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Hello thread. I have a baby now. It is day 5 and it is a glorious day. We went to the pediatrician for first appointment and we found out our son was starving and lost 14 oz. I am happy because as soon as we made the formula my little dude gulped down 4 oz, crushed the bottle against his skull, and pulled his arm out of his onsey to Popeyes flex. Then, finally, he went to sleep. My wife is destroyed though. Absolutely crushed. Her boobs went up to H and it is a sick irony that they have no milk. My first instinct was to look her in the eye and tell her "This is not your fault". It isn't, she did all the correct things and abstained from all the incorrect additives and chemicals. Her labor was induced, her body doesn't know to make milk until next week. I hope that she doesn't internalize it. I told her for the next lil bit I want her to continue being the sole feeder. I've prepared a few bottles for tonight, and it really helps me feel useful. I've vowed for the last two nights to stay on baby watch until 6am. I failed after being exhausted and shoo'd away by mom in law. But that's because the baby was violently screaming at my face. Thank goodness I now know it was hunger that made that face, at the end of day 4 I thought that terrible existence was going to be the rest of my life. I mean it is, but tonight is too and on average it feels p cool. 😎 Edit: oh god, this was hanging in my drafts for a week now. Yeah, just feed baby. baby so ez. Been trying HARD to get wife to write down times for baby actions. I was about to divorce her when she woke me up to ask me when SHE last fed the child.
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Mar 4, 2021 22:22
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We tracked everything for the first couple months. Was very helpful especially before regular sleep came back because we literally struggled to remember when he last ate/slept/pooped without it. I have flashbacks just thinking back on the first week where we were he was pooping like 10x a day, we were also tracking my wife’s C-section pain meds, all on less than 4 hours of sleep a day. We gave it up some time between 6-9 months though as he started to develop a real routine and we found we just weren’t looking at the entries anymore.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:24
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Just checking in to say I love my 2.5 year old son that won’t listen to a loving thing I say. On a serious note, we’re expecting baby 2 in May. Any tips on wtf to do with the toddler when it’s time to go to the hospital? My wife’s a stay at home mom so we don’t have any child care options. The only family is a sister an hour away who is willing to come down and help...she’s great at playing with my son but can’t put him to sleep, never says “no” to anything, and doesn’t have kids of her own...we’ve done a few date nights where we leave for two hours and she manages fine, but both attempts she’s tried to put him to bed have ended with him screaming and us having to come home...she can’t accept the fact that kids sometimes cry and it might not be related to anything she’s doing. We’ve left specific notes, walked her through the process...and nada. Part of my wife and I are terrified that if she watches him she’s going to legit call us in the middle of the birth freaking the gently caress out because he woke up. So far are only options are: 1) I drive my wife to the hospital with kid...we drop my wife off by herself so I can drive kid back to my house and aunt can come to watch him...she learns through trial and error with me coming back as needed over the next few days. 2) aunt stays with us for a few days before the due date so she’s at the house and ready to step in...maybe she puts him to sleep for naps and bedtime so he gets used to it. 3) gently caress if I know. We have a few couples with kids that have offered some help, but it’s a question of if they’re home or not at the time...plus it’s not like any of them could help out for more than just a few hours. Any other suggestions or advice on what you did in the past? My mom is going to fly in and some point-luckily she’s already vaccinated, but we can’t count on her because who knows when this kid will come-and she can’t come in early because of work. Edit: northern Virginia if location matters.
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Mar 5, 2021 00:48
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nwin posted:Just checking in to say I love my 2.5 year old son that won’t listen to a loving thing I say. Y'all got friends in the area you trust and have/are good with kids and are able to do this? You might have to go with the sister aunt, and she will have to learn if SHE wants to sleep
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Mar 5, 2021 01:14
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life is killing me posted:Y'all got friends in the area you trust and have/are good with kids and are able to do this? You might have to go with the sister aunt, and she will have to learn if SHE wants to sleep We do...they all have kids. Couple 1 is the closest, but they have a 3 month old and are coming back from vacation a few days before the due date. He’d only be able to stay there for a few hours. Actually, typing this out and thinking, all three couples we know wouldn’t be able to watch him for more than maybe a day...none have a spare room so we’d have to bring a pack and play or something for him to sleep in. I think the sister-in-law is the only option really...and I’ll still be driving back and forth to help out I’m sure. The only other option I threw out was for the sister in law to be with my wife during the birth. Neither of us want that and she immediately shot it down.
