No, this seems accurate to me.
Oh, not about the baby, but about being pregnant … I WISH someone had spoken up about this trap …
The way I was carrying, I was still able to wear my own (as in, not maternity) jeans and other casual pants for quite a while into my pregnancy. I was thrilled! I obviously looked pregnant, but I could still wear my pants and look cute. For some reason which isn’t clear to me in retrospect, I was pleased that I was wearing my “regular” clothes.
So then, after having the baby and being happy when I got the baby weight off, I went to put on my favorite jeans AND … they were all stretched out to my pregnancy shape. I have tons of pants I will never wear again now, pants that I really liked. What was I thinking? It seems so obvious now.
When I mentioned this to someone recently, she told me she had done the same thing, but with her favorite sweater.
As much as it seems like you will be pregnant forever, some day you will not be pregnant and want your favorite clothes back.
My wife was warned- and I wish I had been- that with the difficulties and hardships that go along with the first month or so of parenthood, it isn’t that uncommon to seriously question your marriage. As in, “I’m not sure I want to continue to be married to the insensitive, useless sack of shit that is my husband,” even if he’s doing a good job. Under the heavy weight of sleep deprivation, pain of recovery from the birth, pain from breast feeding, lots of hormones, and more, it’s hard not to be resentful of the partner who, just for biological reasons alone, doesn’t have to deal with most of it.
Pink eye. Pink eye sucks. The antibiotic knocks it out easily enough if it’s the bacterial kind, but it’s contagious as hell, and there’s just nothing happy about trying to get drops in a baby’s eye. If we’d known the first time, like we did the second, that wet eyelashes were the symptom of an onset, we could have spared our first child and ourselves a couple days of misery and jumped on it right away. Maybe my wife wouldn’t have gotten it all and been forced to just tough it out, because she was pregnant with our second and the antibiotic is on the forbidden list for pregnant women. Lordy that experience blew.
This is a seemingly stupid warning that you won’t need… unless you do: the workings of the car seat and its detachable bucket may not be as obvious as you’d think they would be. We had ours installed by a relative with a new baby, because he of course knew how the whole thing worked. Which was great, until it was time for us to leave the hospital and I was supposed to go bring the bucket up the room, without ever having messed with it before. It was not the least bit clear how the bucket was supposed to come out of the seat (apparenly I was supposed to squeeze two plates on the back together). My wife’s memory of how it was supposed to work was completely wrong (understandable, under the circumstances) and I was on two days of high adrenaline and no sleep myself- I spent 40 increasingly frustrating minutes and never did get it before we had to leave. We drove away with our child not in a car seat and parked in a nearby parking lot so my wife could look at it, at which point she remembered how it went. After that, of course, it was easy. Lesson: before you go to the hospital, do a trial run or two.
Yeah. It’s really hard not to resent the person who sometimes gets to sleep. ETA: not meant to be as snarky as it sounds. Lots of Dads sleep through baby noises- Moms are usually woken up by every sound, and because you’re exhausted and terrified and hormonal you can get very, “Why the hell are you complaining about it crying when you got more than forty minutes of sleep last night, you utter bastard!”
I don’t know if this is universal but my husband and a few Dads I know have found dealing with upset babies very hard. I think it’s a male/female thing, maybe and sort of- mothers are more inclined to think, “Oh, he’s crying. Babies do that.” and fathers think, “Augh! Problem! Must solve problem for offspring! Why crying? Why can’t fix? STOP THAT!” and tend to get angry. Toddler and older babies who can actually communicate their wants are easier to make happy.
Quoted for truth. Now that I have kids, I can’t imagine in what universe people think that having a baby will somehow save a marriage.
