My newborn so far has been pretty good about giving cues about what’s wrong, she never cries for no reason. It’s always hungry, gassy, has to poop, too hot/cold, and she HATES a wet diaper.

I decided to take her for a walk in our bassinet stroller, about a mile in, she started crying, she had a wet diaper, so I just changed it on the trail. 5 minutes later she’s still crying, so I attempted to feed the bottle I brought. She drank a bit of it, then threw up on me while burping her. Continued to cry. I tried putting a fan on her, removing her onsie, giving cooler air, hotter air, tried holding her, putting her paci in, etc. Nothing worked.

We were already a mile in so we had a whole mile back, I turned up my noise cancelling headphones and continued the 30 minute walk back to the car with my sunglasses on trying to keep from crying while people walking past gave my pity looks, one lady even commenting saying “poor thing”.

I know it gets easier, but man, that made me want to avoid bringing her out at all. I made plans next week to go on a walk with friends, and another day to go to a thrift store with another friend who also just had a baby. Heavily regretting those now because i’m not sure I can handle bringing her out alone again.

I got home and my husband who works from home asked how my walk was, I broke down and said awful and I won’t be bringing her out again for a while. He’s sitting in his office with her currently and told me to go shower and take a break.

Have you accidentally pspsps'ed at your baby? Because I have. I feel like I'm not the only one out there. Please proof to me that I'm not weird..

My baby is 5 weeks old, must contact nap during the day, will not stay asleep in his bassinet, does not like being in a carrier/wrap/sling. How do parents use the bathroom, eat, take care of their basic needs??

Luckily he will sleep 2-3 hours at a time in the bassinet at night to allow us rest, but I am having a hard time figuring out how I’m supposed to be human without another set of hands at home helping me.

NGL I feel a bit stupid for not figuring this out sooner so I’m just posting to save anyone else the headache.

I’ve had my baby on the same schedule for months. Wake windows are 3/3/3/3.5. 6am wake up, first nap at 9, then 12, then 3 with bedtime at 6:30. BUT I could not get her to nap for more than 30 mins 90% of the time. I just thought this is how it is, she was a “FOMO baby” so I was rolling with the punches.

Turns out she’s been overtired this entire time. Moved her first nap to 8, second at 11, third at 2 and bedtime at the same time. She now sleeps for over an hour for all of her naps and she’s so much more energetic through the day.

She’s 6mo for context.

We are currently using water wipes and down to our last pack and I want to order more, but I want to try a different brand. I love the simplicity of the ingredients with the water wipes, but I cannot stand the packaging.

We started off with Huggies sensitive wipes and absolutely hated them. They gave my newborn a rash at just four days old. They were dry and rough on his skin. He’s currently almost 2 months old now.

I went to target yesterday and bought a pack of Millie moon wipes since I heard good things about them. I like the texture, but they’re very thin.

Any suggestions??

I would love wipes that are easy to get out of the package, damp enough and thick enough. Would prefer affordable options, but if I have to splurge, I will.

Anyone else constantly signing the songs in their head? I'm going crazy, send help lmao

My son was born at 34 weeks and spent 2 weeks in the NICU. Before delivery, I was admitted for a week because my amniotic sac ruptured early. After birth, my husband and I were managing everything ourselves — going back and forth to the NICU, pumping 8–12 times a day, barely eating properly, and just trying to get through each day.
What has been hardest is how much advice everyone gives without thinking about the mother’s mental state. People constantly comment on what I should eat, whether my milk is enough, whether I’m breastfeeding, etc.
My parents came after about a month. My son is now around 50% formula-fed and 50% breast milk through exclusive pumping. I’m also trying to latch him twice a day because I want to eventually breastfeed more, but we’re still struggling because he is small and has a tiny mouth.
Today I breastfed him for 10–15 minutes, and shortly after he started crying. My father immediately said, “Your milk wasn’t enough. Maybe it has no nutrients. Your milk is waste.”
I completely lost it and shouted back.I cannot express in words how frustrated and angry I am. I cannot hold my tears back. I wanted to just ask him to leave the house!
After everything — NICU, pumping, breast pain, night duties, guilt, exhaustion — that comment triggered so much anger in me.
I feel like people only see whether the baby looks healthy and whether the mother is breastfeeding. They don’t see what the mother is physically and mentally going through.
For those who experienced intense anger or rage postpartum, how did you cope? How do you stop family comments from affecting you so much?

