I would advise against the rock n play sleeper. We had one and my daughter slept great, and when I went to look it up online to recommend it to someone I discovered loads of negative reviews on amazon (and one class action lawsuit IIRC) because it was causing skull deformities in a number of babies. We got rid of it that day.
But as for the thing no one told us - sleep in shifts. Arrange your schedules so that one of you goes to sleep as soon as you get home from work and then wakes up around 1 or 2 so the other can go to sleep. That uninterrupted block of sleep is the best thing ever. We did it for the first 4 months or so and yes, it did mean that we didn’t see each other very much and there was almost no hanky panky, but quite frankly if I’d only been sleeping in short bursts it wouldn’t have been happening anyway.
I had no idea this was a thing. All this time, I thought I was a complete weirdo for doing this, and my son is 10! So glad I wandered into this thread.
As for advice, mine echoes the others too. Babies are people! Their moods and milestones will vary from day to day, from kid to kid. You might not be an expert in infants, but you will absolutely be the foremost expert in your infant. Don’t let anyone bully or pressure you. Listen to your instincts.
Finally, my personal favorite diaper bag recommendation for parents: Masking tape. Put a roll in there and leave it. Fixes broken diaper tabs, baby proofs things, sticks plates to tables at restaurants, holds blankets in place in the wind… and removes without a trace!
Wow, just wow. I have two kids now, and I truly wish I had found this advice when I was first pregnant. Everything you say, in my life, honestly happened. Now that they are older I can look back and laugh at the things I did, but back then I was really confused about anger, the baby being harmed, baby breathing.
The worse thing, when I brought my first baby home, she slept all the time. No one, I mean no one, told me this. I always heard of screaming babies at 4:00 a.m. But I believe because I breast fed, and did not abide by a strict feeding schedule, that really helped. I also always had to have the baby sleep right by me in her bassinette, so I could make sure she was breathing.
She slept so much, I was so worried, and really wanted to call the doctor, like it was an emergency or something, but my husband talked me out of it.
One thing I also wish someone told me:
There is no such thing as spoiling a baby Give your baby all the love and attention you want.
Speaking of diaper bags…Jeeeeezus the monstrosities people drag around with them.
You don’t need it that much. Really.
You need: An extra plain onesie. Maybe two, they’re small.
A gallon ziploc. For wet or dirty clothing.
Two or three extra diapers. But, but, what if I’m out longer that that? Then leave a box in your car. Refill.
A small package of wipes. The ones I liked were .99 at Walmart and were the size of a paperback book when the package was full.
If you have to store milk, then a small insulated bag with a gel ice pack.
And extra pacifier if you’re using them.
That’s it. Your diaper bag should be no bigger than a shoebox.
Sunblock/bugspray/a hat/randomothershit…leave it in the car. Use it when you need it.
One more thing: don’t start worrying and get out of bed to make sure your baby is breathing. She is. You need to stay in bed and sleep. It might sound morbid, but when I had the urge to do that I told myself that if he’s not breathing, it won’t make a difference if I find out now or tomorrow. That’s what exhausted brain will do.
Here’s my standard nugget of advice to new parents:
Croup is a weird barking cough that some babies get when they’re sick. It’s the result of their throats getting inflamed from infection. In severe cases it can actually close the airway completely, so you shouldn’t ignore it. However, humidity often helps. When my son got croup we’d run the shower to make the bathroom steamy, and I’d sit with him in the moist air until his breathing returned to normal.
Exactly. We were SUPER prepared for giving birth, but ultimately, that’s one day. Then it was over and suddenly we found ourselves alone in a room with a newborn, and realized they were about to let us take this little creature home, all by ourselves, without any help or even supervision. So my suggestion is: read ahead. I had the “What to Expect…” books for both pregnancy and the first year. Each month while I was pregnant, I’d (re)read that month’s chapter, and then read the next month or two. I got the information I needed when I needed it, and was prepared without being overwhelmed. I figured I’d just continue doing that with the first year book.
