To think maternity leave is supposed to be enjoyable?

I think different people experience it differently. Have friends who hated it and were totally bored and fed up whereas I loved it. Getting outside definitely helped plus I would go to bed when baby did and so could get two big chunks of sleep some nights

It feels at the time like they are going to be a baby forever, like you have 18 years of babyhood ahead of you. You don’t, people always say this time is short and dear god i know it doesn’t feel like it. But every day they grow a tiny bit more, and need you a tiny bit less. Until one day not long from now you’ll be able to get a full nights sleep, watch a bit of telly in the evenings. Then they’ll get into playing with toys and entertain themselves for a bit, and eventually off they go to nursery and school and the second phase of your life begins.

You are in the thick of it, it can be shit and boring and hard no matter how much you love your baby. If there’s any local mums and toddlers groups hit them up for a change of scenery. Not the £90 per term baby massage nonsense, the £2 in a church hall with tea and cake ones are the best.

Oh yeah one more thing- pregnancy leaches every vitamin and mineral from your body and your lack of energy and feeling down might be related to deficiency in iron/vit D/b12/whatever. Might be worth seeing the GP and taking a good multivitamin.

I think I enjoyed it more from about 6 months even though sleep was still rubbish. At least the baby could interact more and play and I could make food for them.

Is your baby actually only sleeping for 5-6 hours in a 24 hour period though?

I think I enjoyed it more from 4 or 5 months onwards. I was getting a bit more sleep than the early days and breastfeeding became much quicker when she had taken absolutely ages to feed in the beginning. Things got a bit more predictable and I felt more able to mange and do stuff. Getting out for food, cake and walks etc with other mums was essential. Also I had a winter baby (born in December) so spring and then summer weather made a big difference.

Having a baby is bloody hard work so it's no wonder you're not loving it. Try not to be hard on yourself or compare yourself to others who may seem to be enjoying it more.

3-6 was easier than 0-3 and 6-12 easier than 3-6 in some ways but with new challenges!

I wanted to stab anyone who said "they're only little for such a short time" or "just lean into it" but now I have a toddler i feel wistful seeing little babies knowing mine will never be that small again.

I found it really hard to just hunker down at the Newborn stage i needed to be put and about for my own sanity. Sling was a saviour. Local mum and baby groups (mostly free ones) or even just chatting to other mums at the park was a godsend. Now it's getting warm enough to spread a blanket under a tree and just play.

Enjoy this time before you have to worry about weaning!

And maybe you'll need to go to bed earlier some nights. Not every night, maybe try a few nights in a row til you feel a bit more rested. Then every other night?

Your body has been recovering from pregnancy and delivery. And if you're BFing that's hard work too! Are you getting enough hydration and nutrition?

All sounds pretty normal! It's a really hard grind those first few months (and plenty of times after lol!) But personally I didn't realise how hormonal I still was until one day at about 4/5mths I woke up and felt like myself again and I remember saying to my mum god I hasnt realised how unlike myself I was feeling physically/mentally before that...

When they can sit and have solid poos/less sicky it gets bit easier being out and about and also when their milk intake reduces and when they are on 1 big nap a day it's like HALLELUJAH 😅😅😅

Then you go back to work and miss them like crazy but also get a break!

I found the first maternity leave the toughest, because it's such a massive change to your life. I've just finished my third, and that was a breeze in comparison.

With young babies, everything is a phase, so sleep will come and the enjoyment will quickly follow. I found four of five months to be a real turning point, and at six months they can sit up on their own and eat food so I could leave them with their father so I could do something else for once.

My son is now 9mo and he's a lot of fun. The early months are for muddling through. I hope you come back to this thread in four or five months just letting us know how things have turned around for you :)

Exactly. I felt so out of my depth - and sure I’d be doing something wrong and somehow affecting their life, being a bad mother, etc.
Probably normal thoughts for somewhat anxious mothers, who used to have our lives under control.