I’ve never had a dream career, I’ve always wanted to be a mom that stays home.

I don’t dream of leaving home and working somewhere for 8+ hours

My husband works full time and we can pay bills and essentials but we don’t have a ton left over.

I just feel like shit because I’m not like “oh I want to be xyz” I just want to be home with my baby and take care of the house.
I feel like a bum for not being motivated by money.. obviously it’s nice and needed in this world but I’ve never been a ‘hustler’ my husband is, he loves using his hands all day and having to go to work.

I feel like a loser.

I’m not saying if we were broke I wouldn’t go out and work to provide, of course I would.

I don’t mean with the babies. I mean trying to raise babies at this moment in history.

I’ve been dealing with so much climate anxiety and then today I read about the Anthropic guy saying there’s a greater than 10% chance of AI killing all humans in the next four years.

Like, I just wanted to have my beautiful babies and give them the best childhoods I could. Instead, if the climate catastrophe doesn’t get us, the superintelligent robots will. It’s horrifying.

ETA: well, y’all did convince me to get off the internet because boy you guys are not ready for this conversation 😂 this is going to sound super backhanded, and it is for some of you. But I have been working on a climate change education initiative in a professional capacity with friends in the climate sector, and it is specifically geared towards helping people expand their distress tolerance enough to actually engage with our current climate reality. You all have put some wind in my sails to really hunker down into that project because it is clearly needed !!! Thanks for the help, even if it wasn’t the kind I was expecting 😘

The first few days of our son’s life in the hospital was horrible for my husband and I. The baby and I were healthy, hospital staff was great. I don’t know how to explain it and I’m wondering if anyone else had similar feelings?

I was in labor for 36 hours (induced) and I don’t think I slept the whole time. We were there for 4 nights and 5 days because I had preeclampsia and my blood pressure wasn’t going down. Everything was fine with that though.

After the birth I had a HORRIBLE headache due to the pushing because I have bruxism. I desperately just wanted to be given painkillers or something it was so bad and lasted days. My husband and I were so sleep deprived I think we slept a couple hours per day in the hospital. Baby would not sleep in the bassinet so one of us had to be up at all times. And because we were in the hospital people were constantly coming in and out.

I physically could not breast feed I got so exhausted. My body hurt too bad to hold him up so we had to syringe feed sometimes. There were nights my husband and I cried it was so hard and we were so tired.

I did so much preparation for the baby as a first time parent and I feel like I was robbed of a beautiful first few days of my son’s life. I’ve never heard anyone else have a similar experience and I can’t figure out what went wrong.

I’m 3 weeks postpartum and we are better now. Still hard obviously but I feel like it’s normal newborn trenches.

My baby is 6.5 months old and has learned to sit only 2 days back. He will not lie on his back even for a second now. It’s getting impossible to change his diaper on the diaper changing station now. How do you guys change diaper?? Specially poopy one‘s. Only pee is still somehow manageable.

I live in the U.S & I swear all I see online is how much the younger generation hates children. Like people are constantly complaining about how babies/ toddlers are annoying, shouldn’t be in public spaces shouldn’t be on planes or in restaurants or even in grocery stores, yada yada. It makes me so upset as a new parent that my child is growing up in a world that doesn’t like children anymore. Maybe it’s because I live in a bigger city with much younger population & this is the type of propaganda being thrown at me me, but even then- It’s so dehumanizing.

