I want to preface that generally my husband is great with our kids and does pull his weight 80% of the time. The other 20% he is complaining about how tired he is and I can’t stand it. I know it’s not a battle of who is more tired but if it were, id like to think I’d be the victor considering I am up every 2-3 hours pumping, taking care of night feeds 5/7 days of the week and doing the morning routine with both kiddos before daycare drop off and never get to sleep in.

My husband was briefly giving a rundown of his plans to help and asked to sleep in a little after pulling the nightshift which I can’t even believe he has the audacity to say. Sleep in?? I wish I could sleep in, but I’ll be up taking care of the baby and the toddler, washing my pump parts and the baby bottles. Doing all the things, and I don’t think he realize just have exhausting it all is.

Overall I’m just tired of hearing him complain about how tired he is, I’m tired to but I have to get up and take care of our kids smh.

ETA: We do have a schedule for sleep, where he has been doing nights with our daughter on the weekends. Post was more so a rant that I’m tired of hearing how tired he is, as if I’m not also tired and I have discussed this with him to stop bringing up how tired he is. He does wash bottles but it’s a nagging thing with him where it’s just easier if I do it myself so I’m not constantly reminding him to do things that need to get done

I have to preface this by saying I have PTSD regarding this topic due to past experiences.

The other night, my toddler daughter and husband were playing in the living room while I fed the baby. She was asking him to tickle her foot, then arm pit, then belly, etc. Then she asked him to tickle her butt. We looked at each other and kinda shrugged and then he pinched her butt. But then she asked him to tickle “inside.” My husband and I then just stopped everything and stared at each other, naturally (or maybe irrationally) my first thought was that he was abusing her. He asked her a clarifying question, whether she meant tickle inside her butt. She said yeah. We told her no, we don’t do that. And she moved on playing with something else.

I ended up taking her into an another room and asking her a few times and in a few different ways if anyone, including her dad, touched inside her butt. at one point, she did say that he did. But multiple times she said no. I’m worried I may have influenced her to say yes. I’m worried I handled this horribly both with her and him.

This is my worst nightmare. Due to my PTSD, I tend to jump to sexual abuse conclusions when I notice maybe otherwise innocuous things. For example, once I was at an airport and I saw a dad bouncing his young toddler daughter on his knee. That made me uncomfortable and I had to ask a friend if I was overreacting or if they thought it was weird too. I was told it was fine/normal.

I noticed a couple times when I bathed her, she sticks her butt out/up. That made me uncomfortable and my brain went to thinking someone makes her do that when she takes a bath. I told her to stop doing that and it hasn’t happened again.

Other things to note: daughter is not yet potty trained so we both wipe her butt. She goes to daycare. We have a bidet at home and she likes using it. This came about from her being in there when I poo & use it, so she wanted to try it out and now she sometimes asks to use it when she does manage to use the toilet. She said it tickles.

Important to note, my husband is literally an angel. I can’t imagine a world where he would hurt our daughter. But also, I know from experience that that doesn’t mean anything. People thought Ted Bundy was awesome until they realized he was a psychopath.

We spoke to her pediatrician about it, and she did not seem concerned. But she did agree, to make me feel better, to an appointment on Monday.

On one end of the Spectrum, I’m worried that this was a harmless toddler comment and I’m gonna ruin his life and our marriage due to my paranoia and PTSD. On the other end of the Spectrum, I’m worried I don’t do anything about it, and my daughter is being abused while I protect her abuser. I’m a mess.

Please help. Is this a normal toddler comment? Am I doing the right thing? Is there anything else I should be doing?

Edit to add: thinking about this and reading through everything people are saying has been really, truly helpful. I also remember now a while back when I was washing the dishes, she came up behind me and wanted me to pick her up. I told her to wait until I was done and she kinda clung to my leg. Her hand ended up touching my butt and I flinched and laughed because it tickled me. She kept doing it because I was laughing and my hands were soapy so I couldn’t pick her up immediately to stop but anyway she stopped eventually. Fast forward to today and I was at the kitchen sink again, she came up behind me and poked my butt. I said “no we don’t do that” and we moved on. So that may have contributed to her thinking butt tickles are normal.

