Is there really no time for a cuppa with a newborn?

[feijoo]

I am due in 5 weeks with my first born and one particular question keeps going around my head.

If newborns sleep up to 17 hours a day, why am I reading everywhere that there is no time for parents to make/drink a cuppa, go to the toilet, shower etc? I can't understand it. If baby falls asleep after a feed, you put them in crib/bassinet for their nap, why can't you make a cuppa?

I am very confused and starting to second guess myself - am I being naive? I fully understand that having a newborn is a relentless cycle of feeding, nappy change and sleep but I am quite keen to have my baby and get on with my life e.g. do things while they are sleeping.

Any clarification greatly appreciated. xx

And dealing with illness and death affects everyone whether they have children or not. My 85 year old neighbour was devastated when her cat died, even though she had no children.

Noone has said here that if your baby cries too much/sleeps too little/is overly needy etc etc that the parent is a failure. What people are saying to the OP is what has worked to create the desired effect for them. And going through the trial and error to make that happen and raise a more easy baby absolutely IS an achievement I’m afraid.
I have three DC’s, and read up around avoiding attachment issues etc whilst pregnant with my first as I’m a very pragmatic, easygoing person and knew I wanted to mitigate the chance of a ‘difficult’ baby in any way possible (clearly any health issues would be outside of my control, and each DC has in fact had something that afflicted them). All three have different personalities, different quirks etc, but I applied the same methods to all of them and they all responded virtually exactly the same. I don’t consider that sheer coincidence three times over. Although I had awful pregnancies with severe HG each time, the joy from making the ride as easy as possible once they arrived is what kept me coming back for more! They are all now happy-go-lucky, independent, resourceful little people, in contrast to my cousins DC’s - she did the virtual opposite to me and now has two pre-schoolers with separation anxiety who cannot be taken anywhere. Her life is miserable half the time, her marriage void of intimacy from co-sleeping etc etc, yet she warned me against the ‘cruelty’ of letting a baby cry for more than 30 seconds and similar nonsense. I repeatedly suggested my cousin put her babies down to stop them crying due to being completely overstimulated - she’d do it, it would work, but then as she’s a much more anxious person than me in general would find another excuse to interact with them and wonder why they’d start up again!
I definitely believe a lot of what you’re prepared to try as a parent depends on your personality as the parent, as opposed to the personality of the baby dictating matters. Achieving an outcome that means everyone in the household is as happy, satisfied and fulfilled as possible is the aim, and that’s never achieved by solely luck alone. So there is no shame or embarrassment in a sense of achievement for helping enable that through considered decision making and sticking to your guns, despite naysayers claiming you’re damaging your baby’s mental health and should in essence sacrifice your own instead!

To be clear, my reference to grief was specifically helping a child through grief.

Im not saying we can't share our positive stories too but, this obsession with being relentlessly positive is damaging to women who find things harder. Social media is full of it and it can be very isolating, especially with pnd etc., in terms of not seeing your own experience reflected. It's fine to normalise putting your baby first and resting as a new mum.

And if you think that was a mean post, you've not been around MN much!

This is all so horrible. Avoiding attachment issues...in a newborn...oh my god. My DS is perfectly happy to be without me now, but never would I have discouraged his needful me when he was small. I really hope the OP has checked out of this thread so they don't read such awful advice.

I repeatedly suggested my cousin put her babies down to stop them crying due to being completely overstimulated - she’d do it, it would work, but then as she’s a much more anxious person than me in general would find another excuse to interact with them and wonder why they’d start up again!

This is literally the opposite of my experience.

And my child is well adjusted while my friend's child who was left to cry and put in another room is anxious. Do I assume it is her shit parenting and I know better? No. But neither do you.

Yes, like everyone else is saying, you won't really know until the child is out. I had to sleep sitting on the floor, against the wall, cushions under my arms to support them, cradling a child in each arm because they wouldn't sleep unless I held them the entire time. They are a year and few months apart.

But you don't actually know if that's down to parenting or just the personalities.
They way you talk about your cousin comes across as patronising. I'd love to hear her side
And the other thing is, you don't actually know the effects on leaving your kids to cry later on in life.
I'd be careful about being too msig about it.

My cousin took your path and I witnessed her parenting style when she stayed at my granny's once. She had previously told me how sleep training took a few nights and her daughter went down so easily now. Except I saw and heard the opposite and in actual fact what she did was the absolute minimum you could for a child and then closed the door. The screaming lasted a long time and escalated so much even my husband mentioned about going in to get the poor kid. But my cousin actually acted like the night/bedtime had gone well.
Delusional really.

It simply comes down to a willingness to try different things to see if they work for you. If the opposite worked in your case without you having to try the alternative, that’s amazing. The alternative always worked for me so I didn’t have to try the opposite. What works for one someone else would categorise as being ‘shit’ parenting, whilst another would view it as good parenting. All entirely subjective, and ultimately utterly irrelevant as the important thing is EFFECTIVE parenting. My DC’s do not appear damaged in the slightest and I had an easy, enjoyable ride so it was totally effective for me 😊

Thank you for illustrating my point so eloquently @AudentesFortunaIuvat whilst attempting to rebut it.

@bussteward @MrsTerryPratchett - thank you for your ongoing sanity.

