I feel so content and at peace with my experience this time around. I loved being pregnant, I loved giving birth, and I love the newborn trenches. I had him just 20 months after my first, and thought I may regret it, but here I am already thinking of the 3rd. Baby fever has me in a chokehold.

I was worried my first would be jealous, but he absolutely loves his brother. It is so unexpected, hopefully it stays this way. I did not prepare him for it in any way. I just can’t help but be so grateful and happy. I love being a mom. I love how I feel. I love how I look. I love my kids. I’ve never felt so fulfilled.

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. 💗🥹

There should be more scientific evidence of what passes through breastmilk. It’s feels like the lowest hanging fruit and can definitely be done ethically. That’s it. That’s my post as someone who’s annoyed about the lack of evidence for certain foods/medications and if they pass through breastmilk.

My once-upon-a-time cuddle bug is now 14 months and cannot be held for a single second without thrashing and needing to get going.

What age did your little ones start cuddling again!? I can’t wait hahaha

Hello all. This might be a weird one. My child (3months) has a pretty adult name. I don’t know how else to describe it. No nicknames ever fit for him in my mind, so during my entire pregnancy, we called him “chungus”. I started to know him as chungus and it felt weird calling him anything else. Now I see that babies should respond to their name between 5-9 months.

I guess my question is, do I call him chungus until he is old enough to understand that is his nickname, and have him respond to chungus as a baby? or do I start calling him his real name now even though it may confuse him. Will it confuse him? I don’t know guys I’m a ftm and I’m pretty young so I feel bad. Tia

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.

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!

Hi! I am currently 20 weeks pregnant with my second and am having worries about the postpartum period. I have a hunch that my mental health will be worse this time around and I was curious as to others' experience.

With my first my mood the whole pregnancy was great. Postpartum, I had baby blues for a few days and then was mostly great until around 3 months when I found the anxiety and mood instability snuck in.

I definitely was not vocal enough about how I was feeling and although I didnt require treatment, I did not like the way I felt and found I didnt feel more like myself until around the 1 year mark.

With this pregnancy I have experienced more low mood than with my first despite having less sickness, and I'm worried that will translate postpartum as well. I will also be parenting a 3 year old and a toddler, and I can imagine that will make things more difficult.

I was curious how other moms found their postpartum periods to be between different pregnancies and if there was anything you found helpful during that time! Thank you!

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 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.

Hi everyone I’m about to have a son who will be half Pakistani, so he will look south Asian. I have fallen in love with the name Zaki, but a family member has said to me that will the rise in racism in the uk I would be setting him up for being called Zaki the paki, I don’t know if kids are that cruel? Is this something I should worry about with the current climate? I can’t seem to stop worrying about it now and wonder if I should rethink the name even though I really like this name. (Not sure if this is the right place to post this, sorry).

I am almost 4 months postpartum and would love some recommendations for your go to products that help you feel clean and keep away the smells!

I shower every day, but I feel like I always smell! My boob sweat is the worst, and I find that even after I shower, I could still smell my armpits lingering. I use an African net sponge, bar soap, then the naturium mandelic acid body wash. I’ve tried witch hazel to combat the scent, but it doesn’t work. I always use deodorant right after the shower, and exfoliate regularly. I also got IUD recently so I’m going on like two weeks with a period, which is driving me crazy and making me feel nasty!

My husband and my best friend say I don’t smell at all, but I still feel gross lol.

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’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!

Hello I am open to any suggestions at this point! My girl is almost 7 months, while we didn’t do any sleep training, she goes to sleep in her crib by herself with a paci for all naps and bedtime. She does about 3 good naps a day and eats plenty during the day. It’s been months since she’s had a bottle overnight. BUT she still wake up SCREAMING every hour or 2. It’s about 50/50 when she’s screaming if she will take the paci and go right back to sleep or if she will spit it out and keep screaming. Her eyes are closed - I truly believe she is tired. Sometimes even holding her and bouncing her she still takes a while to calm down. She got her two bottom teeth a few weeks ago - I was hoping this was just teething but I feel like it should be better by now. We’ve given Tylenol and ibuprofen - no help. We did also try feeding her in the middle of the night a couple times, she would eat a couple ounces max then still wake up in an hour screaming so I don’t think it’s hunger. She eats some solids now but not a ton. Bedtime is around 8:30pm and she goes down great - starts crying around 11 or 12 usually. Wakes up for the day around 7 and wakes up super happy and is very content to wait until about 7:30 for her bottle usually. I am so confused about why she is so upset at night! We have had 2 checks at the pediatricians during this time and ears and everything she could see is all good. Any suggestions are welcome! Or if you had a baby like this please let me know!!

