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2015, March: Wisdom from the First Month

I knew having a baby would be hard work - it is. I also knew that I wouldn't be getting much sleep - I'm not. Here are some other pearls of wisdom from the first month of Declan, in no particular order:
  • If the baby falls asleep in a position that hurts your arm (or neck or back or hip or alloftheabove), your pain is irrelevant, DO NOT MOVE.
  • Staring into a baby's wide open eyes and willing him to fall asleep does not work. Neither does ordering him to sleep, nor explaining rationally why he should be sleeping.
  • Maternity leave is boring. Dull, tedious, repetitive, mind-numbing, boring boring boring boring BORING. Most of the time you cannot do anything about this because there is a baby attached to you.
  • Getting more than 40 minutes sleep at once will be a cause for celebration. Getting more than 2 hours straight will make you feel like you are capable of ANYTHING.
  • You might feel like an idiot reading a book to a tiny baby that clearly doesn't understand a word. If so, make it easier on yourself in the first few weeks and read a book that you're interested in rather than wearing yourself out now on the baby books (plenty of time for that later). For the record, we're going with Harry Potter.
  • There is "research" to both fully support and thoroughly oppose everything you are doing. EVERYTHING.
  • The baby blues are real, do not feel bad about them.
  • You will need more diapers than you think you will.
  • Babies sleep a lot and cry little in hospital. This pretty much reverses as soon as you get them home.
  • You will never appreciate a cup of tea more in your life than the morning after a rough night.
  • You may develop baby-related OCD. If the baby slept well after a certain sequence of events, you will attempt to repeat those events as closely as possible in the hopes for more happy sleep. It won't work, but you'll keep doing it anyway.
  • Attempting to apply order, logic, or reason to a baby's behavior will drive you crazy.
  • "Sleep when he sleeps" is utter crap. You'll want to use any time he's sleeping during the day when he's not attached to you to do things like eat and pee. Seriously. It can be immensely difficult just to find time to eat something, never mind take a nap. Also, being awoken from a daytime nap to do another feed just makes everyone grumpy(ier).
  • Cloth diapers are the best burp/clean-up/general purpose rags ever. Buy a bunch. As for their success as diapers? No idea.
  • It takes 15 minutes for a baby to fall into a deep enough sleep to be moved without waking. The discovery of this fact was a MIRACLE in our house.
  • The internetz talk about how babies love bath-time and how you might want to incorporate this as a regular part of a soothing bedtime routine. Not true of all babies. NOT TRUE AT ALL. I suspect Declan will grow up to be quite a dirty kid given his (loud) negative opinion of baths so far.
  • Pumping breast milk is the least sexy thing you will ever do in your life.
  • Get out of the house as soon and as much as you can. Daylight helps.
  • Showering helps, too. Pop the baby in something secure and take him into the bathroom with you. We found that the noise of the water had a calming effect, but even if it doesn't - take the time to feel human, even if it means he cries for an extra 10 minutes.
  • And finally, wine helps. Enjoy a glass right after a feed to maximize the time before the next one. I find late afternoon/early evening the hardest time of day, and the time when the blues are most likely to return. This is now my glassofwine time.
What have I missed?

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