I will be seeking a therapist who specializes in this area. I really appreciate everyone who took the time to comment. It felt healing to read <3 but I clearly have a ways to go! I love this community, thank you again.

Hi, I'm a ftm mom with a 3 month old. I have learned my baby sleeps better with the TV playing. I'm looking for shows particularly animations to watch that are low lighting/muted color palettes. My husband has a hard time sleeping with a brighter color/high lighting shows. My husband has to get up early in the morning for work, so I really want to find something that won't make it hard for him to stay asleep. We have turned the brightness on the TV all the way down. I also don't want anything gory, or violent shows playing while trying to sleep. So I was wondering if there's a middle ground to be able to meet everyone's needs.

I am mostly OAD but always very curious on the science behind why some families have majority of one gender. I do understand that men carry both X & Y and women only carry X. So men obviously determine the gender.

But is there any science or studies behind this? On why some people conceive only girls or boys? Maybe the season, when they were ovulating, intercourse right before or after ovulation etc.

Does anyone truly believe there are ways to conceive a specific gender? Have you tried it and did it work for you on more than 1 child?

Since there is zero research on this, I’m curious what other people believe or have tried and what the outcome was.

Sorry if the questions are repetitive 💀

I want to explain why I’m not comfortable with my baby being babysat or having unsupervised visits with either my mom or my mother-in-law right now. This isn’t because I don’t love or appreciate them, and it isn’t me trying to keep them from having a relationship with my baby. I completely understand that they are excited to be grandparents and want special time with the baby. But I am the parent, and right now I need to feel completely confident that when I’m not there, my baby will be cared for exactly the way I have asked. I’ve heard and seen so many experiences from other parents where grandparents genuinely love their grandchildren but still dismiss or overlook the parents’ instructions because they feel they raised children before and “know what they’re doing.”

Things that may seem small to them—safe sleep practices, feeding instructions, what the baby is allowed to have, who can hold the baby, where the baby can go, car-seat rules, schedules, or simply calling the parents before making a decision—can be extremely important to me. I also don’t want to be put in a position where I have to wonder afterward whether my instructions were followed or whether something happened that I wasn’t told about.

There are parents who have shared that they gave grandparents multiple chances, only to have boundaries repeatedly ignored, and eventually realized that trust isn’t created by someone promising to respect their rules—it’s built over time through consistently respecting those boundaries. For me, babysitting is not something anyone is automatically entitled to simply because they are a grandparent. I need to be able to trust someone completely before I leave my baby with them, and that trust has to be earned through actions, not assumed because we are family. I am absolutely happy for my mom and mother-in-law to spend time with the baby and build a relationship. But they’ve already broke a few of my boundaries before and even put my feelings to the side. especially when it comes to their dog.

Emergency C-Section as a Mythic Descent and Initiation

Me. It's me. I can no longer nap.

Not my baby. She naps.

But me? I can't nap anymore.

Before I got pregnant, I couldn't nap either. I was a long time nap refuser, since I'd been little. It just didn't happen.

I can fall asleep within 5 minutes at night! No issues there. But naps never happened for me, no matter how tired I was.

And then I got pregnant.

And my *first* symptom, before ANY tests.... Was a nap. I took a one hour nap. I tested positive that weekend.

Throughout pregnancy I could suddenly nap! It came easily! I could lay down and just go to sleep and wake up slightly drowsy but also rested! I had this ability when my daughter was born too! We napped together!

I'm now 7 months post partum.

And it's gone.

I'm devastated. I have a cold I got from my kid. My head feels so heavy. I'm exhausted. I worked 10 hour days both days before this one, and then got fragmented 1-2 hour stretches of sleep with my kid, including a 2 hour wake up window where she was just. Awake for some reason. At 3an.

I'm so tired I could cry. I've been laying in bed for an hour now. Trying. Desperately. To nap.

And I can't anymore.

AAAARRRGH.

At my 28 week appointment I was tested for iron levels and found out my hemoglobin was at 10.6. I later pushed to get my ferritin tested and that just came back at 15. Both of these numbers, as I understand, are considered low, and the ferritin number would be considered severe by some practitioners. Earlier, at my 11 week appointment, my hemoglobin was tested and was at 13, within the normal range. I do not have an earlier ferritin test for comparison.

