The first-time parent newborn experience (with Breastfeeding in starring role)

Well, well, didn’t Kate’s newborn experience sound nice what with all the sleeping through, high fiving and apparently oodles of downtime it’s given her.  I’m pretty sure there were butterflies fluttering over the flowers on her windowsill and birds chirping from the water spout as she wrote that post from her writing desk overlooking a Provence garden.  Good grief woman. Have you no mercy for the less fortunate?

Lots of down time? Really? Don’t worry readers who were wondering what happened to their daytime TV viewing opportunities.  And heads up those who think they’re in for a cruisey time.  Because the force may be strong with Yoda (aka  Kate) but it’s not easy to use the force from the get go – that is, from the moment your first little bundle of joy enters this world.

Let me talk you through a typical day with a newborn, one made up of a seemingly never ending cycle of feeding, crying and not all that much sleeping.

Newborn sleeping: if you move your finger the baby WILL wake up

photo credit: Jon Ovington

Feed

Let’s take our day’s starting point as some obscene hour like, say 5am. Not that it matters. Days and nights merge into one blurry, bleary eyed hell, and you won’t be sleeping much anyway.

Assuming you are breastfeeding (breast feeding vigilantes may well hunt you down if you are not,  lock the doors if you are using formula), you will need to have first established HOW to feed.  You will not have accomplished this before straining your arm, back, shoulders and neck, ultimately putting the last out completely resulting in you getting about with the movements of C3PO.  Your nipples will be creating a world of pain all on their own.

Feed Ends

Possibly.  Perhaps never.  You feed for forty minutes from each breast because the little beast cries alarmingly every time you attempt to detach its determined attachment to your breasts.

Despite this 80 minute test of endurance, after attempting to finish the feed you witness baby’s sucking reflex at its text book best, with baby still searching for a breast, any breast, or actually any object living or otherwise, that passes within the vicinity of its mouth.  This leads you, in the very early stages when you are exceedingly stupid, to resume feeding even after 80 minutes.  In your defence the midwives and paediatricians haven’t helped.  You have triple checked with the paediatrician regarding how long and how often is a reasonable amount of time to breastfeed and he or she will have told you with a look of withering patience, ‘breastfeed for as long and often as the baby needs. It’s called feed-on-demand .  And it means, Feed. On. Demand. Got it?’  You think of telling them to imagine something sucking on their sensitive parts for hours on end and then realize that argument is totally not going to work in your favour.

The site of your starving child throws you back into a state of near continuous stress and anxiety.  You conclude you have NO MILK.

At some point you decide the beast cannot suck on your nipples any longer and you finally limp across the finish line of the second stage of the marathon feed.  You will find that this has brought you to the half way point of the next 3 hourly feed.  This realization makes you cry.

Post Feed

After the feed ends, should you be blessed with a few minutes to do so you will spend 10 minutes applying hot and cold packs, or just cold, or just hot, depending on what you were told last or abandoning that technique because you also read the key is to keep them dry or applying lanolin cream, or alternating between all the above in state of pain, confusion and indecision.

The whole Breast Feeding process temporarily over you briefly and foolishly permit yourself to hope for sleep.  You are sadly mistaken.

Crying. By baby and most likely you.

Baby begins session of gut wrenching and inexplicable crying, for at least 40 minutes and often up to two hours.  You pray to the colic gods to spare you.  Later, after hours on the internet, you will realize it doesn’t really matter if your baby is diagnosed as suffering from colic or not because this is just a whole other problem to which there is also NO ANSWER.

Attempts to Stop Crying

Attempt every winding technique known to man.  You also attempt every lulling to sleep technique – rock, pat and pace and finally, head outdoors for incessant walking around the block.  Walking with pram will take place in either 40 degree heat or sub zero temperatures and gale force winds.

Miraculously find position in which baby stops crying

After several weeks you discover that the baby suddenly stops crying when placed face down on your stomach.  Of course this cannot be achieved in a position in which you can sleep but instead requires just the right angle on the couch.  So you and you’re your husband swap hours on the couch watching 3am episodes of the new Knightrider series and something starring Pamela Anderson with quite the most appalling actors you have ever come across and you can say that even in spite of your impressive bad TV watching history (which may or may not include the V alien invasion series, which you secretly hope will be screened some time around the 5am slot).

Baby sleeps.

Baby seemingly sent to this earth to torture you through feelings of failure, inadequacy and ineptitude falls asleep in your arms, or  in the pram on the 10^th kilometer of walk thus rendering any intentions to “sleep when the baby sleeps” completely futile.  Alternatively, baby has fallen asleep on you stomach in above mentioned couch sentinel position and after several failed attempts you have actually managed to transfer it to its cot without waking it.  You will try this several times before achieving success. The baby will obviously only fall asleep just in time for his next 3 hourly feed.

Research and Self Flagellation

Instead of attempting to sleep for the first time in anywhere between 12 and 72 hours, you take the opportunity to try and find THE SOLUTION to your problems.  You feverishly re-read all your baby books in case you missed it.

You check Gina Ford and note you are so far off THE ROUTINE designated for your child’s age you may well be the cause of all your problems and a complete failure.  Much reading and re-reading to see where you are going wrong.  Book says nothing about crying. Allegedly Gina’s babies never cry.  Stab book with a knife and throw it out the window.

In moments of sanity, of which there are few, you will instead read Robin Barker’s, Baby Love which will bring you some relief with very sensible and practical advice. Unfortunately it still does not have all THE ANSWERS.

You call friends blessed with Yoda-ish wisdom, your mother, your grandmother and anyone else you know that has ever had a baby.  Then you really torture yourself by getting on to the internet where you find many other illnesses your baby clearly has that you hadn’t thought of before. 

You run down to the street to retrieve Gina Ford from the street whence you threw it, weepingly begging forgiveness because maybe just maybe there is THE ANSWER in there somewhere.

You try to research some more on the internet but find yourself trying to locate your internet browser with the potato peeler as a mouse while you peer into the microwave.  This is possibly why you couldn’t find that list of questions you wrote for the pediatrician which you won’t need anyway because you will find the answer to all of them is, ‘Feed on Demand’.

You start to weep, finally giving in and decide to go to bed.  Morpheus just about to take you down when..

Baby Wakes. Back to Feed (yes, it is a lot like the losing throw in Snakes and Ladders)