to wish people wouldn't say "It gets easier after three months"?

[ennistonemother]

Because it hasn't. I'm sure it does for some people but, because I've heard this so much, I feel inadequate that it isn't true for me.

Why do people say this? What is supposed to be easier? Or is it just about reassuring parents of small babies that this will pass, and putting a date on it makes it seem more concrete? I'm sure people meant well, of course.

Did it get easier for you after the magic 3 month mark? Or 4 months? Or ... will it only be easier when she leaves home?

I remember taking DS to the GP when he was 8 weeks and hideously colicky (he'd spent the previous day screaming without stopping from 11am to 9pm and I wanted to leave the country to get away from him) and the GP told me it would get better by itself after he hit 3 months. I was like "what the hell make you think I can live like this for another fucking MONTH! A MONTH! How is that supposed to reassure me?!" it did though, when he was about 3 and a half months. And things have just got better and better and now he's nearly 7 months and is delightful and so much fun to be with.

I say 'it gets easier'.

Because it does. Eventually.

Even if problems don't go away you find you get better at coping with them.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, no use asking others when your baby is likely to sleep through because that milestone can vary by years .

For us the getting easier at 3 months thing was DH and I settling into our new life with a baby if that makes sense. The first 3 months we argued a lot - competitive tiredness, housework etc and then everything calmed down.
I think it took those 3 months for my hormones to settle down to a more reasonable level as well.

At about two months after birth I remember feeling like I'd quite cheerfully like to violently stab the next person who said that to me so YANBU OP. The fact that you have held it together enough to write a coherent post is very impressive! I put milk in the washing machine and forgot my own name!

I found my DC did start acquiescing to the routine I was trying to establish at about 3 months of age, which helped, but my biggest breakthrough was 6-7 months - the ability to sit up unaided heralded the end of screaming because of wind or frustration because they couldn't see/get what they wanted. Reduced crying and a reasonable amount of sleep made a huge different.

You have my sympathy. The lack of sleep, the endless chores and routine of feed, burp, change, try to get some sleep, be woken after 10 mins by crying, jiggle baby back to sleep, feed etc ad nauseam....

I'd say the toddler stage is the most difficult

is this your first sorry didnt read post

I found it got easier after 4 months when

a. I stopped breastfeeding after struggling for weeks
b. I knew DS was past the most risky age for SIDS

in fact, once baby was crawling it got loads easier. why? he was free! free to lick shoes, free to open cupboards, free to eat food off the floor, so maybe wait till 8 months

up till then he was cross and pissed off!

I think people say it's gets easier at 3 months for several reasons.

Many babies are sleeping through by then, certainly going fro longer stretches at night anyway.

You have usually fallen into something of a routine by then.

You are getting to know your baby properly, are developing a strong bond and understand their needs by their different cries.

You have had time to physically recover from the birth, well the worst of it anyway, and are not longer bleeding and cramping, in pain etc.

And I beleive these things are true for most people. People are tying to reassure you, not make you feel inadequate. And even if you are struggling at5, 6, 7 months or more it is still true, it will get better!

I'm still not sure it's a helpful thing to say, at least not with a date on it. I know I got to 4 months and things got worse (a lot worse - we had a sleep regression from hell which lasted 8 weeks compared with which the newborn stage was a walk in the park). The worst of that was that I was totally unprepared for it and I was trying to do rather more and get some bits of my ordinary life going again.

Then although objectively things had got rather better I hit rock bottom at about 8 months, when he still wasn't sleeping through, I'd been back at work for a couple of months and I just wanted to die with tiredness. Now he's nearly 10 months, I can't say it's an unalloyed pleasure (I'm really not cut out for the baby stage), but he sleeps through the night most nights, he's crawling and getting easier to entertain when he's awake and I can see light at the end of the tunnel.

Each baby is unique, everyone's experience is different. My advice is to catch up on your sleep deprivation whenever you can,...these months will fly by and you want to enjoy them x

Yeah, my ds ds was just about sleeping through at 3 months....now he is 19 weeks and waking up every 3 hours again! I think, as others have said, different stages have their different challenges. For me I don't think anything will compare to the absolute shock and exhaustion of the first few weeks, so in that sense it is easier, but there will always be another challenge round the corner!

I used to get told this when my first baby had colic - she cried almost non-stop, wouldn't be put down, sleep etc and I clung onto it as if it was some magical line to cross. She took much longer than that and I felt incredibly resentful and inadequate. I could not bear it and thought I'd made a terrible mistake in having her.

Neither of mine have been good sleepers and my youngest still doesn't often sleep through and he's nearly 2. I just don't listen to people now.

rosy, some of us never got the chance to catch up, nearly went mad with exhaustion and couldn't do the baby stage again for any money in the world! DS is going to be an only for lots of reasons, but one of them is that I just can't do that again. I would have liked to enjoy the early months - I'm no masochist - but it was never going to happen.

4 months is also a classic age for sleep regression to kick in (from memory they come at 4 months, 6 months, 9 months and 13 months, as the baby makes mental developmental leaps).

Take heart. There is no set timescale for these things, as others have said. Personally I found the first month tough, the next five a breeze, hit a real low point at 6 months, then it was fine etc etc. At times I felt super-smug at how easy I was finding it, at others I felt just unbelievably inadequate! And what took me aback most was that there was no linear progression from struggling to coping, from sleepless nights to sleeping through. It was/is up and down and inside out.

For me things got consistently easier at around one year when a) I stopped breastfeeding and dd was finally eating 3 meals plus snacks like a 'normal' human being b) she started sleeping through c) she was able to communicate her needs and get around more independently (I mean around the room obv, not popping out to shops or similar!)

Tbh I think sleep is the key thing. Knowing that (teething/illness/bad dreams aside) you will go to bed and sleep undisturbed til morning- that makes it all sooo much easier. And that will come, it will. When your little one is older you may want to help her to sleep through if she doesn't do it on her own. That worked for us, and no we didn't use controlled crying but very gentle methods. The sleep, when it happened, was the key.

But on that note, do not listen to anyone who says/implies that a baby is 'good' or better than other babies somehow because they sleep through from a young age. Babies wake in the night, they're famous for it. And if yours wakes more or til they're older, they're still just as fab as all the other babies.