Yeah, not so much. Maybe if I’d read ahead, I would have known that one of the things you have very little time for with a brand-new infant is reading. Unfortunately, that’s when you need the information the most. The question “Is this normal?” comes up with alarming frequency. Turns out that babies do a wide variety of incredibly weird stuff, and roughly half of it is something that would be a sign of a serious medical condition if it were happening to an adult. For instance: in the first couple of months, they can go directly from pooping eight times in one day to pooping one time in eight days. Both of which are fine. So go ahead and read that first year book now. Then, reread the first six months, and then reread the first three months, and then reread the first month a couple of times. That will save you some frantic Googling and calls to the pediatrician when you open a diaper to find what appears to be basil pesto or stone-ground mustard.
Also, yes to everything Yllaria said. Actually, everything *everyone *said.
I still do this sometimes, and my kid’s 3 1/2. I will probably be doing it until he moves away. Sigh…
Or maybe even *every *hour at first. My kid was constantly nursing. Also note that waking regularly at all hours will make you slightly loopy at best. There’s a reason sleep deprivation is used as a torture device. Right after I gave birth, as I was holding my little guy, I said to my husband, “That was actually not bad! I could totally do that again!” Then, when we’d had him home for three nights and I hadn’t slept more than about 8 hours total, and not more than an hour at a stretch, I sat nursing him and started sobbing uncontrollably to my husband, “This! This is why people don’t have more kids! It’s not labor, it’s this!” It was six weeks before I could sleep four hours consecutively, and even then, not every night. It was really, truly, deeply awful. But as soon as I started sleeping more, everything got a million times better. (Well, okay - a thousand. But much, much better.)
Or perhaps you’ll be one of the lucky few who gets Little Baby Sleeps-a-Lot… but he won’t nurse. Or he’ll sleep and nurse just fine, but he’ll cry every minute he’s awake. There’s always something, and it always gets better.
If you see something going on with your kid and you aren’t sure if it’s normal, ask. Don’t worry about sounding like a newb parent or bothering the doctor. That’s the doctor’s job, and you’re new at this and can’t be expected to know the difference between a normal cold and something that is going to require ventilation support by the end of the night, for example. If you feel that something is wrong, ask. Always.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. You aren’t going to scar them for life if you accidentally clip a little bit of skin when cutting teeny-tiny fingernails. I cried inconsolably when this happened to me. My son is fine today. Fine.
Also: cosleeping is fine. Lots and lots of people do it, more than will ever admit because of the negative publicity. Unless you’re drunk or on drugs, or do it on the couch, you’re not going to roll over on your baby and kill it. If you’re too nervous, get a cosleeper, where you can park him right next to you on the bed. I got way more sleep with my last child doing this; I could nurse in my sleep, hand to God. I never even bought a crib.
Oh no! You’re like the stalker mom in that book Love You Forever! Just make sure that when he does move out you don’t break into his house at night to watch him sleep. That really crosses a line.
The greatest thing a friend told me was when my daughter was a month old.
“Are you enjoying having a baby?” she asked.
I made some noncommittal noise.
She sighed. “Yeah,” she said, “when my son was a month old I didn’t know if I wanted to keep him either.”
I wish I’d been told that before giving birth: that it’s okay if you aren’t hopelessly and totally immediately in love with your infant. Some mothers/parents are, and that’s awesome. But I felt like society had conditioned me to expect that every mother-child bond would be like that, and it… was not that way for me, at all. (I now think she’s the greatest cutest most lovable child in the history of the world! But not when she was a newborn.)
I wish I had a better understanding of what the hospital and maternity leave would be like.
I had a fantasy that in the hospital I’d sleep, catch up on my reading, and play cards with my husband. On leave, while the baby slept, I was going to finally get my blog updated and work through my “potential jobs” list. I was also going to clean out the closets.
