Reply to Veteran moms: Tell us what the first month is like...

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am a 35 yr old FTM...due in november with a little boy.

My husband will be home for the first 2 weeks with me and I'm taking 16 weeks off.  Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night to pee and can barely get back to bed fast enough - I'm so tired.

How will I do it those first few weeks when I'm nursing every hour/few hours?

Please tell me a little bit about the first 4 weeks...anything you wish someone had told you?

What advice and tips besides "get your sleep now" can you offer all the expectant FTM's on this forum?  [/quote]

In looking over these responses, my advice is this:

Your experiences could be so completely different from what you're reading here, so take everything here with a grain of salt. I feel like I was frequently told "it's so hard," but it turned out that the really hard parts for me were not what I was expecting. For example, sleep deprivation was nothing to me. I just slept and woke at odd times throughout the day night, and had no ill effects from it. And my first night home was a breeze...it got more difficult as we went along. But breastfeeding, that was hard.

Breastfeeding "every 2 hours," means two hours FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST FEEDING. So if you start nursing at 2pm, the next feeding will be at 4pm. I had a horrible time with nursing, latching, supply, so each feeding could take 1.5 hours (latching, nursing, rocking back to sleep, then pumping). That was rough, not having enough time to shower and/or make a meal and eat it...and repeat. (nurse, rock to sleep, pump, make my lunch, nurse, rock to sleep, pump, microwave the lunch, eat 2 bites, nurse, rock to sleep, eat the lunch, fall asleep for 10 blissful minutes, nurse...)

Find time to just rock your baby, hold him, snuggle. I remember my lactation consultant telling me often moms who are having nursing/latch/supply issues inadvertently only hold their babies while going thru the breastfeeding process, which for me was stressful. I had to remind myself to just hold him, make eye contact, and snuggle just so I could enjoy my baby more.

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