Newborn exhaustion - pls tell me it gets better

[NewMumSleep]

First time mum, c section, baby is 18 days old. Everyone told me newborns sleep loads. Yeah, he does, just not at night and not in his crib and not for long. DH has been super helpful but he goes back to work on Monday and I'm just angry at him now. He could push to stay an extra week at home but he won't because his boss is a cunt.

Breastfeeding has been brutal, I had a private lactation consultant help me with my latch etc so that's all fine but fuck me, it's exhausting being the only source of milk. The cluster feeding is a killer, where are these newborns who sleep 3 hours at a time?

When did it get better for you? Surely it gets better otherwise no one would have a second???

I found pregnancy so so hard, I had so many side effects (from morning sickness that lasted 20 weeks, PGP (I was in crutches in the last few days), the cholestatis was an added surprise I had never even heard about). I was so looking forward to have the baby but now I'm so sleep deprived, I feel I've made the biggest mistake of my life. I've dreamt of this baby for so many years and now I just feel so much pressure to love it and, while I love him to bits, I am finding I'm not cut out for this at all.

It really does get better I promise. I chose not to breastfeed for that reason. I know everyone says formula fed babies don't sleep better but every single one I've known has done since birth whereas breastfed babies don't as much as they digest the milk so much faster. Of course human milk is better for them but ultimately so is their mother's sanity 😅 definitely do the research on it and decide if the health benefits outweigh the mental ones. Even if they don't sleep better with formula/expressed milk, your partner or someone you trust can have the baby even for a couple of hours for you to have a break and sleep, I think this is so often overlooked. I hope things improve for you soon, 18 days is still such an early time x

I said YABU by mistake! So please ignore!! You're not - it's really hard but it definitely gets easier! Be kind to yourself.

Some babies sleep through the night before 2.

Breastfeeding will get better. Co sleep if you can x

Its not how they fed how well they sleep tbf. My sons breastfed and slept through the night since 11 weeks :)

Ugh, it's vile. I can remember going into the building society (I'm that old) when dd was a couple of weeks old, and the woman behind the counter asked if I was ok. I must have looked fucking awful. Anyway, I burst into tears and said "no, not really" - and she said, wait until about 3 months and it all changes... And she was right!

I also remember telling dds dad that I thought I'd made a terrible mistake and I thought I might have to get her adopted 👀

Promise you, it will get better.

It will definitely get better OP

What I did was eat and sleep while the baby sleeps.

Are you eating properly?

You are not wrong. I remember those days and thinking how is the world overpopulated??? I felt like my human rights were violated multiple times a day every day…. Needless to say one and done here. Couldn’t put myself through that again.

I know it’s so hard right now. I was very sick with hyperemesis and prenatal depression. After pregnancy you have to adapt so quickly to taking care of the needs of your baby.

You are cut out for this. Your strength during a hard pregnancy showed how cut out for this you are.

You might want to see someone for postpartum depression if these feelings of anger are intense and you don’t feel you’re bonding. It’s all hormonal, you can’t fight it without some help. Not a personal failing, just luck.

I breastfed too, felt almost delirious for the first few weeks, I was a dead person. After week 6 I started to come back. I hope that happens for you. By month 4 you start to really see the little person you created, they are understanding a bit more about their surroundings and personality starts to show. It gets easier, wish you and your baby well. You got this x

Haven’t read all the comments but I promise it gets better. My eldest didn’t sleep except on a moving human, establishing feeding was horrific and I thought I would never sleep again. I went on to have two more. Only with the second did I understand the whole newborn bubble, they sleep all the time thing. The stage you’re in with my first was the hardest thing I’ve done, and we’ve had some tough stages since then. And re loving them, I strongly remember worriedly saying to my best friend two weeks in that I wasn’t sure I loved the baby. I felt huge responsibility for her and there was no question of not caring for her and I wasn’t depressed. But I only truly fell in love with her and became besotted a couple months in. That is totally normal. Not everyone gets the instant rush/lightening bolt of absolute love they talk about right away. Hugs to you.

It is so, so hard. Don't be afraid to combi feed (I pumped at 3 weeks so I could go to the cinema by myself and introduced a bedtime bottle of formula at 10 weeks). It didn't mess up my supply at all and I breastfed for 21 months. I also started feeding on my side in bed, then co-sleeping so I could doze during the feeds. You will get to a point where you're only woken a couple of times.

The exhaustion eases off drastically after week six, still exhausted but not feeling mental (early early days)

You feel like you’re breastfeeding round the clock because you are. In the super early days 0-20 I felt like I was breastfeeding every hour 24/7. It gets longer and longer between feeds every day.

I ended up co sleeping so I could rest and it changed the game for me. I was not coping before. Breastfeeding and co sleeping worked beautifully together for me.

It gets better. Promise.

mix feeding helps don’t force yourself to be only source of milk let others help you

Oh mate, been there!

