Please tell me honest reality of having a newborn

[kidsanddogs10]

Can anyone describe how the first few weeks of having a baby are really like?

Some people say it's amazing, some say awful. It's hard to understand. What can I really expect?

I am having a planned c section.

I have been round babies my whole life and have stepchildren from when they were 2 and 3 so I am aware of the impact kids have. Just never done the 0-2 stage before!

Thanks all 😊

As others have said it really does depend!

Number 1 factor is the baby itself. You cannot predict or control their health or tempering. My eldest had colic and very irregular sleep, and i spent 6 weeks sleepibg propped upright with her on my chest. My twins cluster fed in the evenings but we're otherwise very settled in the day but monsters around 1-3am. My youngest basically slept for the first 3 months - most chilled baby I've ever come across.

The birth itself. I only had one section. I didn't much like it, I'll be honest. Day 2 was CRAP - they gaveme morphine because when they checked on me I was white and sweating. I'd pulled my stitches trying to be too active apparently... swelling took weeks to go down, but I was pretty much normally active by 3 weeks. Much preferred my vaginal births, especially the second one which was quick and I didnt tear so I basically felt normal within 12h.

What support you have. Newborns are not very interesting. Having someone to chat to makes a bit difference! Someone that will hang the washing is even better!

On balance I've enjoyed all of mine as newborns but only DC4 has been "easy". You really do need to be ready to go with the flow and just adapt. Some days you will get nothing done but cuddle your baby. That's fine. Enjoy this phase while you can if you can. Either way it is very short.

Definitely ignore anyone who claims it "relentless"

… was just bloody rude.

I have to agree with @LampHat. Just because you had a positive experience doesn't mean other people should be ignored. My daughter screamed day and night for months on end, which left me in a very dark place. I know that's not everyone's experience but it's quite rude to suggest that other people are being negative just because they had a different experience to you.

This is so unpleasant. “It’s hardly a shock to discover that a newborn needs around the clock care” – no, but it was a bloody shock to me when she screamed the vast majority of the day and never slept for longer than 20 minutes at a time, and that the cause – silent reflux and CMPA – would take 3 months to be diagnosed by which point I had attempted suicide. That’s not “parenting”. It was torture.

I don’t have any axe to grind, I’m delighted when people have a magical newborn experience and I would always say – as I did on this thread – that it’s all dependent on what kind of baby you get. If it didn’t feel relentless to you, you were lucky. That doesn’t mean those of us who struggled with the newborn stage were naive to the realities of parenting. We just had a rough ride. My daughter never had a toddler tantrum – but I’m not stupid enough to believe that’s down to me, I just got lucky.

The first year was the worst year of my life!
It was horrendous truly awful but what made it awful was not the baby but really shitty circumstances with a difficult baby.

From conception the following happened
Mild hyperemesis trimester 1
Car accident on the motorway probably a broken rib plus bruised ribs and sternum and mild whiplash
COVID lockdown 1 - one set of parents caring for 3 elderly relatives aged 85-90 no support in a protective bubble
Sickness returned trimester 3
Quick birth - laboured overnight. I struggled with this. I went to bed and essentially woke up with a baby. The bit in the middle was a blur. my waters broke at midnight and she was born before lunch.
Reflux and difficulties feeding began around 10 day clearly poor at 3 weeks horrendous at 3 months
Depression and psychosis started at 3 weeks horrendous by 3 months. As the reflux got worse so did my mood plus lockdown 2
At 4 months in the space of 3 weeks we had 2 relatives die, 2 in the ICU, my PIL was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and my daughter had a bad/strong immune response to her menB vaccine and ended up paeds. This was a blessing and a curse as we finally started on proper reflux treatment and started to explore allergies
Lockdown 3. Lost lonely now both sets of parents shielding to protect clinically extremely vulnerable people.
5 months started therapy
7 months PIL had a nearly fatal reaction to side effects from chemotherapy
8 months finished therapy no improvements felt pretty hopeless. Still struggling to manage my daughters allergies and reflux
10 months I went into a mother and baby unit and PIL had surgery 3h from home alone and had the week stay in ICU followed by another week in HDU
12 months me and PIL are home and recuperating at their house having been able to take extra precautions to minimise passing on any illness and allowing us to travel.

