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Maryland Babies
Were you prepared?
So I see a lot of posts on the bump now that I'm a mom and even when I was pregnant that make me want to bang my head repeatedly against a wall.
There was a post I read today where a girl said she was scared to breastfeed because she had no idea all the baby would be doing would be eating, sleeping, and pooping every 1-2 hours. My initial reaction is ummm well no sh!t Sherlock! and then I started to wonder, do people really have some other picture of what life with a newborn is like?
I know you can only prepare yourself so much in reading books and talking to other moms and much of it you just sort of learn as you go, but I'm always amazed when I read posts like the one I mentioned above.
Soooooo....Mommas with kids, do you feel like you were prepared when you had your kid(s)? Do you feel like you had a pretty accurate idea in your head of what parenthood would be like? What went totally as planned and what came as a surprise?
Mommas to be, do you feel prepared to have a kiddo? What are you doing to prepare yourself? What are you most scared/apprehensive about?
bumping from my phone. please pardon any typos and missing punctuation
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Re: Were you prepared?
I have spent a ton of time around kids my whole life, so parenthood really came as no big shock to me. I've been blessed with a really good baby and she's keeping the surprises at bay *knock on wood*. I think the biggest surprise stems from being with her every day and realizing how fast she's growing up. DH and I talk about it all the time, how she is such a little person already and the baby stage is too short and too fast.
In terms of preparedness for an infant, I just did as much reading as I could, took advice from others but mostly just rolled with the punches after she arrived. I think being a parent is really about adapting and dealing with what comes your way. No two babies are the same, so we armed ourselves with the essentials and worked everything else day by day.
Someone's getting a little brother!
I feel like with Aiden I was pretty prepared. I knew I'd be exhausted, but I don't think that anything can truly prepare you for the exhaustion, if that makes sense.
Now, going from 1 to 2 has been quite the jump. All my friends with two tried to prepare me, but I really had to experience it for myself. It's quite the change!
miscarriage on 11/26/09 at 5w6d
hmmm - that's an interesting take, b/c so many people on teh The Bump are like "oh, the 0-1 transition is super hard, going from 1-2 is NBD"
I think I was "prepared" and it definitely helped to talk to a lot of moms here and get the honest truth on how it is. I guess there were a few things that weren't quite how I imagined them...
I had been dreading (DREADING) BFing but I ended up enjoying it and was kind of sad when I stopped.
I knew that the baby would eat every 2-3 hours in the beginning but I didn't realize it would take him 45mins-1hour to eat. Then you change him, put him back down and you have like 1 hour left before you have to start again.
I wasn't prepared for DH's low level of patience.
BFP#1: 01/10, M/C 6w
BFP#2: 06/10, M/C 5w
BFP#3: 09/10, DS born June 1, 2011
BFP#4: 07/12, M/C 5w3d
BFP#5: 12/12, EDD 08/18/13
My Blog: Decorate This
I'm amazed by some of the posts that I see on the 0-3 month board. It makes me wonder how many of those people even picked up one book or talked to another parent the whole time they were pregnant. I think the posts that make me want to bang my head against the wall more than any others are the ones that start off with "should I call the doctor". If you think it is possibly worth calling the doctor than call that is what they are there for.
I felt I was somewhat prepared between the books that I read and the fact that my mom had my brothers when I was 17 and 20 so I have been around babies before. I wasn't prepared for the fact that I pretty much lived on the couch for the first few weeks because it was the most comfortable place to sit.
Both of these things. Also, keeping in mind that I did a LOT of babysitting even through my 20's and was also a full time nanny for a summer+ for a family with a newborn, there were still things I didn't expect like:
The stress of having trouble breastfeeding and having a baby that lost weight when she was supposed to be gaining, and then gaining very slowly. I also wasn't prepared for the feelings of failure for supplementing with formula when all the breastfeeding resources said not to. While I knew it was the best thing for her (since she was practically starving and it wasn't a supply issue), it was still difficult for me to accept at first.
I also didn't know any babies who demanded to be held ALL.THE.TIME, so I wasn't quite ready when mine did. I know it's in the realm of normal, but I wasn't ready for it.
So, I guess I prepared the best I could, and had/have realistic expectations, but reading things and really experiencing them are different (like truly understanding how tired I could be).
Baby Girl #2 is on her way!
I saw this post today and it was one of those times I wish I could have reached through the computer and shook someone. Your response was great!
I think I was pretty well prepared. I had had a lot of hands on experience with young children. I baby sat a TON (one time I counted and I baby sat for over 125 families from the time I was 12 to 30.) I started watching one little boy in NYC when he was maybe 8 months old (weekends & evenings) and started watching his sister when she was a newborn- so my most recent baby-sitting experiences were w/ babies. So I had a good idea, but it's totally different when it's your baby and you are with them 24/7 (though I did have one live-in experience that I think was the biggest eye-opener for me, like 3 kids who came and woke me up vs. their parents.)
