Babies - Initial Impressions

My daughter was born in early November. Since then, I’ve been experiencing parenthood for the first time. It’s incredible but it’s also frequently rubbish. Like everything, it’s a very polarised subject. Other parents will tell you that it’s the best thing you’ll ever do. Anti-kid people will tell you that you’re being irresponsible bringing a life into the world with so many systemic problems as yet unsolved.

It’s amazing, it’s everything they tell you it will be. Holding a tiny life in your hand and having them squirm and make contended snuffling noises. When they look at you adoringly and make cute little faces like “ooh” and “ahh” it’s adorable. Can’t beat it.

On the other hand it’s horrible. They are exhausting, esoteric little milk demons from hell. They cry for hours for no reason. You’ll go around in circles trying to meet their needs and, they just won’t stop. They wake up every 2-3 hours at best because they have stomachs the size of a walnut and, they can’t actually drink enough milk to keep them sated for longer than that. When they are having a growth spurt they wake up every 30-60 minutes hungry.

They call the first 3 months the neonatal trenches because it is like being at war. At this age the baby is too young to do much other than cry, poop, drink milk and sleep and, they don’t smile socially so, it can feel pretty gruelling with no pay off. Surviving on 4-5 hours of broken sleep a night and being woken up every 90 minutes to feed and change completely saps your energy and mental fortitude.

Things that have helped are:

• Avoiding doing anything too stimulating near bed time. If we bathe her, she is fully awake and alert for at least 90-120 mins afterwards so, we stopped doing baths as part of the bedtime routine because she wouldn’t go to sleep when we wanted to.
• Doing sleep shifts. I am a morning lark and my wife is a night owl. That means that I am particularly grumpy if the baby refuses to sleep at midnight but don’t mind getting up with her at 6am. Instead of both of us doing all the night feeds and changes together, Mrs R covers 12-4am and, I cover 4am-8am and that way we can both have 4 hours of unbroken sleep a night. This made a huge difference to my mental health.
• Baby sleeping/swaddle bags - I was a bit dubious about this at first but, they’re amazing. Newborns have this weird reflex where, when startled, they throw their arms up in the air like they are flipping an imaginary table. This is often quite disruptive to baby sleep. Swaddle bags prevent babies from moving their arms and simulate the cosy environment of the womb. They love it even though it’s akin to an adult straight jacket
• Schedule some me time - Mrs R and I cover each other and make sure we both get the opportunity to have some ‘me time’. We started just with making sure we both get a shower each day but, we now also do things like take the baby out for a couple of hours so that the other person can nap (or write a blog post).

We are about 6 weeks in now and starting to get into a bit of a rhythm but, it has definitely taken some adjustment. I’m so glad we’ve had her and, she’s very cute. I wouldn’t trade her for the world. Let’s see what the next 6 weeks bring.