How did you feel when you bought your baby home?

[Baggyjumper0121]

When you came home with your newborn, did you feel excited? Nervous? Lost?

My colleague recently had a baby and she talked about having an anti-climax feeling after the first day and she said it was like an empty feeling even though she had her baby with her but as soon as family/friends would leave after visiting she would feel very down. I hadn't thought about this

I am due in 5 weeks and I know nothing can prepare me for the emotional side of things but interested in reading your experience of the first few days with a newborn - emotions wise

Anxious, exhausted and overwhelmed. Then the day 4 hormones kicked in and I cried all night. It was Not Fun.

It does get better, but there was no blissful bubble. I hated it.

Yeah similar. We closed the front door and I looked down at her and thought "oh god! What do we do now!"

I also remember how happy I was to get out of hospital just so I could be in my own bed and get some rest. I'd been awake for almost 48 hours at that point.

Exhausted. Stressed. Depressed.

Same. I was never "glowing" or happy. It was some of the worst years of my life.

I was very hormonal. I wanted to sleep all the time because hospital had been awful (and I’d had a fairly “easy” birth!) but of course the baby wasn’t really up for that! DS wouldn’t feed so I was pumping desperately and trying to sort his latch but nothing was working. Then I got very worried my (lovely) midwife and HV would tell me off if I just stopped trying (they didn’t). I was lucky enough to have home visits until day 10, and after that I trundled off to the local centre for weighing ever so often (because of the rocky start feeding I was a bit obsessed with charting his weight gain to start with).

I remember our poor cat coming into the room and DS sneezed and I was crying because I thought he was allergic and we’d have to rehome the cat and how very unfair that was to her.

I found getting out really helpful. I had episiotomy but was other ok (bit wobbly) but managed to push the pram round the block to the park from about day 3. Fresh air made a huge amount of difference (that may just be me - but worth a try if you feel cooped up/trapped at home).

I had an awful (literally completely) sleepless 3 nights in hospital after baby was born (covid times so only partner could visit for a few hours). I was so so happy to be home and able to see people and get some sleep and have our family together.
I loved being home with baby. But it’s of course tiring and overwhelming and I remember being so scared of SIDS at the beginning and kept checking on DS to make sure he wasn’t too hot, too close to the side of the Moses basket etc. (and I’m generally a pretty chilled mum after years of nannying!).
Just don’t put too much expectation on yourself. Accept help when it’s offered. Relax when you can. Cuddle baby and watch tv/read and don’t expect to get loads of housework done. Stock up on batch cooked meals now if you can. If you plan to BF you’ll probably have a cluster feeding baby on and off for the first few weeks anyway so won’t really get anything done besides baby snuggles/feeding.

Oh amazing. It was just the most incredible feeling and all I wanted to do was sit and stare at my beautiful son. We had started to doubt we’d ever get to that point so it felt a bit surreal. DH was great but went back to work after a week, altho slightly shorter days than his usual 7-7 minimum. I think the first day or two of him back at work felt the most strange, on my own with this wee dot, but even then, he was still an easy little baby and I was just blissfully happy. I am not an anxious person generally and luckily that continued into the newborn stage.

I think I felt very like your friend OP. I couldn't wait to get out of hospital and when I got home I was so overwhelmed, wondering what I'm earth I was supposed to do. I sat at the table and cried eating my tea whilst my husband just did everything he could with the baby and consoling me. It didn't last too long but those first few weeks were a rollercoaster.

We had a 7 night stay in hospital so I couldn't want to get home. When we did however, I realised that I had to do everything! In hospital they at least fed me etc. At home I felt completely out of my depth, I felt freezing (Feb) after being on a roasting postnatal ward and generally lost and empty.

After about a week I felt a lot better

The only way I can describe it is I felt home sick. I was home but everything felt different and overwhelming. I missed 'home' and felt really unsettled by this huge change that had just happened and wanted to go back to how things were even though DD was very much wanted after quite a long time ttc. It didn't last long though but it was a really odd feeling, probably down to lack of sleep in hospital and hormones.

I ended up being in hospital for 5 days after DD was born so I think I had gotten over all the emotions/hormones while in hospital. I was more than ready to go home and be in my own environment with my bubba. We had a couple of guests but not too many, but I wasn't relieved or anything when they came or went. We still done all the things we liked to do, watch TV, read, cook etc. We just had to tend to her needs as and when required. You don't need to "entertain" a newborn, just give cuddles. If you have a partner you can share the responsibilities and it's so much easier.

