Dave's Journal - documenting the path to FI

[Dave]

Thanks Divadan, I really appreciate that! Haha, yeah, my flavor of ERE is somewhat reminiscent of @brute and pretty low-key. I greatly admire so many on here for their broad and deep skills and activities, but I have a fairly narrow set of things I enjoy and basically stick to that and try to ride it out and appreciate this life for what it is. I certainly don't do a good job of that all the time, but it is a worthy ideal to strive for.

As a small update, 2023 and 2024 so far have pretty intense with the arrival of our little one. He still is not sleeping well at all, so we are running on fumes, but trying to do the best we can to stay positive and keep moving forward. Not a lot to report interesting on the ERE front. I have mostly been figuring out babies and how to be primary caretaker while my wife works 9-5, trying to put my free time at night and on weekends into investing and enjoying a great year in the market (+61% for the portfolio), trying to keep up with my fitness (exercise piece doing OK, but diet fell off heavily for a while), and notably really enjoying doing 3 hikes with fellow ERErs.

Life has felt like survival mode this past 6 months, but also filled with lots of joy. It's a period getting our bearings straight and our feet squarely under us before the next leg up. Onward!

[frugaldoc]

For example, one recurring conversation we have that brings concern is that we are cosleeping with DS. We try to explain that when adjusting out for tobacco and drug use and various risk hazards (soft and excess fluffy bedding, gaps between bed and wall, etc.) the risks are cosleeping are nil. Consider Japan's cosleeping statistics. And see how nicely it pairs with floor sleeping (wait, you guys are sleeping on the floor, why?!), and how suddenly we don't need a whole nursery setup - a simple mat on the floor for changing and DW breastfeeding in bed makes the nightly wakeups far less jarring. But just like it's hard for regular folks to understand the virtues of going carless and how it directly translates into benefits in other areas of life, the end result tends to just be bewilderment and concern. Oh well, used to it at this point.

Yes, and I would support their bewilderment and concern. While I always joke with the residents that "The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data", seeing one limp, lifeless baby brought into the ED from co-sleeping suffocation makes you question any benefits people claim to derive from it. Seeing multiple just turns you into an angry doctor who wants to toss the parents off the nearest four story building. It didn't take long for me to realize that pediatric critical care was not for me because 2/3 of the children admitted were there because of some ill-informed decision of their parents. And half of them had some excuse why they thought they were special and that common sense or the statistics didn't apply to them.

And I would be hesitant to trust co-sleeping data out of Japan. As someone who has to interface with the Japanese health system frequently on behalf of our Sailors, I am shocked by the difference in cultural norms between countries and how it impacts medicine. For example, the Japanese by and large "don't do mental health". Most physicians here just don't recognize what are clear pathologies in the US. Depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, etc, mostly aren't recognized. Someone can down a bottle of their antidepressants, say "I am actively trying to kill myself" and they will be diagnosed with "accidental ingestion" and then discharged. So, in a country with a high prevalence of co-sleeping, I wouldn't be surprised if suffocation incidents are attributed to something else. Sort of like how "fan death" used to be a thing.

I know I am most likely pissing in the wind here. But one child's life saved over a career is no small thing. That's why we repeat this shit over and over again even though people will ignore it.

[Dave]

I appreciate you taking the time to write and share your thoughts here, and also appreciate the concern. I know you are coming from a good place, even if your frustration and judgement is obvious, and I'd prefer to not be thrown off a 4 story building .

With that said, I am skeptical you have looked much at the actual statistics and research surrounding cosleeping deaths, as opposed to repeating guidelines that lack nuance. I don't think I am at all special and keep base rates in mind for all sorts of life situations, especially this area. Frankly, you might want to think a little more about the common sense of this situation too. Of course there are many cosleeping deaths. However, it's not as if these deaths follow a random pattern - there are clear risk factors associated with an extremely high % of these deaths, of which are not present in our situation and which we are extremely cautious about - to paint the stupidly obvious case, we aren't chain smoking cigarettes, drunk, and having our baby sleep with us on the couch with huge squishy pillows. When these risk factors are accounted for, the risk is nil.

If you are genuinely interested in learning about this topic and want a pretty easy summary, I encourage to look into James McKenna and read his book Safe Infant Sleep.

