To ask what made your experience of newborns so magical

[gollyimholly]

This is inspired by the thread saying how perfect newborns are. I know TAATs aren't allowed but bear with me, it's not quite a TAAT.

If I look back to my experience with a newborn it feels a really bleak time for me. I felt like my body was destroyed (took over a year to recover), I was exhausted from sleepless nights despite sharing night feeds with DH, I found the responsibility of looking after a little newborn very anxiety inducing and was always nervous I had missed something or I could be doing better. I have been having therapy for birth trauma and the anxiety but I still hate the idea of going back there.. none of the bleakness was to actually do with DD though, as she was actually such a wonderful little baby.

My DD is now 2 and our days are much brighter. Before DD, I had always wanted at least two children, but after having experienced pregnancy, birth and all the stress and exhaustion of a baby I feel like I'm so glad all that is behind me.

I would love to reframe it though.. or at least learn from those who speak of that time with such positivity. I think a PP in the other newborn thread said something like how they would love to live the first 6 months over and over again. That honestly just makes me feel anxious. But I would love to hear why these people feel like that. Maybe I'm not seeing something in the right way?

TIA x

Someone once told me that you develop and grow as a mother as your newborn develops and grows into a child.

they’ve also had a traumatic time. So used to a completely different life - dragged into a bright, loud and cold world.

as you limbered around after a traumatic birth, so too did your baby.

but you were both there to help the other one through it. You grew as mother and child together

The emotional intensity of it all is like nothing else - i think having a newborn is like a rollercoaster . Amazing highs and desperate lows. Also… newborns smell amazing

I'd love to hear it too as I remember being in a brutal miserable hell!

That is just so beautifully put and almost moved me to tears. How truly lovely.

Before having DD I would have never felt emotional reading something like that, but having a child really does put those words into context in a way nothing else will for me.

Thank you x

When you look at a newborn, are you not transfixed?

The endlessly mobile faces, all the expressions moving across their tiny faces like clouds on a windy day. I can look at them forever. When my first baby was born I’d watch him like he was telly.

And the sounds - those tiny, bunged-up sounds like tiny woodland creatures that they only make in the first weeks… melt my heart into a puddle.

Babies are just amazing.

I think a lot of my delight at that time was purely through hormones. I just think I was lucky with how my hormones affected me. Some people are less lucky. Nobody has it smooth sailing and each of my pregnancies has had a long term affect on me (still not recovered from DC1’s birth 10 years later!). But my god, the newborn days I could live 100x over! Heaven. Plus when else do you get to sit in bed so much?

However to look at it another way, I feel a lot more shit in daily life and feel amazing pregnant/post partum, which is only a tiny portion of life!

I just remember being exhausted and feeling like I’d been hit by a train.

I had a PPH with both DC, was very anaemic, my milk never came in and had a baby that never slept for months.

I also work with children so as much as I love my own I’m not that fussed about other people’s babies, I’m a bit over it. 😂

I personally really loved the early months. I was really in awe of ds and to be honest I think what helped was just not putting any pressure on myself, I slept where I could, I just accepted that certain things wouldn't get done or I'd be too tired to properly communicate etc and tried my best to go with it. And he smelt SO good.

I had been really nervous about having so long off work with no routine etc as normally I find a 2 week holiday too long so I think my expectations of maternity leave were low to start with. And I'd found pregnancy pretty horrific ,I lost 3 stone with sickness, was in constant pain and ended up unable to walk and for a long time we didn't know if ds would actually make it to being born so there was a huge sense of relief that he arrived safely and my it meant my recovery was much easier than what I dealt with actually being pregnant. So that probably set the tone for me in terms of how I processed it all.

I would just say that every baby is different, every recovery and birth experience is different and none are right or wrong... they just are. I think there's something about recognising that you did the absolute best you could with the resources and experiences available to you at that time and not only did you survive, you reared a happy healthy baby and gave them a great start to life. I think that's something to be really proud of yourself for.

Even though I really enjoyed the early days and in some ways I found them easier than now (ds is 2.5) I still don't think I'd want to go back to that for longer than an afternoon. There will always be periods of parenting and stages of their childhood that you like more/ less and there will be positives and negatives about each stage too.

With my first, I didn’t appreciate the newborn phase as it was happening. I was exhausted, emotional and overwhelmed.
With my second, the newborn phase was a blur as I was running around after a 1 year old.

It’s only as my girls are older now that I think back on those tiny babies and realise how lovely those times were.