So yes. The first year was the worst year of my life. It would have been a shit year even if I hadn't had a baby and severe pnd. It would have been quite shit if I had the daughter I had and the depression I had but with family support. Some times in life the world conspires against you and that was the first year of my daughter's life.

Things I know now
-all births may need time to process what happened simple and difficult, easy and traumatic. There are very few things in life that means your world changes in a second and that's ok. Talk about it.
-you need to be your child's advocate and then some when you are faced with a crying baby and are a first time mum. I wish I had seen more GPs and not just stuck with the unhelpful one that told me what she thought I wanted to hear
-don't keep doing something because someone else tells you it will help and it's clear to you it won't. I did the full 12 weeks of therapy and it was clear at 4 weeks it wasn't the right fix. I wasted precious time
-there is nothing you can tell a health care professional that will shock them. Expressing thoughts around post natal depression/anxiety/psychosis won't make them think poorly of you as a mother or a danger too. I disclosed thoughts my daughter was evil and didn't exist. They just wanted to support me.

Support is so important people going through something similar or people that know you backwards are worth their weight in gold. I cannot thank my partner and parents in laws enough for supporting me through that first year. Twice we moved in with them for 2-3 weeks to be looked after. Once just as PIL was going through tests to be diagnosed and then again when I was leaving hospital.

She's 3.5 now beautiful and caring but still struggles with reflux and allergies. It's still a challenge but I'm well now and I have my parents for some support too now my grandparents have passed. I am so much better at advocating her needs now and things spiral less. I have grown into the job role of "mum" during those first weeks and months it can seem like every week more responsibilities are placed on your shoulders with out the resources to manage what you had previously been doing. During these weeks take a deep breath and ask for a steering hand. Best of luck!

I had a horrible pg and a horrible birth and I couldn't bf despite the harridan bf nurse telling me all the ways I'm a shit mother, alongside the SCBU lead nurse telling me my baby was stealing donated milk from babies who really needed it. Then when we got her home, she got reflux. Then there was the sleepless nights and the problems getting her preemie feeds from the chemist.

My friend used to take her out for a couple of hours so I could sleep because baby never did.

But eventually things settled. We got her into a nice nursery (the first one she went to was crap. Lesson learned). And we got on ok. She weaned and ate well. She was behind on her milestones but was catching up, and nursery helped. Because of the pg and birth I decided OAD. I couldn't go through it again for my MH, nor could her dad.

It's so variable though. Depends on you, your baby, your life experience/age, how much support you have etc. Some things you can't predict, like how the birth will go, whether you'll physically be able to breastfeed, your emotional state.

Luckily I knew in advance that it isn't always love at first sight and it can take a while to bond, otherwise this would have really freaked me out.

I struggled with each day not having a beginning and end, so just a constant round of feeding with no end in sight.

I wish I'd told my extended family to get lost and surrounded myself with friends - you need likeminded people around and I got lots of pressure to attachment parent and breastfeed, and no support for things like routine or daring to put the baby down.

Some women find they can't bear to be away from their baby. Others are desperate for a break and to hand them over to a partner or relative. Either is fine, the baby is being cared for, but you have to ignore the pressure to do the opposite!

I didn't realise how I'd have to become an advocate for my baby. That there isn't support out there and that I'd have to fight for us to get even a basic level of support for things like perinatal mental health.

I found it tiring, tough and amazing all at the same time. Around the 6 week mark it got significantly easier and I have loved the baby stage since then!

Oh and also the realisation that everyone thinks it's normal to not sleep for days eg if you have a sick child. That was a shock!

