As a first time mom, everything is new to me. Sure, I’ve held a few babies in my day and even worked in the infant room of a daycare for a summer, but I still have a heck of a lot to figure out when it comes to caring for a baby nugget 24/7. I learned SO much in those first few months about everything from newborn sleep patterns, breastfeeding, and so much more. Some it might be specific just to our little guy, but if I could go back and tell myself a few important lessons on Day One, these are the things I’d want myself to know.
1) Babies won’t just fall asleep on their own every time.
Like the expression goes, I had naively assumed that my sweet cherub would “sleep like a baby” any time he got tired and I would just sit back and soak in the snuggles. Oh man this could not be farther than the truth! Yes, newborns sleep a whole lot and are quick to fall asleep after eating, in the car, while being carried, etc. But after a few weeks, I started to realize that some of Caleb’s fussing was due to the fact that he had been up too long and was just starting to get tired. I think some of our frenzied, emotionally-draining fussy moments could been avoided if I’d just tried to snuggle and rock him to sleep instead of assuming that he’d just fall asleep when he got tired.
2) Approximately 83% of the things you worry about are normal.
Okay, so I made that statistic up, but really…isn’t it crazy what we mamas find ourselves googling in the middle of the night? I found myself searching things like “Is it normal for babies to sleep with their eyes open? Is _____ color poop healthy? How often should newborns eat? (Answer to that one…ALL the freaking time)” Almost every time, the internet gladly informed me that yes, the thing I was worried about was completely normal. I’m learning to trust my gut and know that unless something is persistently weird or off with my little guy, he is probably just fine.
3) Young babies shouldn’t be awake longer than 1-2 hours.
This was a GAME changer for us. By the time Caleb was about 8-10 weeks old, he started to fall pretty naturally into an eat-wake-sleep routine. The timing of it all changed day to day, but once I realized that he shouldn’t be awake much longer than an hour to an hour and a half, it became so obvious that the fussiness I’d been seeing in him was just plain tiredness (see above). I started to notice his sleepy signs between 60-75 minutes after he woke up and put him down for a nap and he has been a much happier, more content baby ever since!
4) Cluster feeding is real and it’s ROUGH.
We fed on-demand in those first few months and there were some nights where it felt like Caleb was attached to me for 6 hours straight (we still feed on demand now but it’s more like every 2-2.5 hours). He would eat for 30 minutes, sleep for 30 minutes, then wake up and start the process over again until he finally collapsed and slept for a few hours around 11 PM or midnight. If I could go back, I would remind myself that this is completely normal and not a sign that he’s not getting enough or something is wrong. Little babies have little tummies and that constant eating is one way they stay healthy, full, and close to the mama who means everything to them.
5) Babies are noisy sleepers.
Caleb slept in a Rock N’ Play in our room for the first few months and this was such an easy, convenient way to have him close by for those middle of the night feedings. But as he started to stretch out his nighttime sleep, I was still waking up constantly because he was so stinking noisy. He would grunt, gargle, squawk, toot, and fuss, often just for 30 seconds at a time before going right back to sleep. In the beginning I was so quick to jump up and try to get him, but after a few weeks I realized that 80% of the time he would just go right back to sleep if I let him sit for a minute. This has continued to be true as he’s gotten older and knowing that he’s just plain noisy has stopped me from waking him up mid-nap or mid-sleep because he squawked and I thought he needed me.
6) Falling in love with your baby can be a gradual thing.
Yes, I loved my sweet boy from that first moment they put him on my chest after his whirlwind birth (you can read his birth story here). But the newborn weeks were hard and while I loved the snuggles, the lack of sleep and lack of interaction from little man didn’t give me all sorts of lovey-dovey butterflies. I think for me the falling IN love with him (versus just loving him) has come as he’s started to be more interactive. I love when he smiles at me in the mornings, how he pets me with his little fingers while he nurses, how his little eyes follow me as I move around the room. The process of falling in love has taken time and that is completely normal.
7) Nothing is permanent.
Anytime Caleb did something for a few days in a row, I was quick to believe he would continue doing this thing forever. Oh, he woke up at 4:45 AM and wouldn’t go back to sleep for three mornings in a row? He is probably going to keep doing that until he graduates high school! I would get so worked up about some new “habit” I thought he’d picked up but almost all of these habits would disappear within a few days or a week or two as he continued to get older and grow. It’s taken me a few months, but I’m learning to give everything a little bit of time before I start to panic and life is a whole lot more peaceful as a result.
What are some things that you’ve learned about kids or babies that you wish you’d known from the beginning? Share the love!
