So we have a gorgeous 2 month old baby boy, but it has been the toughest 2 months of my life by a factor of about x10.

Currently the little ‘un suffers badly with trapped wind, neither girlfriend or I have slept properly since he arrived and it’s starting to show.

Last night things blew up a bit and got tense; I’m struggling to do any night feeds + associated settling process, & I don’t feel able to deal with the boy when he’s unsettled (I get frustrated quickly, despite my best efforts). I don’t really feel like I’m part of the process, & evidently the GF would agree. I’m just so damned tired, with the commute I’m out from 7am to 6pm daily with a stressful job – amazingly work are putting pressure on me to work longer hours/weekends, but that is another topic! I’m also certain GF is feeling devalued after putting her hectic job on hold, a role which ordinarily consumes 90% of her thoughts.

We don’t have any family around to support us, GF’s side occasionally but they live 5hrs away. Although GF has some close friends with young ones fortunately, who have been a lifesaver for her.

Any other working partners out there who have struggled to feel like they are anything more than a disruption to the mother/baby bond? How can I go about dealing with some of this, or is it just a case of hanging on for dear life?!

Grit your teeth and get on with it, it gets easier when they’re about 22

Sadly, yes was definitely there with my first, mainly due to feeding issues.

Hang on in, it does get better and it will be worth it. You are not the first.

If it does get too much, put the baby down and take 5 mins to resettle yourself. He’ll respond better to you when you are calm, and won’t come to any harm.

If necessary talk to the GP / health visitor, see what advice they have.

IT WILL BE WORTH IT (although you will still want to kill them at least weekly for the foreseeable – mine are 12 and 10 now)

Hang on, first few months is a sleepless, frustrating, stressful cycle of getting up, feeding, noise and interesting and unpleasant smells and sights.

Soon your little ‘un will do something that will warm you to your bones and all this feeling will dissapear like a fart in a hurricane.

The first 3 months are probably the toughest.
It really does get easier, honest.

Everyone needs a bit of me time, can you cajole grandparents into helping out?
Maybe give b you guys a night off?

As a dad I find it definitely improved when they get a bit older and more interactive.

We’ve got 2 boys aged 3 and 5….

and 12 week old twins, who just this week have slept thru from 2300 to 0500 🙂 for the first time, so trust me, it could be worse !!

We have a 5 week old and I could have written most of your post above.

Thankfully we have some support from family which has helped a lot. My wife’s mother spends some time with her in the day a couple of days a week which allows her to either sleep or do something. My parents also spend a few hours with us once a week at least.

I feel guilty when I leave for work each morning, but things are improving slightly each day.

We’ve introduced one bottle of formula each evening, which I do. This means that my wife can go to bed and get 3 or 4 hours of solid sleep whilst I spend time in the living with the baby. Makes me feel part of the process and a little bit less useless.

Congratulations by the way. If everyone else is right it gets easier as each month goes by (until they are teenagers).

From my experience, I found that sleeping in different rooms helped a great deal. Some people have issues with this , but the simple fact of the matter is that if you both get woken every time the baby wants feeding, then neither of you will get any quality sleep.
For medical reasons my wife was unable to breast feed, so we did share the feeding. She would go to bed around 9pm, then I would look after the baby until around 4 am. She would then take over, and I would have a sleep until 9am , then get up and go to work.
This allowed us to have quality time together in the evenings, and neither of us were particularly tired as such. Having an understanding boss ( well I told him what was going to happen and he had to accept it) helped.
You have just got to remember its a big change for both of you and there are hormones flying around (both yours and hers), but its worth it in the end.

We have a 5 week old and I could have written most of your post above.

So could the majority of new dads.
I just used to go out and ride my bike 😆

Just grin and bear it.

My ordeal is nearly over – one’s 20 and left home the other is 17 and only causes 2-3 sleepless nights per week now.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/14053196

You both need to make time to do stuff for yourselves individually too. So plan some stuff, get some times agreed and stick to it. Need only be an hour or so, but it will help.

