r/NewParents

My wife and I did the whole thing—read the books, watched the YouTubers, took the classes. We knew babies eat every 2-3 hours. We thought we were prepared. We weren't. Not even close.
Month one hasn't been "tired"—it's been a total brain-melting blur. I’m currently walking around like a zombie on a boat. Last night, I caught myself staring at the bottle warmer for five minutes trying to remember if I already put the powder in.
The 3 AM feeding is the worst. You finally get them down, you crawl back into bed, your head hits the pillow... and 45 minutes later, the screaming starts again. Your heart just drops. Nobody told me that weeks of this would actually rewire my brain. I snapped at my wife over a misplaced burp cloth, then felt like a total jerk five minutes later. We’re both just… frayed.
How did you survive this? Is there an actual hack to make the night routine faster? I’m desperate for some proof that I’ll eventually feel like a human being again.

I have a beautiful 6mo daughter who sleeps through the night, can sit up unaided, can roll both ways (back to belly and belly to back), and is an incredibly happy baby who only cries when hungry. She’s my little bestie - I bundle her up in the car with me and take her everywhere I go.

I just LOVE motherhood!

Sure, she doesn’t always settle herself to sleep for naps but am I really bothered by that? Not really LOL

I see so much doom and gloom online and this may seem like I’m bragging (boohoo if it does to you) but motherhood is just so special and this period in life seems so short in the grand scheme that I try to not get caught up in the negative stuff. They’re not going to be babies forever 😭

Anyone else wanna share your wins and have a brag about your baby!?

Just want to let y’all know an incident that happened with my almost two year old that left my heart a little bruised.

We have the silicone binkies that have a little hole where you would normally hold the binky with your fingers.

The other night my daughter was tossing and turning in her crib for a good 30 min and woke up twice, said ouch and went back to sleep. The third time she did that I went in to check on her thinking she was getting her molars and her gums hurt. I probably asked her over ten times “does your mouth hurt?”, “where does it hurt? Show mommy”, but she was half asleep and didn’t respond. I again chalked it up to it being gum pain, and went to grab the kids ibuprofen from her closet. When I laid her down on the changing table to dose the meds, she said ouch again and lifted her hand. I had my phone flashlight on, so I was finally able to see that the binky was very tightly stuck at the base of her pointer finger, cutting off circulation to her poor tiny little finger and it was completely white and swollen. My heart dropped and I tried to gently take it off, but she started screaming like I was amputating her whole arm, so I quickly yanked it off. Poor girl was hysterical. After a minute she calmed down and I rocked her back to sleep.

I don’t know if this happened to anyone else, but I never thought in my life that a binky could cut off my poor babies finger circulation like that, but it can. Thank God I saw it and it wasn’t like that all night.

Okay.

None of ya'll know who I am IRL so IDC about sharing this story. 😭

So you know how most parents light up when talking about a trait they share with a child? Example; a baby and his dad both snore, or a baby and her mom share the same smile.

My son's daycare giver mentioned he didn't poop through the day (as she always gives me a status). I recall earlier that he did in fact poop in the morning, so I mentioned it to her. I also mentioned that he probably takes it after me, because I poop in the mornings too. 🤔

I only realized while I was eating dinner, that I told a stranger (or, someone I'm not necessarily close with) my pooping patterns without thinking. Nooooo. 😭

This is like the worst mom brain.

I'm laughing and crying inside.

I'm sure this will be funny in a few years, but shit--I'm so embarrassed. I'm normally more cautious than this, I had social anxiety as a teenager and trained myself to assess my thoughts before speaking. And I kept that habit long after I got over social anxiety. Fucking aye.

Excuse me while I go find a rock to hide under.

My wife has been having a really hard time since giving birth. Let me give you some context.

My wife left her country to come live in mine more than 5 years ago. She left behind her country, culture, family, and some of her dreams. Little by little she has adapted to her new life here, although it hasn’t been easy and I wouldn’t say she feels completely at home yet.

A little over a year ago she got pregnant, and overall she handled it quite well, although she will always feel sad that she had to go through it far away from her family.

After giving birth 5 months ago, she started having health problems. During the first month postpartum she had an abscess. In the third month she developed De Quervain’s tendinitis. And now, for the past week, she has had a rash all over her body that itches badly and doesn’t let her sleep at night. The doctors still haven’t been able to tell us whether it’s an allergy, hives, or scabies.

