This thread is bookmarked and saved. Great job! Awesome advice!

Don't worry too much about it, you won't remember

It does depend on your baby, but I feel the first few months are in general very tough.

One think I did from the beginning though that helped was letting my husband take the 11 p.m. feeding. I went to bed around 9:30 or 10 then the baby was normally good till at least 1, sometimes 2, even from the earliest days. I used formula typically for that feed, and pumped right before going to bed while watching TV or listening to a book on tape. This got the baby used to bottle and formula, and I wasn't uncomfortable. And I was getting solid 4 hour blocks of sleep, even for the beginning.

Letting yourself off the hook for doing everything perfectly was a big help -- but it's very hard to do, I've found. For me, giving up breastfeeding and pumping instead was a huge turnaround in enjoying my son. I realized that lousy breastfeeding was tainting everything; I wasn't bonding with my child at all. I switched to pumping, and we were both much happier. My son never got the latch right, and was either gagging on too much milk or not getting enough,

I've posted earlier to this thread, but had forgotten about the night sweats. Ugh. They were worse with my second, I had to resort to sleeping on a towel, and would mop myself off at various intervals. Crawling back into cold, damp sheets after nighttime feedings was no picnic.

I had sick and colicky twins. Thank goodness we had a baby nurse and a great ped. Our babies screamed so hard and long the ped researched and found that they will very ill (as well as colicky). If things seem abnormal, check with your doc. It was a wonderful close time, but interrupted by many trips to the doc/ hospital. (If you have to take a new born to the hospital, they will get you in and out of there so fast you won't believe it -- they don't want to expose your baby to germs.)

PP - how and when do you turn that nap into nighttime sleep? Baby is 4 weeks now and goes to be at 10 -- when I do. When do I change that?? I have no downtime - at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your experience will be its own - some things that other PPs found awful were not bad at all for me, and vice versa. Remember: Everything bad is a phase, and everything good is a phase. I thought the first few weeks were awful, and i would never just get to sit on the sofa with my husband, watch tv and have a glass of wine ever again. That came sooner than I would have imagined in those dark, early days. And when your child is doing something so adorable, cherish it, because it won't last forever.

I felt the exact same way...I had made a mistake. I was sad and missed my dh. He stayed up later to watch our dvr'd shows and I went to bed earlier than EVER - just to get some rest. I miss my old life and I'm only 3.5 wks in. How long until I can put baby down to sleep and have wine and gang with my husband???

PP, you're still in the weeds! I felt like things improved significantly after 6 weeks, once the baby starts sleeping in more regular patterns. Certainly by 4 months, DD was going to bed by 7:30 and then we had a couple hours to ourselves. Before that, she was staying up until 11 or midnight, but one of her naps just turned into night time sleep. Hang in there. It'l lbe there sooner than you think.