Tom Evans

New dad survival guide: how AI got us through the first 6 months

Our son is 7 months old. My wife went back to work at 4 months. I work from home. For a while there I was basically failing at everything simultaneously — work, parenting, house, relationship. I started leaning on AI heavily and it helped more than I expected. Meal planning: gave Claude our dietary preferences, our weekly budget, the fact that I had 30 minutes max to cook each night, and a newborn who might need attention at any moment. It gave me a meal plan with everything simple, everything batchable, and a shopping list. Life changing. Baby questions at 2am: not medical advice — I understand that. But "my 3-month-old has been crying for 2 hours and has done X and Y" is genuinely helped by having a thinking partner who doesn't judge you for panicking and helps you think through whether this needs medical attention or is probably normal. For us it was always normal. But having a rational voice at 2am helped. Work emails when my brain was soup: briefed AI on what I needed to communicate, got a draft, sent it after editing. My work quality didn't visibly suffer during a period when it very easily could have. Not a replacement for anything. Just a support system that's available at 2am.