Newborn - when will it get better?

[Joppi]

I’m just over a week post c section and getting to grips with taking care of my newborn (FTM).

Of course I knew it we going to be hard but everything has been harder than expected - breastfeeding, baby doesn’t like being put down in side sleeping cot, bassinet etc so the only place to settle is on me/husband so we only get a few hours sleep as we take it in shifts to look after baby.

In the evening, sometimes nothing will work to stop the crying - baby has been fed, nappy is clean, have winded etc

With the frequency of feeding, it feels like the day revolves around feeding, getting baby to sleep, resolving crying and changing nappies with little time for anything else.

of course I’m grateful and happy with the new baby but also feeling exhausted and a bit overwhelmed.

I feel it’s not the done thing to air these feelings for fear of coming across as ungrateful but wondering if these are normal feelings and when does it start getting better?

Your baby sounds like the one I had 18 years ago. I gave in to the sleeping and we ended up buying a superking bed so she could sleep with us which I hadn't planned at all.
My view is that it gets easier from the start- slowly but easier and easier. Not everyone agrees but I think a high maintenance baby at the start when you're not used to it, having had a CS (which I had too) is the hardest part.
Good luck OP. Try and go with it if you can. There's nothing else you need to do at the moment except eat, sleep and look after your baby. Stay in bed all day if you want to. It'll change. Nothing is forever with babies and children.

Slowly and surely day by day. Then one day you'll notice you've had a full night's sleep

Oh OP, sending good thoughts to you.

I remember those mad first few weeks. It just all seems so impossible, and then you feel so guilty because you’ve got this beautiful baby and you don’t want to seem ungrateful but you just want to SLEEP and have a break and your whole world has turned upside down.

But it DOES get better and those feelings ease, I promise. I remember one night in the first few weeks, I threw myself on the bed in a massive drama moment, genuinely not knowing how me and DH would get through the night. And it was lockdown and we had nobody to help. I laugh about that moment fondly now.

I promise it gets easier. I think you’ve probably got another couple of weeks of adjusting, then you build a mini-routine and it gets easier. And when the smiles come, it makes it all worth it.

Last but if mini advice from me - we had the same issue with contact sleeping. DS wouldn’t settle anywhere but on us, and it was exhausting. But now he’s 3 and I wish I’d leaned into that more. He rarely cuddles to sleep now, and I weirdly miss it.

anyway, sending massive good vibes, you got this

Congratulations on your LO!

Be kind to yourself, you're a week in. My LO is 7 months and when I look back at texts I sent in the first week post EMCS, I was crazy with hormones etc.

It will get better, take each day at a time. It'll take a couple weeks to start to improve. If not, contact your perinatal mental health team.

Sending you hugs and congratulations

It does change and some stages are easier than others. Newborn is hard due to sleep deprivation, the relentlessness, hormones and the fact that you are in recovery yourself. It's easier if you can accept this as normal but know it doesn't last forever. Also rest when you can and accept all offers of help. And look out for yours and babies best interests don't worry about anything else

Oh and the witching hour thing is totally normal

Yes! It was a like a switch went off in my LO at 4.40pm every night for 5 weeks

I had this exact scenario after my c section, and I really feel for you. If there is another person that can come over and help you, eg someone to have the baby sleep on them while you rest, do it.

We ended up cosleeping as a necessity because of this, so I’d recommend giving it a go following the safe sleeing guidelines.

You need to adjust your expectations. What else needs to be “got done”?

your baby is behaving as a newborn baby. They should still be inside you which is why few of them like being put to sleep on their own on a surface. Your voice and heartbeat are soothing to them.

have a read up on the fourth trimester, outsource all cleaning, cooking and other domestics to others and enjoy your baby.

Yep it’s shit!! And normal. We wondered wtf we had done.

I can’t give you a timescale for when it gets better as it varies hugely from baby to baby. For me it was hell for ages but then improved about 4/5 months. For some, things improve a couple of weeks in, then get hard again around 4 months, then better again.