You can't predict what it will be like at all. My first was really hard due to premature birth, NICU, colic/reflux, relentless daily crying, not sleeping until 2 years, high maintenance etc etc. my second (newborn) has been easier so far even tho we had colic symptoms for a few weeks so I was really anxious it was a repeat of the first, but it's settled down and he's generally easier than older sibling. I do sometimes feel trapped.. but then I look at my lovely pre-schooler now who is much easier now and a joy to be around and I remember it gets better. I think the most common thing to struggle with is sleep deprivation so you'll definitely need support to catch up otherwise it just feels much worse. Both of mine were EMCS. The first took 6 months to recover truly due to going back and forth to NICU and never resting or eating well. My second I felt ok by 2-4 weeks and now 2 months on feel like my normal self. So really different experiences. Good luck.

Oh another thing I would say is I found it way easier once I embraced my instincts.
So, I wanted to cosleep and once I changed my mattress to a super firm one and started cosleeping about the 1 month mark, my baby slept so well and I breastfed lying down and life suddenly felt way easier. Or another example, once I stopped worrying about cluster feeding and just settled into feeding all day with a boxset and biscuits I was way happier. I wish I had put the majority of visitors off for about a week after the birth as I found it hard having visitors when I was trying to establish breastfeeding and hadn't had chance to have a shower etc.

It's horrendous.

I've had 2 ELCS and the recovery was embarrassingly easy for both of them. I was back to normal quicker than some fo my friends who had vaginal births.

I am...not a fan of the newborn stage. I find it so, so, SO boring. My first baby was really easy - barely ever cried, slept really well, never fussy and I still found it dull. You just do everything on a 3 hours cycle and it's like groundhog day. It gets MUCH better at about 6 weeks when they start smiling and interacting.

I agree, its one thing to put your experience across but don't tell the OP to ignore those that didn't have a dreamy time. I was expecting to be tired, but I wasn't expecting 4 hours of broken sleep a night for 4 months. DS never learned to connect sleep cycles and took an hour or rocking to settle him again for a 45 min sleep then repeat the rocking. I wish I knew that was a possibility instead of wondering what I'd done wrong.

And shower when the baby naps? I used to walk over 6 miles a day to facilitate naps, so that wasn't an option!

Life with our newborn felt like Groundhog Day! We were lucky as he went every 4 hours between bottles pretty much as soon as we got home! And even at nighttime so we weren’t overly exhausted. We got into a really good rhythm pretty quickly. He had colic so was quite difficult sometimes but around the 3 month mark it disappeared and he was loads better. He’s 2.5 now, always been quite a good sleeper except for his eczema which flared bad when he was 7/8 months, sleep regressions that didn’t last long or teething! The usual I guess!

I really loved the newborn days, I wasn’t a mum who napped when he did, I kept myself busy with housework or whatever and the baby weight dropped off me I was delighted 😅 if I had another one I’d be hoping to have pretty much the same experience again but I know it isn’t guaranteed 😂

I loved it. There were anxious moments and a severe lack of sleep (youngest wouldn't sleep at night, only in the day for at least 3 weeks) and the first had colic, but it was a beautiful and special time for me.

As almost everyone else has said- it depends on your baby’s temperament, how much support you’re getting and how much sleep!

My first was very fractious and unsettled for the first three months. It was HARD. I could not have predicted how rubbish lack of sleep would make me feel, and how low in mood. I had good support but found it all very hard. Like a PP, I masked this and pretended I was fine as all around me I could see Mums who appeared to be absolutely nailing it. Luckily I had a lovely group of NCT friends who all had babies around the same time, and bit by bit we all began to open up about our various challenges so I felt a lot less lonely then.

My second DC was a totally different baby- he slept and ate well from the word go, so I had decent stretches of 3 hours between feeds early on which enabled me to get more rest. Plus I was a lot less anxious second time round.