DH is shocked by the reality of having a newborn

[WheelieBinPrincess]

I’m not being very sympathetic.

We are both shattered, like all new parents I guess.

When we first got the baby home a couple of weeks ago, he was quite chilled (the baby was, and to an extent DH was too) he thought things were easy! Unfortunately DS hasn’t slept well at night, he’s a bit nocturnal- he’ll do 90 min stretches just 3x throughout the night so you can’t get a proper sleep. During the day he was fabulous at napping initially but he’s not great at the moment, he gets bad wind after a feed, gets uncomfortable and needs about an hour of comforting/winding.

‘I didn’t think it would be like this’ said DH yesterday

I think I cope better on the back of a night of no sleep so I’ve been doing the night shift, in the spare room with the baby, and trying to grab a few hours nap in the day, DH still has another week off work, but last night I’d had enough, I was dead on my feet, so I expressed some milk and handed over to DH.

I’ve just been into the bedroom to find DS sleeping peacefully, and DH practically rocking in a corner, ashen faced, like he has experienced a terrible and traumatic event.

I asked how he got on. ‘Not good’, he replied in shaky voice. I’ve got the baby now and he’s gone back to bed, in a strop, because I reminded him that it sounded like an entirely normal night to me.

AIBU (and possibly a bit of a martyr ?!)
But I wonder if DH pictured having a tiny baby as like having an agreeable little cat curled up in a corner, waking up for the odd feed and cuddle, letting us watch a box set of an evening and share a bottle of chianti.

Dh the first night with twins “I don’t think I can do this”
Me “tough shit, you’ve got to” 😂

You're only hope is to pull together and work as a team. Aim to contribute equally whilst recognising that you both have different capacities.

"But I wonder if DH pictured having a tiny baby as like having an agreeable little cat curled up in a corner, waking up for the odd feed and cuddle, letting us watch a box set of an evening and share a bottle of chianti."

This is beautifully put, and is exactly how I thought it would be too! I had no experience with babies before my first pregnancy, neither did my husband. Of course I knew that newborn babies cry; I assumed mainly when they were hungry or in need of comfort, and it would be pretty straightforward to work out which.

Otherwise I assumed that their main states were: asleep, contentedly awake, or feeding, all of which would happen at fairly predictable intervals. I anticipated some upheaval, naturally, but I had no idea that I wouldn't be able to sit down to a proper meal for months, nor could I have imagined that particular feeling of dread as bedtime approached.

I think also that these days many people have not so much as held a newborn until they have their own baby. Years ago when families were larger and childbearing took place over much of adult life there were teens who looked after younger siblings, so they had more of an idea about the sheer drudgery of having a baby.

We had similar but you (the general you, not you specifically) have to suck it up and get on with it frankly. This is the survival stage - DH and i used to take it in shifts so we both got a block of sleep - could you try that? If he had work the next day I did the last feed at night and the one in the middle of the night (something like 10pm and 2am) then he would get up early for work and do the 5am so I could sleep between 3 and 9 for example. If he wasnt at work in the morning we switched so I went to bed at 9pm and could sleep til 5am.It worked for us, you just have to find what works for you.

With ds2 and dd my partner who is a natural night owl used to do the shift from 9pm till about 3am, so id go to bed at 9 and he would deal with it till 3am, and then he would go to bed, and I would do any further ones and would get up at 7 or whenever while he slept in till 9 or 10 (he was WFM before it was cool, so a bit more flexible)

I think its harsh if one person does the whole night when they dont have to

It gets better at about 6 weeks if I remember

No it doesn't! That's peak crying phase along with the first sleep regression.

@WheelieBinPrincess

To be fair to him, NCT was mostly complete bollocks, the practical element involved pretending to bathe a doll. Mainly it was a lot of shite about how ‘any woman can breastfeed if they want to enough’ and how drugs during birth would practically turn your newborn into a crack addict.

I remember those days well!

I absolutely applaud all of you who had twins or did this on your own, or babies that were unwell and slept less, I can’t even comprehend.

I think most people are shocked

Some people do cope better than others sleep wise

It always annoyed me when people would say oh but DH has to go to work, he needs more sleep. MIL was obsessed with this and actually CRIED when she was told he'd been up in the night on paternity leave (not much though as I breastfed). And he works in IT!

You might not be going out to work OP buy you're not sat on your arse either and it shocks me how many men are happy to let their chronically sleep deprived wives drive their babies around and care for them solo all day. I remember in the early days of DD1, waiting to cross the road and really having to stop and think whether the red man meant stop or go, i was that out of it. It's not fair!