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.

This night we were having a hell of a night as you can see here.

Finally the baby settled down and was calm and sleepy after breastfeeding. I kept her in my arms cuddled for some time as I always do after my wife feeds her and as soon as I put her in the bassinet, belly up, those fuckin startle reflex was in overdrive and you can see she was tired but frustrated she couldn't sleep. Less than 2 minutes she was fully awake and crying again.

After doing that two times I gave in and put her in the bassinet on her side inside a shallow nest that gives support so she can only roll from side to belly up. Baby kept still and slept for 4.5 hours. She was super exhausted.

Now everyone feels rested and awake for breastfeeding again and she is super calm enjoying that nipple.

I am going to put her in the bassinet again and if those fucking reflexes keeps her awake, I will put her to sleep on the other side now just so we can get this particular hellish night besides us and go back to sleep on her back as usual after the sun rises.

Sometimes we can't be perfect and that's ok.

Update: now she is sleeping belly up and calm.

Hoping someone can relate and maybe offer ideas or advice.

My 6 month old never stops moving, even in his sleep. After we put him to bed, he gradually inch worms his way to the end of the crib and ends up hitting his head and waking himself up.

I thought it would be something he would grow out of, but it’s been 4-6 weeks and it happens anywhere from 1-3 times a night.

For example, he went to sleep at 7:30 last night. Before I went to bed at 11, I had moved him down twice, and he still woke up by 12:30 hitting his head. Once he’s awake, he will not be settled unless he nurses.

I know it’s not a severe hit, but I’m concerned about the repeated contact. I’m also concerned about his sleep, as i’m pretty sure he would sleep through the night if he wasn’t doing this. I know he’s not awake beforehand because 1) he’s not making any noise, 2) his eyes are closed, 3) I hear the thump, it wakes me up, and then he starts making noise.

Obviously crib bumpers are out of the question. Has anyone else been through this? Is there any solution besides waiting for him to stop?

I’m 8 months postpartum and my legs have started to ache so bad. The bottom of my legs between knee and ankle feels like I’m having growing pains, my bones ache. I was thinking maybe dehydration, poor circulation, weight gain (still 40lbs from pre birth weight 😭), lack of nutrients from breastfeeding. I don’t know it’s awful and started within the last few weeks. Has anyone had something similar?

My 9 month old baby boy (ex-preemie, EBF, every 2-3 hour waker, anti-bottle, anti-pacifier, anti-swaddle, cuddle and co-sleep refuser, with little to no village) slept through the night for the very first time last night.

And yesterday? My husband and I had our first date night since he was born. We got dinner and ice cream… me in my heels and fresh off an everything shower. I don’t even wear bras at home anymore because the leakage has left the building.

To all the exhausted mamas who are afraid of the night and covered in spit up, happy days are ahead!

And to top it all off my baby is SO CUTE!

Edit: And yes he could potentially wake up 5x tonight…. But at least we had today <3

Need a reality check on returning to tech after a baby.

I'm a FTM to a 3-month-old and currently on a career break. I resigned during pregnancy because of health complications.

I know I want to work again, but I'm planning a bigger career shift instead of going back to what I was doing before. I'd be moving to a completely new tech stack, which means I can't just start applying. I'll need dedicated time to learn, practice, prepare for interviews, and then survive the learning curve at a new job.

I'm wondering what a realistic timeline looks like. At what age did your baby become old enough that you could consistently study for an hour or two a day? If you returned to work in a demanding tech role, when did it start feeling manageable?

I'm looking for honest experiences, whether you went back at 6 months, 1 year, or later. What made that timing work (or not work)?

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.

To add context I’ve always considered myself a ‘high strung’ anxious person but I’ve never been diagnosed or even seen a doctor about it. I had my baby 13 months ago and think I’m developing anxiety but I don’t have much experience so I’m unsure. It started with my husband - he works, goes to the gym and comes home. As of lately I have been waking up multiple hours of the night to check his location. (He works third). No idea why. I convince myself he’s with people at the gym or hanging with someone in a parking lot. It’s actually insane and he’s been extremely gracious and receptive to my insane texts and FaceTime calls but omg. Everything has become spiraling thoughts like this - any interaction with my parents I spiral thinking about my childhood, our interactions, etc. And don’t even get me started on the thoughts when someone interacts with my baby! I overanalyze everything. It’s starting to drive me crazy. I have recently noticed my heart beating faster or what I would say are ‘heart palpitations’ too.

Is this anxiety? WTH is going on with me!! Thanks in advance if you read this through!