Question about newborns from a naive first-timer

[mrsbean78]

I might seem totally idiotic asking this question but here goes nothing..

I am due my first any minute now (40+6) and two friends have told me this week that when the baby comes you won't be able to watch tv anymore.. I don't understand this, because I've taken care of very small babies (e.g. under a month) in the past and it seems to me they spend an awful lot of time feeding or asleep.

I can totally understand all the other things you won't be able to do, like showering for long/straightening your hair, but TV seems like a pretty passive activity that should be possible with a small baby, as long as it doesn't have colic? One of my friends told me she hasn't managed to spend half an hour with her dh in front of the television in 5 months! 5 months! Is this typical? Am I just deluded?

We used to watch tv when i would feed the baby in the evenings - yes you are more up and down than usual - nappy changing, bathing etc, but IMO 5 months is a bit silly

well if you don't have a tv it is dificult. But I guess if you have one in the lounge then you can sit down and watch a program after having a baby.

Does your firned not have a tv? Or os there anther explination?

no you're not deluded. small babies sleep alot !

Yes small babies sleep a lot (if you're lucky) and they do tend to do a lot of that sleeping on you. So TV watching perfectly possible.

Until of course there is something you really want to watch and then the baby will decide to cry and cry

How bizarre. IME you can watch masses of tv with a newborn. If you put the subtitles on or turn the sound right up you can even watch it while walking around with them while they're crying.

i spend most nights in front of the telly with DH whilst DD feeds non stop (literally)

during the day i have it on for DS who needs his Peppa Pig fix when i am teething

if you are lucky enough to have a good sleeper, then sleep when they do as Riven says - you will be soooooo tired

good luck!

The very best thing I have ever used to enable me to sit and relax/read/watch tv etc is a baby bouncer.

I sit with the chair directly in front of me or Dh and gently rock/bounce the chair with my foot on the bar. It usually works a treat.

A word of advice though learn to stop bouncing the thing once baby has fallen asleep.

Dh thinks its funny that I carry on totally unaware that baby is sound asleep.

Eh? no tv? if you're planning on breastfeeding you're probably going to be sat on the sofa for a few weeks - you will get to watch tv! However you may not get to watch things uninterrupted the whole way through because obviously there's a lot of feeding, changing, changing clothes, mopping up sick, soothing etc

(And you CAN do things like take a quick shower, they won't spontaneously combust if they whinge for a minute or two! pop him/her in the carseat/babyseat outside the shower and have a quick scrub, the sound of the water may even be soothing for them! it's so important to look after yourself and do the little things that make you feel human in the first few weeks, helps you cope.)

Best of luck with it all!

You're less likely to be able to watch a whole series with a complicated plot, as you'll be disrupted and also struggle to remember vital bits of the story. But apart from that aspect, watching TV is fairly easy with a small baby.

teething WTF!!! I mean feeding

Maybe if you formula feed instead of bf you have to leave the room to get feeds ready whereas with bf you seldom need to leave the sofa?
If there is something I really want to watch I have been known to change the baby in front of the telly using the things from the changing bag I normally take out with me.

I watched the whole of Friends several times over when I was feeding my two. And I mean ALL of it.

On the other hand, I also tried to get into The Wire, but lasted till half way through series 1 episode 1 before I fell asleep. I just borrowed the box set from my SIL (my children are now 4 and 2), and it's fabulous! I couldn't remember anything at all about the (half) of one I'd already watched adn my brain is now able to compute a bit better.

So yay to loads of crap telly, nay to anything requiring thinking. I would, for example, avoid sitting down in front of Memento (which was bad enough before I even had children).

i watched loads of tv when ds was tiny, after a while (6 monthsish) they might get scared by scary bits & you wouldn't want them to hear swearing.
he made his dislike of jeremy kyle known very early on

good taste Stealth

DD prefers homes under the hammer ...

I watched loads of tv with my newborn. even got extra sessions in a 4 in the morning. I would like to know what she was doing for the first 5 months.

I watched dinnerladies on dvd while feeding dd. Just the theme tune makes me sob with memories of dd being brand new.

Red Dwarf here. Our TV reception was rubbish when I had ds so I watched a lot of dvds on the laptop while in bed feeding/cradling a sleeping baby

24 here and sex and the city

what a bizarre thing to say.

i have to admit that when i had my second i was so bloody knackered that i couldn't stay up past about 8.30pm so missed a lot of tv that way!
but in general you can watch tons. just sit in front of the sofa BF the baby

They do sleep , sometimes , but also your concentration goes and you use that time to do other basic things like cook, wipe the loo, put a wash on. ds used to howl just as we sat down to eat, however we varied it, or watch a programme. So you may need to adapt your viewing to coincide with those calmer period or feed them then. Sky + may come into its own !

Phew! I was getting worried.. not so much because of my love of TV, but because I couldn't work out what you would be doing/how you could be so 'busy' while feeding if not just sitting there like a lump watching TV?

midnightexpress I watched the ENTIRE 5 series of the Wire in a darkened room while on holidays in my mum's at 7 weeks pregnant, punctuating each episode with copious bouts of puking - up to 15 times a day! I can't remember any of it either!

i found out that This Morning is repeated at something like 4.30 in the morning (this was in the days of Fern) and it was The Best Day (sort of)....I watched a LOT of TV..none of it was life enhancing stuff - i think i even found ITV1 too taxing..but even now if I hear certain theme tunes or even adverts (the butlins one with Sunshine, Lollipop) I get that achy feeling....nostalgia's a funny thing hey?!!
Good luck MrsBEan!! you've got an exciting couple of weeks coming up!! Look forward to seeing you on the tellyaddicts thread - purely to spite your friend of course

I was glued to the sofa with the telly on for weeks!

LIZS - thinking of boxsets anyway.. nice easy stuff, nothing too taxing on the brain.