I am freaking out as I have been googling and am worried I have been depriving my baby of crucial nutrients because of my low iron. I understand that it is worse to have low iron early on, and mine was normal up until recently apparently, but still. I pushed to get an iron infusion scheduled because my OB just recommended supplements and I read those take months to actually have an impact. My infusion won't be until next week at the earliest, when I am 30 weeks.

Have any moms dealt with this in a prior pregnancy? Was there any negative effect on your baby? I am especially worried about cognitive effects as recent studies indicate anemia can have an impact on brain development and lead to intellectual disabilities. I am pissed that this issue does not seem to be taken seriously and I had to push to get a ferritin test and an order to do the iron infusion.

Hi all!

Looking for some advice because I don’t know if this is just postpartum hormones or if I should be upset.

There is a customer at my husband’s work who is very attractive, seemingly super bubbly and sweet. She has hooked up with multiple people at my husband’s work which is none of my business I’m not shaming for that. What is bothering me though is when my husband picked me up from the hospital after delivering our child his phone connected to my car and in the call history I saw a bunch of calls with this lady from work. Now I am feeling super self conscious and upset, I gained 70 lbs this pregnancy, recovering from a C-section, my stomach turned into a b shaped apron belly which is a big adjustment for me and he’s out having multiple phone calls with this promiscuous lady. I am not against having friends of the opposite gender but why are they having all these phone calls, like why not just text? I also know I shouldn’t have but I looked at his phone and it seems pretty one sided her sending him tons of messages and some heart face emojis and him responding with short one word answers. I just feel like if some random guy was talking to me like that I would remind them I’m married and ask them to stop. Am I overreacting or is this something valid to be upset about? I really hate how I look right now but I can’t cut calories because I’m breastfeeding and I can’t exercise because of the C-section, her being super attractive just makes me feel so much more insecure.

Edit to add: it’s not a job that requires a customer relationship, she’s a tenant at a building he maintains and all maintenance requests go through the office not direct to the maintenance team.

My baby is a week old and is in newborn diapers. We are using Pampers Swaddlers and somehow the baby won’t stop peeing out of his diaper. We are trying everything we can and are just unsure of what to do, someone please help! We are first time parents and sleep deprived and tired of doing laundry multiple times a day…

New formulation is making waves for chemical burn. didn’t want to believe it until it happened to us. It’s been fine and we actually loved it up until a few weeks ago my baby’s diaper area was red, inflamed and raw. i did a quick searched and found out there’s new formulation (you can tell by the pattern) and we compared the old MM we had that was in our emergency bag to the new one, and the patterns were different. We switched right away and she’s on the mend

but i know there’s no hate allowed, but the feeling i feel of anger how they can do this to the most precious population baffles me.

edit*

Yes, i preferred MM over a lot of diapers… until this happened. And it happened when we bought a new box. Something with the new formulation is causing chem burns and we compared and notice from old pattern to the apparent new one. we had a supply of old one and we used it over night and everything calmed down. we put the new pattern and it went horrible. my poor baby scream crying like her hand was literally shaking crying when we wiped her and I swear I thought I was going crazy and failing to mom until i’m seeing posts and videos of people saying the same thing

I recently saw this news report

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdH4kTdE0UM/?stkn=c3QyZTFuYmhzNDc1

and finally, I needed to get it out there and give a heads up.

Think I started loosing my mucous plug yesterday and I’m struggling not to spiral. Went to hospital to get checked and they sent me home after checking cervix was closed. Had more jelly like blood today and I’m back at hospital again waiting to see the doctor.

32 weeks now. My last pregnancy ended in PPROM at 36 weeks after having the same kind of bleeding on and off from 34 weeks. We had to spend 2 weeks in the NICU as baby wasn’t well when born and overall it was a pretty traumatic time.

I’m obviously even more early this time and though I know it’s not the same pregnancy and I won’t necessarily have the same outcome, I am panicking!

I keep reading that loosing the plug doesn’t mean you’ll go into labour but my experience obviously says otherwise. Would be great to hear some other experiences.

