r/beyondthebump

And how did you guys net out? I love my husband but the whole tradition gives me the ick and the expectation from everyone especially my in-laws.

I make as much, if not more than my husband, I’m carrying the baby, delivering the baby….and then baby gets husbands last name. For context, I’ve kept my maiden name and in laws have been trying to pressure me to change it.

Thank you in advance for any tips on how you’ve handled this!

I am planning to give birth with a licensed midwife in a birth center, no epidural or gas pain relief options. I will have water and a team for counterpressure for pain relief! This will be my second, my first had the epidural.

Most of reddit is full of the horror stories. Please tell me your good story :)

Hi all! Would love any thoughts. I'm four months postpartum and have started working out again. I wasn't actively working out during pregnancy but walked daily, and was keen to get back to running and cycling on my peleton. I feel okay generally and have been listening to my body however whenever I run I start to feel run down and all my stats seem to be telling me to stop what I'm doing. I am not getting amazing sleep but not really expecting to at this stage. Do I need to wait until my baby is sleeping through the night?

I am following a runna postpartum running plan 2x a week atm. It's quite slow and includes run-walking. And/or I do 1-2 cycle classes a week. I am walking regularly and little man is keeping me busy ofc!

My garmin regularly tells me I am unproductive or strained and my cycling v02 seems to go down each time I work out.

Im not interested in losing any weight, 90% it feels good for my brain and 10% would love to get fit again eventually. Would love any suggestions or ideas!

You guys. I'm so exhausted by the dogma! Apparently I'm a centrist when it comes to many parenting issues and I guess I just need to vent that it's hard out here to be open to multiple POVs lol. I know the only real answer is to get off Reddit altogether but the sleep deprivation has truly decimated my attention span for anything else.

Why is it so hard to have nuanced conversations about baby sleep? On one end of the spectrum, even questioning the effectiveness sleep training with my particular baby gets me banned in one sub, while acknowledging the existing research on sleep training has me attacked in another sub.

Honest question, is there a centrist-friendly sub about baby sleep that I'm not aware of where you can have open discussions about this stuff without so much extremism?

I can't be the only person who craves a space like this???

Prefacing this with feeling very thankful that I’m in this situation and have these choices.

In November 2025 I gave birth to our first child and had 6 months of maternity leave. In April of 2026 while on leave still I was given a massive promotion and now make $200k annually. My benefits are free and I recognize I had a wonderful maternity leave. I returned to work in May.

For childcare, my mother watches the baby during the week. I work a high-stress consulting job with monthly travel.

My husband is an executive and makes $300k+ annually. We would like to have at least 1 more, potentially 2 more children. He has asked me if I would like to quit and become a SAHM.

I loved my 6 months home with our first child and do get sad that I don’t get to spend every day with her, especially as she approaches her first birthday and I realize how quickly she’s grown in the first year alone. Work takes out a lot from me and sometimes after work I find myself secretly counting down the minutes to bedtime so I can rest. It feels wrong to me.

On the other hand, I make really good money and worked really, really hard to get this huge promotion. Our household salary will cut by almost half if I do quit. My industry will be hard to return to if I take a break in my career. And I don’t know what toddler years are like or what having several kids will be like.

I’m afraid I’ll regret my decision, either way. Welcome any insights or advice. Thank you!

I recently had an unplanned C-section for arrest/failure of descent and I’m still trying to understand whether things realistically could have gone differently.

I was unexpectedly induced at 37 weeks for gestational hypertension. I made it to 10 cm/100%/+1 and pushed for a little over an hour. Baby was OT, had a 95th percentile head, and wasn’t descending despite pushing and position changes. My OB tried manually rotating him a few times but couldn’t get him rotate. I was contracting every 2–3 minutes with an epidural and couldn’t really feel the contractions.

Eventually they recommended a C-section for arrest of descent. I agreed, but afterward I’ve struggled with feeling like I “gave up” too quickly because I hear about people pushing for 2–4 hours. I keep wondering whether I should have advocated to keep pushing longer.

For OBs/L&D nurses or anyone who had something similar — does the lack of descent + persistent OT position + failed attempts at rotation make it unlikely that another hour or two of pushing would have changed the outcome? Or could I realistically have had a vaginal delivery if I’d kept going?

Disclaimer that I know single mothers and people with multiple children have it way harder than I do.