It feels like life never gives her a break. She hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in more than 5 months.

Her family was supposed to come before the birth, but a week before the due date her father had a heart attack. Thankfully he survived and is stable now, but because of that her family couldn’t come then. In the end they came about 2 months later, but they could only stay for 1 week.

I know my wife has really missed having her parents by her side during this time.

She feels very alone. I try to help and support her as much as I can, but I had to go back to work 2 months ago, so she spends most of the day alone. At night she can’t get much rest either because the baby is going through a sleep regression and she is breastfeeding.

I can see that she is feeling low and very irritable. I understand why. It is incredibly hard. Her life has changed completely, and motherhood is being much harder than she expected.

I don’t know what else I can do to help her feel happier, more positive, with more energy and more desire to enjoy life again, because sometimes it seems like she would just like to leave everything behind and disappear. Don’t get me wrong: she loves our daughter more than anything. But this is all becoming too much for her.

What affects her the most, besides all the physical problems, is having almost no time for herself. Whenever the baby naps (and the naps are short), she uses that time to eat something, shower, or do housework.

I try to help however I can. Before I go to work, I do the laundry, empty the dishwasher, prepare breakfast for her, etc. When I get home, I take care of the baby until bedtime. On weekends I spend as much time as I can with our daughter so my wife can rest, sleep, or have some time for herself.

But I feel like it’s not enough. She still feels alone.

Unfortunately, we don’t have help from anyone, for one reason or another. Neither her family nor mine can help us.

I am genuinely worried about her health, especially her mental health.

Thank you for reading this far. I would really like to hear from mothers who have gone through something similar, what helped you stay mentally healthy, or what you think could help my wife. I am willing to do whatever it takes to help her and give her some relief.

Has anyone been through something similar with their infant? Our 10 month old is going through a chronic diarrhea for the past almost 5 weeks now. No fever/vomiting. We saw blood in the stool in the 5th week and her pediatrician requested for stool culture. All results have been negative with mild inflammation marker that’s borderline. Referred to GI and waiting to meet them. I just wanted to reach out here and hoping to understand if anyone has any idea what’s going on with her. 3 weeks into diarrhea her pediatrician asked to switch her to switch to gentlease from kendamil infant formula.

Maybe it’s just me, but my parents insist my brother and I both slept through the night after a few weeks. My boyfriend’s mum says the same about him and his brother, and all my friends parents say it about them too. Yet my baby is almost 10 months old and is still waking so many times a night and it’s the same case for most of my friends with babies. It seems unlikely that this generation of babies are inherently worse sleepers, so I suspect our parents have simply blocked out the sleepless nights. Have your parents ever admitted you were a bad sleeper or are they all lying to us?

I just caught my husband rinsing out a bottle before reusing it to make a new bottle of formula. Like not washing it or sterilizing it, just rinsing. Idk how long he’s been doing this but I’m freaking out could this cause any issues with baby? Baby is 7 months

"3-month-old. Every 2 hours. Up, kitchen, mix formula, feed, burp, wash bottles. Takes an hour. Sleep for one hour. Repeat.

Sometimes after he finally goes down I just sit on the floor in the nursery. Too tired to walk back to my room. Just sitting there staring at nothing.

Please tell me this is actually a phase and not just... my life now.

Okay so: is there ANY safe way to have bottles ready or kept warm? I need those 10-15 minutes back. Badly. Or am I really stuck doing the full fresh-prep thing every single time?

How did you guys get through this without completely breaking? I need something, anything, that makes the nights less terrible."

I can feel the cortisol flood my system with the CONSTANT whining. My whole body is tense and I feel ready to explode and run away simultaneously. Baby girl is 8 months and I'm pretty sure her upper front teeth are coming in. I could crawl out of my skin. This must be an evolutionary/biological response to my offspring being in distress, right? I feel so overstimulated and enraged. I'd never take this feeling out on my sweet girl, but good lord I could tear my hair out.

Doesn't help that she wakes up 6+ times a night, every night, so I'm also running on very broken sleep. Husband works a lot and we don't have a village nearby. Not really looking for advice, mostly just venting, possibly commiseration.

Ugh.

I just turned 33 and got married 6 months ago. I love where I’m at with my husband and life feels pretty stable enough to start having kids but I get sad thinking about our chapter of just the two of us being over. I do want at least one or two kids and I feel the biological clock pressure, but is it normal to feel like you’re not ready to leave your child free life behind? I had a little bit of a late start when it comes to growing up and adulting. I still feel like there’s so much I want to do.

