Hacker News Books

I like that book, too. There were two others that we thought were helpful:

"The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance" which is just an overall guide to everyday things you have to do (and it's pretty funny.)

"Precious Little Sleep" on improving our sleep situation.

One book I wish I had known about was "Precious Little Sleep" by Alexis Dubief. You don't have to follow everything, but having some guide to your babies sleep needs and will be helpful.

Honestly, forget the manual. Get help with either taking care of the baby or with household stuff. Get family to come, pay somebody, whatever. If you aren't comfortable with paid help to take care of the baby, pay somebody to clean and cook. Having healthy home meals ready is going to save you a lot of misery.

Babies are actually pretty easy from a task perspective. Sleep, eat, poop, diaper changes, playtime, tummytime, etc. What takes the toll is how many times you have to do this stuff combined with sleep deprivation.

Get help and emotional support. That will do much more for you, your relationship with your partner, and your ability to be a parent than any manual can do.

Also a note on pediatricians. A lot of pediatricians are fairly easy going in that if the baby has no major symptoms (e.g. no fever, no vomiting) is gaining weight, there is nothing to worry about. This is actually a good way to look at things, but it's definitely hard not get frustrated with this easy-going approach when you have this little person in your arms and you're totally overwhelmed.

Precious Little Sleep - New baby in the house. Seems to be good advice.

We are legion (We are Bob) - Finally broke down and listened to all the praise. It wasn't misspent. What fun!

The Emotional Craft of Fiction - Can never have enough writing advice

The Pragmatic Programmer (20th anniversary) - Again, relenting to the pressure to read classics

There are a lot of great answers so I'll just provide some general advice.

1. Baby sleep is not intuitive at all. Learn as much as you can before the baby comes. Read "Precious Little Sleep" by Alexis Dubief. Figure out how to get a baby to sleep without them being on you, even if you are patting and shushing them in your bed. Having a baby fall asleep on you constantly may cause massive problems after the first 4 months. You don't need to use "cry it out" if you get the basics of baby sleep right early.

2. Pick a reasonable amount of time (e.g. 6 months, 1 year) and say the baby and your family are a priority. For this period don't get too caught up in when life/work/friends/hobbies, etc will get back on track. Just say "I said X time, and right now baby and spouse are the priority."

3. Remember to forgive yourself and your spouse for the fights, bickering, and mistakes. At some point you will take a week to figure out something and feel you should have figured it out in a day. You will feel like a failure. Then something else will change and another week will go by and you will feel like a failure again. Just take a deep breath and keep trying. Kids don't come with a manual.

4. Some kids are easier. Some are harder. If you are doing your best, that's all you can do.

I second the recommendation for Precious Little Sleep. I bought and would recommend the book, but you can also get a lot of what you need from these blog post but the author.

https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/what-you-need-to-know-ab...

That was enough for a while and I believe I didn't actually buy the book for at least several months. Then I bought it at 2am during a particularly rough sleep regression. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My main caveat for sleep advice is that you need to take it all with a grain of salt because whether any particular strategy will work depends on the parents and kids temperaments, along with a variety of other factors. YMMV and don't let anybody else's success story make you feel bad. They're probably leaving out the worst parts, possibly because their brains have literally blocked out the memories of them.