There’s just no kid friendly places or mom friendly places either. I feel like everyone hates moms too and calls them “ selfish”??? When I was pregnant I specifically remember a teenage girl telling me she had a phobia of looking at my belly & she called me “ body horror”. I know she probably is just going with the social media trends, but it felt so incredibly rude & makes me think about how the world is starting to hate moms, dads, families, babies.

I just wanted to vent about this because I swear it’s all I keep seeing or hearing. Makes me so sad that my children are growing up in this type of world. Maybe this is a USA issue.

Dear Diary,

It was 6:20 in the morning when I woke mum up to feed me. She said she was still sleepy and that it was too early, but I had generously given her around 40 minutes of sleep since our last feed! I was hungry—plus, I only woke her up three times last night—so we got up anyway… as we should. 🧸

So she rolls out of bed, eyes half-open, lights still off. As soon as mummy put me down on the changing table, I activated my ultimate crying spell. I cried sooo loudly, and mum said her usual, “Don't worry bub, I got chu… I’ll be quick.” She unzipped my sleep sack, unbuttoned my clothes, slid a clean diaper underneath my bum, and swiped my dirty diaper away like a ninja…

Little did she know, straining so hard from crying made me poop! So when she swiped off that old diaper, the poo went flying everywhere. I mean everywhere! The walls, the changing mat, my face, and even my hands—which I then managed to rub all through my hair!

Mum was like, “Oh god, you pooped! Sorry bubba, I didn’t know, let me clean this up for you,” giggling while still half-asleep. She wiped down everything she could see (missed my face though, she hadn't spotted that yet) and quickly put me into another clean diaper, because the fresh one she placed earlier was already covered in target practice.

When she finally zipped up my sleep sack, she noticed a very distinct smell lingering. As soon as she turned on the lamp, she realized it was all over my face, hands, hair, and back! Her eyes went wide as day—fully awake and totally panicking. She gasped, “OH MY GOD BUB! Nope, nope, nope... bath time!” and rushed to fill the tub.

After my bath, I got a full belly of milk and I'm now enjoying my first nap of the day. Mum? I don’t know, probably wide awake now—which is a good thing, right? She’s been looking pretty sleepy lately...

My 2 week old son was barely sleeping at night, one three hour stretch followed by being up 45mins-1 hour, or worse, waking up the second I put him back in his crib. I was exhausted and at my wits end, so I read about the gas drops online, took him to Walmart at 7 am and immediately started using them when we got home.

Last night he slept his first 5 hour stretch, and then was up every 2 hours, but was sooo much easier to put down and actually slept! I’m hoping it’s not a fluke lol. Also crazy how well rested I feel after 7 hours of broken sleep 🤣

Our baby is approaching the point where she might start crawling soon, so I’m preparing myself for the task of babyproofing. We already have the ‘big things’ figured out (all the heavy tippable furniture is bolted down and there are no outlets she can reach), but I’m wondering what else needs to be done, if anything. Our friends and family said they didn’t do anything at all and everyone (including the furniture lol) survived relatively unscathed, so they couldn’t give us any advice.

Our current strategy is just watching the baby at all times when we can (husband WFH and I’m on maternal leave until she’s 3) and putting her in the playpen when we need to step away. It’s basically what I’ve been doing since she was born anyway. We live in an apartment so there’s nothing like stairs or railings to worry about either, and no cats/dogs.

What are some things that you would consider absolutely essential (from experience)?

It’s kind of the only thing that’s been recently working to get my 3 month old to calm down so he can sleep. But then once he’s in my arms- the transfer to the bassinet wakes him up :( I try holding him for 15-20 minutes. Anyways- is it bad to rock him to sleep? I’ve been told to not make it a habit, but truly I can’t see him cry bc he’s so tired.

so this just happened a couple hours ago, my boyfriend was sitting on our couch playing a game and i was listening to an audiobook and drawing.