But I have an 11 week old and my husband goes back to work today. I know that we were so blessed that he got such a long leave since a lot of fathers don’t get any time at all. But we have a very “colicky”, difficult, high needs baby. She is truly 24/7. She doesn’t like being put down, she won’t nap in her bassinet, and if you aren’t holding her just right she is very upset. We’ve spent much of these last 11 weeks trying to figure out what exactly is bothering her so much and we just can’t figure it out.

Now that he’s going back to work I don’t understand how I’m supposed to live my life. I already am so sleep deprived. She usually settles for the night around 10, but I can never make it in bed before 11 because I have so many things to do around the house. I usually then get to sleep until 230, but then I’m up from 2:30-5 every day to pump, feed her, settle her, run the bottle washer, etc. At 5 my husband takes over but she’s still so loud at that point that I basically don’t sleep.

Then my husband goes to the gym at 7 so I have to take over. I physically can’t force myself to get up before that because I’m so tired but then I need to pump again and get ready, but I can’t because she’s napping and I can’t set her down. I can’t hold her when I have wearable pumps in so that’s not an option.

So now my boobs are engorged, i need to pee, I’m so tired, and I can’t even wash my face and brush my teeth to get ready for the day. I can’t even make myself a cup of coffee. And I have loads of laundry, my bed isn’t made, the dishwasher is full of dishes. And I’m so overwhelmed :(

So how do other people do this alone? I know that so many women do so I don’t understand what’s wrong with me.

I have a 6 week old and have been debating buying the owlet sock. I never had one with my first baby but I’m dealing with a lot of anxiety this time around. My first baby never really slept but this one sleeps well and pretty heavily. I’ve been very anxious about sids, I understand it can’t actually prevent anything but I like the idea of a warning system if that makes sense? So I’m looking for opinions. If you have it, do you like it or find it useful? Does anyone regret their purchase? It has a big price tag so want to make sure it works well and is worth buying.

My baby is colic so very rarely wants to chill even in my arms, basically upset unless everything is perfect for her or she’s asleep. I just want to know what a baby without colic is like. I’m so curious!

Can you set them down for a little? Will they chill in a car seat after coming inside if not asleep?

Tell me the chillest stuff about your non colic baby

I’m day dreaming of my next kid being non colic and I just need to know what your day is even like 😭

Weird logistics question. We have the Frida Baby 4-in-1 Grow-with-Me bathtub and I should’ve taken the little mesh sling out months ago, but I cannot figure out how to clean baby’s privates/bottom without it. My approach is terrible, I’ve basically been draining almost all of the water out of her little tub and pulling her feet way up so her head is uncomfortably lying at the bottom of the tub and she’s torquing around like a little shark. There has to be a better way to do this. For the rest of the bath, it seems clear that she needs to just be sitting up in the tub. I can wash everything else except her privates/bottom this way. It seems dangerous to have her stand up in any way. Any tips?

So I have an appt for a cleaning tomorrow and I’m filling out my paperwork online and it just occurred to me that since a C-section is considered like surgery, I might need to mention it in the notes for them to know? Is it important or no? I just don’t want to look silly for mentioning something possibly irrelevant.

Hey, I want to buy my babies their first shoes, they are 15 months old and have been giving their first steps barefoot, so it's time to get them their first shoes but I'm not sure what size to buy. They are kind of 4.8 inches so should I buy them a 5?, or at this age their feet will grow up quickly so I should better buy them a 5.5 or even 6 instead? This clueless mom will appreciate any advice. Thank you!

I recently interviewed for a good job for which I got rejected. During the interview, I was asked to explain my current resume gap. I thought being honest would be the best answer so I let them know I took a year off to take care of my newborn.

In retrospect, I’m wondering if this was the best way to go about it.

How are we answering the dreaded question during interviews?

PS: I don’t think I got rejected because of the way I answered that question, I just want to be better prepared next time.

My husband (30M) and I 29(F) have been together for 10 years, and we’ve endured a lot together. We’ve become new and improved versions of ourselves and it’s been amazing to grow up with this man and evolve into who we are today. He really is my best friend, but I feel like parenting has torn us apart. Our 2(M) toddler is extremely high needs and potentially on the spectrum (pending official diagnosis) and I feel like no matter how hard I try we’re always at odds while trying to achieve the same goal. We’re weeks away from welcoming our daughter into the world and I feel like I’m at my breaking point because how are we going to do this all over again?