Stella Artois!

Work on the routine for the wee one and try and give each other a break.
It’s hard when it all starts as soon as you walk in the door,more so if she has had a hard day.
I would plug in some tunes and walk for miles with our first (pram and sling in all weathers)and it gave my OH time to recharge a bit.
For the first 6 months he hardly slept more than 3 hours straight,now he sleeps like the dead.
It will get easier,hang in there.

Just reiterating the above. I was introduced to a whole new level of tiredness when my boy was born and, like you do when you’re tired, you get snappy and tense. It will get easier though and it now seems like a very distant memory now he’s six. Believe it or not, every now and then I miss those times when he was a real little nipper. Then I remember the tiredness!

I don’t really have much advice with regards to help. We just seemed to grind on, bleary eyed and in a daze. I thought it would never end but it did.

Our first wasn’t a great feeder to start with so my wife out of no where put him on the Gina Ford plan. I know Gina’s plan can be a bit divisive but it worked. Our firstborn went from a nightmare to manageable within a few days and was sleeping through the night from 5 months.

We have a 3 yr old and an 18months old who have just been packed off to the outlaws on their summer holidays. Time to get the bike out….

Mine are 10 and 8 and I STILL dont get good sleep every night!. Its as above really, at your stage its very hard and you will often feel sidelined. Get involved at every opportunity and get involved in the local toddler groups, they help a lot and you will see that your issues are nothing new!. Its gets progressively easier and you will end up with a system that allows some normality to return. Compromise and understanding each other is essential and you’ll be fine. The sleep deprivation is by far the worst thing as your judgement can go out of the window and you can feel on the edge of sanity. IT GETS BETTER HONESTLY! 😀

Sounds standard for any new parent. You aren’t alone thinking this. Try to spend more time winding…put them on your lap and roll them over – it helps shift the wind…I also found putting them on lower legs so slightly upside down helped shift wondering as well. If the wind can be helped then the unsettling should reduce slightly.

It does get better but you need to work through it and knuckle down…not easy but the rewards are there (assuming you aren’t expecting junior to cloth and feed themselves from day 1!).

Also, dad tends to be ignored in the grand scheme, so accept you won’t even be an afterthought for months but try to consider other half…all 3 of you are struggling to learn and deal with the new baby.

It’ll come good but it won’t happen overnight…good luck.

It’s been over 16 years, but I can still remember just how much we argued when our first came along – the lack of sleep turned us both into irritable monsters… but as everyone else has said it does get better.

I’d also echo this advice:

From my experience, I found that sleeping in different rooms helped a great deal. Some people have issues with this , but the simple fact of the matter is that if you both get woken every time the baby wants feeding, then neither of you will get any quality sleep.

Although I’d suggest that first try getting the baby into a different room – it may be convenient to have him next to the bed, but it just means that you’re all waking each other up all through the night. Move him out and he won’t wake up when you start snoring, and you won’t be on edge every time you hear him move. We got our second out of our bedroom at 6 weeks, and it made a huge difference. Don’t worry about whether you’ll hear him cry when he’s hungry, he’ll make sure of that 🙂

And get him onto formula at least once a night, gives you a chance to help out.

It can be tough at that stage. The feeling of not knowing what you can do to ease baby’s distress can be very frustrating and also distressing in turn for you too.

It is a hard journey, we had one with colic and then twins who needed a huge amount of patience and effort to wind properly. This isn’t so bad during the day, but was a killer until they slept through.

The upside, is that this doesn’t last for ever. Right now though so far seems enough though I am sure!

1. Try and give mum some time of her own
2. Try and get some time of your own
3. Speak to health visitor and see if they can offer professional guidance

Recognising you are failing to cope as you would like is a massive start on the road to the solution.

Yak – Member
You both need to make time to do stuff for yourselves individually too. So plan some stuff, get some times agreed and stick to it. Need only be an hour or so, but it will help.

