I’ve got a 3 week-old newborn. During the day there are plenty of adorable moments and easy times. But it’s the middle of the fucking night, he strategically waited until I was switching diapers to piss on me and all over, then was flailing his arms and pushing the bottle out of his mouth even though he was very hungry, then shit his GODDAMN BRAINS OUT while eating, then after I burped him and cleaned him up and got him in new clothes and swaddled and put him down, he fucking screamed until I picked him up again.
Like, I’ve given him everything his tiny little brain and body could need. That coupled with the strategic shitting and pissing to require the absolute maximum amount of work from me.
The vent here, I guess, is that I fucking hate this. I loved my life with my wife and now we have next to zero intimacy(not sex, obviously, but even our normal physical touch). We have zero time for each other, one is tending the baby, while the other is desperately trying to keep up with cleaning bottles and keeping the house passably clean and there is no time for anything.
I would never let any of what I just said affect how I interact with the baby, but I’m fucking sick of having literally zero independence and I miss my wife (her being in the same bed and next to me most of the day makes it worse somehow).
Fuck.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Check out The Oatmeal, they’ve got a comic about having kids that’s painfully applicable.
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Yeah. All the times people say “sleep when the baby sleeps” or “You must be exhausted”? It’s because we’ve been there.
I will give one piece of advice. Alarms.
Need to make a call or check on someone? Alarm.
Dropping the baby off somewhere before work? Add an alarm (repeat if need be) to make sure the kids not in the car.
Cooking dinner? Add an alarm to check that the stove is off.
Super exhausted brain is rough and while it’s always a small chance it’s scary how quickly we can do something stupid or dangerous without realizing it.
Personally I’ve thrown clothes in the trash and put trash in the laundry hamper (learned not to carry both at the same time) and locked myself out of the house for an hour (trusted neighbor got a copy of our house key after that one)
Bonus tip: poison control is cool. Don’t be afraid to call when/if something happens. Kid got into teething tablets and ate them all? Not the first time they’ve heard of it and if there’s anything to be done they’ll tell you. They even checked back a little later just to be sure.
Bonus tip 2: if you have somebody willing to help with laundry, house, etc take it. It feels weird but a lot of the people offering know exactly what you’re going through.
I couldn’t tell you how many decidedly not-garbage items have been a split second from being thrown away
As for alarms, my memory was already shit before this, so I’m all over that. Thanks for taking the time to respond
Small kids pee when exposed to cold air around their private parts. It’s to avoid peeing on mom all the time. Some people use that to save on diapers xD they are not doing that on purpose, learning that helped me keep a strategic eye out for that.
My daughter is 10 now, but your comment triggered a memory I had buried so deep it was all but forgotten.
The rule was that we put the child on its back, undo her diaper and fold the front down, blow on her exposed nethers and then close the diaper again and wait. She immediately pees, every fucking time, I change her, she stays dry for longer, I get some fucking sleep.
I just reminded my wife of this ritual. We laughed. Take this forgotten knowledge from survivors of the bad times, whoever might read this.
Welcome to parenthood :)
It will get better. I promise you that. The beginning is always the roughest. It’s an adjustment. Things will never be the same, but you can (and will) make it just as good, if not better.
Hang in there. You and your wife got this. How you feel right now is not how you’ll always feel, ok? Sometimes it takes a little while to “kick in”. And when it does, whoa baby, you’re in for the greatest ride of your life.
I have to reiterate: you’ve got this. You are doing fine. This is normal.
Also: when changing baby, put new diaper over them while you dispose of old diaper. Then when they pee, it hits the diaper and not you.
You’ve got this!
Edit: I almost forgot: congratulations! 😁
Oof. I had one do that a few times. I was shocked because that particular kid had great bladder control, generally. It sure seemed calculated.
In his case, the second time it happened, I realized he had been waiting to get out of a full diaper, because he knew peeing then would soak his clothes.
And once the diaoer was off, I think he wanted to pee quick before the next diaper went on, because he didn’t like the feeling of a wet diaper, and he knew I wouldn’t check it for a bit right after a change.
It gave me some comfort to realize he wasn’t just being obnoxious on purpose. He was just trying to solve a rare problem in his own clever way with the few options he had.