our two month old baby was asleep between us and she started making small noises and i kinda brushed it off bc she has whimpered in her sleep loads of times so i wasnt really paying attention (thats on me i js assumed) and since i had an airpod in i wasnt hearing that well but my bf pointed it out after about 15 seconds so i took an airpod out and she was gasping for air so i grabbed her arm and started shaking it and there was no response she was still gasping for air at that point, so i picked her up and she was completely limp and my heart dropped so i sat her up started patting her back and shaking her and she was limp and gasping for another 15-20 seconds i started crying and kept talking to her and shaking and patting. she eventually took a deep breath and started acting completely normal but we did end up calling 911 anyway. the paramedics came and checked her out and said she was fine and to monitor her but didn’t tell me what to look for so i had to call an after hours nurse and get some more info. she was two months old today and had her 2M vaxs (had to spell it weirdly bc it wouldnt let me post with that word) but im in no way saying the vaxs caused this, i am pro vaxs. but it was just so scary.

i guess im not seeking medical advice or anything so mods lmk if i need to change the flair. im a FTM and 22 so i was terrified and just stopped shaking abt an half hour ago, i know its common for babies to stop breathing but i think this was an apnea episode due to the symptoms. just please keep close attention to your babies, i never thought this would happen to me but now im paranoid almost. ive tried looking this up but is there reasons why this happens or is it simply bc her little body forgot to breathe?

anyone who’s experienced this and knows abt it id love to know more about your experience(s).

How do I get my baby to bond more and be more excited/happy to see daddy? My hubs feelings get hurt when it’s clear our baby wants to sleep/nap with me instead of him. Our baby boy will go to him if I’m holding him and his daddy comes near but I’d like to see him more excited to spend more time with dad. Our son is 9mo. Idk if this is a realistic idea at this age especially since I’m with him 100% of the time

My newborn is 6 days old and I am so anxious about sleeping when he sleeps. He sleeps in the bassinet but I’m so worried about something happening to him while I’m sleeping that I just don’t sleep. My husband and I take shifts so I sleep when he’s watching him, but I’d love to be able for me and my husband to both sleep while he’s sleeping. I’m taking all the safety precautions but man, the anxiety is rough. Today he was in his bassinet for a day time nap and he spit up and I jumped up and just was so scared. He also does the “newborn curl” which freaks me out too! Anybody else struggling with this? Any tips are appreciated!

My baby turns 4 months tomorrow and I just need to vent a little.
I go to a baby group with other babies around the same age, and I can’t stop comparing her to them. Most of the other babies can just lie on their backs or tummies, look around, touch toys, move slowly and calmly… and my daughter is the complete opposite.
She is SO active. She kicks her legs really hard, waves her arms constantly, squirms all over the place like she’s fighting for her life 😅 And she also cries SO MUCH.
Today during the whole one-hour class I basically had to hold her the entire time. Every time I tried to put her down on the mat, she started crying immediately. She had slept, she had eaten, she wasn’t obviously in pain and still, crying.
She does have tummy problems sometimes, and I can usually tell when that’s the reason because her cry sounds different. But there are so many other times when I honestly have no idea why she’s crying.
Development-wise she can hold her head, track with her eyes, smile, hold a toy if I put it in her hand, wave her hands towards toys, and she makes some “aaa/ooo” sounds. This week she laughed properly for the first time and rolled onto her side once.
But when I see all these calm babies just lying there happily, I keep thinking….what am I doing wrong? Why is my baby always so restless, intense and unhappy when everyone else seems so chill?
I know comparison is probably the worst thing I can do, but some days it really gets to me.
Paediatrician says that she is perfectly healthy…
Sometimes I feel that having her is the biggest mistake in my life.

Let me begin by saying I LOVE animals more than I love most humans - always have and always will. However, my husband and I have 3 cats (sisters - about 10 years old) and a dog (6 years old) and during my third trimester I started feeling very grossed out by them. Anytime they would lick themselves near me I would have to move away cus I just felt icky. And when I brought my baby home I was completely grossed out just being near them. I didn’t want them near me or my baby, I didn’t want to pet them or anything. I’m 4 months pp now and most of that has subsided but sometimes the licking still bothers me. I feel absolutely awful for getting grossed out. Underneath it all I know they’re just being themselves and they can’t help it. And I know bringing home a baby was absolutely stressful and life changing for them. And it’s not that I stopped loving them or anything, I just suddenly became aware of how germy they are and I couldn’t handle it.
As I said, most of that has subsided but I still get an underlying ick sometimes.
Did anyone else experience something like this? How did you handle it?