I asked how he got on. ‘Not good’, he replied in shaky voice. I’ve got the baby now and he’s gone back to bed, in a strop, because I reminded him that it sounded like an entirely normal night to me.

tbh, with many more years of experience behind me, I think I wouod have left him with the baby.
And yes, as you did, reminded him that was a NORMAL night, one I was doing every single day (well night)

I think you need to spread the load.
For yur onw benefit health wise
But also so he can actually FEEL how hard and exhausting it is. The fact he was grumpy you reminded him it was a normal night, wouldnt have gone down well at all tbh.

I have to say I am wondering how he is going to cope if it happens you have one of those babies that just down sleep well.

dc1 was gold, slept through very quickly etc...
dc2 on the other side was still needing support in going back to sleep in the middle of the night when he was 2yo..

I found bouncing on the birthing ball a life saver for getting them off to sleep, first time took 20 mins now it's 2!!!

Sleep begets sleep, check baby sleep site for average nap hours required per month and hopefully should be OK at night sleep with enough naps. We found that drawing the curtains, dimming the lights at exactly 7pm helped with early day and night association. DD has a rigid body clock to this now 😂 Obviously it can be different for every baby.

DH was a bit like this. He's crap at being tired and he was a bit shell shocked. He was fine for a couple of weeks but once he went back to work he expected things to 'go back to normal'. He got a slightly angry lecture about pulling himself together, this was the new normal, and he didn't get a bloody choice, he had to cope with it, just as I had to. He bucked up his ideas after that.

[quote whatswithtodaytoday]@Neonplant But living through it is incomparable with reading about it. Everyone knows having a newborn is hard... but until you've slept in 20 minute bursts and experienced the absolute mind fuck of looking after a helpless baby with no previous experience of babies while also getting no sleep, you can't really understand what it feels like.[/quote]
It's a worrying lack of imagination if you can't think of the most tired you've been then imagine having to care for a helpless newborn. I just think a lot of people aren't very good at thinking.

An hour of comforting after a feed needs checking with HV and GP, sounds like silent reflux.

I was the same 😳 when people used to tell me how hard it was having a newborn I used to think "seriously it couldn't be that hard! They must be badly organised it'll be no bother to me. It's only a baby and all it needs is fed, winded and changed". Your cat reference sounds about right.

What a shock I got 😂 I remember more than one occasion crying because I was so tired.

DH coped way better than me. Though in the beginning he assumed because I was feeding that he didn't have to get up. I remember DS cluster feeding until 2am one night. I literally had just got over to sleep and he started crying again, probably full of wind. DH elbowed me to notify me. I growled at him "did you just elbow me?! Get up now and change and wind him! Just because you can't breastfeed doesn't mean you can't do anything! He's 50% yours!" A very shocked DH jumped up.

We're going to do it all again next year. Im dreading those early days.

I do wonder about reflux, but it’s not after every feed, just the bigger ones, and he’s always had a rubbish latch either on bottle or breast so he seems to just gulp a lot of air along with the milk. Will definitely ask health visitor though.

To be fair on your DH I remember shouting at DH (who had already had a baby 10 years before), "why the fuck didn't you say it would be like this, it was a stupid idea". Ds was about 2 weeks old. We then went on to have 2 more so I must be really thick. 😁

Sounds normal. It’s a shock to the system to both females and males in most cases.

I know I was shocked and I had a “good” baby!

I was your DH

I had visions of myself sat eating cake watching shitty daytime TV occasionally rocking and feeding a baby.

The first month is like a grenade going off. I remember being sat on the kitchen floor eating a bowl of Frosties crying thinking WTF is my life .

She's 4 now and I'm having to wake her up for school!!

Get him on more night feeds, it's what parental leave is for, you need to recover from pushing a baby out of your Vageen.

Sounds normal - the shock of a newborn. It does get better, gradually.

Do not let him off the hook at this stage. That will set the tone for the next ten+ years of your life. You'll be covering nights alone for years.

He needs to go through the horror and come out the other side, with you.

It is so, so easy at this stage for one parent, usually the mother, to become the expert on everything and the other to become the 'helper' (if asked). The only way to avoid that, is for the father to take first hand responsibility for baby care, for significant periods of time. He has to be thrown in at the deep end and learn to swim. Just as you've been. Or he'll be forever coaching you from the sidelines.

I was the DH too. My plan for the first few months didn't extend much beyond sitting in a rocking chair in a shaft of winter sunlight, reading aloud to my baby from whatever novel I was into (because of course my voice would calm him). I was all ready for having to get up in the night, in the odd occasion. I was an idiot.

There's a lot of recent evidence that babies don't actually get bad wind or need winding. They just instinctively bring their legs up towards their stomachs when they cry. A baby, as indeed will any human, will burp if you rub their back! Try it on your DH. Often babies are crying none stop because they are wanting to cluster feed constantly, because they want to be held, they are over stimulated (TV on in the background etc) or for a myriad of other reasons. Colic isn't a medical condition. It just describes the act of a baby crying a lot.