You will get there. Just focus on surviving now. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
And - if you can - try to nap whenever you can. Sleep really does help.
(or rather - lack of sleep really screws up our brains)

Also, if you are breastfeeding, 3 months is still the pits. I used to go to bed crying that I made a big mistake breastfeeding because I get no breaks. But once he hits 6 months, baby will be SO efficient. I'm so glad I stuck with breastfeeding as it's the easiest thing in the world now at 7 months.

It's definately not a holiday, like some guys think, and it was not for me. It was very, very hard with a baby screaming his lungs out all the time and me trying desperately to calm him down (he had colic). Luckily for me, it was summer, so I took every opportunity to go out with a pram. I spent whole days from May to October walking with a pram to the park and to malls, with bottles of expressed milk, eating ice-cream and reading books (he slept well outside). Before I realised, I lost a stone and became even thinner than before my pregnancy. Crazy days, I call it. But you know what? Back then, I hated it, but now I miss it. I look at my school-age kids and it's kind of sad I'll never experience it again. And you will feel like that, too. P.S. It was easier second time round. Good luck!

I agree. Find a local library that does a kids sing a long or a mum and baby group.
Theres always some Amanda’s but mostly they will be mums that feel the way you do.

I definitely hit a wall of frustration and exhaustion at 3 months. It's really hard.

My baby is 7, almost 8 months now and it's THE BEST. He sleeps, he laughs, he plays, he's interactive BUT he's not walking yet so my days are still piss easy.

@Newmumhere40

At 3mo - is roughly when my PND hit. Accumulated tiredness, anxiety, low milk supply, etc - all came together and knocked me out for months.
So - no, maternity leave, or more specifically - the first year with baby was not enjoyable for me.

I have two kids - and both times, the first year was the hardest and least enjoyable time.

It started getting better by 12mo or so. And now my kids are teens. Mercifully you forget a lot of the struggles of the early days.

Total luck of the draw. I’ve known mothers who gardening and shopping less than a week after the birth. That certainly wasn’t me.

Currently on mine and I found months 4-5 the hardest with sleep, which meant the hardest with everything and often felt robbed of joy and unable to enjoy all these lovely enjoyable things around me including the baby at the times.

From 6 months it's consistently got easier with the switch to co-sleeping having worked for us, longer stretches of sleep, more time between feeds and a gradual reduction in nursing as he switches to solids. Also weening, learning to crawl, going swimming are all fun. Now I feel like I am enjoying it

The start of spring has also helped enormously

Also just to add breastfeeding gets quicker, a lot quicker!

I never viewed maternity leave as something that was meant to be enjoyable. I viewed it as a necessity to allow me to recover from giving birth and to care for my baby.

It gets easier, but there’s also a realistic expectations thing.

It’s not set up to be a gap year. It’s set up because baby’s are sodding hard work.

I really enjoyed my mat leave (most of the time) but it was definitely hard work and had similar feelings to you early on. Do you have much of a social network? I found it hard going from working full time and always being busy to not really having much structure and found it much easier having a busy week planned of baby classes, meeting up with friends etc.

The sleep deprivation is hard but gets easier. I could never sleep during the day either but I assume at 3 months baby still naps a fair amount in the day even if it's on you - try to enjoy the resting on the sofa with baby and making the most of binge watching netflix etc as that soon goes.

I hope it gets easier for you op. I really enjoyed my mat leaves and most of my friends did too. We felt lucky to be able to have that time off with a job to go back to. First time around I had a good sleeper, felt like a holiday, second time was a lot harder but I still really enjoyed it even though my toddler (who I later discovered was autistic) had me in tears most days! I have a lot of friends so plenty of options if I wanted to see someone. but I did spend too much money going out to make life easier for me - do what you need to to get through the day!

Oh yes by the way it does get better. But it's still all consuming.

Some people love being in the baby bubble, some people find it hard to accept the change. I think maybe it's about expectations. The people who I know who are miserable spend a lot of time mourning their old life and trying to get it back.

I just think lean in to the monotony and the simple life. why are you not sleeping when she naps? She must still nap often?

I agree with the woman who said it should be called Maternity Service, not Leave.