I also wish someone had told me that agreeing on the big stuff doesn’t mean jack when you have a baby. Agreeing on the big stuff is what will get you to the point that you actually have the baby. Once you have the baby, the things that cause the biggest arguments are the stupid little things that you would normally never consider arguing about. And if you’re the person who takes care of the baby most of the time (usually the mother), having someone question even one iota of what you do with the baby can make you go ballistic and ridiculously defensive. I’m sure it has something to do with the hormones and/or lack of sleep, but my husband and I got into the stupidest arguments over things like how quickly to lower our son into the bath, whether he should be wearing a hat in the summer or not, how to hold him to best clear out his sinuses, etc. We do that to a lesser extent over our daughter, but it was a huge shock the first time around.
Let’s see…stuff that happened that freaked me out, I didn’t expect, or I learned quickly.
Boy #1: Peed in his face, peed on everyone. Really bad diaper rash, switched to cloth diapers for a year. After the first few months, he slept 15 hours a day, in a bassinet under the telephone in the kitchen. Don’t be silent…train them to sleep in noisy environments.
Boy #2: Bit my wife while breastfeeding…and she slapped him. It was an unconscious reaction, and she cried. No harm, no foul.
Boy #3: I whacked his head, accidently, on the door jamb when carrying him back to bed after my wife fed him. I made it through the door…he didn’t quite… Again, we both survived.
Boy #4: Be careful letting older brothers hold younger ones. Babies apparently appear to be very easy to carry by their necks. All is well.
Not sure which boy: Attracted to shiny things…like the chrome headers on the car parked next to ours in the grocery store parking lot. Grab…sizzle…scream. Ran back into the store, grabbed a cold can of soda and had him hold it. Spent the night replacing an ice bag every 2 hours.
A million little things… you’re sure you don’t know how to do…that you learn very quickly. Kids are tough. Kids will let you know what they like or don’t like.
Remember, though, you are the parent. Set rules. Enforce rules. Not draconian rules, but things like: stay in your bed. If you need something, yell. It will pay off later.
Take pictures…I don’t remember much of the 1990’s due to sleep deprivation.
Oh, and all the stuff you swear you won’t do, before you have a baby…like “We won’t use a pacifier” or “I’ll boil his bottle nipples every day”…You’ll stick whatever it takes to quiet him down inhis mouth after the first few minutes of screaming in a restaurant… and a little bio-burden just keeps an immune system in tip-top shape.
about G.E.R.D.
Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disorder can fuck your parenting world, and there’s a derth of information about it. In place of knowledge is parent-blame, minimization, poor diagnosis, bad dosing. It is more prevalent than most people realize.
The first 6 months of my daughter’s life were the worst of both mine and my wife’s, including going through the loss of both my parents to cancer. Only once we had the GERD sorted out did we start to discover what everyone says parenting is supposed to be. But luck and life fucked us out of the soft moments of new-family tenderness that are supposed to be punctuated by late nights and poopy diapers.
So If at every touch-point where life is supposed to get easier (IIRC 3 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months) instead things get noticably worse (more crying, less sleep for everyone, less eating), there is something wrong, and you need to get someone to help you sort it out. (Hey, it may not be GERD but the advice stands)
We just watched some friends of ours go through it with baby number 2; Number 1 was an easy joy., but their second ground them into the dirt; not in that funny, rueful “gotta new kid, do ya?” kinda way, but the everyone-losing-weight, marital strife, clinical depression kinda way. Once they got their Ped to refer them to a Pediatric G.E. who got the dosing right, the change was as dramatic for them as it had been for us.
about bad sleep training information
Sleep is important, but the go-to book by Dr Weisbluth is filled with bad information based on bad studies. Some children are easy-going and natural sleepers, and his numbers and expectations are based on those children, and people with those kind of children will have a lot of luck following his guidelines.
If you have a good expectation of how much sleep your child needs and is capable of, it is relatively simple to achieve a schedule even with a spirited baby (as ours is/was). The trick is that while you cannot force your child to sleep, you can force her to be awake. You drive the sleep schedule by enforcing the awake schedule, and adjust based on the child’s reactions.
It is possible and important to sleep train your child. We’ve both been getting full night’s sleep since she was 7 months old with no regressions (she’s almost 3 now).