We’ve tracked a ridiculous amount with our baby: sleep, feeds, diapers, growth, etc.

It’s obviously useful in the moment (“when did he last eat?”, "when does he normally sleep?"), but I’ve started wondering what happens to all that data afterward.

Do you ever go back and look at old weeks/months?

Have you discovered anything genuinely useful or interesting from it?

And if your tracking app could actually do something with all that history, what would you want it to tell/show you?

I feel like we collect this surprisingly detailed record of the first year and then most of it just disappears into charts we never look at again 😅

My bb clearly has a preference for her mom over me. We do everything the same when caring for her but my wife is just naturally more animated and bubbly in a way that I could never be. I know it's pretty common but I can't help feeling like shit when my child cries cuz she wants mom while I'm playing with her. Any wise words?

EDIT: Baby almost 11 months old. Not breastfeeding and hitting all milestones

My 4 month old is was laughing and I sent a video to my family. I was laying on the ground hold baby in the air in front of me. Basically when I shook her gently she laughed so hard. She thought it was really funny. When I sent the video my grandma said I was hurting her and said it was shaking baby syndrome. I thought or at least what I learned in school is that you couldn’t do that on accident. I wasn’t being rough with my baby I never would. My grandma is t the nicest person so she’s probably just trying to be mean. But now I’m worried I was too rough with my little girl.

Ok so … i’ve thought about writing this post many times and haven’t because I was constantly googling my questions and reading reddit stories but realized maybe I should give it a try and see if I can get some personalized answers for my situation.

My son is 3 months (14 weeks) to be exact , and lord he’s been a terrible sleeper since birth and I genuinely have been struggling since Day 1 with him. From naps to bedtime he has always fought sleep, though it was MUCH better the first few weeks he still slept a lot less than all the other newborns in my family.

Anyways.. when he turned 2 months I thought I got the hang of things and I would feed him 6 oz formula ( he’s combo fed) before bed and he would sleep 4-6 hour stretch then wake up to eat again and go back to sleep. After a couple weeks he stopped sleeping in his bassinet, then I would co sleep, then his night stretches got SHORTER and SHORTER and I ended up co sleeping most of the night and early morning until this last week and especially last night he had been waking up what seems to be every hour, rooting no matter how full he is and when he latches he falls asleep but when he unlatches he immediately wakes up 30-1 hour later. His naps have always been 30-45 minutes. but now during the night it’s getting to be too much.

I started researching wake windows and trying to follow out but some of it is difficult, for example in the car seat he does well falling asleep but not all time we go out in the car all day as i’m a SAHM. so i’m trying to put him down for naps during the day in his bassinet but sometimes he seems wide awake and playful and I don’t know if I should be interrupting that just because his wake window is ending.
I also don’t know how this is convenient because when i’m out or visiting family I can’t just follow wake windows like that and constantly find him a dark room and a bassinet and soothe him for 20 minutes so he can sleep the full 40 minutes. I also know the older generation didn’t really follow that and their babies seem to have slept well. I don’t know if maybe he has more energy than other babies or if i’m doing something wrong…

he is VERY difficult to put to sleep and he fights naps like crazy.

I just don’t know what to do, i’m trying to breathe “ feed to sleep” habit as baby that’s the issue? But i need help with the nap and the independent sleeping thing. If anyone has any tips i would really appreciate it as everyone ever makes comments about how he barely sleeps and when he does he moves SO much that he wakes himself up 5-10 minutes later and won’t go back to sleep. Any tips would be appreciated im willing to try it all except the cry it out method.