r/newborns

today I was eating biscuits and gravy and dropped a bit of gravy near my six-week-old son’s mouth while he was in his carrier. I’m pretty sure I wiped it all away before any would have gone in his mouth, but there was some against his lip so I’m not totally sure if he ingested a tiny bit. has anyone else dropped food on their newborn while in the carrier? I feel terrible!

Just curious and also how was there sleep before they started getting in longer stretches ?

My 6 week old is fighting sleep during the day like there's no tomorrow. I keep reading about wake windows, low stimulating environment, etc. Trust me, I've read about all the "normal" tipps of what you should do to get your baby to sleep.

But I have a FOMO baby and whenever she falls asleep she wakes up not even 5 minutes after because she's realized she's fallen asleep and doesn't want to.

So I would appreciate any unhinged sleep hacks that worked for you and your little one. Because I'm exhausted and at my wits end.

FTM here to a beautiful baby girl! I love motherhood but without a doubt the hardest part has been getting her to fall (and stay) asleep.

Naps don’t bother me as much - they are all contact naps right now, but I would kill for even 2 hour stretches at night.

We swaddle her with love to dream, ensure she has a clean diaper, have white noise on, put her down feet/bottom first, wait to put her down until 20 min after she falls asleep, apply pressure to her chest for 1-2 min after putting her down, and we’ve tried putting my scent in bassinet & using a heating pad.

She sleeps great on our chests and will easily last 3 hours, if not longer. But that makes me very anxious and isn’t sustainable.

My pediatrician says to let her CIO in bassinet for 5-7 min and then gradually increase as time passes, but she seems so young for that approach. I should also mention she’s EBF and only 2nd percentile for weight, but on track with her own personal growth chart.

She seems to kick her legs up a lot when she sleeps which wakes her, but only after seemingly being in a deep sleep for the first 10 minutes of laying in the bassinet.

Has anyone had this experience and can share what worked and/or when it got better?

My baby hates the tub! We tried the muslin cloths the warm towel when getting her out she just never liked it.

One day we took her in the shower with us and she LOVES it and even falls asleep!
Anyone else’s baby?

Update: thank you for being there for me. I am a new parent and man this is some hard stuff. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

I’m posting this on an alt account cuz people know my personal one and I don’t want drama.

I’m so tired of people telling me to do things or asking if I do, I tell them no and why, and they say “that’s how we did it with our kids.” Ok that’s great but things are different now. A family member keeps asking if I give my 6 week old sugar water and I say no. I’ve also been told to give him diluted rice cereal. I say the doctor said not until he’s 4 months. “I don’t care what the doctor said.” “I always did that with my kids.” How do people deal with this? My baby already had issues after birth and I’m not about to risk causing any new ones.

Im a FTM, I had my son on 7/11. Within 10 days of life he caught a UTI. He was admitted in the hospital to treat. In September, he caught salmonella. We were admitted again.
October 7th, he was diagnosed again with salmonella AND the flu. Dr sent us home with antibiotics.

I just dont understand how this has happened. My mom did catch the flu and he was exposed.

But my main concerns - he is so young. All of these antibiotics must not be good in the long run. Can someone comfort me? Will this mean he is at risk for more infections as he gets older? Im so sad.

I am a clean freak. I barely leave my house with him. Barely cook at home. Idk.
I hope a dr responds to this.

Thanks family.

Hii!! My LO just hit 2 months and I’m feeling a bit in the newborn trenches. I‘d love to hear some ”it gets better” anecdotes from yall who have graduated the newborn stage! I haven't seen one of those kinds of posts in awhile and I would lift my spirits!

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!

What is everyone’s LO sleeping in, or what swaddle/sleep suit gave you the best results?

My baby will be 2 months in a few days and I’ve been wondering when we can try to get him on a “schedule.” For me, it’s not a mandatory thing because I work part-time for my family business and make my own schedule.

At the moment, we just feed him on demand (usually every 3-4 hours) and try to get him down to sleep during his last feed of the night (usually right before midnight). My family (older family members🙄) has been saying that we don’t have any real “structure” for him…but like, he’s just on the cusp of 2 months.

Please share biggest tips for knowing when baby is full, hungry, tired, etc.

I’m a FTM and having a hard time knowing what cues to look for.

My 3rd baby is currently 3.5 weeks old. My older two are almost 7 and 9, so it's been a little while since I've had a newborn around. If LO isn't eating or sleeping, he's usually crying. His first wake window in the morning, we get a little time where he is content, but otherwise, he's almost always cranky. I don't remember if this is normal? If it was for you, when did it get better?

I have some mild baby blues. I miss my big kids, as I feel I'm always nursing the baby or trying to get him to sleep. I also feel guilty for all the crying they have to endure. They have been real troopers about it, but I'm a bag of hormones and big emotions. I didn't realize how easy the life I had with the big ones was, and have been grieving that life a little. I knew things would be different and hard, but I somehow forgot they would be this hard.