1000 times this. Our little girl is 3 and a half now and we only really got this sussed a year ago. It really makes a huge difference even just getting few hours away a week doing something for YOU.

I’ll also echo what others have said, it does get easier and a lot more rewarding although the timescales on that are longer than you’d think.

Chin up. It’s hard when you don’t have much of a support network, as we found out, but you’ll get by 🙂

We are 3 weeks into our second. She is being a sleep terror at the moment and like you as I can’t do feeds I can’t help as much as I’d like. I also struggle to settle her, at times feeding is the only thing that will work for this.

Like a poster above we are sleeping in a different room for the moment. For our first we both initially stayed in with the baby and both ended up a mess. Our current schedule consists of wife going to bed as soon as the evening feed finishes (somewhere between 8 and 10). I stay up with the monster asleep on me (sleeps better this way) till she wakes up. Typically this is around 2am, at which point we swap. This is allowing my wife to get a decent stretch of sleep which seems to be helping. Fortunately I’m not far from work so can stay in bed till 8 and we have help getting our eldest to pre school. At the weekends we swap back at around 7 and my wife sleeps for a few hours then. She is also napping were possible in the day.

All you can do is help as much as possible. Look after the child as much as you can for the period you are there to allow your GF to rest. Yes that means taking over as soon as you get home from work. It does get easier as they get that bit older.

Our first had really bad trapped wind and really struggled with sleeping because of this. She would wake up screaming in pain after very short periods. My wife went completely dairy free on a hunch and we saw an improvement within days. Turns out the baby was intolerant to the protein in milk*. The dairy free diet sucks though, especially for the mother, and after 6 months our daughter was moved onto a special formula called Nutramigen (expensive, fortunately we got a prescription for it).

* This resolved with age and careful reintroduction of dairy once weaned. To much dairy produced toxic poo at which point we backed off for a few weeks. Now aged 4 she can eat any dairy fine and has been able to for at least 1 1/2 years.

I had exactly the same thing including starting a thread on here. It is really tough but it goes get better. Our family were a good distance away and every time I saw them trying to pretend everything was great was a real struggle. I ended up waking in the night in tears and going to work at 4am as I couldn’t cope with being at home.

If your feelings get any worse go the doctor as depression (post-natal?) in men is a real issue that very rarely gets addressed properly.

The best coping mechanism I had was to get out climbing for an hour one evening every week. You (and your GF) really need a little (tiny) bit of time to yourself each week to maintain sanity. I cannot stress how important that was for us.

Beyond this I forced myself to take our daughter for a full day on my own one weekend. This gave my wife a break for a day and forced me to deal with the baby properly as I had no one to pass her off to when things got difficult. This made a real difference and as soon as she had the 12 weeks inoculations I made a point of taking her swimming every Saturday. Through this I have built a good bond with her after a really difficult and shaky start.

On the medical side we thought it was trapped wind causing issues but we took her to the doctors and it turned out to be serious acid reflux and she was on baby Gaviscon until she was eating solids. Getting this sorted made the world of difference and things improved dramatically afterwards.

The only thing to remember is that it can be properly lonely for the mother with the loss of adult interaction especially if there is no support structure to rely on.

I can really understand how babies get shaken especially when people find there is little support around by way of friends and family.

Although I’d suggest that first try getting the baby into a different room – it may be convenient to have him next to the bed, but it just means that you’re all waking each other up all through the night. Move him out and he won’t wake up when you start snoring, and you won’t be on edge every time you hear him move. We got our second out of our bedroom at 6 weeks, and it made a huge difference. Don’t worry about whether you’ll hear him cry when he’s hungry, he’ll make sure of that

I’d caution against this, keeping them in your room is recommended for reducing SIDS risk (NHS page). As I understand it the point in keeping them in the same room is so they don’t sleep as deeply because they are disturbed by you being there (not convenience for the parent)! Also there are signs that a feed is required before crying starts. Much better to pick up up these as starting the feed is less stressful when the baby is not frantic.

