What happens the first night?

[snowymum]

Ok, stupid obsessive control-freak first timer question here - but my current 3am-can't-get-to-sleep worry is about the 24 hours directly after childbirth. What the hell happens? How do you know what to do? What if he/she cries all night and you've not slept for 30 hours? Is there a certain amount of colostrum he/she's meant to have? Do you put him/her in a cot or sleep in your bed with him/her (I'm hopefully having a homebirth). How many nappy changes would you expect? How do you know if something's wrong?

I can just imagine the midwife saying 'well done, I'm off now' and me and DH being left with this new life, and thinking 'WTF do we do now?'

As you can see, I'm panicking - and I'm only at 30 weeks so any calming thoughts/advice/experience would be most helpful!

Snowy I'm 33 weeks and having the same freak-outs as you, although my mum has warned me about the moronic staring. thansk for posting, the replies have clamed me down a bit too. I am going to as many ante natal classes as I can find!

i had a sicky baby so was up and down all night changing bedding and baby clothes aswell as nappies, was worrying but turned out to be just how she was for 1st 3 months, bf on demand and slept in moses basket by me. Best advice, limit visitors, people turned up 1st day and expected drinks and kept saying "when she sleeps you sleep" and i was thinking i would if you lot would bugger off.

You let your dh do the nappies. Because you'll be far too tired. For at least a year.

Everything just felt extremely surreal the first night after we got back from the hospital. But it also felt 'right' and 'natural'.
I knew what to do because i had talked to my mum and a lot of other mums, I also read a lot of books.

He didn't cry all night but for the first few nights he didn't want to be in the moses basket and would scream when i put him in it. In fact the only place he wanted to sleep at first was on my chest (I know that this isn't advised but it was the only thing that worked for us)

You will probably need to breast feed a new born every 2 hours and there is no way of knowing just how much they have had. Breast feeding is definately not straight forward, but I persevered and it was so worth it.

I was amazed just how many nappies he went through in the first few weeks, easily around 8/10 in a day. (And he would often poo whilst breast feeding)

Just wanted to add - not ALL babies sleep loads for the first few days, although I hope yours does! My DD would only settle on my chest and I think I got about 8 hours sleep in the whole of the first week. Because it was my first I was too scared to co-sleep and would just lie awake looking at her - I shall be much more relaxed next time! Adrenaline somehow gets you through though

Had difficult/traumatic birth with DS who ended up having to have IV antibiotics into his little wrist so he spent the first and second night in hospital crying his head off - nothing (not boob, not shushing, not holding) would appease him until a midwife came and took him away for a four hour walk around the ward and popped him back into his cot asleep somehow! Third night (we were moved to a private room - probably to let other mother's get some sleep and give the poor exhausted midwife/baby-walker a break) was so much better - he cried less, slept for a good 4 hour stint and spent alot of time just staring at me in a bozz-eyed kind of way. Then went home and had the crying every minutes kind of thing again for another 2 nights and then it clicked again (sort of) on the 3rd night...