I found the 3 week-ish mark hard too, the hormones are crashing, the oxytocin high has worn off, visitors been and gone, probably still having to drag yourself to community midwife/ HV appointments. I also asked myself if I’d made a mistake and wondered if I was cut out for it (parenting, breastfeeding…).

I found it got incrementally easier, you don’t notice it until one day you think “oh this is actually quite nice” or “I’ve managed an hour without a baby on the boob”. Breastfeeding got easier too, the most helpful thing I read was “never quit on a bad day”.

You’re doing amazingly.

You will be ok. I promise. You are more capable than you think and you will get through this.

I remember that with your first newborn you discover new levels of tiredness that you weren't previously aware existed.

No one can tell you when it will get better for you. Every baby is different. For us it was around 15 months but I know some friends for whom it happened months sooner and others months later.

Be kind to yourself. You don't have to do things - apart from keeping you and baby fed clean and safe everything else is optional. Much of the exhaustion comes from trying to do too much on hardly any sleep.

I never used to be able to sleep in the day time, or in any other situation than complete dark and complete silence. Happily motherhood changed that and I found I could nap. New skill level unlocked.

and don’t share a bed with a newborn you won’t forgive yourself if you lay on them in the night.
All these people writing exclusively breastfeed, share a bed and feed on demand, its not for everyone.
bottle feeding and cots are fine too

Much more likely to happen statistically with formula fed babies and if there are drugs or alcohol involved.

Co sleeping can be done safely with cots that go alongside the bed too. It’s very natural and you can see it’s how breastfeeding is supposed to work.

Could you feed your baby lying down in your bed and have a nap when the baby does?

I'm not going to say that it gets better because I've seen so many people on here get to the 6w/3m/6m that people have promised, only to say 'why is it still as hard/harder'

But what I will say is that it changes. Nothing stays the same for long with little ones.

Sleep isn't linear, it doesn't start off bad and then get gradually better, it's more bumpy than that. Both of mine were worse as older babies/toddlers than newborn for sleep (youngest woke 2-3 hourly as a newborn but every hour from 6-18m for example). But you will get used to it more, and you will heal from the birth and both of those things make it more manageable.

'Better' is often when they start sleeping better. For my eldest that was at 6w (although it got worse again after 4m). Even now at 7, she only sometimes sleeps through. Sometimes she wakes more than she did at a month old!

My youngest slept through for a while at 2, and at 5 sometimes does. But she was the one the was up 10 times a night for a year. Better with her was the first few months and after 18m.

You've just started a new 'job' effectively, so even if baby sleeps well it's going to be tiring getting used to it. Share the load as much as you can. It really helps.

This moment is the toughest, for you and for your partner. It does get better soon, hard as it is to believe! I had one who slept truly awfully but miraculously turned a corner at 6m, and one who did 2 hour stunts from about 6 weeks. For your sanity -

1. Stop thinking day and night, think about your sleep as what you’ve had over a 24hr period, this reduces the rage massively at 3am.
2. Do not get lost down a rabbit hole of tips, expensive gadgets, people you can pay to do things etc. You honestly get the baby you get and the blogs etc only increase your desperation at 3am
3. If you can introduce a bottle of pumped milk now, it makes a difference - you both get more sleep, and your partner feels better able to support you when he goes back to work.
4. Get fresh air. Walk to a park and sit on a bench doing nothing. It really helps you and breaks up the day.

100% gets better. Hang in there. My son was an awful sleeper but then that was it, slept through the night ever since. Now he's 11. We never even had those early mornings. He gets up 7, 8 am sometimes later and we get lovely lie ins at the weekend. It'll happen to you!

My other tip is to eat biscuits and go to some playgroups. Not the activity ones, the ones with free biscuits where you can sit and chat or leave your baby with a granny and go and have a little cry in the loo then another cuppa.

Oh sweetheart, I feel you - this was me 20 years ago. No feckin clue what was going on and this "thing" that I loved with my whole heart that was literally suckling the life out of me.
I promise it does get better. 20 years on she sucks the life from my purse!!!
Hang in there and try not to be too hard on your DH - it's not his fault he has a cunty boss.

Mine are now much older, teens. I look back and wonder why the bloody hell I didn’t cosleep with my son. I mean, I know why, in that I was so incredibly ancioud and messed up I was convinced I would harm him inadvertently. But looking back now, madness. We’d have been much better off sharing the bed safely. If nothing else I wouldn’t have had to get up and he would have probably BF for longer.

It does get better, I was an utter zombie for a while, now I can barely remember it and it was only a few years ago. Keep your bedroom cool and take a hot water bottle (it’ll help you sleep) with you to have a nap when the baby does (20 degrees is fine). A swaddle is very helpful, DD used to break out of hers but mainky she woke up because she was smacking herself in the face.

It is so hard OP, I still shudder thinking about the sleep deprivation, but in a few weeks there will be a longer sleep and then a longer sleep. You need to prioritise your own sleep, don’t do anything when baby is sleeping apart from resting yourself. I also found having a belly support helpful with the c-section.