Don't shoot me but... what exactly is so hard about having a baby?

[Naivenewbie]

Ok, I know that sounds like I'm be deliberately provocative. I'm not really. But I'm expecting my first baby in 10 weeks (eek!) and am just wondering what specifically it is that turns your world upside down? Don't they just eat and sleep at the beginning? Seriously, don't think I'm taking the piss. I am just genuinely wondering why my house has to turn into a pig-sty, why I apparently won't be able to get out of my pyjamas before bedtime, cook a meal, wash my clothes etc. People keep implying these things to me and, whilst I am open to them (rather like my PJs actually), Im just wondering why it's the case...

I said to my friend recently about her new-born, can't you try to sleep when he does? And she said it's not that easy, you find so many things to do. And I'm wondering - WHAT?

apologies yes on reading my post i did write smug baby....maybe i should have found another descriptive word.In MY personal opinion i think babies are very clever,as are young children. I dont think it takes them long to realise that if they cry and get a response,(ie being picked up)they will do it again and again and again. Its just like kids in supermarkets that throw tantrums to get sweets.

Just because they are brand new doesnt mean they dont learn quickly.

As for shutting the door on a baby,that was the advice my midwife gave ME and if my prem baby was going to die ,he would have died in the cot whether it was next to me or not. Sometimes its not goood to be in a room filled with the CO2 breathed out from parents. But we are all entitled to our own opinions...thought thats what MN was all about.

So please accept my apologies for the wrongly chosen word...must be more careful next time.

"my friend who is alot older than me has become the guardian for her granddaughter as parents have gone off the rails. She is a screamer and has been since birth...she is now four. My friend has picked up and carried this child,attached to her hip for 4 years and she crioes all the time when she is put down. Now grandma is so stressed as she cant live without granddaughter riding on hip..to stop her crying. She just wants to be picked up all the time...it is like pavlovs dogs to me any way. She told me she wished she hadnt got into that habit as she cant do anything around the house"

Maybe the little girl is a screamer because her mum is no longer around and feels scared, insecure and unloved. Which would be perfectly understandable and rational.

Or maybe she has made "a rod for her own back"?

Just a thought.

screamer from birth,baby new no different..(baby wasnt intelligent enough to know that parents were having marital problems.).thought this was a place for discussion,not cremation.

think i will leave this discussion.....

aly you need to revisit child development theories try piaget,dont get confused by pavlov's dog.babies and dogs are very different

Alypaly - not sure about the cot death thing. There is some anecdotal evidence that babies mimic their mum's breathing patterns so those with apnoea will start breathing again when they stop. Also the C02 helps baby breath deeper - the room is big enough not to suffocate them.

As you say - everyone is entitled to their opinions.

DS was an easy baby but it was such a shock and I felt very isolated. Everyone told me how well I was coping but it wasn't how I felt inside. It was emotionally difficult in a way I can't quite explain.

DD was not easy at all. I felt so much more able to be a Mum but she cried 5pm-1am every night for 6 months and even now at 10 months is not overly keen on sleeping a full night. I am physically drained (although it is getting better).

That said I wouldn't be without either of them - they are hard work but I love them both so much and they are more than worth it.

just popped back to let scottishmummy know that i know dogs and babies are different,(duh) was just trying to have an intelligent conversation about the behavioural side of the pavlovs reaction and to refer to its similaritries in the way children and babies react.

Am really going now as it seems one is not allowed an opinion on this thread,without being attacked.

First baby. Wow, where do I start? I was a party-loving, housework-allergic career girl who somehow thought that having a baby wouldn't change my life much. The whole thing was the most horrendous shock to my system. Truly. I had an identity crisis of epic proportions and spent about 18 months walking around in a daze. I didn't think I'd end up with a c-section. I didn't think I'd find breastfeeding so horrifically hard. I had NO IDEA what devestation sleep deprivation can wreak on a human being. Everything I thought about EVERYTHING changed. It kicked in at about 4 months post-natal for me.

I was ...just....soooo...tired. And bored. And sick to the back teeth of washing and feeding and changing shitty nappies and tryingt o work out what the HELL this little screaming crying thign WANTED. Fuck me, it was hard.

I had another one, though ...and it's been been an absolute doddle this time around. She's an easier baby - sleeps well, feeds well, gurgles cutely like those Pampers ad babies - and I am so relaxed I'm horizontal.

