AIBU to ask for the PFB/newborn panics & preciousness that you look back and laugh on now?

[Dennisreynoldsduster]

As a first time mum I’ve been a bundle of neurotic anxieties, and found myself warming wipes, worrying that DS has a million things wrong with him, studying the contents of nappies with rather more attention that I’d expected..

So as I’m about to do the night shift with a rather awake baby, can I ask you to share the precious first born behaviours and anxieties that you look back on rather fondly or laugh about now?

When dd was a baby, I was convinced I had a cold sore. I was so worried about infecting dd. I'd never had one before, and neither had dp. I was googling for ages ti try and find out it it could have been dormant on me. I didn't have a cold sore of course.

I took DS to A&E when he was a few weeks old because I'd caught the side of his head with a cupboard door while he was in the sling. I couldn't stop sobbing because I was so convinced that I had nearly killed him through my stupidity. The A&E doctor was very nice but lost his patience with me a bit when I revealed that DS had not cried, that he had been asleep throughout the incident and that I wasn't 100% sure that the door had hit him - 'in general', he advised, 'we'd say that if a child had the sort of head injury we'd need to see in A&E, that head injury would wake the child up'

Congratulations on your new baby and godspeed for the night shift!

Wouldn’t say I laugh much, just resentful of how much enjoyment the neurotic worrying stole from me.

If that sounds like you, talk and someone will listen.

Probably not what you’re looking for but it might be a helpful comment for a new mum struggling.

ha thank you @lisasimpsonsbff

The funniest (after the event) was ds getting himself wedged in the cat flap soon after he learnt to crawl. Trying to hold him still and calm him down while unscrewing the frame with the other hand.

@NormanChrist very astute of you, I am seeing the GP and mental health midwife due to my anxieties - I’ve obsessed over too many things and do need a little support but I thougt that a light hearted thread would show me that Some anxiety and precious behaviour is totally normal :)
But thank you. I’m sorry your worries stole your enjoyment, that’s what I’m trying to avoid.

My friend dropped her phone on her newborn daughters head and spent ages dropping it on her own head to recreate the incident and see how much it hurt.

I may or may not have chucked tea spoons or water at myself to see if I could measure how much DS was spitting up last week. It seemed like a lot a the time in my defence!

Oh wow @Mintjulia 😁I bet that was stressful at the time!

Dtwin 2 rolled off the bed and smacked his lip when he was about 5 months. Crafty little blighter! I literally ran the walk in centre. Who were at a cut lip

Some worry is definitely normal- you’re raising a new human! The negative ‘doomy’ worry needs working through though- well done for getting help. It’s hard though, being told not to worry funnily enough doesn’t make you stop worrying. Kind of the equivalent of a ‘’cheer up it might never happen’’ comment.

Erm... defo outing to family but my baby crawled for the first time on Christmas Eve and I thought it ‘meant something’, I’m an atheist. Not a worry but top marks to my PFB self!

This was with my youngest so not really pfb but there's 19 years between DS1 and Ds2 so it was basically doing it all for the first time. When my son had was nearly 3 he could walk but was wobbly. he was walking in the living room and then he fell and bumped his head on the table. He cried for about 5 seconds but I panicked (he couldn't tell me if he was ok as he couldn't really talk) and took him to A&E. He was fine although did have a bruise on his head for his 3rd birthday.

When dd1 was 4 months old, I woke up in a panic one Saturday morning because ‘she’d never seen the sea.’ All of a sudden, this concerned me so much that I ended up making dh drive us all for three hours to the nearest stretch of coastline, just so I could show dd what the sea looked like. Dd displayed no interest whatsoever.

Thinking everything was meningitis.

After I had DD1 I was in hospital for five days. I was out my mind. Completely and utterly out of my tree with exhaustion. I was utterly convinced if I fell asleep she would die. But I was too scared to tell anyone that I felt that way because I thought they wouldn’t take me seriously and they might take her away because I was a crazy person.

It wasn’t funny. It scares me, when I think back, how completely mental I had gone, and how no one really seemed to notice.

Sorry @ViaSacra that really made me laugh. Although DS has never seen the sea. Maybe I’ll wake up in a panic about this tomorrow

@CameronG that doesn’t sound funny at all, that sounds exhausting and terrifying :( I’m sorry you went through that. I think it’s SO easy to cross the line from normal worry to all consuming anxiety without really realising it or knowing what’s normal, especially when you’re a first time mum.