Parenting will bring out the worst in your friends and relatives. They will decide that their entire lives will be meaningless unless you follow the insane advice they foist upon you. Practice: nod, smile, thank, ignore.
There is an evil myth out there that it’s possible to have a young child and a showplace home. These two things are mutually exclusive. Even with a live-in housekeeper, the home of a happy child is very obviously the home of a child. So drop the magazine right now and learn to shuffle your feet when you walk.
Babies get hot/cold very quickly. Most “fussiness” is either temperature or low blood sugar. Feel the hands and feet to find out if s/he is hot or cold.
There will be times when the baby suddenly needs twice as much sleep or food or both. All scheduling ill go to crap and for four-five days it will be almost impossible to make food fast enough. At the end of this period the baby will be an inch longer.
The baby can’t tell the difference between “Mommy’s having a bad day” and Mommy hates me." Until about 4-5 years old, your mood is their mood, and you will sometimes have to purposefully plaster a smile on your face. The time will come when you will need to let them see you be upset and recover, and be angry, but still loving. 6 months old is not that time.
If you are concerned about leaving your child alone with someone, don’t. No matter who it is. My friends and family ALL ganged up on me about not leaving my ex to care for the child. I gave in and forced myself to let him spend time alone with her. I’d give my whole world to change that decision.
Trust. Your. Instincts.
The four most important words in child development (IMO): THIS TOO SHALL PASS. And the corollary: THIS IS PROBABLY NORMAL.
Kids have phases. There will be times when they are harder to enjoy, harder to parent, and will have you question your decision to become a parent as well as every decision you’ve made thereafter. It will pass. Try to stay sane and they really do cycle into something much better to live with.
I enjoyed the “Ages” books from the Gesell Institute, which reinforce both the 4-word mantras.
I knew I’d love my child; I never understood how much. And I could never have predicted how much I just ENJOY him some days!
Ahahahaha! I’m watching this about to come back and smack my brother in the face. They stop everything when it’s bedtime. They shut off all the lights, SIL nurses the baby in darkness while my brother retreats to another part of the house. The MIL was visiting once, and grabbed herself some cereal during the evening ritual. My brother was freaking out over the spoon clanking the bowl. When they came to visit me, they got a hotel room with a separate bedroom so the baby had her own room to sleep in.
However, they’re going on vacation to visit my SIL’s sister. Did I mention she has 2 kids around the age of 5? And the baby will have to sleep in the same room as my brother and SIL??
Here’s one. Not a warning, but a nice thing…even I know this one and I am not even a parent.
There is no feeling on Earth like that when a small child spontaneously puts his/her arms around your neck and says “I love you.” Feeling their little bodies snuggled up against you makes up for so much.
It’s why I resent being told I hate children because I don’t want kids or because I complain about loud kids in restaurants or whatever. I don’t hate kids at all. I mean, not all of them anyway. 
Babies are messy. Buy some cheap clothing for yourself and wear it around the baby. I’m currently wearing my two dollar pants and three dollar top. Both are covered in spit up and I don’t care.
I hope for their sakes they will have an only child.
Which is something to be warned about. There are things that are possible with an only (like really controlling a sleep environment) that become harder as you add more children. If you want more than one, and are thinking about more than one as you raise your first, the changes that need to come to accommodate #2 or #3 may not seem like such a slap in the face to #1.
Two adults (or more) running their lives around one child is fairly easy (especially where there is enough money and security to make the child the focus). Two adults running their lives around four children is impossible - because you have to miss SOMEONE’S baseball game when three of them are scheduled for the same Tuesday evening.
No, as far as we are concerned children are like Highlander. There can only be one!
Oh boy, my daughter uttered the same words at that same age.
Absolutely, it is actually frustrating that we cannot.
