6 week old baby - advice wanted please

[flowers1]

My DD is nearly 6 weeks old. She is gorgeous and doing well, but I am a first time mum and have been feeling anxious and finding it all hard work. After she was born, I had baby blues, but have been feeling much better recently, largely thanks to my DH who has been off work since she was born and helped me to cope with her colicky crying. However, DH has to return to work in the New Year and I am worried about how I will cope on my own with DD. She does not like to be put down when awake and I don't like to leave her to cry. I have tried the obvious eg carrying her into the room with me, talking to her, baby rocking chairs etc. Do you think it is ok to leave her to cry whilst I go to the toilet, eat lunch etc?

Also, DD sleeps reasonably well at night, but does not do more than cat nap in my arms for a few minutes at a time during the day. She will go to sleep in the car, but this does not enable me to get much done. All the books say that babies this age sleep for 16 -18 hours a day. I'm lucky if DD manages 8 hours at night and a couple of hours of catnapping/snoozing during the day. Is this the norm for other parents?

Finally, does it ever start to get easier? Will I ever feel that I've got this parenthood thing cracked? Does anyone have any tips or advice they would be willing to share?

Thank you and Happy Christmas

Hi Flowers

congratulations.....sounds like you are doing really well

16 - 18 hours sleep a day ??? ok, maybe some babies.....don;t worry, your baby hasn't read the book, she doens;t know what she is 'supposed' to do !

of course . leave her to cry while you go to the loo....she;ll get the hang of you coming back...!

8 hours a night is fantastic!!! have you tried putting her down for a sleep in the cot/ moses basket, see if she settles better there....

you could carry her in a sling during the day, which will leave your hands free to do jobs...

of course it gets easier ! she is still adjusting to life outside the womb...everything is new and it takes time to adjust

ensure she doens;t get over-stimulated, which makes it harder to settle to sleep....babies can get surprisingly tired , simply from being awake, having a feed and a cuddle at this stage.....

go with the flow,, feed her when she is hungry, and relax about what the books say !

also, try swaddling, that is very comforting for a new born too !

The first six weeks suck. You're just getting out of that.

It's normal for her to want to be on or with you all the time - until pretty recently, she was inside you.

Have you got a sling? She might sleep in that. Or a flat pram?

Of course it's fine to leave her to cry so you can get necessary things done. But if you get a sling, you can minimise how often you have to do that, which is going to be easier for you and her both.

Congratulations, flowers1. Well done for surviving the first 6 weeks.
It's very daunting when you have to look after the baby on your own but infact, this will boost your confidence. Honest!
It's absolutely fine to leave the baby to cry when you need the loo or have a shower. Not very relaxing I know but you will need your time too.
Babies of this age like lots of bodily contact. Don't be hard on yourself if you don't get jobs done. It won't be the end of the world!! Take it easy. It's very hard adjusting to motherhood. I promise you it does get easier, it's just a very steep learning curve at the mo. You'll find lots of support here. Don't let it get you down. Try and enjoy these young baby days. Good luck.

Lots of good advice from people here flowers1. I agree, the first six weeks are very difficult, or can be. You may find that when you leave dd to crywhile you go to the loo/have a shower that she will go off to sleep by herself. I found I was much busier with my second, couldn't get to him so quickly and he sorted himself out before I reached him. It's possible. I agree, poor old dd is getting used to life outside the womb, if you can enjoy using a sling during this time and then maybe at three months you could start trying to get her to sleep in the cot/moses basket alone by rubbing her back in the dark etc. You'll get tips here on specifics if you ask.

when you DH goes back to work, make sure you get out and about, NCT groups or baby groups or anything so that a) dd may sleep in the pram and b) you get some adult company to keep your spirits up.

Keep posting, you'll get help here. Well done for the first six weeks.

Thanks to everyone who has replied, it is encouraging to hear that things will feel easier.

