bit now but during pregnancy and directly after birth her emotions we're all over the place to the point where she could just break down and cry for the tiniest little sad thing. Now she's just back to normal crying for the sad stuff. And to be fair, having a kid is emotional as fuck, and it's basically constantly emotionally draining as well, I cried the first day we dropped him off to kindergarten, I cried when he took his first steps, I cried the first time he said da-da. His first word was lamp though, and since lamp in swedish is pretty close to dad he's merely adapted that, so I (and others) gets called a lamp from time to time. He's 16 months now and he grows up waaaay too fast.

I'm 32, used to watch sad shit everyday without much of a care, now I'm a father and we have this show on tv here where they show towtrucks and follow them around called "Vägens Hjältar" (Heroes of the Road) and everytime it's a car accident involving a kid my heart just melts, both due to feeling sorry for the kid, but also due to how nice the tow drivers are and how well they handle the situations and give them little teddybears etc. I just start to cry. Same with true crime youtubes and such, I can't handle them anymore when they involve children.

They brake the air, not the car, d'uh

I'd say it's even worse now since they're all "wearing" masks... Don't you fucking blow stuff in my face right now lady.

Hehe, we had one of those spots in my old server, they weren't allowed to disperse anti insect smoke so the mosquito players really swarmed to that area, it was so bad their cows got stressed to death and people and pets refused to leave the house during evenings, one friend who had his base near that area said that you could literally hear the forest buzzing when they saw you and they all just targeted you, it wasn't so much the physical attacks as it was the mental stress of it being there constantly.

They applied to the mods to be able to spray, mods declined due to it being a environmental protection area, so they invited the mods over when the spawn rates were peaking. They lasted 2 hours, then they granted the permission to spray

We live like 2 min from a hospital but they are also out regions main Covid hospital so they had no beds, so we ended up driving for an hour at around 12.30AM, so when we got there and the clock started approaching 2AM and I wasn't let in due to restrictions I decided I'm not driving 1h home and back when my wife is ready so hotel was really the best solution. It was nice though, not that I slept all too good :p. Then when we had our birth my wife got some shaky blood pressure so we weren't allowed to leave the room for about 24 hours so they couldkeep check on her, so then I wasn't allowed to leave the hospital either, but that was 24h of babysnuggles so that was nice! Then after that my wife and baby got transferred to the maternity care and I wasn't allowed to stay with them there any more, so that 1h drive home alone after just having spent 24h in close contact with my new baby was the hardest drive I've ever taken. It also took them 2 full days to be satisfied with my wife's vitals and she was allowed home, I missed them both to bits. The staff was amazing though through our entire visit so it was really good, and my wife got taken care of etc so can't really complain, we were a bit scared that we'd might notice nurses being overworked etc but they were super friendly and helpful, amazing people through and through. Even helped us out with our first baby steps of having a baby!

Here we have 480 days parental leave (split between mother and father) per child. The first 390 days payment would be based on the income you had before and the last 90 days would be what's called a "minimum amount" of roughly 18€ per day.

Those are days we will be paid from the government should we choose to be at home, companies can't stop us from taking those days off as long as we tell them in good time (often requires 2 months so they can fix with replacements etc) but as long as we let them know in time they can't deny it or punish us for it. We are also free to take out basically as many days of parental leave we want and not apply for payment from the government, this makes it so that we can extend those 480 days to last longer (as long as you're not in desperete need of the money of course) and we still have about 200+ days left for our kid at 16 months old. Obviously you don't apply for payment during weekends etc as well so they do cover a loooong time.

All of this is written in law so it's not up to the company to decide if we have the right or not and if they misbehave there will be severe punishments.

Also, I started a new job in May which meant that I would be required to go back to the office a bit more, since then I've worked 80% being home on paternal leave 1 day per week, no questions asked from my new employer besides how my kid is doing and all the fun stuff he goes through. It shouldn't be a financial burden to get a child, it's a fucking burden to be responsible for a life as it is. I honestly wish you and your family well, but your country needs to change

I'm from Sweden and a fellow Covid child father. We have a 10 days mandatory paternity leave and after that we did some drawbacks at work and I was put on short term leave (something that the government implemented to help buisnesses through Covid) where I worked 40% but still got 97.5% of my usual pay, then when that ended I went on 50% paternity leave. Kid is 16 month old now and I'm not fully back to work yet, neither is his mother. But we've gotten to spend SOOOO much time with him that we wouldn't normally be able to, since if Covid hadn't been around at least one of us would have been forced to work this entire time.

I've only had one kid, and I had to pay a hotel for me since we gave birirth outside of our hometown and due to Covid I wasn't allowed into the hospital until my wife was fully open

Pumpkin spice latte, it sounds horrible and I don't even drink coffee