I’m 11 months postpartum and I feel like I’ve completely lost my connection with my husband.

Postpartum has been really difficult and isolating for me. I’ve been breastfeeding, and for a long time we were co-sleeping, which meant I felt “stuck” at home every evening while my husband would go out and see his friends. I built up a lot of resentment around that, and I still feel it. He knows this.

Now, whenever he goes out, I react—I get upset, give him attitude, or make him feel guilty in some way. I’m aware that it’s not the best way to handle things, but I can’t seem to stop feeling this way. He goes out at least once a week, either to a friend’s place or for drinks with coworkers. Meanwhile, I don’t have that same outlet. Even though we’ve stopped co-sleeping, I often don’t have the energy to go out, or I feel anxious about leaving my baby. The few times I have gone out, I’ve been glued to my phone, constantly checking the baby monitor.

On top of that, my husband and I haven’t gone on a date since I gave birth. Our evenings at home feel disconnected—we’re either on our phones or watching something, with very little real interaction. I’ve brought this up several times, but he either denies that we lack quality time or says it’s just not possible to go on dates because we don’t have enough support.

This postpartum period has been really heavy for me. I’ve been feeling very negative, and honestly, I think I’ve been dealing with depression. I’ve also struggled with an eating disorder that has worsened during this time. I know people suggest getting help—I’ve tried therapy, and I’m not open to medication—but I still feel stuck.

I’ve asked my husband many times to plan a day date for us, but it hasn’t happened. That’s made me feel like he doesn’t want to spend time with me, which hurts.

Over the past few days, I’ve been especially low. Part of it is knowing his schedule—he’s been going out multiple times this week and will also be traveling soon, followed by going out again. It just made me feel even more alone.

Today, he left the house without saying bye while I was putting our baby to sleep. When I called him, we ended up fighting and he said: “I left because didn’t want to talk to you. You’ve been giving me attitude for the past few days. […] Why would I want to spend time with you if you’re always negative, moody, down, unhappy, and nagging? It brings me down. You want to spend time with me because I bring you peace—but you don’t bring me peace. I feel like I’m raising two kids.” He also always says that I like acting like I’m the victim.

That completely broke me. I feel deeply hurt, rejected, and incredibly alone.

I’m just looking for advice. Thank you

Edited to add: he is helpful and involved with my baby (Feeding, bathing, putting to sleep, waking up at night).

When he wants me to tickle him with my foot, he lays on the floor right in front of me while I'm walking and says "Step on me". I love him but he cannot be saying stuff like this 😭

I’m 18mo postpartum, I really wanted to be one of those moms who just snapped back. Well it’s been almost two years and I haven’t. I’ve been clinging onto my pre baby clothes that are taking over my closet now that I’m buying clothes that truly fit me. Not just wearing the same three pairs of sweat pants I can still squeeze into.

None of jeans from them fit (I’m nearly twice my size as before) all my cute little crop tops are too tight or show off my stretch marks that I prefer to remain hidden now.

I can’t find myself to get ride of them, and keep clinging onto “someday” loosing the weight.

When did you finally get rid of it all? Did you regret it or do anything special to remember your favorite “pre-baby” clothing items?

Is there any product that is safe to put in my 8 month olds hair to tame it a bit i usually put some lotion but it doesn’t last long and if there isn’t or it isn’t safe i understand i just thought id ask

There are times that I pull up videos I took of baby babbling or giggling and let her watch them. It makes her smile and can distract her from being fussy too. Any other parents do this? I don't think of it as screen time necessarily, but curious to hear the community's thoughts.

Ok, somehow we fell into this trap with our 6 month old where he’s absolutely exhausted by 5 pm. He goes to sleep, wakes up for the day at 3-4 am. He naps every 90-120 minutes for about 30 minutes each time. This early morning thing is killing me. If I’m lucky after I feed him and change him he’ll go back to sleep for 45 minutes or so.

This is killing me. I’m exhausted. We don’t get to go out anywhere in the afternoons. Help me.

Hello there,

First time father here. I want to consult the good people here.

TL;DR: We have tried anything we can think of, anything we found online, and what our nurses, our LC and our doctos told us. But our 28 days old just keeps falling asleep immediately on breasts. My wife is very emotional and stressed. Any recommendations?