I will say, getting feeding sorted is key. Get feeding sorted and the rest follows. A baby who has feeding issues will not settle well. If you are having any issues at all with BF then try to see a BF adviser asap (local BF group, or lactation consultant if you have the £).

Good luck! It does get better I promise.

This is all so normal - both your feelings and your baby's behaviour. I promise it does get better, little by little! For a while you're going to be in feeding mode, so accept that that's going to be your main mission for a while. Eventually baby will start to go longer stretches and become more efficient at getting out more milk in less time (or so the legend says - mine sure didn't 😅)

In terms of breastfeeding I found it was suddenly a lot easier around the 2 week mark. After that we didn't really have issues, but getting through those two weeks was a long slog.

A good tip I heard before I had mine was think back to two weeks ago and see how different things were. It's a little easier than back then! That probably doesn't give you much help now, 1 week post partum, but I hope it does help in the next few months 💐

I’m 4 weeks into my second newborn and it’s utter hell. Granted, I seem to produce relatively grumpy, fractious babies who don’t breastfeed calmly and need a lot of help to go to sleep. Both have been tongue tied and both have awful evening screamies so I can sympathise with you there. Both have screamed solidly in the pram and both have been very hit and miss in the sling. Some newborns are just a lot more tricky than others - it’s really not that you are missing a trick or anything like that. I was beside myself with DC1 but now I’m just sucking it up and reminding myself that it’s all one big fucking phase.

The evening screamies tend to start to subside at 8 weeks and will likely be done by 3-4 months. For us it was bang on 12 weeks.

Breastfeeding also gets easier by 12 weeks and tends to be less all consuming. Met up with my friend who has a 4.5 month old and she went 2 hours between feeds. I’d forgotten how quickly that actually does happen.

A lot of ongoing improvement will depend on your babies temperament. Mine have get progressively happier and easier with each developmental milestone, but some people wake up at 12 or 14 weeks to a different baby. You can’t call it at the moment.

My only advice would be to try and watch wake windows. I’m saying that slightly tongue in cheek as for some sleep resistant babies that’s really difficult. But newborns need to sleep a lot (like, every hour really maximum) and if you’ve been gifted one that didn’t get the memo trying to get them to sleep will be all you do for a long time. Have you sound a sure fire way to get DC to sleep?

Hang on in there. I’ve adored parenting older babies, toddlers and pre schoolers.

It sounds normal for a new born, and they do get cranky in the evening.
The one thing you need to remember is that every is a phase. They grow out of these things, but move on to a new one.

It’s gruelling, isn’t it?

By all means try safe co sleeping but if you don’t want this then I did find my DS got into a bit of a better routine at about eight weeks where as long as he was properly asleep you could get him in his crib and then he’d sleep soundly until about 2. So I could get a good block of sleep which made a huge difference.

My DD is 3 weeks and 3 days and I hear all you’ve said! Witching hour (or hours!) exhaustion, feeding worries and problems, contact naps while the laundry piles high and the house looks like the proverbial bomb has hit it.

It DOES get easier and then you end up forgetting the hard stuff so newborns seem so snuggly and easy and you have another with a toddler also in tow …

Hi @Joppi
FTM too xx
I totally hear you and it's normal to feel like this.
My DD is 10 months now and i'm thinking the time has gone by too quickly lol. It will get better hun xx

Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement, it has given me alot of reassurance and support. Good to hear this is normal and others had the same feelings. You feel bad for having these feelings when everyone is expecting you to be bouncing off the walls, but sounds like these mix of feelings is to be expected!

I’ll look into the safe co sleeping as some posters have suggested but sounds like there is light at the end of the tunnel!

and I had no idea the evening crying was a thing! Witching hour?! I’ll have to look that up x

If your antenatal teachers haven't prepared you for the witching hour, they're missing something crucial! It's totally normal and is related to your milk production hormones.

Get the breastfeeding sorted, that will help. Look for a good local support group- MWs are great but you need specialist face to face support.

