You don't just chill with a young baby ?

[dontfollowmeimlosttoo]

Was asked by a relative
Person : what you up to tonight ? Just chilling?

Seriously do people think babies are easy . What am I gonna be doing other than feeding changing bathing , keeping baby alive and to bed. Baby is 3 months old.

Got me thinking are other people out there with young babies still having evenings and doing stuff , maybe Iv got it wrong 🤷‍♀️

Seriously do people think babies are easy . What am I gonna be doing other than feeding changing bathing , keeping baby alive and to bed. Baby is 3 months old

A lot of babies are easy. Sure, there will be babies who are colicky, or won't settle but we chilled most nights with a baby. In the evening if the baby was being bathed that would take 20 mins or less, he didn't need changing every hour so once evening jobs were done we could relax and put DVDs on.

Even with a little baby I still went on nights out even if it wasn't for long. My first ' night out' was 2 hours in the local when DS was 9 days old so I think the question is 1, not unreasonable and 2 nothing meant by it.

And now 'chilling' to add to the list
You're evening sounds totally normal though if not very relaxed

My twins sleep Through 6-6 from 5 months. I chilled in the evenings the days were bloody knackering.

But people still go out for family gatherings/BBQ/meals out with a baby surely? Well i did/do, not intimate restuaraunts but harvester typle places.

So I think she was genuinely asking, then said just chilling as in, staying indoors.

I just want all the people on here with their babies that were relaxed and slept predictably when they were little to know quite how much I hate them (joke!....kind of)

At 4 months old my DD wouldn’t sleep until at least 9pm and that took at least of hour of trying to get her to sleep/in Moses basket etc.
I don’t know where all these MN babies are that slept through from 3 months, I didn’t get an evening back until she was at least 8 months.
It IS hard, when baby screams in your face all evening, that’s not chilling.

@InsertFunnyUsername no I haven't been only plans in day . That's why I thought maybe I'm missing something . How did you seat baby in restaurants? Just kept in pram?

Entirely depends on your baby. Some of mine have been 'chill with' babies and some were most definitely not!

@Fefifoefum yes baby is the same 9 pm and then it's a lot of shh shhh . Also wakes around 11-12 for feed. There is no evening lol all revolves around baby so I don't know why I got asked what I was up to . I just thought surely it's obviously looking after baby 🤣

I chilled quite alot. There was lots of breastfeeding, relaxing and sleeping for both of us, if I remember. It was very nice.

It all got a bit hectic, once DS could walk at one. And from then on I had a very active toddler, and less rest!

Maybe he meant you just weren’t doing anything specific? You could have said “Oh we’re going to watch Chernobyl/make Mexican food/play a board game” which would still be plans? That’s what I would take it to mean anyway!

Of course you can, it needs you to stop having the child at the centre of your universe. A baby is not always hard work, the concept of materrnal martydom is a relatively new thing, seems to have increased with social media, the more tired I am, the better mother I must be. Sorry dear, people have had babies for thousands of years, you and yours are not so different.

I always used to find that the post natal group mums who said 'oh yes DC is sleeping through now', had a really elastic view of what 'sleeping through' meant. It often meant 'sleeps a bit in the evening, has a 10pm feed then wakes up at 5pm before CBeebies is even fucking on'

once I'd figured out that all these 'good' babies were a bit of
a work of fiction an exaggeration, I felt much less incompetent

Surely your baby does sleep at some point?

We just chill most evenings. Ds either sleeps on us or next to us or we just chill with him awake, cuddles, chatting to him, feeding. It's all pretty much sitting on the sofa with a couple of 2 min nappy changes. Once we've got the toddler to bed, we do just chill with the baby.

Wait until you hit the toddler stage..then you will realise that this was the more 'chilled stage'
I remember saying to my MIL how it's hard work etc and her saying 'Just wait, you will soon realise what hard is' She was right!

At this age you know they are safe, sleeping in their Moses basket, wake up exactly where you left them..and then it starts!! crawling commences and napping gets less and less, trying to climb out of their cot when they wake up etc..you will look back and wish you appreciated this time more 😂

I don't think he intended anything to be perceived in a negative light

How did you seat baby in restaurants

for the love of god OP DO NOT TAKE YOUR BABY TO RESTAURANTS IN THE EVENING

I'm there to get away from my children, I do not want to spend my evening with yours!

dontfollowme

To be fair i imagine it depends on the baby, but my DD was always asleep by 7ish so we would walk down the river and stop off in the harvester etc and she would stay asleep, i imagine if the baby doesn't settle well, it would be hard to continue to eat out in the evening.

But i do understand OP, i felt like that when people would ask if me and DP fancied a 3 day festival or random stuff like that.

Sounds like it totally depends on your baby. By four months my DD was in a bedtime routine and down at 7 so yep, we had chilled evenings or one of us might go out with friends - not very often to be fair! We've not left her at night except for with each other yet so that's our next milestone.

Family friendly resturaunts are fine, clearly depends where you live. Obviously wouldn't take them to a quiet candle lit dinner

Just chilling means - sitting on the couch watching crap TV. If you don't have plans to go out, you are chilling!

You have really over thought this!

@BernardBlacksWineIcelolly no don't worry I wouldn't lol I was just curious as to how they managed it. Struggling to see logistics as baby too young for high chair

By 3/4 months my son was in bed by 7ish. Got a good 4 hours until he needed fed. Definitely just chilled. Watched tv with s glass of wine and made a nice dinner. Unless you have a really difficult baby I can’t see what you need to be doing all night to ‘keep it alive!’ Chores? Plus if you have someone to babysit there is no reason why you couldn’t go out for a couple of hours. Our first dinnner out was at 3 months. Nothing fancy.

I think you’re looking to take offence quite frankly. Babies are not all the same. Parents are not all the same.

FWIW when I had my first baby, I went back to work when she was 3 months old, so after a full day working, I definitely felt my evenings were all about chilling with dh and the baby.
Actually thinking about it, we had a few evenings earlier than that when we popped dd into a Moses basket and went round to friends to chill there. And we also had an evening out when she was about 8 weeks because we’d booked tickets for a gig before I knew I was pg.

Tbh evenings with our first baby were more chilled than a few years down the line with 3 under 5.

Not saying there’s a right or wrong way at all... stay in, go out, book a babysitter... your call but honestly I don’t think you’ve any reason to question why your friend made the passing comment. It’s no big deal

Some babies are just easy. My 3 month old goes down at 7.30 and sleeps for 12 hours. Sadly my toddler is now a sleep resisting whirlwind so we don’t get to do that much chilling. But if we just had no.2 we’d have lovely evenings.