What do you wish you'd known about the first 6 months??

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ds is just coming up to his 6 month milestone. just wondering what everyone else would've liked to have known about the early days...looking back at them from a safe-ish distance

That if you make sandwiches while the baby is asleep mid-morning (even better get DH to do it before he goes to work) you can eat lunch before tea-time, even with a baby attached to your nipple.
Oh, and there's no such thing as a perfect mother, so no point in driving yourself nuts trying to achieve perfection.

That shopping in Waitrose once a week is all the entertainment a baby needs.

That people who asked me "Is it your first baby" could be immediately thwarted from giving unwanted advice by me replying "No, it's my 6th"

That all the problems do resolve themselves, with or without mummys help.

That babies haven't read the parenting guru guides
That puree is a waste of energy
That beta blockers make the whole thing warm and fuzzy (had them for BP, but only just realised that is why is was all sooooo chilled for the first 6 weeks)

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I'm with MI on this. Wish someone had told me " yes, it seems like hell at the moment, but it will get better and you can do it".

Would also have liked someone to have told me to phone NCT helpline or La Leche or log on to kellymon ( or MN) instead of sobbing and screeching through trying to bf and ultimatly giving up within about 2 or 3 weeks. ( I knew the help was out there, just scared to ask!)

That your body takes ages to feel like yours again and it's NORMAL.

To train DP EARLY.

That it's ok to enjoy nap times.

To be proud of what you can do not ashamed of what you can't.

To push if you know something is wrong with your baby.

To enjoy that time when all they do is sleep.

That mumsnet existed

That I shouldn't have been expected to do anything except enjoy my baby

I wish I'd known about the breastcrawl and had ds co sleep with me from day one.

ahhh! dd just gone 6 months and was thinking about this the other day. My very first mn thread was a call for help about getting dd into a routine
I wish that in the 1st 6 wks I had known about mn so that I hadn't ever bothered worrying about the routine.
Once mn was on the scene it was all ok

I found that I got lots of rest in the first few weeks as everyone was so eager to help - lucky me!
its a different story now however....

that all the weight I lost as soon as d was born starts to creep back up on you after 6 months of sitting on your arse bf all day

I agree with MotherInferior. The first six weeks were hideous. It has got better and better from that point on.

I wish I'd known that if your nipples bleed there is something wrong with your latch, WHATEVER the midwife says. It needs sorting!

I also wish I'd had mumsnet then, it has helped so much.

I wish someone had told me that bf would not necessarily happen automatically and that the medical profession might well be well-meaningly out to derail my bf.

Apart from that, the first 6 months were OK. We hit a hideous patch in our marriage around the 7/8 month mark, though - so I suppose I would extend the thread title to 'the first year' and say I wish I'd known that it might, at least temporarily, have a profound effect on the way dh and I saw and treated each other.

I also really wish that I had known collostrum would not fill my baby and that I would be feeding dd round the clock for the first 3 days.
At the time I thought I wasn't doing well enough/didn't have enough milk etc.

I wish I'd known that whatever I was worried about one week would have miraculously resolved itself by the next week, whereupon I would find something else to worry about, which would miraculously resolve itself.....

Gosh - I was so knackered the first 3 months I felt I may have died from exhausion (no wonder sleep deprivation is used as an effective torture method).

My only advice to any new mum - throw away any books about routines, say 'thanks' to anybody who gives you any well meaning advice but don't acknowledge what they said.

Imagine that if you lived in a cave with no watch to tell the time and no noseyparker telling you what do do. How would you care for your baby? For me whatever situation I have been in with my baby this analogy always works. Uunfortnately I only worked out this advice for myself since lo was 6 months old...

I wish I'd used a sling much earlier and really enjoyed being close to him.

all the above but more than anything agree with MI: those first few weeks are terrible and if you are not careful they turn into months. Now I make sure that I tell every new mum that! One should know and get ready so not to feel awful for not enjoying it. I don't understand why a lot of mum in RL are not honest about it. all the mums I know they start off saying how lovely it is and then once I say that I found it quite the opposite at first they take out a sigh of relief and spill their own bins! why? why? who do we pretend for?

and yes it gets so much easier and fun and delight... love it now!!

like berolina I lost it at 7/8 months. I was too exhausted: mind you i keep pretending I could have the same life as before, which in a way was good as I went out a lot - too ehausted at times though!

anyway as I am going to go through all this again quite soon I hope I will remember all this when needed...

That cluster feeding was normal

That there was no need to puree

That the things I was doing would NOT make a rod for my own back in any way shape or form

It's all a series of phases, some better than otehrs

Actually the main thing is I wish I hadn't been influenced by my mother in any way, shape or form about crying babies. I remember being in hospital on the very first night and genuinely (stupidly) worried about cuddling DS in case it spoilt him. How stupid can anyone get?!

I wish I listened to my mum and not the midwife and put something on my cracked/bleeding nipples straight away.

That MNers are always right, and that it is always a growth spurt, and it will pass (even if the next one comes up so so so quickly!).
And I wish I'd been much more forceful about doing nothing for the first two weeks. DH was looking for work and we were living with my Dad, so DH was stressed out and I was trying to help him, and my Dad kept telling me that I had to have family visit. Only after did it occur to me that when I was born, Mums spent at least a week in hospital, so he'd never really dealt with a tiny newborn. Next time, I'm taking to bed for the first fortnight!

That your entire friends and family do not have to come and see the baby the same day your milk comes in. That by and large little babies need to sleep after 2 hours awake. That it doesn't matter if they don't take a bottle and 'free you up' to express and go out. That if you stop counting the nightfeeds and cosleep it doesn't seem so dreadful. That it's normal to think at 6 weeks What the f. h. have I done.

That it goes so quickly.