Its not as easy as it looks!
LisiLynn
member
Hi ladies,
A third time Mom here and I wanted to share a little about my experience as a first time Mom, and second and third. When I was in the throws of it, I didn't even realize I had post partum depression, That's people who want to hurt their babies right?. I never wanted to hurt my baby, I took amazing care of him, I was so gentle with him but... I didn't feel like he was mine. For some reason I felt like I was babysitting someone else's baby and I was really upset that they'd left him with me for this long. It was too much and I was in over my head. But regardless of his parents I'd take the very best care of this little baby boy. For 12 weeks it seemed like, I took amazing care of someone else's baby but then this tiny boy started smiling at me, cooing, reaching out and best of all, SLEEPING! It was like someone flipped a switch at 12 weeks. Everything was getting better, each day was like a milestone and a huge leap forward, I was falling in love with MY son and finally bonding! Though I had a lot of social groups, friends from church, a huge family on both mine and my husbands side, I didn't feel comfortable telling anyone what I was going through. I joined a Mommy and Me group at the local hospital when my son was about 4 months old and it wasn't until he was 12 months that I overheard some of the other women talking about how they didn't feel like their babies were theirs. My ears perked up and I joined in the conversation. I can't tell you the relief I felt. I thought I'd been a horrible mother having felt that way. The RN who ran the group explained that was post partum depression and was very natural, common and important to talk about. I listened to other mothers share their stories. One was gripped with fear that she'd fall down the stairs, trip or slip while holding her newborn. My sister later told me she had a gripping fear that she'd accidentally hit the babies head on a corner as she walked through her house holding one of her twins. These are all symptoms of the baby blues or post partum depression. Who knew??? Obviously not as serious as wanting to hurt or kill your baby, but sill very real and these feelings can make you feel terrible. On the outside, everything seemed fine and I doted over my little boy, everyone thought I really had it together and knew what I was doing. I was nursing, getting out and about and back into the swing of things but inside everything wasn't so fabulous. Another friend of mine had a particularly crabby baby. He's about a year and a half younger than my oldest. I remember calling her to chat one day and she broke down in tears, I told her to bring her baby over for me to watch. She was miserable and at her wit's end with her son who just wouldn't stop crying. When she got to my house she literally opened the door, roughly put the carrier down with tears in her eyes and turned around and left. Fortunately when she returned she was so much better, she just needed a break from that pressure and I was constantly texting her that everything was going great and to stay out as long as she needed! She was truly having a really difficult time. After about a year, they found out their son had a sensitivity to certain milk protiens that are also in soy. I just wanted to share this with you first time Mom's incase anyone else is going through this. There are many things that helped me through the most difficult time. One was a really supportive husband, he wanted to be sure our son was as bonded to him as he was to me (even if it wasn't a two way street on my part) so he insisted on taking care of him quite a bit. Another were the women at church. One lady finally convinced me to allow my son to sleep on his tummy. It terrified me and I'd lay him down and lay beside his crib and read a book so I could watch him breathe. After about a week of this we decided to purchase a motion monitor. It was a fantastic investment. Did it have false positives? Yep, quite a bit when the baby scooted too far to one edge of the crib but better to have a false positive than not work. At least we knew it was working and worked well. The more my son grew, the less the false positives happened, but they still occurred on occasion until we stopped using it at about age two and a half. Another huge benefit was reading sleep training books. I didn't start them until about 4 months and never went with one method or another. I just made up my own from what I'd learned and what I felt I could do (I couldn't let my son CIO). My favorite book was Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child though I learned a lot from each book. Though I'd already gotten my first son in the pattern of nursing him (or bottle feeding) and rocking to sleep I learned from these books that was a HUGE no no! With my second and third I nursed/fed when they woke up. This is one of the most life changing lessons I learned when it came to my second and third child. The last thing I learned was that babies sleep a LOT! Let them sleep, give them the opportunity to sleep. My children could barely stay awake for an hour before it was time to put them back down. And sleep begets sleep meaning the more you let them sleep, the better they will sleep. My now one year old sleeps from seven to seven (all three of my children head to bed at seven and the boys (age 3 and 6) are brushed, read to and tucked in with lights out by 7:30. My baby wakes up around seven, we change her, feed her and then play and have her back down right around 8am. Yep, one hour. She sleeps for about an hour and is up for maybe 2 hours, then back down again. The next time she might stay up for up to three or four hours before its nap time for the third time and then up to eat dinner, bathe and down for the night. For a stint, she was rarely if ever up for more than an hour at a time. That's a lot of sleeping! And a lot of time for me to unwind and focus on my older children. I can only imagine if I'd known with my first what I learned before my second and third. They were/are the easiest babies of all time. In fact my husband just put my one year old down for nap #3 (late because we went to the pool) and he literally walked in, changed her, kissed her and set her in her crib. She whimpered for all of perhaps 3 seconds before agreeing it was time to sleep.
Re: Its not as easy as it looks!
OP, I read most of Weisenbach's book. I wish I had read it before I had my first. Sleep -I find- does beget sleep. Thanks for sharing.
And as far as nursing your baby or bottle-feeding them to go to sleep, there is no way my kid is going back down in the middle of the night if he's hungry. No amount of patting and shushing is going to convince him to ignore his biological urge to fill his tummy.
He's a big baby and needs those calories. He's at the top of the growth chart and that's because he eats so damn much.
So yeah, babies need a lot of sleep, but they also need to eat very frequently.