ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Right, actually telling me about this seems huge because he usually prefers to keep his school and social life to himself. There's just no way he would have approached me about it if he didn't have actual concerns.

I seriously underestimated how incredibly taxing having a newborn actually was going to be, especially one who seems to have an hour long screaming fit 50% of the time after every feeding. But three weeks in and it's starting to sort of feel normal to sleep no more than six hours total every night with a three hour chunk of being awake in the middle, or at least I no longer feel like I'm going to puke and cry all the time.

And holy shit, twins, I can't even comprehend having twins. My level of awe at all the parents of twins that I've ever known has shot up exponentially.

All of that OTM :)

<3

hang in there, joygoat.

In case you haven't already tried it, putting the baby in a sling post-feed could work - combination of keeping them upright for stomach issues and close body contact for comfort. And yeah, hang in there.

vibes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My excellent babby is here! And yes it's tough. He's been relatively easy going until last night when he was a total horror...

aw congratulations!! i have been wondering how you were going.

Welcome kinder kinder!!!

Yay!

Yaay kinder and new baby! :D

Congrats! RIP sleep

congrats kinder!

and yea joygoat otm. it's so exhausting. and twins, i can't even imagine.

tbh the only time it's really felt overwhelming were the two weeks when we forgot we could swaddle them

those were the worst two weeks, tho

baby #2 coming in april for us, i have no clue what it will be like to have a toddler and a newborn at the same time. there is totally an amount of selective amnesia w/r/t having a second child, but now some of those memories are coming back and i'm freaking the fuck out

Congratulations Kinder!

Yay kinder!

yay kinder

congratulations marcos

Aside from the birth itself, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. I'd like a day where I don't cry at nothing and the baby makes sense, please.

<3

Don't underestimate the WTF-ery of your post-partum hormones careening around your body, which I don't say to minimize this but to emphasize that the frustration and crying and feeling out of control are temporary, if it helps to think of it that way. Also post-partum depression is real as fuck, and even if how you're feeling doesn't rise to the level of PPD, post-partum hormones and their shenanigans with your mood, perception, and coping skills are real as fuck.

Do you have someone you can talk if you need it?

(The baby making no sense is also real as fuck but probably not temporary, at least not in my 13 months of baby experience. But it does get easier to live in the baby's nonsense world.)

kinder - is yr baby collicky? our first one was and it was hellish - unable to be calmed, constantly crying/screaming, fear on our parts that we're doing something wrong, etc. it was a nightmare. our second was not collicky and it was a totally different experience.

Oh man that sucks but I totally understand. We had a terrible stretch of crying fits after eating, switched formulas up and had a magical couple of days, then yesterday was back to weird screaming fits that just made everything awful - and this is without any post-partum hormones in the mix and two people available all the time to switch off when needed.

Hope it gets better, or at least becomes normal enough to deal with (which seems to have helped me deal with things).

Oh god and yeah, sleep deprivation on top of everything else, just makes everything more difficult.

I told DJP this but I also give kinder and joygoat permission to strangle anyone who tells you to sleep when the baby sleeps.

haha seriously.
I also echo the realness of postpartum hormonal rollercoaster - I cried a fair amount, sometimes hysterically, and then shifted into anxiety and nightmares, which have now subsided at 3 months, phew/fingers crossed.

New babies don't make much sense and less sense to my tired brain.

he's not really collicky, and actually he's quite content most of the time but it's the nights that are a bit of a disaster. I think he has a bit of reflux at night which means nothing really consoles him for long and his crying is super horrible. He also has oral thrush at the moment so we're both taking treatment (him cherry-flavoured syrup stuff for the mouth which seems weird after giving him only breastmilk!)

'sleep when he sleeps' ok but that's also when i eat and shower and also I have no idea when he goes down if he'll sleep for 5 mins or 2 hours and it's extra wrenching if I lay down to nap and he wakes up at that exact moment.
o/h is amazing and waiting on me/us hand and foot, changing nappies etc.

oh man thrush is the worst :( i hope baby + you feel better really soon

I tried to sleep when the baby slept last weekend and since she sleeps best when someone is holding her, we cuddled up together for a nice long nap when I was awoken about 20 minutes later by the sound of delighted squealing and a little baby finger poking enthusiastically into my nostril.

