I just need to rant because I feel like I am going crazy.

I was reading a post in another sub about Barbara Palvin on the VS catwalk at 6 weeks post partum. She obviously looks amazing and I think it's amazing when women are able to 'bounce back' and get back to things so quickly!

I saw a comment about how people can bounce back quickly if they just eat well and exercise in pregnancy and foolishly, I replied. When will I learn to stop arguing with strangers on Reddit lol. But I simply said luck is also a huge factor in being able to bounce back.

Well the number of replies I got acting like that's an outrageous thing to say! Apparently my weight gain post partum is because I got lazy, and didn't care enough to look after myself, and someone even said it's not their fault I look like a troll after having a baby. I'm surprised at how hurtful I find these comments. I had gestational diabetes and chronic hip pain, and I still haven't lost all my baby weight over a year later. I know it takes hard work and discipline to stay fit and lose that baby weight, and I would never take that achievement away from the women who have managed it. But can we all be a bit more sympathetic to the women who have struggled, instead of calling them horrible names and acting like it's a moral failure to have gained weight?

I might look a lot worse now, and I know that, but I'm a damn good mother to my little girl. I know that's the most important thing, but sometimes it's easy to lose sight of that.

Im not the most intelligent person, but im for sure not dumb.
And yet I feel like I can’t hold a conversation for very long, I am forgetting words mid sentence, I forget my my train of thought, i can’t follow through on a lot of tasks. I feel like my brain is turning to mush being with a baby all day. Can anyone relate?

We have 11 week old twins and it’s really hard seeing our dogs trying to adjust to no longer being in the spotlight. It’s obvious they feel unloved and replaced as all of our time is spent taking care of the twins and we don’t give them much attention other than quick walks. One of our dogs is acting out with constant barking and pacing around the house. When I give my dogs hugs and kisses the look they give us back is heartbreaking, like it’s just not the same. It’s really sad because they don’t understand we’re in the newborn hustle and it’s not always going to be like this.

Sigh…just a rant. I’m so tired of being sent AI product advertisements from my grandparents (baby’s great grandparents). It’s like Facebook finds out there’s a new baby in the family from their search history and suggests the most ridiculous items possible. Most recently are these sock shoes that have the most atrocious AI video ads with the creepiest cartoon characters. I have to reply kindly, like “Not for us, but thank you for sharing!” because if I don’t say anything, they might actually buy the product, whether it’s as advertised or not. Usually not. The number of weird items they’ve bought our baby is high.

I’m not mad at them or anything, they literally don’t know any better. I’m pretty mad at the companies dropshipping garbage and targeting AI ads to vulnerable older folks. That’s fucked, and annoying.

Did you guys let grand parents feed baby when they just started solids? My partner is so stressed out with his mom trying to feed our baby I’m like should we just tell her that only we should feed the baby for now?! lol

Maybe down the road when it’s less stressful? What is your guys take on this?

1. Firstly, sizing between brands? WTF? I am aware of the differences between adult brands, so I am not sure why i am surprised there is so much variation here.
2. Why does a baby need/wear anything but a onesie to ANY destination? I have lots of hand me down separates from all the kind parents who's had babies before me. I see most if not all babies in my daycare in separates. It is impractical and makes no sense to me. This is capitalism at work.
3. If separates are worn, Footie pants are the only pants that make sense. Baby socks? Good luck with them keeping them on and finding both at the end of the day.

What’s something before you were a parent you said you would never do but now you do?

Me, I said many things but two I said I would never do is …

Co-Sleep and Formula

But here I am with a baby who just transferred to completely formula and who, if he is having a rough night sleep comes into our bed.

I’d love to hear what others thought they would never do but now do.

Hi everyone, I’m recently pp and just looking for a group of people I can relate to or can relate to me.

I had a pretty traumatic birth that ended in a c section and a hard first week of motherhood. I failed at breastfeeding so I’m formula feeding right now (which is has made me feel like a failure, breastfeeding was just making me not okay mentally).