I was to an extent. I had baby experience from working in daycare and my sister was born when I was 16. But like PP have said, even if you know you're going to be sleep deprived, nothing can prepare you for how that will feel. I also wonder if I had some mild PPD for the first 4 (maybe even 6) weeks, or very much baby blues, which even though I knew was a possibility, I was not prepared for that and had no idea what it could/would feel like. I read BF books and lurked on the BF board and went to BF class and had a LC already set up - but I was not prepared for a baby that was slow to gain, had major latch issues, a NP telling me I was starving my baby, etc. Combine that w/ the baby blues and it was a miracle I lasted until 4 weeks w/o supplementing w/ FF (which I still don't think she needed, but I needed to do it for my mental health) which eventually lead to 100% FF. Never in a million years would I have thought that would happen and I was not prepared at all to FF (had done no research on it.)
So, I guess I don't really know if I was prepared or not...I didn't expect a lot of the issues that came up...I did expect to be sleep deprived, nursing a LOT, I knew how to change a diaper and give a baby a bath and do those basic care things. But I don't think anything I read in my books or on TB could have prepared me for some of the struggles I listed above.
I was about 75% prepared. During my bedrest I did a lot of lurking on 0-3 and BFing boards so I knew of the common issues and kind of mentally bookmarked some info.
I was not prepared for PPD or exactly how sleepless I would be. I thought DH would be able to help more but if I wasn't holding her she was screaming so it never helped.
One thing I had no clue about that makes me laugh is I thought J would "magically" go to sleep if I laid her in her bassinet. I had no clue you needed to do a bedtime routine or anything like that. Boy was I in for it.
Francesca Pearl is here! Josephine Hope is almost 3!
Kathryn- I have one older sister. She lived in VA Beach when #1 was born and moved to Hawaii when my niece was 4 months old and had kiddo #2 while she was over there. So while she did have kids, we also weren't all that close in proximity so I could really see what it was like.
I read a LOT prior to having Lucy. I lurked on probably every board on the bump, read tons of crap online, and read like 5 books. I just wanted to get my hands on as much information as I could. I think what helped me the most was the year I worked in an infant room at a daycare center. Even though I was only 20 at the time and not exactly trying to retain all I could about caring for an infant, I'm surprised at how much stuck with me.
Overall I would say I was pretty prepared when I had Lucy in terms of caring for a newborn and what to expect. I knew I would be tired, but I don't think there's anyway you can prepare yourself for what that kind of sleep deprivation feels like. I wouldn't say I was surprised by it, I knew it would happen, but I definitely wasn't used to functioning on that little sleep.
I'd say the only thing that really caught me off guard were the pp hormones (which looking back I feel like should have been a no brainer) and how my relationship with DH would change. It's definitely much more like 'old times' now, but in the beginning I seriously couldn't even look at DH without wanting to hit him with a brick.
I nannied for a family in college, when I started the oldest was 10 months old and by the time I graduated 3 years later they had 3 boys. So I had a lot of experience with NB's and even watched the boys for entire weekends at a time, so I knew what to expect, pretty much you are "on" the entire time they are awake and barely have time go to the bathroom. But I didn't know first hand what it would be like to be the main source of food for my LO who had latching issues at first, and then ate for an hour, every 2 hours for the first month of his life. And since J was born during the winter, and right in the middle of the 2 big snow storms, I wasn't prepared for being stuck in the house and the isolation for the first 2 months. But J was/is also a great sleeper and was STTN at 5/6 weeks, so while I was still a bit tired, getting a 6 hour stretch of sleep helped so much.
I also read A LOT, did A LOT of research, but there are people out there that just...don't. I don't know if they don't know how, don't know where to go, whatever, but there are people that just don't research the crap out of things. I think you (and many of the ladies on here, including myself) are the kind of people that know the best way to go into a major life changing situation is to research the crap out it, and others just don't.
I thought that I was prepared, but like others have said in retrospect I don't think I could really be prepared. My expectations and reality where VERY far apart. Some of this had to do with DD's prematurity. I had a really rough time in the begining.
Everyone kept saying, "Isn't it wonderful?!?" And it WASN'T wonderful... it was awful. I remember at about 8 weeks PP I went to the doctor to talk about the possibility of having PPD. I was crying to my doctor about how hard it was and asking why everyone "lies" about what it is like to have a baby. She reassured me that the newborn phase is really tough, and it was especially difficult on preemie moms. Evie's newborn stage was almost twice as long as with a normal baby. My dr said normally by that point babies would start to smile and coo, and give the mom positive feedback, but DD was still acting like a 2 week old.
Even with a lot of family support it was still hard, and I don't think anything in the world could have mentally or emotionally prepared me for going through it. I have to say, my husband was totally awesome. I'm not sure what I would have done without him.