I think it's called growing up, actually

applying pavlov and operant conditioning to babies is erroneous.and too reductionist. the baby crying is physiological/psychological state which is likely to remain undiminished by being ignored

you posts state things as if irrefutable facts. when thing is babies are complex and unique

Oh Aly, don't go. People aren't attacking you - they are just reacting to the very dogmatic way you phrased your post implying (or seeming to imply) that anyone with a screamy baby was just doing it wrong.

I know that's not what you meant to say - but reread your post - it is the way it came across.

Like I said, if you'd made the same point in a less dogmatic way, you wouldn't have got the same reaction. People are just bristling at the implied criticism, which is not unexpected really.

And of course you are allowed an opinion - but when that opinion is phrased as fact, hurtful to a number of people, and contradicts medical advice then I'm afraid you can expect to get a reaction.

That's not to say you aren't entitled to hold it or air it on the thread - but if you want an easy time then it wouldn't hurt phrase your opinions with a bit more sensitivity to other people's experiences and feelings.

heres what its like!!!!!
sore chuff, cant sit down
when you piss, it burns
trying to look presentable for visitors even thugh you are in pillow sized sani pads and your belly has not shrunk back and your nipples are leaking
lack of sleep from 2 nights in labour
sore nipples
cant breastfeed, then when it does takes half an hour, every 2 hours!
complete ignorance (how do i wash it! why is it crying!)
baby blues

Then add on top not sleeping for more than 2 hours, indenfinately!!!!

its worth it though xxxxxxx

thanks the youngvisitor...my opinions were never aimed at anyone,otherwise i would have named them...sorry if people have taken my personal comments to heart....no intention meant...and apologies if ive offended. I will stay off as i seem to have upset everyone but thanks anyway.

Er...hello? Is it safe to come out now?

Well, I guess I asked! To begin with, I was smiling at your posts. Then I was laughing out loud. Then laughing on the inside. Soon I was staring slack-jawed, shaking uncontrollably, praying for a power-cut to shut this thing off. Eventually I went to bed and lay awake most of the night thinking only one thing. Shit. Oh, and I dreamed about nursing pillows. Dropped off at 5:30, then the lumberjacks arrived to chop down tree on street outside at 8:30 and I lay there feeling sick and tired and thinking that all I needed now was for someone to "kick me in the fanjo" and "tug on my nipples" (sadly DH had left for work) and I would have completed the task set for me by some of the earlier posters.

I still haven't read every message but one thing I do want to say is thank you for your honesty. Where else would you get it in such brutal technicolour?

I think I get the point now. Sleep deprivation and hormones, yes? I actually used to work nights and can well remember that zombiefied state of just feeling out of kilter with the world and like you could throw up or fall over at any given moment. I will take various tips from here: get a sling, get a cleaner, only wear PJs, don't go out unless strictly necessary, gaze at baby lots, forget about your old life for a while and, in the words of REO Speedwagon, don't "fight this feeling".

Thank you also for the slushy posts. They made me cry. In a good way...

you are a good sport,yes read the advice then do your own sweet thing

Haven't read all of this but it has made me smile! I would say nothing prepares you and none of us can describe it but, from the terrifying moment they hand you the car seat with a brand new human in it and allow you to walk out of the hospital with it, nothing is quite the same! The first time, I found the first bit the hardest because I worried about everything and was so terrified that I might do the wrong thing, but then it all got so much easier.

The second time, the first bit was OK but the bit from 6 wks - 12 wks was like nothing I had ever imagined with an 18 month old, a colicky baby and a LOT of crying! I had a new respect for people who had had colicky babies first time round. It had never occurred to me that I might not be able to leave the house without being instantly covered in vomit - nice....

When they sleep, you sometimes just look at them and, when it is your first, you then foolishly poke them to check they are OK (and wake them up!) and they then need to feed and change! And then suddenly it is 6pm and you don't know where the day went.

But the final thing that I hadn't realsied before having kids is that once you are a parent of small children, you will hear someone cry AT LEAST once a day and, with a baby, this can sometimes be ALL DAY! And that takes up a LOT of time!

WELCOME BACK!!!

Now you've survived the onslaught, I bet your baby will be a treasure who pops out like soap through wet hands, takes too the boob like a duck to water, goes 4 hourly from birth and sleeps through from 6 weeks.

