New family advice / ranting / support forum etc etc

Re the faking it aspect, I live next door to a couple who’ve just had their second baby. It screams the house down and they spend all their time shouting at one another, slamming doors and screeching out the drive way after a barmy.

But when they have friends round, it’s all smiles and a masterful projection of the idyllic family, circa 1950s smalltown America.

As Pilate asked, What is Truth?

For us, expressing milk helped lots, meant bub got the good stuff and mum could sleep.

We then went into a rota system for a while, so I’d get in from work sort tea, then Mrs Potato would feed. She’d then got to bed and LesBijouPotato and I would watch some box sets while he slept on my shoulder until say midnight. That gives her some 4-5 hrs continuous sleep which will really help.

Other things that helped, coming home with a new outfit for her so she feels pretty and getting the food and drink for parents sorted out.

Good luck 🙂

We tried expressing but jnr didnt like the teats so a round of trying all the teats available. Getting out to mother and baby groups might open some avenues.

Whilst the baby was young it was great to go out together for a few hours but on demand feeding did curtail some trips. Identifying the baby’s feeding routine via a feeding diary did highlight some free time. Also spotting local mothercare stores as they have mother and baby rooms along the way is good.

We found the NCT post natal courses really useful. https://www.nct.org.uk/courses/postnatal

They are a small group of people with babies the same age and the point is to talk about the issues that you are facing. 10 years on the group is still close, even though some of us no longer live in the same country.

local libraries and church halls will have coffee morning and baby bounce/music stuff that is free(ish) and can be great for getting out of the house.

I think though, that one of the fundamental issues is loneliness / tiredness / feeling that you aren’t doing it right. You can provide support and re-assurance just by being there and listening.

Also, I think that sometimes blokes have a tendency to try and fix a problem, but that isn’t always what is needed.

Where to start? Hormones – for 9 months they’ve been working differently, they won’t return to ‘normal’ after some time so do be patient with that.

Boobs – they can get bloomin’ sore when breast feeding, having a pair of melons full of breast milk can be very uncomfortable, let alone getting sore nipples. Don’t get me started on squirting boobs and damp clothing. 😳 To be blunt, some wimmin just want their boobs back as they get fed up of feeling like Daisy when they want to feel like a woman.

Confidence – don’t under-estimate how tough it is having a first baby when you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s a massive responsibility but one can feel over-awed.

Put baby in pram every day regardless of the weather and go for a walk, fresh air works wonders and clears the head. Good for baby too.

Can’t really add much more other than on cycling, I did almost all of my riding through a 1 hour each way commute. Everyday, come rain or shine, all seasons.

That way I got loads of riding and exercise and never ate into the remaining time. And, when my daughter was more than s few weeks I’d get a weekend ride in by making sure I left the house by 7am, rode on my own and pressed on for 2-3 hours. I was fitter then than any time before or since!

It’s been a while since I had a baby in the house, and I can’t really offer much advice, but I can still remember just how much we argued during that first month – lack of sleep and confidence really mess with your mind!

But it will end, you will get the hang of it and it does get easier. Eventually 😀

(Oh, and bottle feeding is great!)

Great thread!

Our little girl is 19 weeks so just got through the rougher stuff and getting slowly settled into a routine.

My wife and I both work shift patterns but she will be on maternity leave for 9 months whilst I’m back at work. Our closest relatives are 2hrs away and We also have a 17 month old working cocker. She did not have PND but here is a few tips that I found usefull.

Having our dog was great as my wife had no option other than to get out the house once a day.

We went to NCT and as a group we have all stayed in touch. WhatsApp group for the blokes and wife’s mean advice and support is always there. Had a belter of a curry with the guys last week.

Get a good baby carrier and take the young Un for a long walk and let your other half have time off. The dog helps here. My wife is like a refreshed person if I take everything off her hands for a couple of hours.

If friends come round be brutally honest. If they want a cuppa or beer, they get it themselves AFTER, they’ve emptied the dishwasher, hung out the washing etc. As our family live so far away we rely heavily on neighbours and mates.

Knock the biking on the head until you are in a routine. Either commute to work or get good lights and go out at night when baby is in bed. It’s teamwork.

You will both fallout as it’ll feel like you are both on the wrong page, but this is down to tiredness so take a deep breath and count to 10.