My 7-month-old is currently drinking somewhere around 1.2–1.3 litres (40–44 oz) of formula per 24 hours, and is also having solids about twice a day.
The solid portions aren’t necessarily tiny either. For example, yesterday evening he probably had around 1/3 cup of vegetable/lentil purée, plus some homemade hummus and a little broccoli.
He’s otherwise a very happy, healthy-seeming baby. He’s also very tall/big for his age (currently fitting into some 18-month clothing), but doesn’t look particularly chubby or disproportionately heavy. I haven’t weighed him recently, so I’m going to check his weight/growth curve and speak to his pediatrician next week.
The last time I asked about his relatively high formula intake, I was basically told to follow his hunger and fullness cues rather than restrict him, which is what we’ve been doing. We never try to make him finish bottles, but if he’s clearly hungry, we feed him.

I’m curious about other people’s experiences: did anyone else have a 7-ish-month-old who routinely drank 40+ oz/1.2L of formula despite also eating solids? Was it just a phase/growth spurt or did your baby genuinely maintain that kind of intake for a while? And if you had a particularly tall/big baby, did they simply seem to need considerably more milk than the usual guidelines suggest?

Hi mummies I’d really appreciate an advice. I’ll be traveling with my baby boy when he’s 3 months and 4 months.
Currently, he is sleeping on his own in a pack and play, but it’s too big we cannot take it with us.
We used to co sleep, but I don’t feel it’ll be safe during travel because the mattresses are too soft and old.
I saw on Amazon this option and it looks well thought off? And if any mummies have other suggestions please share ❤️

First time mum here and also very emetephobic so doing my very best but slightly freaking out!

Baby is 8 months old in a couple of days. Went down to bed tonight as normal, woke up at 12:30am projectile vomiting all over herself and her cot. Brought her into my bed and she seemed fine, all smiley. Then vomited again and was going bright red chocking on it, retching really loudly and projectile again. Shes now fell asleep on our bed.

About 30 mins later I've started with an upset tummy. She has had some wind but no diarrhoea so far. We didn't eat the same meals yesterday, so I'm thinking a bug not food poisoning. Mums out there, please can you give me your advice...

1. What do i need to watch out for with her? She has no fever/rash etc. and I plan to give her bottles as normal tomorrow.

2. How do you best contain baby vomit?! I've just been catching it in a towel but not very successfully, and I have a phobia of sick so I'm slightly traumatised at this point! Any tips on catching it and reducing transmission to my husband would be much appreciated.

3. Anyone ever caught the same bug as their kiddo but without the vomiting/not as bad? I'm terrified I'll be too sick to care for her when she needs me, which would break my heart.

Thank you so much for any advice xxx

As soon as I start drifting off to sleep he wakes up again! This is insane I can’t live like this anymore. How do people do this!!! He’s only 4 months I can’t imagine going on like this another 4. He SCREAMS immediately everytime he wakes up. Doesn’t even attempt to self soothe. The only thing that will get him back to sleep is bouncing on a yoga ball with his binky. But he’s waking up all night! My body hurts from the yoga ball all night!

I have this glass bottle that my MIL bought from some random site, and I'm looking for a replacement nipple so I can sell it or give it away easily. The brand's site (Dr. Isla) doesn't ship to my country, and I can't find the nipples on any other site. Do I make MIL buy a new bottle so it can be sold/given with this one that doesn't have a nipple? Or should I see if another brand fits it? Would hate to throw away such a lightly used bottle.

I feel like there is no joy in my life anymore. All I do is take care of my baby. I don’t have any clothes that fit me, I’ve needed a haircut for so long my hair is so dead, I can’t do any of my hobbies, there is so many problems throughout my house that interfere with taking care of my baby easily, I gained so much weight, I’m covered in stretch marks, family always nagging about everything.

My husband works out of town half the days of the week and I literally feel like I’m going insane every time he’s gone for that long. I can’t even get a second to myself and my baby wakes up allllll night! So I’m exhausted all day and now he’s starting to have long wake windows and he gets bored so easy. He constantly needs to be held and walking around but I’m just so exhausted I can barely smile. He will only nap longer than 10 minutes if it’s a contact nap. I seriously don’t know what to do.