I ended up switching to diapers with the color change stripe, which I think helped him relax about peeing in the diaper, knowing I would notice the full diaper sooner. Once he understood the change, I recall that stopped happening.
Of course another change was I got quick with the spare diaper cover, for him.
With every other kid, they just peed randomly, so I was always careful with that spare diaper. The only reason this guy nailed me a couple times was that he had great bladder control, other than in that rare situation.
Bud you are not wrong. I absolutely hated the newborn phase even the toddler phase while adorable was mind numbingly boring. But once they start hitting sevenish years old it’s a total fucking turnaround and they are a blast just hang in there dude. And whatever you do for fuck sake do not shake the baby
Totally hear you. First few weeks are tough. Some kids are harder than others, and you’re learning a lot too. Good news is that they get easier, and you will get better at it. Also, a couple months in they start smiling and you get some encouragement finally.
Until then - consider a postpartum doula and a housecleaner. Takes money, but your life and family are worth it if you are able. You can’t get all the independence back, but you can get enough.
My parents paid for a lawn mowing service for a few months, which is a game changer for me. My wife has been pricing out cleaning services, too. We don’t have night nurse-money, but the things we can afford should be helpful
Also worth noting that research indicates that the fathers can experience symptoms similar to post-partum depression as well. I’m not armchair diagnosing anything or anyone, but the strain of a newborn is real. Take care of each other and yourself too.
Depending on your situation there are some doula services that are partially or fully covered by some medical groups. Varies state by state and depending on income and other factors, but can be a few visits or so. If you talk to a doula collective they may have more info for your specific area.
The first 3-6 months are like vegas, anything you and your partner say or feel in this period are exhaustion enduced and get forgotten. Until the baby can smile and act like a tiny human you just endure. Once it smiles and sleeps for at least 4 hours your brain will give the good chemicals and you both start to forget this time.
Honestly theres some great advice in this thread about perspective already. So being only three weeks in, i have one useful piece of real advice. Thats not a functional human yet, it cant move under it’s own power, it cant remember what happened 5 minutes ago. You can strap the infant in a car seat and walk the fuck away for five minutes. be in another room breathing. It can not follow you, it will not remember. Use this weakness against it while you can.
You can do it! In a few weeks he will sleep through the night and you’ll both wake up panicked because it’s 6am and you haven’t heard from him in 7 hours. These are the things that you’ll look back on and smile. You’re doing it!
My son once peed when he was getting changed and managed to hit himself in the face. He never did it again after that. Win!
Anyway, hugs, you’re in the thick of it, but as everyone says, it does get better.
Definitely reframe your thinking. Baby didn’t do anything strategically. He is in an alien world, inundated with new experiences. None of this was his choice.
He isn’t doing anything TO you. You did it all to him. And while I figure you’re kind of joking with that, those words get into your subconscious and breed resentment, even if you think it’s not affecting how you interact with the baby.
That said, what is your support system? Do you have family or friends who could spot you for a few hours to give you and your wife a nice dinner out or something? Don’t be ashamed to ask for help. No one should isolate themselves when caring for a tiny human.
As a parent of teens, I’d be super happy to step in and clean some bottles, clean up a poopy baby, and rock them while they cry. These are all skills I developed that I no longer get to use. It would be nice to feel like maybe I have something useful to offer, because teens definitely make you feel like you don’t.
It’s actually really good that you wrote out your frustrations like this. Humans are incredible at forgetting, which is why people often look forward to having a second or third child despite living through the nightmare you’re describing. In a couple of years, if you’re feeling like you want to have another one, at least now you can go back through your old posts and regain a little bit of the perspective you’ve managed to forget so you can go into the second time around with your eyes wide open.
I know this probably isn’t helpful, but I’ll see if I can turn it around at the last second:
Reading something like this really makes me so grateful that we somehow won the baby lottery for those first few weeks.
She was chill, and predictable, and sweet. As a pair of first time parents we couldn’t have asked for a better onboarding.
Now, if your baby and mine can be so vastly different at that early stage, who’s to say what’s next? Mine could turn into the goblin you’re describing and yours could magically zen out.
I keep reminding myself, with each new phase, “this is cool/shit and all, but it’s also gonna be over right quick.”