What I would say is I didn't get the overwhelming love when I saw her after waking up from general anaesthetic. It took a few days to feel that, then as the weeks passed love grew stronger and stronger. My DD is now 4 months and the love is overwhelming at times <3

I definitely didn’t feel like I was in a happy bubble. I cried, a lot, felt very ‘what have we done?’, and was terrified of everything after DD was born. With DS it was slightly easier, but I still found it very hard. It probably didn’t help that I had birth injuries with them both, so was in a lot of pain, and everything just felt so hard.

No bubble.
No high.
Pure misery with difficult feeding and constant crying from the baby.
No sleep as baby screamed more when put down.
Traumatised from the birth.
Constant sodding visitors that I didn’t want to be having to get my bleeding nipples out in front of.
Thought (and privately said) “what have we done?”

I think this is actually a lot more common than people let on.

NB - I didn’t have any PND, it was just effing hard in the early days. I love being a mum now but the newborn phase isn’t for me.

Can I just add, if I had read some of these stories before giving birth, I would have been terrified, particularly because I'm prone to depression and was already worried about how my mental health would be. However a week after my emergency C-section (and traumatic birth) I was home, my husband drove the 3 of us into town where we walked around for a couple of hours (in hindsight I wouldn't recommend it, I felt it over the next few days, but at the time I felt great) and I was the happiest I had been in a long time. And continue to be the happiest I've felt in years. There are stressful moments but on the whole I couldn't be happier.

It's great that people have shared their honest stories and it's good to be prepared, but take it with a pinch of salt. You won't know how you'll feel until you're in it. I went from being the most stressed out, worried person to being so chilled about everything. I actually started to worry that I was too relaxed about everything!

I hope all goes well for you and you have a happy experience! The one bit of advice that changed my life is you can't spoil a baby before they're 6 months old. Do with that information what you will 😁

Numb. Regretful. Tired. So, so tired. DS didn’t sleep AT ALL unless held for the first 3 weeks.

Terrified 😂

I was so excited to be home so everyone could meet him. I was however riddled with anxiety about absolutely everything. And obsessive about pet hair, which pisses me off anyway but I was almost irrational about it, and would cry if I found a tiny speck of it on his clothes. I had some quite horrible intrusive thoughts as well. I was scared that I would accidentally hurt him, and was terrified I'd fall downstairs with him (never fallen downstairs in my life). But after about 2 weeks things settled down.

I thought being a midwife would prepare me. Nah. Absolutely not 😂😂

DC1 - I was in hospital for the baby blues and the staff were incredible. I think that emotional side of things would have been very hard at home. Got home and rarely slept when baby slept, it seemed extremely important to clean all the time. Then lockdown happened and my husband went back to work on the front line. In a way, having no visitors was a blessing- nobody giving unsolicited advice for every little thing.

DC2- Unmedicated hospital birth, home after 24 hours. Baby blues didn't hit too badly. I had much more confidence to tell people to stay away if I didn't feel like visitors. Exhaustion, bleeds and back pain were tough, but emotionally fine.

Tl,dr: don't feel you have to say yes to visitors.

But just to add some balance, I did then have that glowy, omg look at our baby feeling. I still have it now sometimes 14mo later. And even though we laugh and go what have we done?! There is literally nothing I would rather do more than be a mum ❤️

Huge mix of emotions with DC1 - in awe, in love, anxious (actually, terrified!), a bit depressed at times (hormones, sleep deprivation), tearful and mainly just absolutely exhausted.

I hadn't intended to have a c-section so I was mostly in pieces about that. There are a few steps up to my front door, and then lots more steps up to the bedroom, and I remember staggering up, pulling myself up by the banister, an absolute emotional wreck.

I think I'll be much better after my second c section because it'll be planned and I'll know what to expect.

Scared stiff and inadequate: between two intelligent people we couldn’t work out the poppers on the babygro 😁

Very soon passed though. Confident enough within a week or so, fairly relaxed within the month.

Just as scared with our second, though, nearly 9 years later. Had forgotten everything and were much older/tireder.

Just wandered around in a sleep deprived haze. Very weak and anaemic - tried to walk upstairs at normal pace but had to stop because I was so out of breath.

So exhausted but when I tried to sleep I’d get flashbacks to labour. These did get less and less though.

I also didn’t have the “instant bond” with the baby. It felt like someone had given us their baby to look after. He was a very nice baby but didn’t feel like “ours”. That love grew over the following weeks, but I know a lot of people get worried that they haven’t felt it instantly and think something is wrong.

I felt that I wanted to go to bed and sleep forever, preferably alone. I also felt "who the fuck let us just walk out of hospital with a BABY, can't they see we don't have a clue what to do?"

Both feelings wore off. Eventually.

Me and hubby we kept grinning tbh loved getting back home seeing our little bundles at home