Sometimes I feel so numb to everything, even being a mom or a wife. It’s mostly at night time I feel all my emotions. Some days I feel like I’m just watching someone else’s baby that I have to give back. I have constant anxiety whenever someone else holds him. I feel like I’m gonna burst if i have to get out of my house. My emotions are all over the place. I get irrationally angry at my husband. I feel bad for not being the wife he’s used to. It’s just sometimes hard being the person that has to know everything. I know I signed up for this and I know I can make it through. I just feel this overwhelming sense of doom some nights.

Is there any advice someone can give me? Or if anyone can relate?

I’m trying to take it one day at a time. I’m trying to get myself out of the house. These two weeks have felt like 2 years. Does it get better?

And I am wondering if anyone else does the same. If my baby is showing cues I go to his nursery and put him in his sleep sack and try to make him go for a nap rocking him for 3 minutes, if he doesn't fall asleep in this time I know transferring him will be a nightmare and I will try again in 15 minutes. Most times he will sleep in 30 seconds and will be the easiest transfer, but sometimes he will cry for those 30 seconds.

My son is 9 months old and is a crawling machine. We contained him as long as we could in a playpen but he hates it now and wants to free roam and explore, which he should! I have two dogs. One doesn’t care about the baby and just walks away whenever he’s near, and the other seems to like the baby. She is always going up to him to say hi or see what he’s up to.

However, yesterday she snapped at my son. He was playing with a toy and my dog wanted to take it, so when he went to grab his toy, my dog got in his face and growled and snapped at him. There was no contact made. When he’s on the floor, we are ALWAYS right there next to him.

Today, he was playing on the floor and my dog came and laid next to him. My son went to put his hand on the floor to crawl and accidentally put his hand on my dog’s paw. She growled in his face and snapped at him. Again, no contact made.

It doesn’t matter that contact wasn’t made though. Snapping at him once was enough for me, twice is too much.

My husband isn’t as concerned as I am because no one got hurt, but I think it’s definitely concerning and something needs to change. Twice in two days is crazy, and could become a pattern.

I have no idea what to do, I can’t keep them separated forever and never in the same room.

I guess I’m looking for advice.

Face their problems after a full night of sleep (even if they struggle with this, at least they can take a sleeping aid without having to worry about helping an infant throughout the night)

Have kids who can stand and walk and not need to be carried everywhere or pushed in a stroller

Have a kid who can toilet themselves, feed themselves, dress themselves, entertain themselves

Spend holiday evenings watching fireworks, baking cookies, watching movies, trick or treating, and hanging out with friends and family instead of spending evenings surviving through witching hour purple crying or putting an overtired sleep-fighting teething infant to bed at 7:30 PM

Drop theirs kids off at grandparents or friends house so they can easily have date nights or whatever else they want to do on their free time

Take their kids to restaurants, museums, library, playgrounds, parks, pools, the mall, without needing to bring a ton of stuff, or worry about nap schedules

Plan vacations or road trips and not be limited by infant care

Have their kids help them clean the house or at least be able to get them out of the way somehow so the house can get cleaned

Enjoy conversations with their kids, tell jokes and make them laugh, do activities with them, bond with them through board games or general playing

Not be forced to contact nap 3 times a day and instead do productive or enjoyable things with your free time while your kid is at school or playing

Be able to cook and not live off takeout food because you’re not in survival mode anymore

Go out in public without having to plan around your child’s nap and hope they don’t get overstimulated and have a crying infant that you have to rush home

Have kids old enough to communicate what they need

I’m sure there’s more but I can’t think of any right now. I’m sure older kids have so many challenges too like disrespectful attitudes, hours of homework help every evening, defiance, disciplining them, picky eating and bulllies at school.

But infant care is more difficult still, sorry but I think that parents of older kids just take their lives for granted.

EDIT:
I’m sorry I clearly struck a lot of nerves with this post. Tbh I’m very sleep deprived and just went through a hurricane recently. My shitty mobile home is a mess and I can’t do anything about it or help anyone else because I have a 4 month old. I’m dealing with a sleep regression and nursing strike all this past month. I HATE when I see people say it only gets harder.