Can anyone recommend a good and easy to use sling, as this is something I could try? Thanks

agree with other posters. i found the first 6 weeks pretty grim - took me a good 6 weeks to start recovering from the birth, aside from having a baby to deal with! re:sleep - it's amazing that however much they are meant to sleep, it's all in broken up phases, so you don't feel you get much of a chance to recover in between. The 8 hours at night is good - so I think you have to accept that she won't sleep as well during the day.

re:slings - my friend found a huggababy sling very useful ( it's nice because a small baby can lie down in it). the bogstandard tomy ones you find in boots etc aren't all that great - they can strain your back a bit, particularly with an older baby. but don't put too much pressure on yourself to get things "done" - as long as you all have cleanish clothes, something too eat, and the kitchen isn't a health hazard, that's about all you need atm!

Babies get to 12 weeks old and it's like magic. They start whacking toys, blowing bubbles, and giggling. Newborns are BLOODY HARD WORK!

Try putting her next to the washer while it's on spin, or the tumble dryer. They like that.

I'm afraid you need to abandon ideas of 'getting stuff done'. You won't yet. Concentrate on the baby and yourself. It gets easier, when she is napping regularly and playing with toys, you will have more time for the house. Until then, don't worry about it.

and if you can beg borrow or steal a swing, some babies take to them like no-ones business, but no point shelling out full whack for one if you don't know that yours will like it.

Do you have a baby swing? Ds practically lived in his the first 3 months. He loved it and would nap like crazy.

Even though the first few weeks feel like hell, when your baby starts crawling and becoming more independent, you will miss these first few weeks when they are so small and need you for everything.

pmsl at the cross post - great minds think alike eh!

Yup.

Flowers don't worry about your baby crying if you leave the room. I always figure that the best lessons my kids can learn is that mommy may leave, but she'll always come back.

do you have a bouncy chair?i donr think i'd have survived without those,particularly with my 2 girls cos they were so nosey even at that age they didnt like sleeping through the day but would sit quietly as long as they could see what was going on
try putting music on as well,not kiddy stuff,decent music that you like yourself,especially stuff you listened to when pregnant.
babies do get alot easier at around 3 months when they start playing and becoming more interested in whats going on around them.
and as for having the parenthood thing 'cracked',i reckon i'd just about started to suss it out when i had my 3rd baby....i still dont know what the hell im doing when it comes to ds1,and he's 9 next month

I have a 17 week old and it does get easier - sleep getting worse ! But leaving on her own and being able to entertain herself much more. Agree don't worry about the house, sort out easy to eat (with one hand) lunches and stock up on drinks/books anything else you need each time you leave your baby if you don't like letting them cry. Good luck !

I used to pop ds in his cot under a mobile if I needed to go to the loo or have a quick shower. Used to just about keep him occupied long enough and I think your dd would be old enough to focus on one now??

Also, on the basis of my antenatal group's experience, I think that most newborn babies tend to stay awake for about 1.5 to 2 hours before they get tired, but not all of them know how to go to sleep. So start looking for tired signs - yawning, rubbing eyes, pulling at their ears, etc. - around 1.5 hours after she wakes up from her last nap. If you don't look for them, it's quite easy to spot them and once I realised this, my ds went from being awake virtually all day to having a few naps of about 30mins to 1 hour...

Sorry - quite easy to miss them, not spot them!!

Hi Flowers - hope your first Christmas with DD was wonderful. Just wanted to suggest borrowing a vibrating bouncy chair or a swing for a bit of eace during the day - or buy one if you can and are planning to have more - our vibrating chair gives me half and hour here and there to have a shower or wash up, or have a cuppa!

Cuddle your DD as much as you can/she wants - they don't stay this little that long. With regards to a sling - I have a bushbaby cocoon which is great in that you can take the baby off ithout removing the straps (I think baby bjorn may have one that does that too) but I also have a homemade 5m length of fabric that I use as a sling too and I have to say it's much more comfy if a bit faffier to tie - you can find instruction for that here and tying instructions here .

hope this is useful

The first few months are very hard. Definately you can leve them to cry for a few mins. My 2nd was left to cry for ages while I put first to bed etc. I find it hard to leave them to cry if I'm not doing something else. i could never get the hang of the whole controlled crying thing (or anyother sleep 'solution') mine still dont sleep and end up in my bed most nights. With No1 I carried him everwhere and No2 spent nearly every waking minute in a baby sling so I could carry on with No1. Probably why I don't have a No3! It gets better as they get older and you can play with them (then even better when they can play together!) Good luck. J

I used to take my DS into the bathroom with me (in his moses basket) when I had a shower. He would have been fed & changed, so knew there wasn't too much up with him, and I found that the roar of the shower used to calm him down, and sometimes he would nod off for 40 mins or so, while I got myself dressed and ready to face the day.

