Scared about coping with newborn

[dadindifficulty]

My wife and I had our first baby on the 21st, so she's currently 8 days old. My wife is breastfeeding and so needs to be around the baby 24/7 for feeds (and she feeds a lot, at the moment she's asking around 20 times a day and feeds for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes).

During the day, things are relatively okay. She sleeps between feeds, my wife and I can watch TV or doze on the sofa, etc. But at night, all hell breaks loose.

She simply will not sleep.

I'm off work for another two weeks (had three in total) but even now my wife has told me to try to sleep through the nights so I can be fresh to do washing, cooking, cleaning etc. during the day which I am happy to do, but it's hitting her so hard overnight and I hate to see her like it. I feel useless and like I'm being no help at all.

We had a big teary conversation a couple of nights ago where I'm afraid I said "I don't know if we can do this." I feel awful about it, and the situation as a whole is just so down.

I'm probably just talking about what happens with babies in general but I'm looking for any tips or advice to make this easier. I'm scared for my wife, she's 100% devoted to the baby even at the cost of her own mental well-being.

And if you have a sling library near you help her to get there, if baby is cozied in the right sling (not baby Bjorn style!!!!) On mum or you she might start to sleep a bit better.

Be nice to each other- something I learnt from the Mumsnet book on babies- it's not a tiredness competition!

And it's ALL a phase. The difficult and the wonderful. This is difficult as you are both learning how to look after a brand new tiny person. You will get there
Big hugs!

It’s day 8. It’s so so so early. My lovely husband also thought we would never be able to do it on day 8. And we did. We argued and fought but we did.
Here’s what helped practically when he went back to work:

1. He woke up, had a shower, tea and toast and got ready. He emptied the dishwasher, made tea and toast for me and a sandwich for lunch. He dried out a load of laundry, put one in and put away another load. All this took roughly 45 mins.
2. In the meanwhile I fed and changed the baby into ‘day clothes’. And handed him to Daddy.
3. I then had 45 mins to myself to eat some and toast and take a shower and make sure the changing bag was packed.

So this meant that at 8:30 when he left the house we were all ready, I had eaten something and there was lunch in the house. When he came home if I hadn’t managed to cook, he made something quickly. He also did another load of laundry in the evening, washed the dishes and gave the living room a quick tidy and hoover. So we went to sleep (or not) with the dishes done and the house tidy. He also sometimes did a 9:30 feed with expressed milk so I got a chunk of sleep- sometimes from 7-11/12. And then I took over and he slept till 6:30 when he woke and started the manic morning routine. On the weekends I got lie ins and once a day he threw me out of the house (nicely) and told me to go to a coffee shop and read a book and come back more human. He also made sure I had time to get a haircut and other things that post kids become monumentally difficult.

And then in the long run he’s always been an equal parent. Has never ever shied away from putting family life first. And has managed to look after two kids with no hassle when I have gone away with work. He has never assumed that they are ‘my problem’.

Newborns are BRUTAL. Noone tells you this, but basically the first few months are just about surviving.

Top things you can do as a Dad - honestly sleep at night. There's literally no point you both being awake and you getting up with the baby at 4 or 5 in the morning when your wife thinks she's going to die she's so tired is way more helpful than being sympathy tired.

Make her breakfast, make her dinner, send her for a bath, tell her she's beautiful and you love her over and over and that you can can can and will do this.

You'll be fine. You care enough to post so I guarantee it.

Ps it gets much easier about 5 weeks in.

Several people have pointed out that new babies don't know the difference between day and night. My opinion is actually further than that - in the first few weeks you actually need them to learn a reverse pattern. If you think about it, before birth, during the daytime they have been rocked and lulled to sleep, and at night everything goes still and it's time to wake up and have some fun (I'm sure I've read numerous posts over the years about being kept awake by kicking in late pregnancy). Then after birth we expect them to be awake in the daytime and sleep in the night ... Jet lag! I believe it is reckoned that your body clock takes roughly a day per hour to adjust naturally to time changes, so I figure you've got at least 2 weeks with a newborn to adapt to day/night in even the most basic sense.

With both of mine, it wasn't until more than 3 weeks that feeding was tolerable as opposed to excruciatingly painful. And probably took at least that long for them to regain birthweight (both quite big so didn't trigger as much concern as there might have been with smaller babies).

I would second the benefits of expressing, once your wife is up to it (maybe 3-4 weeks maybe later). My sister passed on a recommendation she'd found useful, that worked really well with my 2nd. Express in the morning, and get dad to give that as a bottle in the evening while mum gets some sleep. The evening can be the fussiest most difficult period for feeding, and there tends to be more milk in the morning (at least once things are properly established - this is not something to try starting at 1 week old generally). We managed a pattern where I fed the baby, went to bed leaving him downstairs with his dad, then he could have a "late" feed whenever he needed it prior to being put to bed properly. If he needed more at that point he was brought to me to feed in our bed, or I might get to sleep longer. Either way it saved my sanity at times!

The first two weeks of parenting nearly drove me mad. I kept asking people “how do people have two of these?”. I was so sleep deprived and out of my depth. But I am here to reassure you that it really does get better and sooner than you think. Within six weeks my son knew a bit that it was night and he was to go to sleep. Keep the days really busy as light and the nights dark and quiet and your will learn that nights are for sleeping.
And support your wife the way you are already doing, it’s so helpful.

Good luck!

Ugh so many typos

Sorry i havent read the whole thread but my 9 mo dd did not sleep at all when she was a newborn. Someone mentioned to be about using white noise (apparently its a similar sound to what the baby would hear in the womb) so i went to mothercare and bought Ollie the Owl which plays white noise, rainful, a heartbeat sound and a lullaby. It truelly saved my life, it relaxed her so much and she drifted off to sleep in seconds. Would highly recommend it!

I just wanted to say thank you once more. Our little one is two weeks old today. Some of the nights are still very tough and I lay in bed feeling guilty while my angel of a wife handles the nights alone, but she's told me time and time again that handling the cooking and cleaning is helping enough.

But, we have had four or five of what we would call "good" nights, where she will sleep around 9 til 12, 1 til 3, then 4 til 7. We can live with that :)

Thanks again everybody. I'll try to share back some of my findings with the community as we grow as parents!

You can do this! You already are! It WILL GET BETTER! Hang in there, your baby is only just over a week old.

@dadindifficulty thank you for coming back to update.

They do say consider a pregnancy to be 10 months, 9 month of carrying the baby inside and 1 month of the baby being attached to you especially breastfed ones.

The gift of housework should never be underestimated. Simple food, eaten whilst still hot is bliss.

I remember when Dh went back to work and I closed the front door, looked at my son and thought who the hell decided I could do this alone for 8 hours. He is now almost 16 as in years not months.

Grab any sleep you can whenever you can, both of you. Take photos and video. It goes so fast.

You've had such fantastic advice and tips on this thread, and I totally agree that you sleeping is more helpful than being too tired to sort the house out during the day.

Please keep telling your wife how much you appreciate what she's doing for your new family. it means so much!

Just know that this is a stage and you will move through it , even though it feels like it will never end. It will be replaced by another stage with its own rewards and challenges.

It is also scary trying to keep a little human alive but as long as you are kind to each other as parents you will survive!