Tell me your honest to god experiences with your newborn

[Mitsufishi]

I am going through hell for the third time around with a newborn.

Everyone says 'sleep when they skeep'. But how? Mine would never sleep, in bed, on me, maybe in a buggy or sling if in constant motion. They all went on to be horrific sleepers so 'this too' did not pass.

My mother says 'all newborns are like that, people who say otherwise are lying'. So it's just me who can't cope then?

Honestly tell me, what was your experience with a newborn. Because I have friends who seem to have had it easy and have seen evidence of it. My mother insists people are lying to show off. But I don't think there's such a fashion for that any more and that actually if anything people often tend to make things sound worse than they are these days rather than the other way around. In any case I've seen friends newborns and babies that effortlessly doze off and wonder a thousand times over what I'm doing wrong.

Mitsufishi- sorry if you have said this up thread, but how old are your older ones? Are they at home or school, and if at home do they still nap?

I don't have many suggestions I am afraid, but anyone that does probably needs to know that.

Anyone who follows the Gina routines are accused of being a 'know it all' and it's a little churlish, if I'm honest (not to mention rude, when I have tried to offer suggestions, photographed pages from the book and posted them and also asked questions to try to get a bigger picture).

However, here is more advice from Gina, which answers your question directly. I hope it helps:

There are still options for setting a routine for a baby when there are toddlers in the house. I don't have any other children and so haven't researched the ins and outs of that scenario. I do believe it's a whole other bag of crazy shit though.

I am sorry Pistol. I was on my phone on the app and have only just seen you posted a picture now I'm on the computer.

I didn't know that Gina gave that process a name. It's quite a common suggestion actually, with variations about how you implement it. Even Dr Sears (at the total opposite end of the spectrum) suggests something along those lines, just without the crying down at the end. I did it with DD2, but I only had DD1 who took a reliable two hour nap, so I did it then. Took a lot longer, about a month or six weeks I think.

It's a good suggestion if you don't have kids at home in the day though OP. My slightly more hippy version started off with feeding to sleep lying down and staying with, then gradually withdrawing a bit. Think DD2 was about three months old when we started though.

I read the Gina and toddler book and TBH I didn't think it that great. I'm not that much of a prescribed routine person as I found that both my older ones found their own routine by around 6 months. But with a pre-school run and a school run I thought DS would have less chance to do that and wondered if I could take any suggestions to help. I may have misunderstood, but it seemed to be rather a lot of 'split this feed' (to me that's just two feeds if you are breastfeeding, how do you split a breastfeed?!) and split this nap (to me that's just two shorter naps?!) and 'start this nap in the buggy'. Plus it was really only geared around having one drop off and pick up. Until it seemed to me that it boiled down to 'try and let the baby eat and sleep around your other responsibilities and do a bedtime routine'. Which I did anyway. And I don't rate the bfing advice in Gina fi you are bfing so I didn't try and stretch out feeds.

I don't know how anyone manages any semblance of a routine when they're EBF-ing. Hats off to them.

When I was pregnant I knew my only hope of retaining my sanity post-birth would be the implementation of a routine. I am anal by nature and have suffered some serious bouts of depression since my early twenties (I have taken AD's on and off for two decades). It was with this in mind that I researched sleep training and routines before my daughter was born. None of it made sense until the baby was actually here, and only then did I realise how difficult it was going to be in practice. However, I felt I had little choice but to plough on, as the antenatal threads I had stalked followed from the previous year (when I had suffered a miscarriage at twelve weeks) was awash with miserable mums pinned beneath cluster feeding babies who refused to be put down or sleep anywhere except on mum.

I just knew I could not - would not - cope with that vision of my worst nightmare. I don't have the brain for 'winging it', being 'baby-led' or any other description of a new mum who is happy to bow down to her baby. I just am not made that way. Of course we all have to surrender to our tots to some degree; they are babies after all. But I refused to give in when it seemed that my routine was falling apart (which happened at various times through growth spurts).

I am acutely aware I may never be able to 'Gina' further children due to the problems you highlight in your post, Penguins, and that kind of freaks me out.

..not that further tots are likely. I'm 43

Pistol, it now sounds like you're agreeing that a Gina Ford-style routine can often be extremely difficult to implement from birth for exclusively breastfed babies, and for subsequent babies. Are you?! Because this is pretty much what everyone else is trying to say.

I haven't had your long history with depression, but neither was I happy to 'bow down' to my EBF baby or be 'baby-led'. I was angry and resentful about it actually. But it got so much better when I got more rest by abandoning all efforts to implement a strict schedule that did.not.work.with.my.tiny.baby.

My baby was a terrible sleeper to begin with, but took to food perfectly and eats really healthily because she likes pretty much everything. She toilet-trained, including dry at night, at age 2.2, within a day and a half. We were strict and careful about the way we approached both issues, same as we were strict and careful about the way we approached the sleeping. We got really lucky with food and toilet training. We weren't lucky with the sleep.

So I mean this question genuinely gently. What will happen if your baby does not take to your planned schedule for eating or toilet training as smoothly as she has the sleeping one? Or what will happen if her sleep changes a lot as a toddler or small child?

Pistol, with EBF you do get a routine. Granted everything doesn't happen by the clock but it does follow a sequence which is predictable.

It is basically they wake up, you feed them, change them, they are alert for a bit, then they get tired, you feed them again a bit and back to sleep they go. Not much too it really!