In case you thought that weirdness was a newborn thing.

xp thanks :)
ha reading upthread about reusable nappies. we're not ready to take that leap yet but determined to at some point (our rubbish only gets taken every 2 wks and i'm fed up with sacks of nappies hanging around). you can get a baffling array of difft types but prob going to go for washable outers with compostable liners (will get taken weekly if we don't compost them)

To add to the list of postpartum WTFery, I'd say the arguments you have with your other half are most likely to be the least rational, indeed sometimes the most completely nonsensical ever. Double that after 1am.

'sleep when he sleeps' ok but that's also when i eat and shower

In all seriousness, showering shouldn't be a priority unless it would make you feel better than a nap would.

I say this because it took me waaaay too long to realise that four days with no shower is not the worst crime. Indeed, greeting visitors in your dressing gown with goth hair means (a) nobody outstays their welcome and (b) they might do some chores for you.

friend shared this on fb & it seems relevant re nostril finger cosleeping

http://youtu.be/3DrB_rfiFu8

Haaaaa yes v accurate IME.

If we had slept when the babies slept, we never would have slept because they didn't always sleep at the same time. Also we would have run out of clean clothes for them after about a week.

To add to the list of postpartum WTFery, I'd say the arguments you have with your other half are most likely to be the least rational, indeed sometimes the most completely nonsensical ever. Double that after 1am.

Ohhhh yeah, I remember that. In fact I think I kind of learned a new marital skill from having a baby, the thing where you have a screaming match but then 20 minutes later you just pretend like it didn't happen, no need to even apologize just back to being nice to each other

I've been told to shower once or even twice daily because of stitches - not sure how long i'm meant to keep that up but yet another thing to feel bad about not doing :(

Oof, that really is a pain. In all ways :(

I suck at napping so showers are always better for me than naps - refreshing! (and l had an emerg c-section so cleanliness was/is important). I should really learn to nap like a pro though :/ Naps are really nice when they happen :)

Hahahaaa that video!

I was thinking more about the "sleep when the baby sleeps" advice (I'm still bitter apparently) and I'm really annoyed at how often my doctors told me that. They should freaking know better. "Sleep when the baby sleeps and don't worry about housekeeping." Sure, okay that sounds good and all until you've got fruit flies, no clean dishes, and all of your clothes are covered in dried breast milk/baby barf. I know women of my grandmother's generation (and specifically my grandmother) were expected to prioritize housekeeping over baby and self-care, so that advice was probably useful for women of my mother's generation, but at this point it just becomes yet another impossible to meet expectation. Like, if new mothers are tired it must be because we are houseproud materialists who value clean underpants over our own health and well being, and not because having a baby is flipping exhausting.

The other worst thing a doctor said to me was when I was being discharged from the hospital, four days post-partum and sore and miserable from the c-section, and basically crying non-stop all day because I had to leave Ivy behind in the NICU (dark fucking day that was) and the doctor cheerfully told me that I should be thankful because lots of new mothers wished they could be in my shoes so they could go home and sleep!!!! Which wasn't even true because I was pumping every two hours, as instructed by the nurses and the DVD about pumping for preemie babies in which women solemnly told the camera that after feeling like they had failed their babies with their defective bodies, pumping milk was something they could proactively do to support their babies health and well being.

Gah.

Sorry I'm apparently having some feelings today!

Gonna watch that video again.

Ugh yeah seriously! After c-section I was also told things like "at least you can rest in hospital because nurses are there for you and the baby!" I'm like, have you ever been to a mat ward in 2014?? I didn't sleep for longer than 30 min at a time for all 4 days there, cumulatively about 3 hours of sleep, because i was either feeding, soothing, changing or watching baby, or talking to visitors.

Also cut-it-out: "oh first-time moms! Always so over-anxious! Lol!"
Grrr.

(I'm a pretty chill first-time mom really!)

The biggest difference between mother's of previous generations and us, I think, is the likelihood of relations living nearby. My parents are a 75-minute drive away and Stet's are up the other end of the country.

Yeah, same with us (well, both of our parents are on other sides of the country). That's harder than I thought it would be. I keep trying to convince my parents to move to the midwest when they retire but that's pretty unlikely to happen. I felt that difference most acutely when Jeff and I both had food poisoning/norovirus/non-stop barforama illness and still had to see to the well being of a baby. I never so desperately wanted to live close to my parents in my life. But it's also stuff like seeing how happy my parents are to interact with Ivy and wishing they could do that more than a couple times a year.

I was so happy when we got her to daycare that day. Barf.

speaking of barf, two nights ago my oldest woke up sick and last night it was the youngest's turn. i don't like being thrown up on :(