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

Hmm, so it sounds like things have improved in some hospitals anyway?

Risk is a weird one, isn't it? I have a friend who crashed her car on the motorway she was so exhausted after six months of not being able to put her baby down - in her case her baby had severe reflux and later turned out to have ASD so very difficult to put him down.

Crikey, that's awful. It also coincides with the first lockdown too so presumably was very difficult to access support even for those new parents who do have friends and family around.

Interesting levels since covid have gone up. People talk about how having a permanently baby attached to you was normal in the old days of hunter gathering. It wasn't we lived in large tribal groups so childrearing was shared. Many somen would be lactating at the same time , nowadays you are expected to do the old ways of childrearing but in a nuclear family set up which is lonely . Humans didn't do that.

Who actually gave the advice not to put baby down?

That's Covid related

OP can you come back and update the thread once Dd is a month old and let us know if you managed a hot brew? Good luck x

Great post. 👍

The evidence regarding room sharing, is that the baby takes cues from the mother regarding regulation of breathing- which is why same room, cot close to bed is recommended. The baby doesn't get the same feedback if they are in a different room with a monitor. Same room sharing also reduces how deeply the baby sleeps, which is a GOOD thing, because deep sleeping babies also forget to breathe. There's quite a significant amount of evidence regarding how room sharing is considerably safer. Thankfully, we're talking about very small numbers of fatalities, so chances are minimal anyway that anything will happen. It's the same re sleeping on their back. Most babies sleep best on their tummy, and because of that, are more likely to die (increased risk of suffocation, increased risk of rebreathing CO2, sleeping more deeply and forgetting to breathe and the startle reflex (which shocks them to breathe and wake slightly) is reduced when on their front.

So it's not about YOU as the parent being able to meet their needs physically, but that the baby needs your physical presence to regulate themselves in to staying alive.

@Ungratefulorunreasonable I knew the theory about regulating breathing, but I was wondering what the actual numbers we are talking about are? Because if it's a tiny increased risk, it doesn't seem worth the problems it causes TBH. For instance, how does the risk of putting your baby in its own room with a monitor compare to the risk of travelling in a car?
Because if it's around the same, it seems to me that a lot of mums are really compromising their mental health for a tiny increased risk

All I’ve been able to find is that it can reduce SIDS by up to 50% which does sound huge but since SIDS is already rare, the actual number without the up to 50% reduction is already going to be incredibly low.

Especially if you do other things to prevent SIDS such as place baby on back.

I understand why some parents want to follow the recommendation but I also think it’s fine for other parents to assess the risk and make a difference choice.

Mine has been in his own room since 3 months and I’m comfortable with that risk assessment.

I am not sure new mums are empowered to risk assess actually. The rules are followed so slavishly and any digression is met with reactions such as some of those on this thread. Social media has a lot to answer for.
I remember reading a post on here a few years ago now, from a mother of a five-month-old who was not sleeping. She gave a blow-by-blow account of her evening and night, from eating in the dark at 7pm because she had to be with her baby at all times, to going to the loo (and waking baby), her husband coming to bed (and waking baby) opening the window (and waking baby) and I was honestly aghest that this seemed to be considered normal nowadays.
When is the time to chill with her partner, when is her downtime? Sitting eating dinner on her bed alone in the dark sounded so needlessly miserable and she had been doing it for five months presumably.
And the responses? Enjoy the milky cuddles and you're doing great OP.
I would want to shoot myself

Attachment parent is in fashion because its apparently biologically what we are supposed to do, babywearing , cosleeping, extended breastfeeding. Yes but we used to lived in large groups of 20-30 so actually had lots of help with childrearing. It was never just the mum but more a communal activity

Social Media definitely makes things more polarised and seems to make people feel like you have to do something exactly perfectly following best practice advice 100% of the time and this is not sustainable, and neither has it EVER been what "official advice" intended!

I had babies in 2008, 2018, 2021. The advice hasn't (much) changed. The way people interpret it has gone insane, and there's a really nasty culture on social media of policing that other people are following advice correctly, and "I'm following more advice than you", along with weirdly black and white ideas like thinking somehow that not following a guideline one time is very likely to cause irreversible damage, so the policing is not even coming from a nasty place I don't think, it's a place of anxiety and concern, but it's completely overblown and can be perceived as "You're not a good mum".

