When did you start enjoying your baby?

[mrshope]

Hi - this is my first post and I was just wondering when you starting to enjoy your baby? I am a first time mum to a 9week old and while I love him dearly I am definitely not enjoying myself! It seems so relentless! Is there light at the end of the tunnel?!?

Those first few months are so hard, for the first month I didn't even feel a bond with my dd (which I will feel eternally guilty for), the 2nd month we started to bond & I got more confident with her, by 3 months I was totally in love with her & started to enjoy being a mum, but it was still REALLY hard. I was lucky that by then she was sleeping 12 hrs at night plus 3 naps a day, it was rather blissful, but they are all different & it all comes in stages. I remember it changed again for me at 6 months with weaning, crying my eyes out because I felt like I'd just got the hang of things when there was this massive new thing to embark upon & a change in daily routine etc, plus she was late at sitting up, so at 6 months til 9 months when she finally could by herself, she was always screaming in frustration & I had to do everything for / with her, there was no sitting there grabbing, playing with toys for her so I found that stage hard because every waking moment she needed me to entertain her & physically help her. She hated the car & buggy & never slept in them, I was always envious of people whose babies did that & they could go out & get stuff done!

I loved the toddler stage best, from 1 to 2.5, just adorable, you get so much back too then. Then we got the terrible 2's hit us a bit later than others, which we are just coming out of really now at 3.5! Every stage is different, some much more enjoyable, dd is a delight & my best little buddy at this age, but she still has her phases of being exhausting hard work too! As far as the baby stages go, I would def say things get easier at around 3 months, a lot of babies have bad colic / reflux til then which gets so much better around 12 weeks when their little digestive systems get a bit more mature. Most people I know who have had babies who scream non stop & won't sleep during the day have had colic / reflux, but it does always get better after that! We put so much pressure on ourselves as mums, I know it's hard, but try to lower expectations of being the perfect mum because she does not exist, I wish I'd done that when dd was a baby xxxx

Beabea81 your baby slept 12 hours plus 3 naps in the day??!!! You hit the jackpot!!!!!

mrshope how did today go? Hope you had an okay day.

Humptydumpty thanks so much for asking! We survived!
Ds was practically angel baby.
I wimped out if going in the car as he just screamed until he choked last time I took him in the car. This meant an hrs journey on the tube.
DH popped in the sling and we managed to time both journeys for a nap time. It seems the tube lulled him to sleep!
DH also had him in sling during the service as I was a god parent! None of my friends believe me now that he is tricky!!
Love that he will sleep in the sling but wish I could get him to sleep in his own in the cocoon/pram/car/anywhere but on me!!

Yay, I'm so glad! Progress. See, it gets easier.
Well done mini hope! Glad you had a peaceful day.

I so feel for you. My little girl has always been much more challenging then most of her peers. The good news is things are vastly easier now she's a toddler and honestly the first year doesn't seem that long now it's done and dusted! I still do occasionally get envious of friends with babies who have three-hour naps while half an hour a day can be all we get. But she now sleeps in the car and buggy (and cot, yay!) having not really done it at all for her first nine or so months. Hang on in there, it really will get easier and there are definitely advantages to having a more spirited baby!

I so feel for you. My little girl has always been much more challenging then most of her peers. The good news is things are vastly easier now she's a toddler and honestly the first year doesn't seem that long now it's done and dusted! I still do occasionally get envious of friends with babies who have three-hour naps while half an hour a day can be all we get. But she now sleeps in the car and buggy (and cot, yay!) having not really done it at all for her first nine or so months. Hang on in there, it really will get easier and there are definitely advantages to having a more spirited baby!

Thanks BB01 - any advice on how to get them to sleep in the cot or buggy?
DS is getting heavier and heavier and using the sling to get him to sleep is becoming more and more tiring/less feasible! Am dreading the bad weather...

I know I am doing every thing wrong, rocking him to sleep/feeding him to sleep at night/holding him for naps but I don't know what else to do if he won't sleep.
If he doesn't nap in the day the whole thing becomes totally unbearable!!

I still use a sling for DS (nearly a year) but have moved to a structured one (manduca). Might be worth getting a more supportive one? DS napped only on me/in sling til he was about 6m. I did get totally fed up with it tbh, but he really needed his sleep. Every four days or so I would try putting him in his cot for a nap and eventually it just worked. Think he was just ready...