Below, I am listing everything we have tried and summarizing what our story has been since birth.

So our girl was born on March 13th, shortly after birth, the nurses visiting our hospital room tried to breastfeed our baby but told us that mother's nipples were hard to latch onto. So they recommended us silicone nipple shields for baby and we've been using it ever since day 1 because baby doesn't suck on the bare nipples without those. Later on we found out from our LC and Doctor that the silicones were not really necessary and the nipples were completely fine. Anyways...

So even with the silicone nipples, the baby has been sleeping on the nipples since day 1. The behaviour is: The baby is fully awake, cries out of hunger, tries to latch on to the nipples, shakes/bumps her head a few times, latches on, closes eyes and sucks a few times and then falls asleep. With our efforts, we MAY get her to wake up and suck a few times more but that stops working after a few times and she is completely asleep almost immediately again. This is still ongoing to this day.

What we have tried;

-Skin-to-skin feeding
-Pinching her foot
-Tickling her
-Playing with her hands/feet
-Shaking her head
-Holding her and waking her up
-Laying her on her flat so she cries or wakes up
-Dripping some formula or pre-pumped milk inside her mouth or inside the silicone nipple
-Squeezing the breasts from each side
-Breastfeeding while standing up
-All sorts of positions (Normal, football, laying down, sideways, standing straight, and more)
-Dripping some water on her head/body
-Moving her chin to imitate the sucking motion

All of the above work only for a few sucks (2-3 seconds) or don't work at all. Then she falls asleep again. Each sleep on the breasts gets harder and harder to wake up from.

This has been going on since day 1. With the recommendations from nurses, we started to feed her formula with syringe. First with 1ML and then moved on to 5ML. Doctors said it was too early for bottle and she would reject nipple. So we kept using the 5ML syringe. After every breasfeed, we were giving her 10-30 ML of formula.

However, on day 2 and day 3, the doctors said that "She wouldn't sleep if she was hungry". We naively believed that and she ended up getting jaundice. She was born 3,890 KG and was down to 3,300 KG only after a few days. By day 7, she was 3,400 KG and by day 15th, she was about 3,590 KG but jaundice was all gone. All this time, we breastfed her 8 times a day and about 45-50 minutes per feeding.

She wasn't getting enough weight so we went to doctor again. Doctor said we could use bottle and that's when we started to get very strict. For 5 days, we fed her 30-60ML after every breasfeed with formula, most of the times until she puked. And we were able to get her to 4,050 KG by day 25.

Thankfully, all of her checks are fine and she is very healthy. But it is mostly due to formula support. I'm completely fine with pumping and supporting with formula but all these issues have taken their toll on my wife. She's very emotional and prone to panicking. She doesn't want to lose her milk and wants to try everything we can.

A few more details;

My wife is able to pump about 80-90 MK every 4 hours. We are not sure if this is normal.

We have been using hands free electronic pumps

Baby is completely fine and relatively fast with drinking from a bottle. She drinks about 90 ML in 20 minutes.

We have been pumping after most breastfeeding sessions.

Any recommendations anyone can give us? Thank you all in advance!

Once the meal trains stop and the freezer stash is empty what’re we making for dinner? I’m exclusively pumping and the primary caretaker (stay at home) so I have time to do prep through the day (between naps 🥲)

I’m open to suggestions both for bulk so you’ve got leftovers or what’s the simplest to make/takes the least amount of energy. I’m only about a month postpartum

My baby was SUCH a chill, calm newborn. He was a great sleeper, easy to put to bed and just all around easy. He is now 19 weeks old. Around 2 weeks ago he just became fussy seemingly overnight. I can’t get him to sleep in his bassinet at all, so we started co-sleeping (we follow the safe sleep 7) because its literally the only way i get get him to sleep more than 30 minutes. I really didn’t want to start co-sleeping because i feel like its going to be hard to break the habit. He is exclusively breastfed so maybe he just like the unlimited milk buffet..lol.

Is this the dreaded “4 month sleep regression”??

I am hoping we can get through this soon. He cries all day now and fights his naps. He isn’t easily entertained so i am really at a loss. I just want him to be happy again. I don’t see any teeth coming in and he is a good eater. Perfectly healthy. i just don’t know why he changed so suddenly. I cry with him too sometimes. My nephew is also 4 months old and he is still such a chill happy baby so i feel alone in this.