I know doctors are in the position of constantly dealing with ignorant and naïve patients who engage in all sorts of absurd behavior, but I'd suggest that in some cases on very specific issues the patient really is in fact more informed than their doctor. Doctors are taught medical algorithms based on guidelines. Sometimes those guidelines are wrong, often in situations where they paint with too broad a brush or rely on poor quality or outdated data. For someone flying by the seat of their pants doing what they want because of how they feel, I think your characterization is fair. In this case, my wife and I have looked into the research deeply and are comfortable with our situation. We absolutely believe the statistics apply to us, and in fact actual statistics are guiding our behavior, not unnuanced guidelines and doctors who are repeating them without understand the underlying data (not that I'm blaming them).

Still, thank you for the post as I know you are trying to help someone who you perceive to be taking idiotic risks. I have no idea if you'll actually consider what I'm saying or look further into the situation, but do know that this was not a haphazard decision taken to lightly.

[theanimal]

So, in a country with a high prevalence of co-sleeping, I wouldn't be surprised if suffocation incidents are attributed to something else.

SIDS perhaps? Japan also has the lowest SIDS rate in the world.

there are clear risk factors associated with an extremely high % of these deaths, of which are not present in our situation and which we are extremely cautious about - to paint the stupidly obvious case, we aren't chain smoking cigarettes, drunk, and having our baby sleep with us on the couch with huge squishy pillows. When these risk factors are accounted for, the risk is nil.

Formula fed babies are also at an increased risk of SIDS, which is another variable that does not apply in your situation.

@Dave and I were talking about this topic earlier on our walk today. We had the same scenario and had the same discussion with our doctor.
“Does the baby have her own space?”
“No, she sleeps with us.”
“You shouldn’t do that, she should have her own space. Other countries that do that have much harder beds than we do.”
At no point did she inquire or consider that we very well might have a hard bed or sleep on the floor (we do). So instead of having an honest discussion, where we were told the risk factors and the way to make the situation safe for everyone. We instead had to do our own research, finding the same things that @Dave mentions above. In conversations since then, we have avoided saying anything about what we’re doing. Treating your patients like they’re idiots is not a winning strategy.

[frugaldoc]

In the three infant death's I have dealt with from co-sleeping, the parents weren't drunk or smoking etc. They had made a conscious decision to co-sleep thinking it was best for their child. I think this is a good case of comparing ensemble probability vs time probability. Just like a gambling strategy can be a winning strategy for an ensemble of people, it can be ruinous for the individual if repeated in series. But people are going to do what they are going to do, so I will say no more.

[mooretrees]

I was planning on cosleeping and naively told the pediatrician at the hospital when I gave birth. She scared me tremendously talking about recent deaths and how dangerous it was. I freaked out and found a used bedside cosleeper so I wouldn’t kill my baby. Fast forward a few weeks and one night of nursing I left our son in between my DH and I and fell back asleep. I woke up from a deep sleep to shove my arm in between DH and baby as DH was set to roll on him. After that I felt reassured that he was safe in bed with us, as some part of me was on alert.
I know this is another anecdote that doesn’t refute any real (horrible, terrifying) deaths that frugaldoc witnessed. But for me, it was evidence that we could do the safely. We also felt we were low risk because we don’t drink, do drugs and only sleep on a bed.

I’ll make one last point about cosleeping. For me, as a nursing and working parent, it made the difference from terrible sleep to almost getting a real nights sleep. That was extremely important for me.
Sometimes as a parent, I recognize that my child is in a light amount of danger (biking, skiing etc) and I feel the impulse to protect him. I weigh the consequences of protecting him over the risks of letting him potentially get hurt. Usually, my tolerance for risk wins out, and I can take a breathe and let my kid get hurt, have fun and learn about his body and world.

There’s so much fear pushed in parents, that it is quite overwhelming. I’ve done what theanimal described, where I have hidden what we do as parents from drs or other parents because I assumed (probably correctly) that they would freak out and tell me bad stories about how kids get hurt. I know deeply that there are no guarantees that my kid will survive past today. I say a small pray every day that he will, but I can’t parent from a fear based place. I can parent from a knowledge based place, and that does mean sometimes I’ll make a different decision than the Academy of Pediatric Medicine would recommend.

[Dave]

@frugaldoc

I am open to changing my mind here. My son's safety is paramount to me. If you can present compelling argument regarding the mechanism of risk for how we cosleep, a strong base of evidence against the statistics I've mentioned (not the broad-based stats on cosleeping, but those on floor-sleeping, non-heavy blanket/pillow using, non-smoking & non-drinking & non-obese parents, breastfed, full-term healthy babies, where the risk is meaningfully lower than being hit by lightening in a lifetime), and an argument against the anthropological history of millions of years of evolution where humans and their predecessors didn't sleep in cages up until the very recent past, I would 100% consider changing what I'm doing.