DS has gone to sleep and I think I need to change his nappy SIGH. Although this happened last night and it transpired that he had just done a succession of stinky farts and was not impressed that I woke him to change what was a dry nappy...

I feel I was quite a chill first time mum and not especially PFB BUT...

On my first outing with my newborn in his buggy in January I had to take him into the local Currys and take him out of his 101 blankets as I thought he was turning blue with cold. Nope, we just had a blue buggy that was reflecting on him.

Like most I felt he was the most beautiful child ever made. Even when my good friend told me that she had felt sorry for other mums that didnt have a kid as good as hers but had grown out of that nonsense, I still remember thinking, yes but thats because you dont have a child like MINE!

First time he threw up, we must have been 9 months in (yes I had a pretty easy ride), I was convinced he had just ejected his stomach lining and was ready to invoke the men in hazmat suits.Nope, he'd just had a belly full of half chewed grapes.

Not really an anxiety or pub.
But when my pfb was a couple of weeks old I took him into the local village to do some shopping. He had almost no hair and was dressed in head to toe blue. An older lady looked into the pram, cooed at him for a minute and then congratulated me on a gorgeous DAUGHTER! I was aghast! How on earth could he be a she? He was all in blue ffs

I look back now and wonder wtf was wrong with me. And if I had a girl I would dress her all in blue if I felt like it. But I was young and sleep deprived and it bothered me

Ha these are excellent.

I cried recently because everyone coos over DS and says how tiny he is. HE IS TINY but for some reason in that particular moment I took great offence to it. A day later I was already thinking WTF. Hormones have a lot to answer for.

Oh and I also got upset because of DS doing stinky farts as I had a panic that it meant when I go to mum and baby groups nobody will want to hang out with us because he will be the “stinky” baby.
Turns out quite a lot of babies are stinky

Not a PFB thing but a totally neurotic thing...I insist on sitting next to DC / any child in a rear facing seat and keeping my hand on their chests to make sure they are still breathing.

OP, I can't remember the name of the thread, but I think it's somewhere in classics - the ridiculous stuff you did with your PFB.

Includes squirting Johnsons baby shampoo into your own eyes to see if it really is 'no more tears' and the mum who parked up outside A&E to feed her baby various things in case he had an allergic reaction.

I once knocked over an entire bookshelf, narrowly missing DS, because A WASP HAD DARED TO ENTER THE ROOM and quite obviously this was a direct threat to his life.

DS is now 15, taller than me, and far, far more sensible than I ever have been.

I got lucky and had a good sleeper, except if he didn't wake me up every 2 hours, I'd wake up in a hysterical panic that he'd died in the night. I even poked him a few times, just to make sure he was ok. He was fine, but very pissed off at being disturbed from his slumbers.

My epic occasion was when dd had slept longer on her nap than normal.
I waited a half hour, and still no sign of her waking up (despite frequent furtive forays into her room.). She was about 9 months old I think.
After a while, I decided I'd need to try to wake her up. She promptly woke and just stared into my eyes. Clearly this was a fit she was having so I promptly called an ambulance. When they arrived 10 minutes later with this clearly unwell child, she was by then sitting on the floor, smiling at them and handing them her toys.
I then realised that maybe she had been startled by being awoken, but the ambulance crew insisted on bringing her to A&E.

Now, not only had I my own paranoia but the ambulance crew had also felt it necessary. They hadn't, but they had to bring her in.
I spent a night in hospital with a very jolly bouncy 9 month old. I have never felt like such a bigger gobshite in all my life. I had actually called my mother to suggest that it might have been an epileptic fit (because opening your eyes when you're suddenly woken up, is a sure sign....).

@sadeyedladyofthelowlandsea I’ll have to see if I can find it! It might make me feel sane!

Another time, an old woman, touched her! She actually shook hands with my tiny baby! Evil woman.
Dd was taken home immediately, given a bath, her hand sterilised with Milton and her clothes and blankets washed.
Oh I was a lunatic. But at the time I was thinking 'what if they have HIV?'.

None of it is rational, but it does tend to be normal.
If it gets too much, pop to the GP, but I think anxiety around this most precious bundle in the whole wide world is expected to a degree.

Ds hasn't even been one for sleeping, so the one and only night he did as a baby (I woke at 6.30am to an undisturbed night), I genuinely thought he must have died in his sleep. Of course, he hadn't. It was a one off 🙄, hasn't given me reason to panic since.