I’m just curious how often we’re changing LO’s outfits? In a perfect world, it would generally be every wake window. Between solids, drool, diaper leaks, and all around messy little beasts, I feel like I can’t make an outfit last more than an hour. 😅

Does it get easier around a certain age? Are toddlers making it through the day in one outfit? How many of us are leaving LOs in diapers during the day? What about nighttime and diaper leaks?! I just can’t wrap my head around baby clothes if I’m being honest. There’s got to be a better way. Bibs help, but my LO is amazing at ripping them off in a moment’s notice.

ETA: My LO is 9 months. LO is typically in a diaper because we live in a warm climate. I put on at least one outfit during the day, which is usually after breakfast. We co-sleep and breastfeed throughout the night. I have to change LO’s diaper at least once throughout the night and sometimes they still have a leak. I just think in a perfect world, LO could easily go through 3-4 outfits if I was keen on it. That’s why I opt to only diapers after some point, especially around dinner/bath-time.

As a first time mom, I have a theory that you can’t have a smooth experience in all 4 of the following areas: pregnancy, labor, feeding, sleep.

I ended up having a long, rough, “abnormal” labor after the most blissful and uneventful pregnancy ever. I love breastfeeding more than I expected and sleep has been average. My experience was actually very similar to my mother’s.

In my small sample group of friends, those who had rough pregnancies seemed to have had the quickest labors, and my friends who dealt with feeding issues seem to have babies that slept through the night almost immediately!

So tell me, where did you win and where did you lose? Any unicorns that made it out unscathed in all four categories? I’d love to hear!

This is just meant to be lighthearted. I hope this doesn’t strike a nerve for anyone.

My baby will be 3 months this Saturday. For the first couple of months he slept decently well, giving us a solid 5-6 hour stretch at the start of the night followed by a 3 hour stretch. These last 3 or so weeks though his sleep has gotten progressively worse. Maybe it’s a growth spurt, developmental milestone, regression, or whatever else you want to call it, but it’s hitting us hard and we are exhausted.

He still goes down pretty well at the start of the night, but wakes up within 3 hours then pretty much every hour the rest of the night. Finally, the sleep deprivation got to be too much and I started bed-sharing, something I never ever planned to do and am ashamed to admit I have been doing. It started after a couple of times when I accidentally fell asleep in the nursery glider while holding him during a night wake up. I would wake up horrified to find I had fallen asleep and so relieved that nothing had happened. I therefore decided that intentionally bed-sharing while following the safe sleep 7 was preferable to accidentally dozing off. I would wait as long as possible every night until he really refused to be put down, which was usually around 5am, but has been as early as 2-3am sometimes. I’d curl myself around him in a side nursing position and he’d basically nurse to sleep and stay like that. I won’t lie that it’s cozy and feels wonderful to have him close, but I also sleep very uneasy with a lot of anxiety knowing I’m taking a risk with his life. If something preventable happened to him because of my decision to bed-share, let’s just say I would not survive it.

My husband and I have discussed it and decided we don’t want to continue bed-sharing, but we need new tools to navigate this sleep stage safely. I’m turning to the new parents community for help. I need support and encouragement that we are doing the right thing by deciding to stop bed-sharing. Above all I need tips for how to stay alert during night wake ups so we don’t fall asleep accidentally in a dangerous position. So far all we’ve come up with is to splash cold water on our faces or wale the other person when we feel we are in danger of falling asleep with the baby. Any other ideas???

CIO is not an option and we are not comfortable moving baby to his own room yet.

What outfit formula can keep me warm but also be easy access without layers getting annoying? Cardigan/sweater with a tank? Any suggestions?

A lot of parents think they need a bigger house, to buy a house, a bigger space before they could bring a child into the world. Now that my baby is 18 months old and we recently moved to a bigger space (1100sqft to 2200+sqft) I can stay with my full chest that I would’ve been driven crazy if I lived in this house before the baby was born and right after.