It's likely you'll have a hard time coming up with such logic and evidence, though, especially as you look globally where most countries that have much lower rates off SIDS than the US practice bedsharing on firm surfaces, low rates of adult smoking and high rates of breastfeeding.

Again, if you are interested in learning more, google the paper "Co-Sleeping, Breastfeeding and Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome" as an introduction.

Like in many other cases of health guidelines, sometimes things go astray for a variety of reasons. Cigarettes are healthy. Sugar is perfectly healthy. Oh wait, there were a lot of messed up influences going on there. So on. Health guidelines can be wrong. I don't really want to turn my journal into a discussion of the history of how the American Academy of Pediatrics has led to overly simplistic cosleeping guidelines. I've referenced some materials here. But the core issue is that while cosleeping most certainly can be dangerous when done in certain ways, there is not any evidence it is when it's done in other ways. But if our authorities throw a blanket statement out there that it's always bed and never instruct people how to be smart about it, you're going to have some folks who totally ignore everything and engage in cosleeping in an extremely risky way. That is scary and leads to terrible outcomes, but you don't see that same pattern present when these modifiable risk factors are eliminated.

I don't know any of the details of the 3 cases you described, and that is incredibly sad. I'm sorry for the parents and that you had to witness that. But you have to recognize that n=3 of people who presented themselves as safe, non-smoking, non-drinking intentional cosleepers may not necessarily being doing it safely in the other risk factors. And even if they were, that is 3 people. There are broad-based studies done on this that override 3 anecdotes as evidence. I don't mean to be rude, but your appeal to authority argument is not compelling to me against the balance of other resources that I've looked at compiled by people whose life work is specifically study this kind of thing. It's frankly a little lame to come and criticize what I'm doing without knowing all of the details of how I'm doing it, spill ink using judgmental language, cite a few anecdotes while implying I'm ignoring statistics while yourself not citing any evidence, and then basically peace out because "idiot patients don't change their minds".

I would change my mind if there was a compelling reason to do so, but a stranger on the internet coming into my ERE journal and telling me I'm wrong without understanding my situation (and seemingly the underlying statistics) and referencing anecdotes isn't going to get me over that hurdle.

[Dave]

@mooretrees

Thanks for sharing your perspective and that experience! There is some research on the mom's ability to detect changes in conditions regarding their cosleeping baby, from something moving on them to actually detecting changes/cessation in breathing, even when the mom appears fully asleep. I wouldn't bet my life on this working 100% of the time or anything, to be clear, but it's pretty fascinating stuff...it's almost like our species evolved for this exact situation or something .

I think the problem comes in how it does so often...the environment we evolved from is radically different from how so many of us live now. Humans didn't evolve sleeping in soft and plush beds with big pillows and heavy blankets, or on sofas and recliner chairs, and with alcohol and smoke mixed into the equation, along with babies being fed lab-synthesized "milk". All of these sorts of risk factors, along with others, present a dangerous physical environment or other conditions that modify the standard processes of how our physiology functions. So the actual way many people default/slip in cosleeping results in situations that are extremely dangerous, thus leading to increased infant deaths, which then steer guidelines and fear-mongering campaigns and lectures from healthcare professionals who are coming from a very good place. And that makes complete sense that we want to stop these deaths, but for a subgroup of people who practice safe cosleeping, the guidelines miss the mark, and even more dangerous, there is a group that may end of cosleeping regardless of guidelines, but now they don't even know the way they are doing is particularly dangerous, and that they could do it much safer.

It's somewhat comparable to sunscreen and skin protection. We've got to the point where people are so disconnected from common sense that you'll have pasty northern-European descent people venture to the tropics during their winter, spend 4 hours in the midday sun and absolutely fry themselves, repeat this over decades, and lo and behold their are downstream consequences. And then the solution is sunscreen sunscreen sunscreen, even if you're of 100% African descent and are outside for 10 minutes in the morning in the winter. Zero nuance at all. It's absolutely absurd, but the data is there to some degree. Nuance and thoughtfulness appear to be lacking, but I suspect to some degree those at the helm weigh the tradeoffs of how people will actually implement nuance, so they may suspect a blanket general approach may be best on a net basis...but it results in some individuals losing the trust of their doctors and regulatory agencies as they are treated as idiots (as @theanimal hinted at above) who are incapable of making their own best decisions, which may be true in many cases. But again, you have that subgroup who is ignoring the advice of using sunscreen in any circumstance because they either don't care or reject the guidelines at face value, who might benefit from a more tempered response of "Hey at the very least if you're going to get burned think about putting some on" instead of "If you step outside at all and have any bare skin exposed, you must use sunscreen" and meanwhile advice coming from other areas of "Hey don't forget vitamin d supplementation, and get sunlight to help regulate your mood and sleep, and..."