Sling to pram is probably easier than sling to cot, as there is still motion.

You could try wrapping him in a loose swaddle to replicate the enclosed feeling of a sling? And maybe white noise (I never tried this but I know someone who puts her iphone in the buggy with a white noise/heartbeat app playing).

Well partly she just started dropping off in them occasionally then that became more frequent. But after we started putting her in a cot (we'd wait by the cot til she dropped off, first few nights lots of angry crying) she started sleeping much better in the carseat and pushchair too. Think she just realised she could sleep without being fed or held. This was at a year when I just could not spend two hours every day trying to walk her to sleep anymore when it often didn't work anyway and then we'd spend a hellish night walking her up and down the stairs (then she'd wake the second we transferred her).

Thanks for the tips!
I know he can sleep in his cocoon as he does 3/4hrs there at night and sometimes I manage 45mins in there for morning naps (after I have rocked him to sleep :-()
Should I just keep trying him in the cocoon?
Is it terrible that I always put him down asleep?
If you read any baby books this seems to be the cardinal sin and it sounds like I will end up with a baby with dreadful sleep associations!!

Workingtitle when did yours decide that the cot was ok?!
I am pretty fed up of pounding the streets with a crying baby getting angry judgemental stares from passerbys!

At 6 months things got a lot easier, but I would say 8 months is when I actually enjoyed it a significant amount of the time. Since then, each week has just got better and better .

It is tricky, the sleep associations thing. On one hand, is it really wrong to associate sleep with close to mummy and daddy? It seems to be the natural thing. But on the other hand yes it is an association. I think a variety of ways of getting to sleep is great if at poss. Sounds a good idea to keep trying with the cocoon. We found we'd get stuck doing the same thing for months even if it didn't work very well then we'd try something new out of sheer desperation and wonder why we didn't try it sooner!

Thank you for this thread, and everyone for their replies.
Sitting with DH listening to DD (5 weeks) scream in her Moses basket. We've done everything we can think of and just need a few minutes break from holding her.

But we both agree that she is overall much easier than DS.

I think I started to enjoy DS and bond with him more when he started smiling back at me. But really once he started walking he was much happier and I was too. I enjoy him more the bigger he gets. He is 20 months now, not easy but lots of fun when I have the energy for him.

I agonised for so long about sleeping, creating bad habits etc and DS was hard work, but he did get there in his own time. Firstly alone in the co-sleeper for part of the night, then most of it, then when we moved him to the cot he managed to start napping in it sometimes. think he was 6m when this started working on and off.
If I could go back I would try to be more relaxed and realise many/all babies get there in their own time, or you reach a point where they're more robust and older/stronger so you can push things a bit and see how it goes. For example, DS cried before he slept, even in the sling, for months. At 7-8months I felt he could cope with crying a little in his cot (grumbling, not screaming!) so I stopped feeding him to sleep/ocuddling him til he drifted off, and he did go to sleep after about 10-15m.
He's a dream now, sometimes I can put him down, say sleeply time and just leave. I never, ever, ever thought it would happen, but it did. Oh, sleeping bags definitely helped too!

Sorry for the essay!

Working, you have worded it better than me, that's what I wanted to say! Definitely the older they get, the more you can stop giving them 100% what they want.

When we weaned him off breast milk at 14 months.

BB01, sounds like we had similar experiences!

Definitely, Working!

Night weaning also really helped. Didn't want to stop completely but cutting out night feeds really changed things. She was about twelve months then though.

Thanks working and BB.

I tried at around 8 weeks a sort of pick up/put down experiment -lasted 12 hrs and he slept for about an hr. Total disaster. So swore I would wait until he was older. I don't think I feel comfortable with letting him cry at less than 10 weeks.

Hopefully when he is older he will have settled down and I will feel better about training him.

It's all a bit relentless/overwhelming at the moment. I am just doing all I can to get through the day...

Are you able to get any help from family and friends? Take any offers of help you can get and don't be afraid to admit to people you're finding it hard-going

Thanks BB - my mum came round yesterday and held DS for a nap (he actually spent 45mins asleep in his cocoon!!) while I had a shower!

But last night he was awake at 10.30, 2.30, 5, 5.45 and 6.30!!
And I felt sooo angry by the time we got up for the morning!

I don't know how to get him to sleep better.