Any words of encouragement would help.

I would love some help/advice/encouragement/reassurance regarding my 10 week old 😭 I am so sleep deprived.

The longest stretch at night we’ve ever had was 3 hours and 1 minute! In the daytime he will have contact naps lasting 1-2 hours or sleep in his Moses basket.

BUT, our sweet baby boy is awake every 2 hours overnight for milk. He drinks both formula and pumped breast milk (my supply is crap hence topping up with formula). He will not settle any other way in the night, the boy wants milk!

He’s a grazer, he drinks 60-80ml of milk per feed (VERY occasionally 100-120ml) lots throughout the day. Over a 24 period he has the recommended daily amount of milk, just in lots of smaller feeds.

At night we put him down in a dark room, with white noise, in a next-to-me bassinet.

What am I doing wrong? Why does he like to eat so little each feed?! How do I get longer sleep stretches?

My 4 month old has been a good sleeper since about 2.5-3 months. He goes down about 8:00/8:30pm and sleeps until about 5:30/6:00am. Rare to no MOTN wakes. Our routine is fairly lax. I’m pretty lax about wake windows. He’s awake when he wants to be and sleeps when he wants to. I thought his wake windows would end up naturally increasing to around 75-90min. But they are pretty much 60 minutes on the dot. Pushing him past that makes him overtired and he’s kind of a bear to get settled for a nap at that point. Everything I see says at this point they’ll only need about 3-4 naps a day. But homeboy is napping at least 5 times a day. Some are short 30-40 minute naps. Maybe a 1.5 hour nap midday. But is this a bad thing? I’m kinda one of those “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” kinda people. This is my first kid, though. Do I need to push those windows? He gets his calories and playtime in. He’s on his milestone marks so far. He’s a pretty happy little dude for the most part.

My baby is 6 weeks and a day old. She grunts a lot while sleeping especially the ones in the early morning after 3AM.

I put her on the crib at 9:30 PM so that she is in her deep sleep. Until then she sleeps on me for an hour or so. Then wakes for feed, burps and back to crib.

But after then2AM or 3 AM feed there is a lot of grunting which is periodically every 10 mins. Sometimes it stops and she is asleep. Sometimes it’s too loud she wakes up crying from the grunting and squirming.

Yesterday night was a bit diffeeent. She had a dissociative evening where she would fall asleep and wake in 10 mins and she used to be active then shin fall asleep. Due to the over tiredness she needed comfort at night so did contact sleeping at 12:30 AM and thought she was in deep sleep and put her in crib. But boy she was loudly grunting and squirming which woke her up. She had grunts even after I picked her up and was walking with her.

Has anyone experienced this?

FTM 10 week pp and exclusively breastfeeding

I usually take care of our 10 week old boy all day while my husband takes up the 11 PM to 2 AM shift to watch over our boy as he sleeps (light sleeper so we usually have to rock him back to sleep between sleep cycles)

I am feeling so tired and overwhelmed all day, especially on days that our boy doesn’t sleep well or cluster feeds. I don’t do anything much around the house except cook meals but I feel like I haven’t had a downtime at all and whenever the baby sleeps I either sleep (which is not much since he wakes up a lot needing to be rocked back to sleep) or cook meals.

My husband does the other chores around the house like dishwashing, laundry, groceries and garbage handling. He works a full time job but works from home so there no time lost to commute. He does have some time to relax occasionally but he is overwhelmed and tired too and I feel like I cannot ask him more help especially on high demand days.

We only do what is absolutely required for us to survive. Is there anyway I can help him or he can help me? What are we doing wrong? Or are we simply lazy?

Note: I had a very bad first few weeks as I both recovered and took care of the baby full time with no help for the baby, me or the house. I had the talk with my husband and he did step up after but that exhaustion has only grown even with help around the house now from my husband.

I'm pregnant, and my parents have been guilt-tripping me ever since I told them. They smoke inside their home, and I've told them I'm not comfortable leaving my baby with them there. Their response is to say things like "so you're not going to let us babysit, huh?"

I've explained that smoking around a baby isn't okay. They say they'll smoke in their own room, away from the baby, but I don't think that's a safe alternative since smoke and residue spread through the whole house. I'm strongly against bringing my baby over.
They've also said "we feel like you're avoiding us," even though I've explained several times that I disagree with their lifestyle and that this is the reason.

My mom in particular makes passive-aggressive comments any time I bring up a valid point, so it's hard to have a real conversation about it. When I was a kid, my pediatrician repeatedly told her to smoke outdoors, and she never did.

I'm not trying to cut them out. I just want my baby safe. Am I being unreasonable? How have others handled grandparents who smoke? Is there a middle ground, like visiting only at my place or meeting somewhere neutral?