So you get these weird effects of people insisting on applying sunscreen absolutely all the time for the sheer horror of the sun and absolute inevitability of skin cancer. Same thing as @mooretrees said regarding the fear present in much of the parenting conversation, there is excessive fear in a number of areas that just isn't borne out by the evidence, and it can cause serious anxiety, often in those thoughtful and conscientious individuals who need to be handheld the least.

[Smashter]

Any attempts to throw Dave off a 4 story building would obviously be thwarted by him using his immense forearm strength (honed while carrying dumbbells on ERE Marches) to grip the railing at the last moment, allowing him to hold himself dangling in the air, Cliffhanger style, until help arrived.

Interesting discussion. Thanks for laying out all your co-sleeping thoughts. There will definitely be a robust discussion around that should DW and I ever have kids. I assumed I’d have almost no chance of ever convincing her to try something like that, but in reading through some research I saw that 60% of US mothers co-sleep! Higher than I would have thought.

I liked your comparison to sun exposure. I happened to see this graph recently. I cannot access the full study to see if they controlled for exercise, diet, etc, but thought provoking nonetheless.

[mathiverse]

I cannot access the full study to see if they controlled for exercise, diet, etc, but thought provoking nonetheless.

Here is a legal, free link to the article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joim.12496.

[Smashter]

Thank you @mathiverse! I am so used to studies being behind paywalls that I completely missed that it clearly states on PubMed that this is a free article. As a side note, I used to just pop every paywalled article into SciHub, but that's become much harder to use recently.

Here is a pertinent section from the conclusion about the limitations of the study:

We acknowledge several major limitations of this study. First, it is not possible to differentiate between active sun exposure habits and a healthy lifestyle, and secondly, the results are of an observational nature; therefore, a causal link cannot be proven. A further limitation is that we did not have access to exercise data from study initiation; however, similar sHR values were obtained when including exercise for those women who answered the second questionnaire in 2000. With the introduction of whole-genome scanning, a new method of getting closer to causality using observational data is Mendelian random analysis. A potential causal link between BMI and vitamin D levels has been demonstrated with this method 8. In addition, individuals with high BMI do not obtain the same increase in vitamin D levels by UV radiation as lean subjects 9. As a consequence, as BMI seems to be involved in the causal pathway of vitamin D, it should not be included as a confounder in analyses as has been performed in many studies.

[Dave]

Any attempts to throw Dave off a 4 story building would obviously be thwarted by him using his immense forearm strength (honed while carrying dumbbells on ERE Marches) to grip the railing at the last moment, allowing him to hold himself dangling in the air, Cliffhanger style, until help arrived.

Hahaha!

Interesting discussion. Thanks for laying out all your co-sleeping thoughts. There will definitely be a robust discussion around that should DW and I ever have kids.

Knowing I'm repeating myself here, I do want to stress that I would never encourage anyone to haphazardly venture into cosleeping. We take it super seriously and everytime we are in a new environment (just landed in Hawaii yesterday) we spend a lot of time making sure we don't introduce any of the risk factors. I know you would do your homework around it, just wanted to repeat that piece over and over here because I 100% agree with @frugaldoc that terrible things can and do happen with cosleeping. The spirit of his warning should absolutely be heard. Yeah, when you look deeper a huge % of Americans cosleep in some capacity, and often not done in a safe manner. That's what I was getting at above by saying that demonizing the entire act of cosleeping, not actually laying out the main risk drivers, and not teaching people how to do it well, you guarantee a huge number of people do it in a dangerous manner and have horrible outcomes! Sad stuff.

Interesting study link to the sun exposure, hadn't seen that one in particular! That's an area worth looking into for people who are either completely sun avoidant or reckless about it...there's a big range in the middle of nuance and I think many people miss the mark (I did, for sure). Sun exposure goes way, way beyond just calculating skin damage risk with massive upside for most indoor-dwellers for more time outside.

Switching gears...

I love a lot of Scott's posts, but this one in particular from 3 years ago is one that I continue to reflect on periodically:

My spiritual lesson was it's ok to be so-so. There's no value judgement I need to ascribe. By ceasing to strive, one creates space to experience unity with the divine. Everything flows from that.