So I think spending too much time online really doesn't help this. It can be incredibly toxic. Whereas when you spend time with other parents IRL you can see that people don't do things perfectly 100% of the time and nothing bad happens. It helps you unclench.

AP was a thing in online circles 15-20 years ago, it's not some new fad.

It's just the social media intensity effect which is new.

I think most of us just follow it loosely tbh, especially with second children etc. It's only very anxious parents that I've met that follow it slavishly.

For us, they stayed in a Moses basket in the evening until they started getting woken by us watching tv etc (with the light on, normal volume). That was 3 months ish, then had the evening upstairs with the monitor, but as they were in our room, weed be there for most of the night.

Naps if not in the sling or pram were in a Moses basket or blanket on the floor with us vaguely in the same area of the house, unless going for a quick shower. So not left at the bottom of the garden at 3 weeks, but not lugging the Moses basket to the loo either.

I think it's more common for people to find a compromise that works than people crying with hunger and desperate for the loo because they can't be more than 10m away from a Moses basket.

There's such pressure to follow the rules perfectly though that it puts a lot of pressure on new mums.

This is what was all over the walls when I had my baby 7 months ago, wasn’t there when I had my daughter 5 years ago. They spoke to me about it before discharge too. I thought it was a nationwide campaign but maybe not. I’ll put the link to the campaign too if anyone wants to have a look. X

What ICON Stands For
ICON is all about helping people who care for babies to cope with crying.
ICON stands for ….

• I – Infant crying is normal *C –Comforting methods can help *O – It’s OK to walk away *N – Never, ever shake a baby

https://iconcope.org/about-icon/

@jannier it's all-pervasive from midwives and HVs- keep the baby with you at all times because of SIDS, combined with lots of: it's normal for babies to not want to be put down/fourth trimester/lots of lovely snuggles/you can't cuddle them too much/watch a box set.

No one seemed to take a step back and realise the reality of the advice meant a new mum on her own for the majority of the time holding a baby and unable to get any rest!

Oh the ICON stuff looks like a great improvement on the advice we got! Although sad to imagine why it was necessary to bring it in...

After the baby stage I read Emily Oster's book Cribsheet which is amazing for actually taking the research into a lot of this stuff, assessing its quality (a lot of it is poor quality!) and what it's actually saying so you can make your own mind up. I wish it had been around to read when I was pregnant, instead of the utter drivel I ended up being given to read.

I realised a few months in that the SIDS guidance didn't make sense - apparently it was better for DD to be in the same room as me but in a giant living room more than 10 metres apart(!) instead of upstairs in our bedroom very close to where DH was working in the next room!

No idea why you think the SIDS guidance doesn't make sense - have you conducted extensive research in this area?

And I will forever be grateful to the friend who had twigged early on that the safe sleep guidance says the baby should be in the same room as an adult, it doesn't have to be the Mum!

Because DD would have been too far away from me for any awareness of my breathing regulating hers - enormous and oddly shaped living room. Yet it was technically within the guidance as 'same room'.

Whereas she could be upstairs sleeping and within a few steps of DH working, yet that was a different room!

Ha! That's a very good point.
with your room, if it was large and an odd shape you know it doesn't fit well into what they're talking about. Even so, being upstairs in a different room to your dh would not have been the safest choice. You could move a bit closer in the large room I would think.

It was one of the things we got really stressed about at the time - I remember being in tears at toddler group as not sure what to do and being reassured by mums of older children! DD was getting unsettled by lights and TV noise so we needed to put her down further away from it - so we used the furthest portion of the room away from light and noise. Then realised she'd be closer to DH upstairs!

So the only options were to sit in the dark and silence in the evening which was a bad choice for mental health reasons (I had PND) or to put her to bed upstairs for a few hours before we went to bed.

Exactly all this attachment parenting turns into mum doing it all without help from a wide circle. In human history parenting wasn't done like that.

Because those 17 hours sleeping are spent sleeping on you, not in the crib. They are also not continuous hours of sleep in any shape or form - you will spend the majority of your time getting baby to fall asleep, then trying to move baby off you - they will wake - you will repeat the cycle…day and night.

I recommend you read up on the 4th trimester so you have some idea of what to expect. Though nothing can truly prepare you!