You will come back in 11 weeks and tell us how easy it's been. And we will all HATE you. Silently. While posting "how nice" through gritted teeth

Good luck - it really is marvellous beyond anything. I think having a baby is a huge magnifier of everything - tough times become immeasurably tougher, cracks in your relationship become wider, small hurdles become higher. But equally you will love and appreciate your partner like never before, find joys you never knew existed, get a sense of perspective on the whole world, and find the small pleasures of life infinity more wonderful when shared with this tiny, curious being. [collapses into maudlin sobs in the corner and wonders if it's time to start TTC number 3...]

NaiveNewbie - sorry cross-posted - your summary sounds perfect! Enjoy it - they are only so tiny once and the feeling of holding something so beautiful that has grown inside you is the most indescribable part of it all - best of luck!

takes to the boob. Where did that extra o come from?!

alypaly, I think you're right actually. Young babies and children are very manipulative. Oh and thank the Lord for that. Because human babies are not born like other mammalian young. They cannot walk, feed themselves, defend themselves, clean themselves etc. I think it is very important to acknowledge that crying for them is communication and I believe the single most important thing I could do for my baby was teach her that I listened. That when she told me something was the matter in the only way she could then I responded. Perfect manipulation.

You parent the way you want to and you make decisions based on what you feel is best. Nobody is attacking you, merely engaging with your opinion. I think there's some muddy waters in your reasoning and that might be where people are aiming their comments as well as at a different parenting style to their own. You state in once instance that children are born manipulative and use the example of a child born a screamer. You also state that it's the way you parent that creates the child you have, specifically referring negatively to responding to a baby and keeping it close. If you think they are born programmed to seek comfort (I agree) but choose not to respond to that then you are doing away with a basic human need. I wouldn't say no to an adult I loved who needed comfort, definitely not a toddler, certainly not a child. What is wrong with offering comfort? What is wrong with wanting comfort? Why would you want to inhibit the desire for affection?

A child that has all of its needs responded to immediately is not a child who screams and cries for the rest of its youth because it believes it the only way of communicating. But while they only have that one way of communicating, ignoring it is not something I could ever countenance.

Like I said alypaly, your parenting decisions are your own, but do not believe that somebody else's parenting decision means a certain outcome. I'm as AP as they come, my dd sounds the antithesis of that poor 4yr old you describe. You cannot make comparisons, generalisations or confident assertions about a negative relationship between responding to a crying baby and attachment issues of a toddler/preschooler. The evidence of research and that of my own eyes won't allow it.

naivenewbie - I doubt you'll need to remember to gaze at your new baby a lot - it will just happen! Unlike some posters on here, I never found DS boring as a wee baby, possibly because he found the world so fascinating (probably why he wouldn't sleep much, little tyke, didn't want to miss anything!) and I loved watching his reactions to things (sad besotted PFB mum)

As for the leaving him to cry thing - well, I rarely did, tbh. Mostly because I discovered that if I left him, he overheated something rotten and kept going; whereas if I picked him up and soothed him he was instantly better.
Problem: baby crying
Solution: pick him up
seemed better to me than leaving him.

Also, at about 2 weeks old we discovered he had a hernia, and crying for any length of time caused his bowel to bulge into the hernia (it was caused by the channel where boy's testes drop into the scrotum, doesn't always close off properly when it should) and this meant there was a risk of the bowel getting trapped and strangulated. He was operated on at 7 weeks old with good outcome (talk about stress!) So - no leaving him to cry in case his hernia strangulated. Sometimes there is a reason for them crying above "needing comfort" - even if you can't work out immediately what it is.

Everyone has such different experiences, NO baby is a bad sleeper/difficult feeder/clingy/whinger/puker ALL the time . ALL babies sleep SOME of the time, you just have to figure out how your time will best be used when baby presents you with this valuable window of opportunity. (I spent many an hour just watching her sleep, and to hell with the washing up). Go with the flow, figure out what makes you and your baby happy as you go along, and above all, enjoy this VERY special time. Trust your own instincts, and smile - you've got a beautiful baby on the way that you will be besotted with, and one day your baby will give signs that he/she loves you right back, and everything else will suddenly seem very trivial.

Hello Newbie!

While all these things are true it is also the best thing ever, and the same hormones which will make you cry at the beauty of your baby will also get you through at least the first week. You really will be fine, you know...

Sleep depravation
Endless crying (both mum and baby!)
Cluster feeding for hours on end
Leaking from every orifice
Being under house arrest

Some of the early day joys!! it's all worth it, though!