If anyone is wondering how you manage a newborn with an older toddler or schoolchild the answer is your newborn has to be completely portable and just go along for the ride, while you meet its needs along the way as and when they arise.

I really don't see how you can have a fixed routine with a newborn when you have the vagaries of a toddler also to cope with or the requirements of the school run, homework, after school clubs some days and not others, friends to play some days and not others. The little one just has to go along with what's happening that day, really.

Greenstone, please read the entire bloody thread. I said right from the start that I saluted EBF-ing mums who managed GF and I also attested how I found it difficult to imagine implementing GF with toddlers running riot. I haven't 'changed my mind' about anything.

I'm getting a tad bored of repeating myself, to be perfectly honest. I've said as much as I need to about my own experiences, except to say, Greenstone, in answer to your question: I will be buying the Gina Ford book on toilet training. My baby's eating is already a joy to behold

Pistol - Do give the Gina toilet training a try, hopefully it will suit your daughter, but just to warn you that even friends of mine who have loved Gina routines have found the toilet training, erm shall we say less successful. She advocates 18 months I think, which would generally be considered very early these days. They both didn't bother with it with their second children.

Presumably the food is still early days given your baby's age. Nice to hear she's enjoying it - hope she keeps going

I suppose what people are finding frustrating is that your very first post said "Gina Ford is the answer." But you have later recognised that it is almost impossible with other children (which the OP made very clear was her situation) or if you are bfing (which the OP might be, I don't think she has said). So it probably isn't the answer for the person who started the thread.

I didn't know GF had a toilet training book. That makes me want to howl with laughter. Toddlers will exclusively use the toilet/potty offered to them when they are ready. No amount of routine, tactics or strategy will bring it about a moment sooner. I literally cannot believe there is even a whole book on it.

.....or at least that has been my experience with two boys. Perhaps there is an army of Gina potty training devotees who got their toddlers trained at 18 months (if that is really when she advocates starting). Good luck to them. I found it almost as hard as the newborn stage with my second boy. Am hoping my girl is going to be easier.

But that's a different thread of course!

Erm, let's just say it doesn't fit in with my experience of toddler behaviour either Dilys. You get them sitting on the potty for long periods regularly throughout the day. Little linky to her very own site. Maybe she raises more compliant children than I do!

Potty training is my most hated job up to school age (oldest only 5, so can't comment beyond that). I can do nappies, sleep issues (hideous though they are), tantrums, actively enjoyed weaning. But potty training

Same here. My eldest is only 5 as well and I agree toilet training takes it. Reading comes a close second though; my five year old and I regularly say goodnight very cross with each other. Biff and Chip have a lot to answer for!

Some mothers practice 'elimination communication'; I have one friend who started this when our babies were very small. Just because you founf toilet training a nightmare doesn't mean everyone will. Don't you get tired of just rubbishing everyone else's ideas? How churlish you both seem.

Yeah, if there's anyone on this thread repeatedly ramming a point of view down others' throats, it's probably us.

Thank the lord mine is a good reader. Magic key books are still Biff and Chip but less mind numbing.

At least I have offered potential solutions, advice, help in the form of posted pages from the book, offers of alternative research. What did you come with, Dilys, apart from nothing?

Oh, yes...bitterness.

Oh read my post again Pistol. I didn't rubbish anything. I wished you luck and said I hoped it suited you both. I just commented that those I know personally haven't got along with it and it relies on a reasonably compliant child.

EC is a bit extreme for me - another thing where I simply don't understand how you do it with a second/third. But even those who practice it don't claim it is potty training in the early stages. It is reading your child's signs and 'catching'.

I am glad you are so confident that everything will be marvellous. I really truly am. I hope that that is the case. All Dilys and I were commenting on was that most people find something or other hard, and we both agreed potty training was one of those. I know very few mothers (who have potty trained a child) or nannies who wouldn't agree that it is one of the jobs which is tough unless you get really lucky. You need to learn that other people talking to one another about difficult things is not rubbishing you.

That's ace about being spared the reading trauma. To be fair, DS1 was a good potty user. I like the 'fixed amount of trouble' theory, even though it's obviously rubbish (because it cannot possibly be true, not because I am hellbent on rubbishing the ideas of others. GF, for example worked with DS2 as a baby, even though he was EBF. Just to clarify. ).

pistol, your baby is very young and over the next few years you will go through all sorts of bat shit crazy stuff with your DD. Early months will be forgotten and you'll even struggle to remember what you really did. I honesty think you will look back over your posts on this thread in a few years and cringe a bit.

My mum potty-trained both my sister's children and says it was easy (no Gina Ford back then). I know mum & I will do it together. Where, exactly, have I said that I am 'confident that everything will be marvellous'? You are putting words in my mouth because you resent my confidence in GF and have done since I started posting. This is understandable. Women who have struggled with her routine are frequently scathing of anyone who espouses her work.

Dilys, you must have been thrilled with Gina when her routine worked for your EBF baby. How marvellous!

Dilys, I can't tell you how important and satisfying these months have been compared to the abject misery some of my friends are experiencing. They will look back on these months with horror; I most certainly will not be cringing.

Yes, so useful has been the tone of your contributions, pistol, that MNHQ deleted one of your posts for breaking talk guidelines. I suspect for calling some of the people who disagree with your views 'morons,'