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Originally Posted by TheOneMarine  As some of you may have heard, I'm going to be a dad here in only a few months! I'm also just starting out at PSA, still waiting sims in a couple of weeks. My question to you 121 and 135 pilots out there with families is this.... How do you deal with being away from your family for 4 to 5 days at a time? Were any of you new-hires when your child was born? How was that? I want to be there and want to get to know my baby but I am scared that being a new-hire and having reserves and crapy schedules will take its toll on me (granted I live close to base so I drive). ANY advice or help would be so appreciated as this is something that has been on my mind and needing to get off my chest for sometime now. |
Well Im not a parent pilot, but I was the child with a father as a pilot. My brother and sister and I didnt like it when dad left but it was awesome when he came home. He always spent a lot of time with us and we did things together all the time. Holidays were holidays but the dates we celebrated them werent always what was on the calendar. It's what your family makes of it and thats all we ever knew so it wasnt a big deal. Dad was there for all of our births which he was lucky for. He came running in for mine and got there about 5 mins before I popped out is what they told me.
As for dad working nights and having little kids, well lets just say we had a tendency to get on his nerves sometimes after he would get home from a long trip. We always knew "not to bother dad today bc he just got home from far away" but we would push his buttons.
In the end, yeah sometimes it sucked growing up and dad not being able to be at baseball and football games, but he made up for it with the quality time we got together when he got home. Looking back on it now and seeing some of my friends whose dads were office junkies, it seemed those guys were so locked up in their jobs and were home every night, so "quality time" wasnt really quality since they always saw eachother....Good luck!