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Mar 5, 2021 01:33
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You'd be amazed what people will do to help somebody giving birth. Especially those who have gone through it themselves. These are extraordinary circumstances and friends really do want to help as much as they can during it. If they are offering to help, take them up on it! Don't worry about it inconveniencing them by having to set up a pack and play or sleeping on the couch to give the toddler a room. They understand that what you're going through is a much much bigger deal.
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Mar 5, 2021 01:48
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Yeah just call the three parent friends and have them organize it If anything goes wrong, your toddler is going to end up where you're at anyways
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Mar 5, 2021 02:05
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Brilliant little fatso managed to learn to flip pages a few days ago. Tonight he managed to feed himself a bottle with one hand and turn the pages on his bedtime book with the other. Truly mind-blowing that he couldn't do either of those things consistently on their own a week ago or so.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:37
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Mind-blowing is the right word for it. Just got to love watching those basic skills develop in front of your eyes in real time.
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Mar 5, 2021 03:40
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L0cke17 posted:Brilliant little fatso managed to learn to flip pages a few days ago. Tonight he managed to feed himself a bottle with one hand and turn the pages on his bedtime book with the other. Truly mind-blowing that he couldn't do either of those things consistently on their own a week ago or so. Dude is chillaxing at a kindergarten level. Grats
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Mar 5, 2021 04:01
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KirbyKhan posted:Dude is chillaxing at a kindergarten level. Grats 30 seconds later he dropped the book though and put his foot on top of it and started crying because he couldnt pick it up because he couldnt get his foot out of the way. So he isn't THAT brilliant yet.
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Mar 5, 2021 04:17
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KirbyKhan posted:Hello thread. I have a baby now. It is day 5 and it is a glorious day. We went to the pediatrician for first appointment and we found out our son was starving and lost 14 oz. I am happy because as soon as we made the formula my little dude gulped down 4 oz, crushed the bottle against his skull, and pulled his arm out of his onsey to Popeyes flex. Then, finally, he went to sleep. heya friendo. Congratulations on the little one When my kiddo was born we had a pretty similar situation. My wife had a scheduled C-Section at 37 weeks, never went into labor, and she would just not produce any milk. She'd get little drops here or there but there just wasn't anything. She'd pump every few hours every single day for three months, and at max produced 2oz in a single day. I can count on one hand the number of times he latched, but he usually gave up pretty quick because there was nothing there. My wife had tons of mommy guilt in no small part to pressure from other moms, hospital nurses and the lactation consultants we met. He's 2 now, smarter than his daddy, and is 90th percentile for height. He's officially nimble enough that if I need to catch him and he decides he doesn't want to be caught, he won't get caught. He's not missing anything from boob milk. I'm a huge outspoken supporter of formula and I will never shut up about it. Ultimately what helped my wife stop internalizing mommy guilt over breastfeeding was having all that extra support. We didn't have to worry about always having a boob available and she didn't always have to do every single feeding. I could take every feeding in the night and allow her to get some good sleep, especially during her recovery period. We really felt like partners because I was able to take equal responsibility in keeping him alive. Trying to pump every 3 hours loving blows and she was never happier than when she didn't have to anymore. Some people love the experience of breast feeding, and that's fine. But some kids get formula, and that's fine too.
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Mar 5, 2021 15:21
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Also 2 year olds are evil loving monsters and I'm aware it only gets worse from here. Manipulative little gently caress.
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Mar 5, 2021 15:23
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It has now been a little over a month since my second child was born. I also have a 4 year old. I'm so tired. I'm tired beyond description. I'm terrified that one night I will be woken up and I will be completely unable to sleep again. My nights are a foggy miasma of feedings, trading children with my wife, and carrying children around the house. I have no way of measuring how much actual sleep I'm getting but I suspect it's in the range of LOW. Speak words of encouragement to me thread
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Mar 5, 2021 15:31
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When your four year old turns five, it's gets a bit better.
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Mar 5, 2021 15:59
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Just Offscreen posted:I'm so tired.
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Mar 5, 2021 18:31
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Just Offscreen posted:Speak words of encouragement to me thread You can do it! Go team! (I don't and won't have a second so I can't relate but I'm confident you'll pull through!) I remember back when my almost 2 year old was testing out all the noises his mouth could make, and then began putting words together. Seemed crazy how quickly progress happened, but he never made the f or s sounds, and any time I prompt him to try to practice he gets upset. "Dada all done". I assume this is the kind of thing you just wait for and fixes itself. In the meantime he either pronounces words wrong or comes up with a new word altogether to reference things, and my wife is a lot better at learning this alien language than I am, despite me being the weekday parent.