Yes to all of this! I had to read online (kellymom, probs) that newborns don’t have “routines,” so stop trying to force a routine on them. I felt so relieved that I didn’t have to try to feed at the same times every day (which is totally what I had been trying to do.) I’m so glad you’re sharing these bits of advice for other first-time moms!
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I’m so proud of you, Lor :). It’s crazy how much motherhood has grown and taught you already, and I’m lucky to get to watch it (even at a distance).
Love you guys,
T
These are all so true! I feel like the only one I got a reprieve from is cluster feeding. Selah might be the only baby in the world who not only doesn’t want it, but actually refuses to be cluster fed. Haha! Figuring out #1 and #3 were total game changers — I thought babies just figured out naptime sleep on their own! I thought I had a difficult baby on my hands for her entire second month. Nope, she just needed a nap! So fun to read these and be able to relate. You’re a wonderful mama to Caleb and I love learning with and from you!
Haha, #7 is so true, even with an older baby/toddler. Bensen will do a three hour nap in the middle of the day some days, and it seems like he’s switching to that new sleep schedule and then he’ll go back to two hour naps twice a day for a few days instead. It’s a little bit easier to plan around now, because I know that I can keep him up all morning and he won’t get TOO tired and then he’ll sleep all afternoon. But the trying to get him to take two hour naps twice a day is sometimes a joke!
Also, the noisy sleeper thing is so true. We’ve started turning down Bensen’s monitor at night so that we can hear him if he’s upset, but not if he just moans and groans a bit. We moved him to his own room at two months and it made a world of difference for our sleep quality! My mom said she moved me to my own room at a few weeks because I was so noisy and we were all keeping each other awake.
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#7 is/will be a great reminder…it’s so easy to assume that anything in our lives are permanent when it actuality a lot of it can shift and adjust.
Yes yes yes yes! All of those things! Thankfully though, since I exclusively pump, cluster feeding wasn’t nearly as hard on me as it is when you’re nursing. We just gave more bottle and most of the time, Jon gave them. I was already making plenty of milk to give him whenever he wanted. Are you following Babywise? I think that was a game changer for us. Well, really, I kind of followed it from the start, but I just never would have known that the babies are just OVERLY tired and that’s why they don’t want to sleep! I think I’ve told everybody with a newborn about making sure that wake times are short enough (we did 35 minutes for 6 or 7 weeks!). Jackson still only stays up for 1hr 15-1hr 30 min if he’s at home. At daycare, it’s a different story, but then he comes home and crashes. I am so with you on the noisy sleeper thing too. I actually never slept with Jackson in my room, but I had to start turning off the monitor because I would wake up to all of his little peeps. I thought maybe he had quieted down, but I slept in the room with him at my parent’s house and he was so loud! Also, yes to thinking things will last forever. In the last 6-7 weeks (I totally don’t know how many weeks old Jackson is- oops), he has woken up at 4-5am 2 times to eat and both times I was like, “OMG he is going to wake up EVERY MORNING AT 4AM TO EAT!” And then it didn’t even happen the next morning, but I made sure to spend that whole day worrying that it was going to be his new thing! Haha. We (as in you and me) are definitely at a sweet stage now with these babies! This stage is just so sweet and so fun! I LOOVE when I pick Jackson up and he rubs his face in my chest or when he smiles and laughs at me. I get so proud of him when he grabs things and I just love picking him up from his naps because I can finally tell that he knows who I am. I wish all the time that I had enjoyed the newborn phase more and spent more time “loving” him, but it was so hard with such a lack of sleep and so many hormones and the whole change in lifestyle. I think I did my best, but I wish I could experience him that small again (without all the waking up). As always, love reading your blog, especially these ones about motherhood!
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I love this list! Thank you for creating it. We are expecting our little pumpkin early October and I will definitely keep these things in mind. 🙂
Something that’s interesting to me is that when we had our second a few months back, I had to re-learn so many of these things. I found myself looking up random things like “how often should babies sleep”, “what do I do with his umbilicus”, and yes nursing. This was interesting to me, until I realized I was creating stress for myself for no apparent reason, as I knew many of the answers, or at least I knew something about the answers and how it’s OK for this child to be different from our first. 🙂
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Oh my goodness! Yes, yes, yes to ALL of these!!!!!!!!!!!!! You explained the newborn stages so clearly!
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I just love reading about motherhood through your eyes! It’s so fun for me to see the things you’ve learned. The sleeping thing is so huge. I was just talking to my mom about this and how crazy it is that we just assume babies will sleep when tired!
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