One of the observations I took from yoga - some people get it right away. They can thrive with a very simple practice. Others need the western mindset beat out of them. They'll take on progressively more difficult practices, chasing higher and higher "levels" of yogic insight. The eight limbed path is a ladder, and they are going to climb it through force of will.

I had to go through a couple years of the latter before things clicked. I visited with teachers all over my region, at least a thousand hours in the studio. I chased the lineage tree. Most days I'd practicing for multiple hours. I read dozens of books. On and on.

Now - I move and I breathe, with no expectation of a result. But, I generally do feel better after. My practice is very simple, typically some amount of this guy's flow:

https://jbrownyogavideo.com/

It's a lesson I've continued to try to integrate over the years with waxing and waning success. "it's ok to be so-so...By ceasing to strive, one creates space to experience unity." Amen. "One of the observations I took from yoga - some people get it right away. They can thrive with a very simple practice. Others need the western mindset beat out of them. They'll take on progressively more difficult practices, chasing higher and higher "levels" of yogic insight." So broadly applicable. It's easy to run from one thing to another, chasing progression and advancement and so on, whether you are a consumer, a careerist, an ERE WL climber, or even a yogi. And I wouldn't say there is anything inherently wrong with this, but, at some point you see the nature of reality (the word samsara captures this well) and it can be spiritually healthy to at least see what you're doing and realize that there is no magic destination where suddenly everything is going to be OK once some line is crossed.

Thanks for that gem, Scott!

[Scott 2]

@Dave - I can take no credit for the teaching, but I'm glad you find it valuable. It's a lesson I continue to relearn.

[Dave]

On the eve before the first formal ERE "Marathon" March, I sit here, a quiet moment after my son has gone to bed, and just enjoy the spring that is coming. Temperatures are up and down, but the cycles trend upward. Green shoots burst from the ground. Flowers are blossoming. Buds appearing. Birds are chirping, and people are noticeably happier as we come out of the winter and the earth awakens from its slumber.

My life has somehow become even simpler, consisting mostly of watching my son and household chores, spending time with my wife and our families, spending a couple hours doing stock research each day while the baby naps and after my wife puts him to bed, squeezing in a quick 10-15 minute strength workout most days (and doing animal movements with my son on the ground, getting my mobility work in!), and seeing friends when we can.

It's not a grand life, filled with an ambitious career or novel projects, but it's the stuff I like and want to do. It's hard to explain how much I enjoy going for a walk outside in the sun or doing some pullups at the local park. We aren't making rapid progress on much these days, but our life activities are homeotelic and we're moving forward on everything important to us.

I am very lucky and grateful for my life, and excited for the walk tomorrow with @jacob & @Smashter!

[Dave]

A quick shoutout to @theanimal and his new book, I really enjoyed it!

https://animaltreks.com/shop/

https://www.amazon.com/You-Carry-Tent-I ... 109&sr=1-1

There is a lot to like in the book, but one quote in particular surrounding the costs of through-hiking that stood out to me that encapsulates much of what we talk about here is:

"...it’s not the doing of the thing itself that’s expensive, but the things that go with the doing. …Money is certainly one factor in each trip, but it should not be the limiting one."

I am fortunate to live directly in line with the solar eclipse yesterday, and as I was talking to people about the "dangers" of the eclipse ("We're keeping our pets inside...Are you going to take your baby inside during the eclipse") the same general idea as that quote came up: it's not the doing of the thing (looking at the sun during totality) that's dangerous, but the things that go with and the way with which people go about doing it (continuously looking up leading up to and after totality).

And so it is for so many things. The broader point is a lack of skill/knowledge itself brings out a number of issues that make certain things either extremely dangerous (staring at the sun without proper equipment or knowledge of the timetable, big-wave surfing without years of experience and knowledge of the beach and current ocean patterns) or impossible (through-hiking the PCT with a baby, "retiring" early). With the benefit of knowledge and the correct tools, the doors open for so many things.

The question that is top of mind for me is what area(s) is a lack of knowledge and skill holding me back from doing something that would be hugely valuable to my life that I currently lack the vision to see.

Thanks again to @theanimal for writing an inspiration and engaging book!

(edited to include both links to book (thanks Scott!))

[Scott 2]

I didn't realize it was out. Just ordered my copy. Looking forward to it.

Non-amazon link, for those so inclined:

https://animaltreks.com/shop/