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Mar 5, 2021 19:44
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I once played all day with my son while he "gwee"d in delight only to be informed when mom got home that "gwee" was this week's jargon for "milk" and he was in fact hungry
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Mar 5, 2021 19:51
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kaschei posted:I once played all day with my son while he "gwee"d in delight only to be informed when mom got home that "gwee" was this week's jargon for "milk" and he was in fact hungry HUN-gwee? All I could figure
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Mar 5, 2021 20:00
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Just Offscreen posted:It has now been a little over a month since my second child was born. I also have a 4 year old. both of us felt like this after our babby was born, since we have a 3 year old as well. It was no lie pretty rough for a few months, both in hours of sleep and quality, but we gave ourselves the gift of being absolute loving sleep dictators so by 4-4.5 months old the baby was sleeping independently in her own room for 11-12 hrs a night. (Now at 7 mo she sleeps 6 to 6 every day.) Get whatever help you can to let the baby take proper naps during the day and it will pay off at night too. Our 3 year old is loud af and wouldn’t play quietly so we always took her to the basement or outside to play. In the cold weather I still took her for walks and poo poo just so the baby could nap for a bit. Sleep begets sleep for babies, and presumably for older kids and adults too. You got this dude. majestic12 fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Mar 5, 2021 |
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Mar 5, 2021 20:32
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nwin posted:Any tips on wtf to do with the toddler when it’s time to go to the hospital? For our second, grandma watched the oldest for a few days. For our third, pandemic was happening (July) so I stayed home with the kids and Mommy delivered on her own. She said everyone was extra nice to her.
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Mar 5, 2021 21:15
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Just Offscreen posted:It has now been a little over a month since my second child was born. I also have a 4 year old. Welp, scheduling a vasectomy now. My 4 month kiddo is absolutely wonderful, and already my wife and I snap at each other over the extremely limited sleep. I don't want to find out what a second kid would do to us.
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Mar 5, 2021 21:51
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Just gonna collapse into this pile of registry burp cloths and unfolded swaddles to take a nap. I'll be damned if we don't still use the hospital swaddle, it withstands real cleaning.
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Mar 5, 2021 21:57
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Yeah I'm curious when is peak "snapping at your spouse for not emptying the dishwasher fast enough" parenting. Is it 4-6 months? First six weeks everything is spinning as a new parent because you're leaning so much, and then it's calmed down but now also the baby wants/needs attention constantly from one parent and it's digging into productivity of both parents regarding basic chores like dishes (her) and taking out the trash (me) in a timely manner etc Starting to understand the church's hard line stance against divorce, especially in a pre birth control era where you have a lot of 18 year old kids getting shotgun weddings and then having to live together + raise a baby on probably not enough money and the stress that causes
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Mar 5, 2021 21:59
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Joey Steel posted:Welp, scheduling a vasectomy now. My 4 month kiddo is absolutely wonderful, and already my wife and I snap at each other over the extremely limited sleep. I don't want to find out what a second kid would do to us. I mean - I know there are wonderful people out there who are wonderful about juggling multiple kids and have wonderful kids that help with they're wonderful babies... but.... Having a second kid for us has been *orders of magnitude* harder than just 1 kid. A combination of the pandemic, the second kid is super needy and won't sleep in his own room, two full time jobs and a bouncing off the walls first child.... it's just hard as gently caress. There's no breaks. No friends or family to help. Just chaos all day every day.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:03
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I'm curious when is peak "snapping at your spouse for not emptying the dishwasher fast enough" parenting. Is it 4-6 months? Well my kid is 14 months old and our marriage gets more contentious by the month. Certainly exacerbated by pandemic living and not having any help from family nor any company besides each other.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:05
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I'm curious when is peak "snapping at your spouse for not emptying the dishwasher fast enough" parenting. Is it 4-6 months? I feel like 6-8mo was extremely rough as the mom parent. The constant attention and new stimulation required by the baby and the increasing demands back at work left me just totally hollowed out and cranky in a way the first few months hadn’t. I don’t think of it as particularly rough, marriage wise, but I’m sure the lows spilled over.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:11
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Yeah I’ve been short with my spouse which isn’t fair because most of her problems are medical issues and not attitude/personality. I’m definitely the rear end in a top hat but I kind of feel like I ended up with two newborns when I only expected one. Post partum and breastfeeding not only kicked the Type 1 Diabetes lows into overdrive but also somehow fried all of her nerves and required tunnel surgery in wrists and elbows. Fun to take care of an adult and a newborn simultaneously.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:11
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I’m looking forward to how loving incredibly tough I know it’s going to be come April 21st when our new kiddo is due. Our toddler still comes into our room at night after two teaser nights of sleeping through the night, and we are stressed as gently caress already just trying to break him of that habit before we find ourselves in a situation where he comes into our loving bedroom and wakes up his baby sister when she’s asleep. Those precious times when she’s asleep and not cluster feeding mean precious sleep for us—we are already short on our quota in sleep for the past few months, why not make it worse in a situation that is already going to deprive us of sleep even more than we are now? Meanwhile I’ve got a business that’s on life support but experiencing pressure from my wife to get it healthy again by any means necessary. But, in this selfsame post I’d like to shout out to all you mom and dad goons who are somehow making it work with multiple kids, and those like space uncle who are super-parenting to help their spouse medically and parentally or whatever hard circumstances anyone might be in but still with their noses to the grindstone. So basically on a positive note, this thread is full of self-sacrificing folks. Kudos to y’all.