ours is 3 weeks old, so I might be in for the worst of it yet, but still. Things that quieten him down :

bouncing on a gym ball whilst holding him (sometimes him looking at me works, sometimes him in ‘burping position’ works)

going for a walk into the downs (~40 minutes) with him in the baby bjorn – sometimes shuts up straight away, sometimes after 20 minutes

not letting him sleep *too* much in the day (ie asleep for more then 2.5 hours, wake him up for a feed) seems to help him sleep at night

for wind, infacol, and lying him on his back doing cycling & squatting motions with his legs seems to get it all out.

Earplugs – this one is golden – once you’re awake, pop them in. You’ll still hear the crying, but apparently ear plugs stops it triggering the stress response that we’re hard-wired into having. Allowing you to look after him more calmly

one thing that being a new parent does teach you is patience.

So firstly congrats.

Mines just hit 1. Ill happily admit that for the first 3 months I had my head in my hands thinking that the hell have we done. The missus looked like death, I didn’t know what to do. Everything I did was wrong and the baby just wanted boob. Its not great for the bloke but hold in there it does get better.

The best thing you can do is look after the mum. Mum will look after baby but she’ll be knackered. It will put stress on you as a couple (its hard, you need to hold it together and take a step back if things get heated. Shes always right and sort it out later). I know the olds are 5 hours away but consider getting them up for a weekend. Just to give you a break. Its worth it I promise.

Get friends round that understand. The ones that will make you a cuppa and not get you to make one. That’s the best thing ever.

I found eating lots helped. Come home with a large bar of chocolate and eat it together.

I know the olds are 5 hours away but consider getting them up for a weekend.

Only do this if there are the type that help. If they require waiting on then don’t bother as it’ll make things worse.

Is your partner breastfeeding, or are you bottle feeding?

My Wife breastfed for 6 weeks, but it was a real struggle & she suffered with really bad mastitis; almost needed surgery & still not right 9 months on….
So, we swapped to bottle feeding after 6 weeks and it made things a lot easier. We put our daughter onto the colic/constipation Aptamil as she couldn’t keep the normal stuff down.

She refused to sleep for the first few months on anything other than one of us; she could be sound asleep until we put her in her moses basket or cot at which point her eyes would pop open & she’d start crying.
We ended up sleeping in shifts – 2hrs on/2hrs off for the first 3 months, which was pretty hard going, but not as bad as it sounds.

We don’t have any nearby relatives, so found it hard to get help which sounds like the problems you are having. It does make a massive difference to have someone who can just take the strain for a short time.

Regarding the feelings of frustrations when trying to settle your baby down to sleep, I struggled with that. I dealt with it by telling myself that this was a little baby who didn’t really know what was going on, but reacted to things instinctively. Any struggles to get to sleep weren’t her being awkward, but just her being a newborn baby.
Someone mentioned just leaving putting the baby down for a few minutes if he’s not settling. I often did that, although perhaps sometimes only for 30seconds to take a few deep breaths & try again.
Even now after 9 months, sometimes she will go out like a light while other times she will fight hard not to fall asleep – I’ve learnt that it’s nothing personal & she’s not doing it on purpose; she’s just doing what babies do & I need to get better at understanding why she can’t sleep & help her out.

As mentioned above – there’ll be the odd signs that she is growing & developing & they really will melt your heart in an instant. That all makes it worth it – hours of misery forgotten with the faintest smile, or a little giggle.

Best of luck with it!