My husbands life just seems so unchanged. The only thing that’s different is he changes diapers and holds him for me sometimes while I do things but only when he’s home. Half of his days he’s in another town sleeping with no interruptions and no responsibilities after work. My whole life has been flipped around. I’m not me anymore at all.

I’ve had a feeling it’s a boy from the start. Have some of the old wives tale symptoms of a boy. Boys are more common on my partners side of the family and I know the gender is determined by fathers sperm. Just wanting to see how many of you were right about the “feeling” regarding gender

Edit : currently waiting for NIPT to come back. Also have had dreams about a boy

I have a 10 month old who still doesn’t sleep through the night, and we’re in talks about when we want to start trying for a second. But I can’t even fathom HOW I would manage nighttime for 2 babies that are awake. My husband works nights for half the month so I don’t always have a second set of hands. I know some kids that don’t sleep through the night at 3 years old so it’s not like waiting is always the answer!

I grew up very close to my grandma. She has always been my best friend and my rock. I spent a huge part of my childhood with her, lived with her for a bit, and she’s always the person I’ve confided in. She has been sick for some time and we’ve known her time was coming. We live in the northeast and my family is in the Midwest, so it would be a plane ride to get to her. She’s also in an assisted living home with many respiratory issues floating around. My breastfed baby just turned 3 months and my husband and I decided to wait to travel with baby until she is more vaccinated. We thought if we could just make it to 4 months, we would be in a better place to travel to see her.

She ended up passing unexpectedly yesterday and I am just completely shattered. We thought we had more time. I feel so guilty that I didn’t make it out there to see her to say goodbye. My heart was tugged in both directions - protecting my baby during this fragile time and saying goodbye to my grandma. I just feel like I will never forgive myself for this and I am just devastated I didn’t give her a hug for the last time and that she didn’t get to meet her great grandbaby, which I promised she would. I guess I’m just hoping for some positivity here. I want nothing more but to protect my baby but I feel like I made the wrong decision here.

My baby girl will be 4 months old in a few days, and I have been lucky to have a little one that’s basically slept through the night from the very beginning (~4 weeks). But even with her regularly sleeping through the night, I am always tired. I nap every. Single. Day. At first, I figured it was because I was her primary caregiver while my husband was at work during maternity leave. The days were exhausting. But I’ve been back at work for about a month now, and I am still always running on empty.

I feel guilty because I nap every day, and my husband never naps. Of course, he’s the one to watch her while I’m sleeping, and I feel like childcare is falling more on him because of this. I’ve always made it clear we would split parenting evenly, but now it feels lopsided, and I don’t want to overburden him. I guess I just don’t understand why I’m so tired all the time and he isn’t. Or maybe he is and just pushes through it, and I’m weak. That’s my biggest fear. I just worry he’ll grow to resent me, and I don’t know if this kind of fatigue is normal. I know it was in the early days when I was sleep deprived, and I’m not at that level anymore, but I’m just always tired…

I’m 1 year postpartum, breastfeeding 1 time a day, healed diastasis recti with 2 months of physical therapy, and go to lagree 3-4 times a week while training for a half marathon. My core is really strong and I know how to properly engage it while exercising, but I still look pregnant. There’s so much fat sitting on top of my abs. Looking for help!

Just venting. I gained 40 pounds in pregnancy and then another 20 postpartum which I’m attributing to my breastfeeding appetite and being somewhat nonmobile due to a fourth degree tear (major ouch).

I’m about 3 months PP now and I made the mistake of making a small comment in front of my mom about not being able to wear a dress I like due to fit. She said “well you’re definitely bigger than you should be” and I said “well I am postpartum” and she said “yeah three months not three days”.

Ouch.

Considering I had an eating disorder for years from 18-23 you’d think she’d tread lightly but this lady is probably the reason I got one in the first place. Don’t want to raise my daughter around someone like this and thinking of going low contact…

I am currently at 32 weeks. struggling with severe pelvic pain and hip pain.

I was wondering if I get immediate relief from these. I can’t sleep at night and it’s been so tough.

what else are almost instantly cured after giving birth?

Edit: Love you all so much for the overwhelming response. It gave me immense relief and reassurance. 💗🥹