@feijoo - I really hope you get an easy baby, and I hope you enjoy every minute. And I hope you remember that those of us who don’t, aren’t shit at parenting, we actually are playing a fucking blinder with a crap hand. And, as @MrsTerryPratchett says, we wouldn’t swap our wonderful children for anything. And, as several posters have said, yes we’ve tried everything you might be tempted to suggest (short of repeatedly allowing our child to be in so much pain and distress that they vomit the only bit of nutrition they’ve managed to keep down).

It simply comes down to a willingness to try different things to see if they work for you.

<sigh>

I tried every 'helpful' suggestion short of extreme distress in me or DD. I was willing. She wasn't able.

I sympathise! I didn't sleep at all for a week after my daughter was born because she would only sleep on me. I did have other people to make me a cuppa though, thankfully!

Exactly. Why is this so hard to comprehend.

It's this attitude of "you didn't try everything, you didn't do it the correct way, didn't try for long enough" etc makes us sound like we are morons.

I don't remember not being able to have drinks/food etc. I was/am.single mum from outset and had a brilliant vibrating chair that baby could use from birth. Put baby in that and could get on with stuff..tea/shower etc. The chair was a godsend:)

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy That sounds awful if they were just screaming after they closed the door, clearly that option was absolutely not working for her and quite rightly she was delusional that it was. I didn’t leave my three to cry though, so not sure how you reached that conclusion? I’m saying I trained them not to cry when I put them down by singing their soothe song to them when they were put down, which I established during pregnancy due to a hack I’d read that meant they associated it with being comforted and safe. If the OP is worried about not getting time for a cup of tea etc if baby is crying, a short amount of time of them crying whist she boils the kettle, safe in a Moses basket in another room if the noise is too much, is in no way realistically going to have any long term effect so she shouldn’t feel guilty about that. So much pressure is put on parents to be available 100% of the time at the expense of their own sanity. Whenever parents need a moment they should be encouraged to take it worry free as long as their child is safe, and encouraged to try a variety of methods to achieve what they need from the situation without fear of judgement if that option isn’t the one in vogue at the time.

There definitely can be in the newborn stage. If any of my DCs went through a phase of wanting to sleep on me, I’d strap them into a sling/carrier to get on with any jobs or make a cuppa. Then sit down and drink it with them sleeping on me (and of course I’d be very careful with the hot tea in case anyone is panicking!)

bit harder when they are rolling/crawling etc but it’s doable don’t worry!

I’m saying I trained them not to cry when I put them down by singing their soothe song to them when they were put down

Do you honestly believe that we didn't try singing? And routine? And soothing cues?

You think we just stood there with a crying baby saying "duuuurrrrrrrrr" for hours?

Sleep up to 17 hours a day?? Hahahahaha

Yes, so so true. I have had people tell me their baby had reflux and then details emerge like…can be put in cot and goes off to sleep with no crying….and I’m just like, ok, they didn’t have reflux.

I think this is part of the reason why people whose children do have reflux get second guessed by others and told that ‘every baby spits up it’s normal’ (argghhh!). When my partner wasn’t well and we had an emergency night nanny with thirty years experience she told me the next day she had been scared. I had a postnatal doula tell me she had never known a child be sick so much. When I told people about that I think they believed me but my word wasn’t good enough.

shout out to all the real reflux mums here! The ones who can’t change the baby’s outfit once without changing it ten times before leaving the mat because each one gets soaked before you can even get it fastened up. The ones whose babies are sick during and after a feed, but also between feeds, and just before feeds. You are amazing!

I just laughed out loud at this

Yes! Yes! Guess what? We’ve actually tried the blindingly obvious. And the less obvious, and the really quite obscure. Obviously.

@SeverusSnapesTrueLove I’m not sure how you can equate trying to avoid attachment issues with ‘discouraging a baby’s need for their parent’?! As @Neurodiversitydoctor said, getting babies used to being soothed whilst in a cot/basket from the off is a proven way of avoiding the likelihood of separation anxiety. Those who choose to do that are still ensuring all their baby’s physical and emotional needs are met! If it doesn’t work for someone it doesn’t work, but there’s certainly no harm in trying, and very judgemental to suggest those parents don’t care about the welfare of their children. I’d have gone absolutely crazy if I’d literally had to hold my DC’s constantly and not be able to put them down to do things for myself, and knew that from deciding to grow my family, so made the conscious decision early on to try adopting practices that wouldn’t enable that behaviour. Fortunately they had the desired outcome for me. Three times. The OP should be entitled to read all the advice she invited and make her own decisions about what she’d like to try; it’s not for you to attempt to veto something just because you didn’t do it yourself I’m afraid.

All 3 of my newborns were fab, they slept well in the Moses basket downstairs after a fed , I was able to make and have lunch and coffee. I could do the housework and everything that needed doing , it was when they hit the moving/rolling stage I found it worst as they never stayed where you put them 😂

trying to avoid attachment issues

I can't imagine a scenario where I'd want a tiny newborn not to have attachment to their parent.

I have three. All were very different. I parented them according to their needs. None of them had "attachment issues"

Completely disagree with this as both my kids slept fine through noise…but woke up when it was silent at night…o had to use white noise extremely loudly for over 2 years with my daughter!!!
my next baby I am going to be completely silent around them for every nap 😂😂😂😂😂

Both mine were quite easy babies but I do remember going quite a while with both newborns without drinking a hot cup of tea. Tea had always gone cold by the chance I got to pick the cup up to drink it as I just found there was so much to do whilst baby slept. I bottle fed so sterilising bottles,making bottles, constant laundry, housework. I just remember not drinking hot tea for months. I got quite used to cold tea!