We find that if both of us help out with the bath it’s a really good bonding experience.

Start the bottle ASAP with expressed milk. It took our daughter a while to get what the bottle was and it was a bit of a battle. Wife is giving up the books soon and going onto formula. This way she can get more time off.

It’s hard but when she smiles it does make all the difference. I don’t think over all I’m happier than before. Sometimes I feel like a good cry and that my wife doesn’t think that it’s also hard on me.

The main thing to remember is it gets a lot easier.

The trouble was, neither of my daughters took to the bottle, and it ended up with me getting incredibly stressed because I wasn’t able to feed them.

Oh yeah, I forgot that bit. Neither did mine. Sippy cup to feed milk at a couple of months old. Fun. Still have a practically unused set of Avant bottles and teats (including the other version that were incompatible!)

Also: Lansinoh cream. Buy some. Her nipples will never be able to repay you! Available from chemists.

This thread is perfectt timing, our 1st is due to arrive any moment now and this is something that has been worrying me. My wife is prone to feeling low/depression and I think that combined with new baby/c-section (most likely due to baby breeched) we are in the realms of PND. So anything I can do to help her is great.

Im going to take a look at the NCT post natal groups, seems a lot of people have got a lot out of and met people that has really helped 🙂

OP
Don’t know if you have any family around for support,we didn’t and spent a lot of time with our NCT group.Like Cobrakai ,we have stayed good friends with some of the group and I would always recommend first timers to give the NCT a go.
It was a lifesaver in the early months being able to share /offload with people going through the same new baby stuff.It also made us get out the house as a family. Try making a plan for getting out and make a bit of a timetable for the week so that you get the best out of your free time. As people have said ,it will get easier.

Maybe different for us because my wife is super social but she’s out and about with our baby almost every day. Not a lot of NCT (although she does seem them occasionally) or baby class things but mostly just meeting friends. Some are also on maternity leave or full-time mums, some are at work and she meets them for lunch or coffee in town.

She was expressing milk from quite early – that’s slowed down a bit as the baby needs more now but there’s enough of a stash frozen that her going out for the evening or a weekend day is no problem. She does that every couple of weeks

We’re total opposites – I can see if she was like me, with a small circle of close friends I only see occasionally, it would be a lot more difficult and isolating. Sleep can be a real issue too – a friend’s wife always felt she had to be tidying, washing, baking when the baby slept and just got exhausted. Letting some stuff go and for you, stepping in and saying “I’ve got this, just go to bed for a bit” can be really important.

It’s hard striking a balance of how much helping out to do – I’ve seen some fathers be expected to spend every waking (and not) moment outside of work looking after kids because the mother “has them all day”. There are some who barely lift a finger because they expect the mother to do it all. We try to look at it as us both having full-time jobs then a shared responsibility outside of that.

Mine is now 13 weeks old; from my personal experience I would drop the biking for a few weeks/months as when you get home taking the baby gives your other half a break physically and mentally as she won’t have to be constantly aware of where the baby is; plus they change so quickly its worth enjoying the ‘now’ as once the time has gone you have missed it.

Insofar as getting out the house, my other half tries to spend at least 1/2 the day out of the house every day doing things and has been since my son was 3 days old, NCT groups are worth a look, as are parent and toddler groups, water babies and buggy fit. Essentially your OH needs to get out and speak to adults and see the light.

I’ve only skimmed – but bear in mind its not as black and white as bottle or breast. One bottle feed a week with formula isn’t going to make any difference. If “mum” is not in the room and baby is actually hungry it will take the formula (there are special teats for breast fed babies that are supposed to be more like the real thing although I think we found normal ones worked well). Of course if she wants to express then great – but if you feel like a milk machine when feeding probably being attached to one when not is hardly appealing.

I’d suggest the first thing would be to propose you give her a night off – where she gets a whole nights sleep, and you do all the feeds. That will make a huge difference. Then you could suggest an evening off (this can be engineered so a friend invites her out in your company and you then say of course you’ll cope, rather than trying to force her out!). Then it can be a day… etc. Any of your friends who have kids will completely understand and be happy to help; if you are light on those then older relatives usually remember it too – grannies and even great grannies love to interfere – let them just a little. Grandads often didn’t get involved in their own kids because it wasn’t the social norm but are happy to do it now for short periods.