Try putting baby down on their side first- so get them properly asleep (lift their arm, when it flops they are in a deeper sleep), then put them down on their side and very gently and slowly roll them to their back. This prevents the startle reflex kicking in.

This is so so normal. I was desperate for someone to tell me the answer when I had my first. We'd known we would be tired but nothing prepared us for just how tired and overwhelmed we would be, how hard BF was (another tongue tied baby here). For me it took at least 3 months but I did have bad PNA.

What antenatal teachers?

We did NCT first time but not everyone has a spare £300!

NHS classes? Some areas have other lower cost/free pregnancy classes. I didn't specify NCT.

Has anyone used the Snoo crib and does that help?

Firstly congratulations! Secondly I promise that it does get easier. My little one is 7 months old now and everything is so completely different to those newborn weeks. It can feel relentless at times but before you know it you’ve found what works for you and you’re coming out of that newborn blur.

The best bit of advice I can give you is, if you can, to not get too caught up in thinking I should be up and about now because it’s “daytime”. During those early weeks if baby is settled or asleep then the best thing you can do for both of you is be resting or asleep too, whatever time of the day that is. Also don’t underestimate C-section recovery. Listen to your body, try not to force yourself to be back to normal straightaway and take your pain killers!

Good luck you’ve got this!

Congratulations OP. It doesn’t just get easier, it gets awesome, and quicker than you’d imagine.

Keep an eye on the crying, DT cried excessively round the clock and turns out they had a milk allergy that I didn’t know about until they were 5 months. 5 months of crying all day every day is a killer. Some crying is totally normal, but listen to your mothers intuition if you think something more is going on and speak to the HV or check back in on mumsnet (I wish I had!!!).

Say yes to anyone willing to walk the baby round the block in the pram. Anyone offering will be doing so genuinely, no reason to say no. And if no one is offering, see if you can persuade a grandparent to do so! Even 20 minutes break helps.

This period totally sucks, you're not alone OP. The visits and presents start to slow down, the sleep deprivation stacks up, your hormones are still mental, your relationship with your partner is under strain, your birth wounds are still healing and it all seems impossible.

It really does all feel better, soon - it can feel like an eternity when you're in it though. At about a month breastfeeding felt easier, at about three months DC seemed to have a lot more personality and smiled a bit, 5/6 months you get to start weaning and they sit and roll and play with toys a bit.

Things that helped us were:

• co-sleeping - we had a co-sleeper cot so could sometimes transfer the baby in
• baby in a soft sling a lot to help with crying, much easier to bob or jig than holding with your arms
• going for a walk with the baby in the witching hour - even if the baby cries, only one of you is having to go through it, but sometimes the walk (pram or sling) calms them down
• singing to the baby, which calms you down as well and makes you take deeper breaths
• having a daily 5 minute thing you do for yourself - quick shower, listen to music and dance around, walk round the block etc
• I used to have kindle on my phone and read books while feeding, the crappiest easy reading, to keep my brain ticking over a bit
• find a baby group or breastfeeding support group nearby, you'll find other mums have very similar experiences
• make sure you eat and drink enough to keep you vaguely healthy, it's easy to live off biscuits and pasta but this will make you feel crappier - make sure you have fruit, raw carrot etc if cooking anything is too ambitious

It's fine for the changing/feeding/burping etc cycle to be the only focus right now, this is a tiny window of time and babies take very intensive attention, especially right at the start. New parenthood is a huge adjustment, be kind to yourself and just take it one step at a time.

Soon, I promise.

By 8 weeks things are SO much better.

and if you have another child you know - the shit bits don’t last!

I think it's also really common to imagine what parenthood will be like, see other parents and think you'll do better, see adverts and think having a baby is all about just tucking them into a cot where they magically go to sleep etc. Reality whacks you on the arse! It's not just you.

The 24/7 nature of it and constantly having to work out if you're doing the right thing and dealing with the scale of the responsibility and secretly wanting to run away and sleep in a hotel room with room service and cocktails - it's all overwhelming but you get to grips with it eventually.