I'll be honest - sertraline. The newborn phase for me is one of postnatal anxiety and OCD. I love being a mum but I'll always be sad that me and the newborn bubble never really got on. But I loved it from a few months onwards, and that's what always kept me going with subsequent children, that it does get better.

Oh gosh I have so many precious memories of my magical baby as a newborn. She was just the most perfect thing and I couldn't believe my luck that I'd been given her (and I still feel like that 5 years later!).
One moment that weirdly sticks out is when she was about 2 hours old and she and I were being wheeled from a recovery room to the ward. It was night and the recovery room had been dark, and we got pushed into a bright lift. She screwed up her eyes and buried her head on my chest because the light was too bright for her. I was amazed... It just seemed like the most HUMAN thing that this tiny baby had managed to do! (and incidentally, very like her Dad who is hopeless with bright lights!). Sounds a bit silly writing it like that but it was a really special moment for me.

For me personally I didn't have any anxiety around it. I found it to be the most instinctive, natural thing I've ever done. I felt so in love and so connected with them. I loved the night feeds, spending those hours just me and them, looking into their eyes, holding their tiny hands. I was so in awe of how quickly they grew and changed. It was all just really lovely to me.

I recognise that I was lucky and not everyone has such an easy time of it but for me it was just a perfect time in my life.

What always made my heart swell with love and wonder was the perfection of their tiny hands and the sweep of their long lashes when their eyes were closed. Oh, and that caramel baby smell that made me want to bury my nose in the hollow of their neck. And while I totally appreciate how exhausting it must be if you have a velcro baby, there is something about the way your fretful baby takes such comfort from being in your arms - that complete and total trust and connection they feel in/with you is so extraordinary and such a privilege.

I absolutely loved the newborn days. As one previous poster said, I think it's just luck of the draw as to how hormones affect you. With my first I remember feeling bathed in love and gratitude like in a transcendental state. I had a fantastic birth with her, which helped set the whole tone.

When I had my next babies, twins, I had a c-section which wasn't what I wanted. I sobbed through the operation and felt dreadful afterwards, was taking oxycodone for weeks. But after the initial sad emotions I still just felt so in love with my babies. Just how the hormones got me.

You ask specifically what made the experience magical. For me... This sense of overwhelming love when I looked at and cuddled my babies. It was like I had given life to the best, most perfect part of myself. They weren't separate from me yet, we were a little pair (or trio) that belonged together. It felt absolutely miraculous. Overwhelmed by waves of love so strong it hurt my heart, like an almost physical ache in my chest. I would kiss their faces and their sweet little bellies over and over. They were all innocence and potential! I could almost feel the waves of oxytocin washing over me. The urge to protect them and care for them and lavish all my love on them consumed me.

I still feel that way, although not at strong as the first few months. And it's now interspersed with times of frustration, exasperation, etc.

Living through that newborn phase changed me though. It made me a softer, more loving person.

I think they’re probably looking at it through rose tinted spectacles…

I found the first three months pretty awful.

The only saving grace was that I found waking up in the night ok.

I didn't find it "magical" exactly. It was nice. It was for me relatively easy and straightforward and I very much enjoyed that time. I liked it. I didn't feel it as incredible or amazing. But I don't feel I've missed anything in not feeling that.

OP would it help if you could reframe it that way; that you have sadly had a hard time and missed being able to enjoy some of those early days but without thinking it was necessarily a huge transcendent experience?

It wasn’t magical for my first, I struggled to bond with her after a traumatic birth and she was quite a high needs baby born during the peak of Covid. Second child however, very easy baby, I know what to expect and I enjoyed it a lot more.

ugh certainly 1st 6 weeks were grim. Then things improved but a reflux baby, surgery at 5 weeks for hernia, 1st birthday in high care with RS virus. No thanks - miss it like a hole in the head!

It was the hardest time of my life, not helped by a crap birth, emergency section, a reflux cmpa baby and a house move when he was 6 weeks old.

What I do remember as pure magic was the sleepy gazes and whispering to him as he fell asleep in my arms at bedtime with the star projector on, and even to an extent the summer night wakes when we were still in our boiling hot little London flat, holding a sleepy baby with the warm night air drifting through the open window and feeling like it was just me and him in the whole world. His first smile was on one of those night wakes and caught me by surprise as I was painfully lumbering across the bed with him.

It's insanely hard though isn't it, and I struggled with the thought of "this isn't how its meant to be" when actually it is for alot of people.

i hear you!

I loved the new born stage as I got to sit and watch Dawsons creek, friends and just hold a cute sleeping baby...I FF dd so I miss the time I had to just do what I wanted.