He is the youngest child in his family and hasn’t had a ton of exposure to kids. I’m the eldest in my family and also grew up in a very tight knit family where my aunts/older cousins had kids when I was coming of age. Not to say I’m an expert on kids, but I’ve spent enough time with them to have some semblance of reasonable expectations of what they can do at every age.

I feel like I have whiplash daily because I don’t know which version of my child’s father I’m getting on hard days. Some days he’s cool, calm, and collected. Others everything is the end of the world. I don’t know how to handle this. And I don’t know how to stop the arguing which affects our son because he gets scared every time we even remotely raise our voices now.

I have so much resentment because I feel like I’m always the person trying to come up with solutions for how to minimize tantrums, how to make bedtime easier, and how to help progress his speech… and yet it all seems to fall on deaf ears. When push comes to shove with him it always boils back to my spouse losing his cool on me and our son.

All of this to say, this is NOT a regular occurrence, but when it does happen it’s incredibly volatile. He is a great husband and father and there’s never a moment where I fear for our safety or security.

Is there any hope that this gets better? A huge piece of me hopes that we’re just in the parenting trenches but I’m at such a loss for what to do.

This is mostly a vent into the void. But also maybe a cry for some solidarity.

First time mom to a 3 month old.

I just need an hour, maybe an hour and a half to fold laundry, but my baby freaks out after like 10 minutes in the bouncer or swing. I can baby wear him for a little bit longer, but he even gets frustrated with that because it puts him to sleep and he's fighting naps right now? What should I do? He actually is really happy when he looks at the ceiling from my bed. I think he likes looking at the shadows from the cieling fan. Can I just put him safely in the middle at the head of my bed and fold laundry at the foot of the bed? Is this okay for him or is it bad for him to lay down that much?

I do have people who have offered to help but they have kids of their own and live 30+ minutes away. I live with my in-laws and they might help but they work and I dont want to add to their plate more than I already do. Plus the other day when I first tried to fold laundry I was watching TV with the whole household. I was babywearing and my baby was asleep and I was obviously folding clothes and I would say I was obviously struggling and no one even offered to hold the baby.

Sorry if this is jumbled, it's late and I overthink things a bit too much.

All,

Seeking advice on if anyone has had this experience and what route they decided going. I had a 3B tear (part or all of anal sphincter tissue is torn) with my first after almost 3 hours of pushing and a vacuum assisted birth. She was only 7 lbs 6oz so not an overly large baby but she sort of got stuck in the birth canal which makes me feel like I’d have difficulty with a similar sized or larger baby.

My doctor is recommending a scheduled c-section with my 2nd due to the possibility of another severe tear which could result in incontinence issues for life (unless I opted for some reconstructive surgery). C-sections terrify me even though I know they are routine and common and pose little risk, especially if scheduled. I think the risk of lifelong incontinence is obviously not great, however, I’ve always heard anecdotal stories of moms having a quicker/easier delivery the 2nd time with less tearing.

Has anyone been in this situation and chosen a vaginal birth the 2nd time and turned out okay with no issues/less tearing?

Why is my urethra more irritated than the actual vagina itself? I feel a weird throbbing sensation occasionally even when I’m not peeing. My urethra feels raw and bruised . If I walk or sit weird my urethra throbs. It actually doesn’t hurt when I pee. It’s a surface irritation that comes and goes, depending on movement and touching. I will call my OB if it doesn’t resolve in another day or two.

I am two weeks out from a vaginal delivery.

When I visit a freshly postpartum mom, I tend to bring a meal, a baby gift item and a self care item for mom.

I am getting bored with some of my go to self care ideas so I am bringing it to reddit.

What self care items would you find useful/fun after having a baby?!

I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore and have to start from ground 0. I can’t seem to wrap my head around how to handle life with a baby. She’s 2 months old and I’m constantly worrying if I’m doing enough. I don’t know how to manage the house, chores, cooking, being a wife.

I haven’t gotten out of the house with her yet because I’m just riddled with anxiety. What if she’s sleeping? What if she starts fussing when I get her ready? What do I do with her if she starts crying in the car? Do I pull over? How do I go to functions? What it she gets hungry and I am not in the place to feed her? Is she happy? Is she breathing?

I feel like I’ve completely lost myself and how to function. I can’t sleep.