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Mar 5, 2021 23:07
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Joey Steel posted:Welp, scheduling a vasectomy now. My 4 month kiddo is absolutely wonderful, and already my wife and I snap at each other over the extremely limited sleep. I don't want to find out what a second kid would do to us. My husband got his vasectomy yesterday. He said it wasn’t pleasant, but it was over quickly. I’m so grateful he was willing to do that, one kid is plenty for us!
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Mar 5, 2021 23:50
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life is killing me posted:Kudos to y’all. Thanks, you too buddy. Anyone with >=1 kid in here is doing some superhuman stuff, I think we’re done at just one. Wife got her stitches and staples out and has fed the baby and wiped a poopy butt so I’ve already seen some light at the end of this tunnel. She’s a trooper.
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Mar 6, 2021 00:34
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Well, our second is now ~3 weeks after a surprise induction at 36wks and things have been so much easier than this point with the first. But that might just be because I have long since forgotten the feel of sleep? Seriously though it hasn't been terrible so far, so to everyone else in the thread expecting #2... It may not be awful!space uncle posted:Yeah I’ve been short with my spouse which isn’t fair because most of her problems are medical issues and not attitude/personality. I’m definitely the rear end in a top hat but I kind of feel like I ended up with two newborns when I only expected one. Post partum and breastfeeding not only kicked the Type 1 Diabetes lows into overdrive but also somehow fried all of her nerves and required tunnel surgery in wrists and elbows. Fun to take care of an adult and a newborn simultaneously. Have her sugars stabilized at all yet? I think it took me about 2 months the first time. But I too am currently in the "do not bolus for anything, drink an entire can of soda an hour after pumping" stage myself and goddamn it gets tiresome John Cenas Jorts fucked around with this message at 01:45 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 01:06
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Hadlock posted:Yeah I'm curious when is peak "snapping at your spouse for not emptying the dishwasher fast enough" parenting. Is it 4-6 months? Lol, I do the majority of the housework. Cooking, cleaning, dishes, trash, laundry, cat litter, dog stuff (when he was still alive, RIP Toby the Wonderdog). I think it started way back when she was depressed in grad school, and I literally had to take her to the shower to wash her for a few weeks when it got real bad. Since then it's been stuff like residency, and the pattern has just been that for so long it. Huh, probably need to have a talk with her about that. remigious posted:My husband got his vasectomy yesterday. He said it wasn’t pleasant, but it was over quickly. I’m so grateful he was willing to do that, one kid is plenty for us! Years ago we both found out that our goals were "have one, adopt one" even before meeting. I think I can do a small child a lot better than an infant, with a breastfeeding wife. If only because kids can have their sleep schedules a bit more regulated than an infant's sleep. Joey Steel fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 01:33
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Joey Steel posted:Lol, I do the majority of the housework. Cooking, cleaning, dishes, trash, laundry, cat litter, dog stuff (when he was still alive, RIP Toby the Wonderdog). I think it started way back when she was depressed in grad school, and I literally had to take her to the shower to wash her for a few weeks when it got real bad. Since then it's been stuff like residency, and the pattern has just been that for so long it. Huh, probably need to have a talk with her about that. I’ve generally started doing more of the housework gradually, but due to Covid. I have to admit it gets old walking into the kitchen and knowing not only will I be cooking, but probably the dishes as well right after. My wife does them and other things occasionally, but whereas I do most chores by myself, when she does them I also am commissioned to help with that too. She works a lot so I try not to hold it against her but it’s tough not keeping score when you’re putting most of the points on the board.