At this stage as other people have said, just concentrate on the basic, make sure both of you are fed, clean and dressed. Anything else is a bonus . I found just managing to have a quick shower everyday and get dressed made me feel so much better. Now DS is 5 months he is so much more entertaining, and I feel like I know him so much more. He will now play in his cot whilst I have my shower (wasn't going to drag that into the bathroom ) and gives me a big cheesy grin when I come back.

I used to bring the buggy into the house, put hte baby in it and rock her to sleep and leave her to sleep there while I had a moment. It does get easier. You might try putting her in the buggy while you eat.

Loads of fab advice here.

As others said the first 6 weeks really blow, then the next 6 are slightly better before suddenly around 12 weeks, it all gets a little easier...

Its fine to leave her to whinge while you go to the loo, as long as she is somewhere safe. My DS would never do the bouncy chair/ swing/ sling thing. Hated them all, and boy did he tell me that!! Hving said that he would sleep 12 hours a night, and have three 1-2 hour naps a day once I stuck him in a routine which he took to like a duck to water. That was at 6 weeksish.

How is she in herself? Is she a happy little girl? The other thing that helped DS hugely was a cranial osteopath that helped him with a headache and some digestive problems.

Thanks to everyone for your replies, this encouragement really helps.

I have just had quite a bad day with DD. She appears to have had a bad attack of colic (although to be honest, I don't know why she cries, and this is something I find upsetting). Normally I rely on breast feeding to calm her down, but she has been pulling herself off the breast with a cry, only to be desperate to latch back on. She seems to be very unhappy and unsettled.

This morning, I left her to cry for 15 minutes in her moses basket whilst I was in the room doing some chores. She didn't calm down and I feel guilty about doing this.

I take a lot of comfort from hearing about other's experiences, and am just desperate for this stage to pass, as I hate seeing DD so unhappy.

flowers, try not to think that crying = unhappy. As a tiny baby, crying is her only way of communicating with you. It says "I want something" - but not what she wants because I would guess most of the time she doesn't know what she wants anyway!

Don't feel guilty about leaving her to cry. Lots of people have different opinions on this, but with my ds (my third child) I found that he needed to have a cry in his moses basket before he went to sleep. I found it really hard at first but after a while I realised that when I put him in his basket and left him to cry himself to sleep, he slept better and more deeply and woke up in a better mood! Go figure . If you want to give it a go but feel that listening to her crying would upset you, get the vac out or turn on the washing machine, or put some music on - it won't seem as bad then. Leaving her to cry a little won't damage her - at all.

And just to add to what others have said, all children are different and the books don't take account of this.

sometimes it can be that you're just trying too many different things and they just want some peace and no stimulation at all. it's hard because you want to find some way to stop the crying but all the attention and trying can get too much.

Well done for getting through the first 6 weeks, that's the hard bit done . It gets easier all the way now (at least, until potty training!).

Don't worry about leaving her to cry a little. Our son tends to cry for quite a bit just before he goes off to sleep. If it wasn't for the fact he is our third, I wouldn't know that and would be picking him up all the time thinking he was hungry. I can also buy a bit of time when he is crying by switching on the hoover as he loves that noise.

Re the crying/colic - cranial osteopathy worked wonders for us.

Good luck, you seem to be doing really well and I think your confidence will grown once your husband has gone back. Personally, my husband always goes back to work really quickly after we have a baby because I find otherwise that I just lie there wondering how I will cope when he has gone. I've found the worrying about it far worse than the reality once it comes.

miaou makes an excellent point about the crying....doesn;t always mean 'i'm unhappy' ! hold onto that thought..you will get to know all the different cries.....you are getting there x