How do you do it all?
Hi I am a FTM to a 3 week old newborn. My husband and I are both on parental leave until the new year, and I would say that everything is going as smoothly as it can. For context, he’s a wonderful and supportive teammate who lives to make my life easier. 🩷 We also have a lot of support from our parents and friends who bring food and help out if needed.
Right from the beginning, my daughter had a hard time latching. I had a few lactation consults, and they were helpful, but she would go right back to bruising and bloodying my nipples, which would delay feedings, and thus upset her. This would break my heart, so I’ve switched to exclusively pumping, and formula feeding overnight.
My question is, how are moms keeping up with newborn care while pumping 8+ times a day? I feel like I’m not spending enough time with her because there’s constantly bottles and pump parts to wash, dirty (poopy) clothes to wash, shopping to do, etc. Then I’m right back to pumping conveniently during her wake windows 😞. This was especially worse when I was healing after birth because there was so much after-care. This leads to my husband doing the bulk of one-to-one with her and I just feel like the cow and life manager.
How do women do it all? How are they waking up 3 times a night to pump, and change, feed, rock back to sleep. I don’t know how much longer I can pump around the clock, and it’s only been 3 weeks!