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Mar 6, 2021 01:38
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Hi thread, this might be a common question so feel free to yell at me to use the search function, but... We have our only child, born last March right as lockdown was kicking in, and we're looking to get him started in daycare (current nanny is leaving). Wife and I are both scared that this is asking for COVID trouble but also work for both of us is so crazy we don't have time to find a replacement nanny, and we don't have any family nearby to help give us time to find a nanny either. We also don't know what to look for in a daycare and are currently just flying by "well-reviewed and close by." Any advice on hunting for a good daycare in the (hopefully) last days of COVID? Anyone have words of encouragement that our baby won't get sick and have organ problems for the rest of his life? He's real cute so I'd hate for that to happen. 
Amergin fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 6, 2021 |
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Mar 6, 2021 03:43
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John Cenas Jorts posted:
They started stabilizing at the 2 month mark like you said, because we gave up on breastfeeding and switched mostly to pumping. Made it a lot easier to plan bolus/juice around. We still go through a case of Juicy Juice a week and I have emergency glucose gel stashed in literally every single drawer. (She had some terrifying hypos during the 2nd trimester and I may be overreacting). Then she got steroid shots for the nerve stuff and that hosed up all the blood sugar again and created a huge amount of resistance. Those are wearing off so now she has to dial back the insulin. I left to go to the grocery store for 20 minutes tonight and she went low and texted me and called me and I missed all the phone vibrations and almost had a panic attack on the way home. She was fine. The grocery store is across the street from our house.
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Mar 6, 2021 03:49
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Amergin posted:Hi thread, this might be a common question so feel free to yell at me to use the search function, but... Can say more another time if someone else doesn’t cover that other stuff but, you probably should have started looking months ago. Get yourself on a waitlist for any daycares you like that don’t have slots open for your kiddo so you have options when one calls and has an opening. We had a big wake up call when we realized we waited way too long to start checking out daycares and we had to go back to work and we were freaking the gently caress out. We got lucky, and I don’t know the current state so maybe it’s not like late 2018 when we looked.
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Mar 6, 2021 03:57
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life is killing me posted:I’ve generally started doing more of the housework gradually, but due to Covid. I have to admit it gets old walking into the kitchen and knowing not only will I be cooking, but probably the dishes as well right after. My wife does them and other things occasionally, but whereas I do most chores by myself, when she does them I also am commissioned to help with that too. She works a lot so I try not to hold it against her but it’s tough not keeping score when you’re putting most of the points on the board. I feel you. It has only been two weeks, mom-in-law has been a big help. But, I worry that my wife is going back to the learned helplessness that her upbringing afforded her. She just doesn't do things, she just points at thing and either me or her mom solves that problem. I have to tell her "use your words" as she chrips and coos at an object out of reach. Nothing medically wrong, I just married a jerk and sometimes people do that.
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Mar 6, 2021 03:58
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I was actually curious about daycare stuff as well, like how the hell do you pick one? I don’t have any friends with babies, so I can’t just ask for a recommendation from someone I trust. The state has an online registry with every licensed person/facility, but there are SO MANY options. And it annoying as gently caress that no one is upfront about pricing. I guess a good start would be deciding between an actual childcare center (expensive) or someone that runs a daycare out of their house (possibly sketchy). Luckily I plan to keep the little dude at home with me for the next six months or so, so I have some time to figure it out. But any advice or red flags to look for would be appreciated.
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Mar 6, 2021 04:41
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life is killing me posted:Can say more another time if someone else doesn’t cover that other stuff but, you probably should have started looking months ago. Get yourself on a waitlist for any daycares you like that don’t have slots open for your kiddo so you have options when one calls and has an opening. We had a big wake up call when we realized we waited way too long to start checking out daycares and we had to go back to work and we were freaking the gently caress out. We got lucky, and I don’t know the current state so maybe it’s not like late 2018 when we looked. Around here at least Covid has completely eliminated wait lists at almost every daycare. A nearby one went from "Thank you for your interest, register as soon as the pregnancy test shows positive and you might be able to get your yet-to-be-conceived next kid in" to "Tuesday start good? Please?!" That said the most important part of picking a day care by far is touring it which shouldn't be possible right now. That is, if one lets you tour it and walk into the care rooms right now it probably isn't one you want. If you can do a virtual tour or FaceTime tour or something what you want to look for is the place being organized, well maintained, laid out so the staff can keep an eye on kids, plenty of staff so that they don't get overwhelmed (there will be a state minimum ratio for any age range, know it so you won't be impressed by the daycare trying to pass off meeting the legal minimum as a great thing), and kids being interacted with. That last one is unfortunately something you can't see in an after hours tour or some photos, we nixed one daycare from our list that had fantastic facilities and ratios but the kids we saw there just weren't getting any real meaningful back and forth - they were just kinda there. And a word of warning: when your kid goes to daycare expect to be mildly to moderately sick for months straight.
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Mar 6, 2021 05:24
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