PS – as above – try to find the odd hour here & there so you can both get some time away to chill – even if it’s just pottering in the garage, or taking a stroll.

try tipping the cot/moses basket up at one end. silent reflux can be really quite unpleasant and this really helped. you’ll be surprised at the angle they can sleep at.

and then look forward to teething…. 😉

Earplugs – this one is golden – once you’re awake, pop them in. You’ll still hear the crying, but apparently ear plugs stops it triggering the stress response that we’re hard-wired into having. Allowing you to look after him more calmly

I reckon this is a good suggestion, I kept meaning to try it.
For some reason, when our daughter cries properly it goes straight through my head and gives me an immediate splitting headache, whereas my Wife who suffers with frequent headaches normally doesn’t suffer at all. She can hold her for prolonged periods while she cries like a banshee, while 5 mins for me & my head is a banging mess. I can put up with it, but it’s not comfortable. I bet discrete ear plugs would just take the edge off!

The first 3 months are probably the toughest.
It really does get easier, honest.

This plus a million. Mine are 5 & 2 now, and whilst I am insanely busy, life is considerably easier than when they were babies. In the meantime, you need to develop some coping strategies. Some agreed times for you both to do your own thing sounds like a good start.

i also used to do the late night feed so the wife could go to bed as soon as possible, and also i slept in another room for a least a few nights a week.
there is no point everyone waking up to feed.

My wife also has a hectic job, but it was only after 9-10 months so she was getting annoyed by the constant baby singing/bubbletime/massage class (all an excuse for coffee and cake) and looking forward to talking to people about something else.

[man hug]Feel for you[/man hug]. My daughter is 11 months now so this is fresh….. Last night teething kept us all awake…. But it does get better. You are probably at the low now, first 8-12 weeks are hard then I noticed I was no worse each morning and it dawned we had reached the turning point. A month later and it was vastly better for me, although a breast feeding partner shouldering the feeds meant she bottomed out a month or more after me. Just hang in there. Remember you are all tired. ANY little gesture to be loving can be huge, a short foot massage, a cuppa brought, making 30 mins for her to shower and relax, helping brush her hair etc.

Keep smiling, you’ll do it.

Oh and my daughter cried so loud it would hurt my and fiancees ears….. Thankfully her max volume decreased dramatically as she got a bit bigger…. Weird!

Almost everyone with children will recognise the scenario

IME no one can sustain week upon week of this without feeling exhausted or unable to cope and it can be a testing time for relationships

I used to do everything from getting home on a Friday evening until 11pm on a Sunday night that way we both managed to get enough sleep to make do.

I found a sling a great help. I was able to slip the boy in and head out for a nice walk. He’d sleep, mum could sleep and I could at least clear my head.

Was great for longer strolls at the weekend but also for a quick 30 mins of peace during the week. Even if I didn’t go out I could tidy up the kitchen a bit while mum and son had a nap.

As other have said it gets easier. Try and learn to de-tune the stress and enjoy these prescious moments!

Our little one struggled terribly with wind / colic and we found that a red castle cacoonababy (stupid name) made a massive difference to sleep.

I’d caution against this, keeping them in your room is recommended for reducing SIDS risk

Live and learn, it’s been 12 years since the last one was a newborn, the advice has probably moved on a bit.

Wow I’m still picking through all the posts, thanks everyone it really helps to read some of these responses. It’s very easy to feel like ‘this is it’ and things won’t improve right now.

Baby has been bottle fed almost since day one, it’s complicated but boob wasn’t really a long-term option. The in-laws are useful and grandad especially loves the little man, but nanny’s solution to most problems appears to be placing baby in a pram in the garden 😀 My parents are 90 mins drive away but unfortunately not really interested.

Stumpy, our little man does the exact same, asleep soundly for 30 mins on mum, very carefully place him in moses (like you’re handling high-explosives) & boom – the eyes ping open & it all kicks off again! Will review the angle/setup in there.

Spoke to GF and agreed a timetable of sorts needs to be put in place, so we’re not debating who is doing what at 3am. Also took time out to speak to a colleague I wouldn’t usually encounter, he has a 4 month old girl, his wife had called him up yesterday swearing & in tears, and he feels helpless at home as she is almost 100% breast feeding – strangely reassuring to hear this.

It’s very easy to feel like ‘this is it’ and things won’t improve right now.

Sleep deprivation is recognised as a method of torture for a reason…