Once your break the pattern once in a while and demonstrate that its possible then slowly “normal” (or a new version of it) begins to return.

You will be crap at looking after the wee one. This is actually good! It reinforces to the mother that she is doing a good job! If you have an amazing disaster free day where everybody giggles and eats and you juggle your kids, your job, your biking and chatting to friends, for godsake don’t tell her!

loads of good advice which i won’t regurgitate. Only comment i’d make (and I only use C_G’s quote as an example, others have said similar in other ways)

Put baby in pram every day regardless of the weather and go for a walk, fresh air works wonders and clears the head. Good for baby too.

This.

In fact i’d go so far as to say that i think new parents should be banned from internet shopping for at least 3 months. Yes, it is bloody convenient but you need to be forced into going out into the wide world just so you have another existance beyond being this thing that the baby is clamped to for 18 hours a day. And if breastfeeding in Starbucks becomes necessary, good, hopefully the gits that think it’s unsavoury will be the ones forced to stay home and do their shopping online in case they get put off their lunch.

Poly is spot on – find someone (a friend of hers) to come on a midweek night to take her to whatever walking distance pub/restaurant there is, as soon as she has fed, she goes out

if you have other activities that involve you leaving the house, then make a call and drop one of those for solidarity reasons,

To build on the expressing thing…

What really worked well for both of ours was to give the last feed before bed (10/11pm ish) as a bottle of expressed milk. This was always my job (except if I was away for any reason). We coupled this with making 7pm babies bed time. Obviously in the early weeks the baby wasn’t actually alone in their bed from 7pm but we tried to put them down in a pram/moses basket or encorage them to sleep (which isn’t always possible!). Then at 10pm ish I’d give them the bottle of expressed in (in our bedroom initially, then the babies room) and do whatever it took to get them to sleep afterwards in a cot. Which useually meant cuddles, walking round the bedroom in the dark, trying unsucessfully to put the baby down without waking them etc. Then we’d go to bed.

While I did this my wife would express while watching tele, reading etc. so I had a bottle to give the next day.

This meant from 7ish it was grown up time. After the last boob feed my wife could relax and know that she wasn’t required until at least the middle of the night and she had some baby free time every day. She could also go out for the evening if she wanted/needed to. This happened more with our second though as I don’t think she trusted me to be in sole charge of another human!

The other thing with small babies is they are extreemly portable. Encoruaging a new mother to do anything is touchy but getting out of the house during the day is really important, as is socialising with other people in the same situation. Leading by example at the weekends by taking mother and child out is a good way to do this. Go to places you won’t be able to once you have a todler!

my advice:

when you get home from work, or at weekends, take baby for long walk in buggy and give mum a break. Bsby will likely fall asleep if recently fed.

If serious about PND get her help now before it gets worse. Once you get local health services involved its amazing what help is available.

Begin to supplement bottle milk for breast occasionally that way yer mrs can have a longer break.

if baby isn’t sleeping through begin to plan when baby at right age can be ‘encouraged’ to self sooth themselves to sleep. theres lots of techniques, the baby will cry, you and your wife have to have the training to not react. its tough but a life saver as it will let her sleep and that will make her much better for the day ahead.

also begin to think how you can do a date night. this might involve inlaws and grand parents and yo both being ready and able to leave baby for the evening. My suggestion is a local cinema first and then as confidence grows do other stuff.

the situation always reminds me of what they tell you on planes, put you oxygen mask on before helping others, you have to be capable of helping, you have to look after yourselves in order to look after others.

Congratulations.

If she’s breastfeeding and nipper won’t take a bottle then it’s going to be tough as there’s little escape for her.

Top tip, dads do first bottle feeds, no distracting milky smells from his chest to confuse things. After Jr has got used to plastic teats mum should be able to do some bottle feeding if needed but don’t count on it.

First a list of things that helped:

A Baby Jogger
A tandem with a baby seat
a baby back pack
The attendants at the local pool were happy with us swimming with the baby in a push chair at the end of the line.

Madame breast fed and it was really convenient having clean, healthy milk at the right temperature available at exactly the time junior felt hungry. Only one time did it go wrong. She went out cycling between feeds but decided to do a longer ride then punctured. Baby got distressed waiting with me at home so I fed him. Madame arrived home feeling uncomfortably full and ignored “best wait a bit he’s just been fed”. Baby turned into a milk fountain.