Hahahah.
In the hospital, I lay hooked and sleepless to beeping machines, with a crying baby I had no idea what to do with, alternating isolating loneliness with the joy of having visitors when you are bleeding out hard and can’t get up to change your underwear. It was gross, uncomfortable, exhausting and boring.
I wish I’d been told that before giving birth: that it’s okay if you aren’t hopelessly and totally immediately in love with your infant. Some mothers/parents are, and that’s awesome. But I felt like society had conditioned me to expect that every mother-child bond would be like that, and it… was not that way for me, at all. (I now think she’s the greatest cutest most lovable child in the history of the world! But not when she was a newborn.)
[/QUOTE]
This. When I found out my first one was a girl, we picked out her name and I immediately began fantasizing about my petite, curly haired daughter, with the rosebud lips and gorgeous eyelashes. When she was born and they handed her to me, this was NOT my fantasy daughter. This one was bald, red faced, splotchy and screaming at the top of her lungs. Nothing I did made her happy, and I didn’t feel like trying too hard. I didn’t LIKE this baby, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. And I couldn’t verbalize that, because my husband, family and total strangers though she was the cutest thing ever.
I took her home and “did my duty”, but whatever bonding was, it didn’t happen at first. I was just going through the motions.
Then one day, when she was about three weeks old, I woke up one morning and the sun was shining, my incision had stopped hurting, and my baby girl smiled at me…and I fell in love. And never looked back.
I have posted about this before. I LOATHE the expression “baby bonding time”, as if maternity leave is about society generously giving a mother and child a time to forge some deep emotional connection. That’s not why we have maternity leave. If that was what we wanted, maternity leave would be around month four. Instead, maternity leave is because 1) you are often physically beat up and need to recover and 2) (even more so) because you have what is effectively an extremely sick relative that needs 24-hour care. A woman takes six-12 weeks off for maternity leave for the exact same reason she might take 6-12 weeks off if her mother had a stroke–you have to have someone on duty 24 hours a day, sleeping in short bursts.
If the baby has wind or colic (usually starts around 3 weeks - lots of crying and squirming, specially in the evenings), and you’re breastfeeding, drink fennel tea. Like four cups a day. It sorted out Thing 2’s windy tummy in under 48 hours, and I wish I’d known about it with Thing 1. We went through weeks of awful evenings before she finally outgrew the wind pains - and she didn’t even have actual colic, which is way worse.
This is the best advice. I’d quote it ten times if I could. Take care of yourself. It is also okay to put the baby somewhere safe so you can take a quick shower. Be nice to yourself and your partner.
Your insurance company and / or local children’s hospital likely have a nurse line you can call for advice. Find the number and keep it handy. If you are worried about an ailment in the middle of the night, these angels will talk you down and give you good advice.
You might be tempted to catch up on chores while your baby sleeps. Don’t. When the baby sleeps you should sleep as well. The laundry can wait.
Everyone you meet will have some advice for you. Thank them and then ignore it. Your baby is an individual and strangers won’t have a clue what will and won’t work.
Until Baby is about 6 months old, they go to sleep at a movie theater. Dark place, loud noises, they go to sleep. Really. I’d feed them, swaddle, off to sleep. Figured it out with Kid 2, not Kid 1 unfortunately, but it was AWESOME. Then around 6 months they decide that loud noises are not for them, and the ride is over. Never did see the end of Serenity. I assume they did not all die.
Once baby is fed and cleaned and sleepy, it’s ok to put them down and let them go to sleep. You don’t have to rock them to sleep in your arms. (Again, this is a YMMV one) Baby might fuss a little, but generally they learn to go to sleep without being held. And that is huge. HUGE. Because I can’t tell you how many times I would try to put kiddo down without waking her up and FAIL, and we would start over. And finally I figured out if I just let her fuss a little, she got to sleep (and I got to sleep) hours earlier.
Give your baby all the love and attention you want.