Well, pretty much I had to say has been covered, except for this:
Kids are weird about nakedness. Mine went through a stage (as a newborn) where being naked was somehow terrifying. She would cry so loud that she ended up throwing up a few times. Then they go through a stage where they don’t seem to be able to cope with clothing. And as soon as they start walking they find out how velcro work and be prepared for poop finger-painting and kids splishing and splashing in a puddle of pee. Luckily I have pictures which I will later use to my advantage.
I have two, but some days I think that they they believe there can be only one!
It took me a couple of days, but I finally got through this thread. Lots in here about bumping and banging and pooping puking peeing etc…
What I wish someone had told me about is how the oldest child is goin to be daddy’s boy or girl and the primary child raiser (this is specially true in a single income home) is chopped liver until the skinned knee happens. This means that Mommy or Daddy, which ever is primary bread winner or works outside the home, is the one that gets special smiles and play time and moments, while the SAH parent is the one that feeds clothes bathes, basically does all the hard work during the day. Evening bath times and bed times aren’t a chore for the outside worker, thats special snuggles and play time. I wish someone had warned me about the friction and resentment this was gonna cause me and my ex to experience. what to her were daily chores were to me daily delights and we both envied and resented each other for it (hindsight-20/20-monumental stupidity-etc)
Awwww… the more the merrier. I will say the change from 2 kids to 3 was harder than 3 to 4. Switching from the man-to-man defense to the zone: I have one, she has one…ZING! there goes the third…
Another tidbit… It’s normal to get really frustrated with a small one. You’re certain they are crying, screaming, whatever JUST TO PISS YOU OFF. I found it very therapeutic to place the child on a blanket in the middle of the room on the floor…safe and isolated… then go out into the garage an hammer really big nails into really thick boards for a few minutes. Don’t take it out on the kid. Hopefully you have someone coming home soon to relieve you of duty, if only for a little while.
If you get to the frustrated…really flippy stage CALL SOMEONE..post here, whatever. It’s not the kid’s fault.
Man…so many things to remember. Here’s a few of the worst bits that come to mind:
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The nightmares. You’ve suddenly been given responsibility for the survival of this tiny lifeform. You will have bad dreams about doing something horribly wrong. I remember one dream where I’d left the baby on a bus and was running after the bus screaming. These go away after a few weeks (to be replaced by others).
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Fever spikes. Not only do kids pick up every disease under the sun when in contact with other kids but they are prone to abrupt fever spikes which can last for two days. This is apparently common but terrifying; you need to make sure that you have baby paracetemol or similar (the liquid stuff) on hand, and if the temperature gets too high, especially after the medicine, go see a doctor. At once.
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Tag team parenting is essential, especially for the first three months. When you’re exhausted and weepy and it’s 3 am and the baby’s been crying for hours and you go to change her diaper and she squirts a stream of liquid poo at high pressure all over you and the bedroom - tag out, calm yourself down and clean yourself up while the other parent steps in. And if you’re tagged in, you damn well better step in when called upon. The comment about wanting to throw your baby out a window at some point is very true, but it gets better.
More generally: if you use parenting books, get a couple of them by different people. If they all agree on something, it’s probably good advice. If they don’t agree, then use whatever technique works for you and don’t stress out because another book says something else.
My kid is almost three so we’re over the baby years and working our way towards the school years. Potty training is still in progress, and she’s still fearless and dangerous and has had a bruise somewhere on her head continuously ever since she could walk, but she’s the biggest blessing in my life. I could still use more sleep though…
QFT. Also goes for grandparents coming down with severe back pains from picking up and putting down their new grandchild.
a) Don’t know about baby girls (yet…our next in November is going to be a girl however) but once baby boys can stand up on their own, they absolutely will try to climb up on everything. No table, chair, couch, desk or countertop is too much for them - they will try to climb up.
b) You can buy them all the toys in the world. They’ll happily ignore them and will want to play with your iPhone.
c) Did you see The Incredibles? Remember the mother, Elastigirl? That’s -exactly- like little babies’ arms: They can somehow reach things on high tables that should be massively out of reach. If it’s within 10 feet of the baby, assume they can reach it. Srsly.