#best of luck anon and hope i didnt offend you with any of this

[subdee]

ADHD anon. Thank you for your answer. A lot of what you said was very relatable. I've also had periods of my life where the ADHD seems to improve without medication. Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people seem to be what works. The ADHD gets worse when I'm using the computer regularly.

It's interesting that you recommend Thinking Fast and Slow. My dad gifted me this book with the earnest advice to read it and I never did. Maybe I should.

If you don't mind me asking one more thing: How does the ADHD affect your ability to care for a baby? I ask because my partner and I both have ADHD and kids might be a thing for us in the future.

My partner is capable of holding high ranking, highly demanding, specialized jobs. He operates on the same high and low energy states that you mentioned. He works so effectively when he's on adderall, but when he crashes it can turn into an emotional breakdown for him.

Neither of us are currently taking medication because the side effects are too disruptive to our lives. My partner recently quit his job due to mental health problems. I'm not too concerned about the financial end of this because his skills are in high demand, but I am worried about this intense emotional/energy cycle becoming a non-stop issue for his health. I also worry that he won't be able to help with childcare for this reason, even though he has an evident paternal instinct around kids and he was raised by a house husband.

I have a hope in the back of my mind that if we did have a baby, parental instinct would override the difficulties of ADHD. However, I suspect this is not something I can know for sure until it's too late to go back on the decision.

"Tasks that require me to be on my feet and with people" <- This is it exactly, yes, thank you. By this measure there are a lot of people with ADHD who manage by either creating or lucking into the right environment (shout-out to the self-help book Driven to Distraction that recommended, essentially, being a dude and marrying a woman who could attend to all the details for you lmao).

About the parent thing... We've only been parents for about four months now so I don't want to pass myself off as an expert. For me, I'm on the older side (late 30s) but I don't think I could have had children any younger than this. Children really require a lot of managerial and organizational skills, especially as they get older and you have to manage their schedules for them. I never had those skills when I was younger, but I was essentially forced to develop them at work because I'm in a position of responsibility where bad things will happen if I don't do my job properly.

And the other part of that is, not only did I have to learn the skills, but after a decade of teaching I **feel** skilled and valued at work, and also in my relationship with my spouse (we've been together seven years). All of that gave me the confidence to try having a kid....

I don't think everyone has to be as old as me, but I think it helps to FEEL settled, to feel that you'll figure it out even if it's tough. And then raising a kid is a big financial commitment and job protections for new parents in the US aren't great, lolsob, so even more than the ADHD I would say that being confident I wouldn't **lose my job** if I took six months off to care for a child was the biggest factor in feeling ready.

As far as whether you'll be able to manage caring for a baby while having ADHD... it really depends on your situation and what kind of support network you have... If there are grandparents or other extended family/friend in the picture to help out, or if you have the money for paid help, then you can relax a little bit.

I haven't found focusing on the baby to be any kind of problem, though, because, well, you have to do it. You know? There's no getting around the fact that baby needs you to feed and change and bathe and burp and hold and play with them and etc etc. They can't even fall asleep on their own without you (alas)!

So whether you feel able to do it or not you just have to do it, unless again you have that great support network. I don't know about you but I personally find that a lot of ADHD difficulties go away when it's something concrete I have to do, with clear consequences if I don't do it right now.

About your partner, I don't know your specific situation but I wouldn't have a kid with anyone I couldn't rely on to help out with the childcare. Of course we all have our breaking points and sometimes RJ needs downtime and sometimes I need downtime and neither of us is 100% all the time *especially on days like today when the baby has been waking up every hour all night long (and this has been going on for weeks (and I'm almost always the person getting up in the middle of the night))* But no way I personally could be the only person caring for Baby. I need my husband to occasionally be the person who gets up in the middle of the night so I can sleep, who occasionally plays with the baby so I can have the morning off, who occasionally feeds the baby because my back hurts, etc etc. I'm sure your guy is lovely but babies take a lot of time and energy.

That's my personal two cents, and you'd know better than I would how often you'll be able to count on your guy when you need him. Maybe a more traditional split with your guy making the money and you doing the childcare would work for you guys, it seems to work for some people. Maybe he'll step up when it's clutch time, some people perform better under pressure. Really it all depends. I couldn't be the woman in this relationship though, not under any circumstances:

https://botharetrue.substack.com/p/i-cannot-handle-my-sons-crying

Anyway. It depends on your baby too, and whether you grew up around children and know how to care for them (I didn't) or whether you'll be muddling through. Some babies are easier to care for than others. Ours is good-natured but he had stomach issues and now he has sleep issues. Also he's at the age when he craves stimulation and if we don't take him somewhere interesting at least once a day he gets cranky and indignant - he also needs tons of exercise every day like Michael Phelps or he can't settle enough to eat or sleep - ADHD probably to be honest.

One thing that no one tells you about babies but that helps in caring for them - they come with a learning curve. They are actually pretty easy to care for in the beginning and the difficulty increases gradually. So you do have some time to adjust.