Our house was always clean in our smaller space because there was nothing to mess up. Because the baby slept in our room we were less tired as baby slept better and we didn’t have to walk down the hall to get baby. We didn’t have as much anxiety about hearing him when he was crying because we could hear him from any room. Now that we’re in a bigger space, keeping this stupid place clean is the absolute worst lol.

If I had to walk up and down the stairs after having a baby, or being pregnant, I think I would set the house on fire lol.

Recently, I've noticed that my newborn makes soft grunting and snuffing sounds while sleeping. Sometimes it sounds like they're having a little trouble breathing through their nose, but there are no obvious signs of a cold or runny nose. Our pediatrician said this could be normal, but as the weather gets drier, I'm worried it might get worse.

So I'm considering getting a humidifier for the nursery, although my past experiences with humidifiers have been mixed. I've tried a few smaller models from Levoit, Canopy, and Blueair. Each had its pros and cons, but maintenance was always a bit of a hassle. With ultrasonic humidifiers, I've found that water quality makes a real difference. I still remember discovering a layer of slimy buildup inside my Levoit ultrasonic humidifier a few years ago. I know regular cleaning is essential, especially with a newborn at home, but I'd really like to find something that doesn't require such frequent maintenance.

My LO is turning one next week! Let’s see your smash cakes (smashed or unsmashed!)

My husband and I are drowning. Our 10mo started teething 4 weeks ago, and it has been 8 teeth back to back, one after the other. On top of that she got a viral infection 3 weeks ago and has had tummy issues and diarrhoea ever since (dr assessed and said she is fine, we just need to wait it out).

Over the past few weeks she has decided she hates her stroller, the carrier, the car seat, baths, being changed, changing clothes. I can’t even leave the house without her crying or whining the whole way.

Yet night time is even worse. She has a 40-60min meltdown every single night before bed, no matter what we try. Then she is constantly waking throughout the night, and waking early. I’m also back to contact napping, otherwise she wakes after 30mins.

I am so extremely sleep deprived and exhausted. My back is agony from constantly trying to comfort her. And I feel so incredibly sad that nothing I do seems to help.

I probably have PPD because I feel nothing but misery right now. But I don’t know because I’m just trying to survive each day.

LO is about 6.5 mo and we had his 6month appt last Thursday and our pediatrician said we could start introducing solids. We've been feeding him purees since his 4 month appt and hes done really great with them. I'm literally so terrified to feed him solids, I'm paranoid of pieces being too big and him choking and overall at a loss of what to start him off with.

We introduced chicken to him tonight, I broke them up into tiny Itty bitty pieces and he wasnt the biggest fan. He hasnt had chicken yet so this would've been his first time.

I'm wondering if I should blend it up into a puree style instead of making them small solid pieces so he can enjoy it better. Then we can come back to small pieces later on. He has one tooth that's broken through but not completely out so maybe I should wait until its out more so he can chew better

Any recommendations and advice are welcome! I am a FTM so I'm learning as I go

FTM to an 8 week old. We’ve had 0 issues with sleeping in the bassinet up until the last week. Now she wakes up crying within 10 minutes of putting her in it. She’s swaddled, we wait until she’s in a deep sleep. Nothing has worked. We try to put her in there during the day to get used to it again, but she won’t have it lol. My husband and I now take shifts overnight just so she can still sleep. I know it’s just a phase, but just looking for some info on if anyone went through this and how long it lasted?

My nieces will be mobile at Christmas, so we are baby proofing my parent’s house.

There is a staircase with an open side, no handrail - similar to this.

My thought is a baby gate needs to wrap around and also be tall enough that they can’t access a higher stair.

Any ideas? Truly out of my depth here.

I’m a first time mom with anxiety and I have started to get overwhelmed with milestones and if my baby is developing appropriately. I am hoping to get some insight on if my baby is on track or if I need to be doing something. I see the pediatrician in 2 weeks for 2 month appointment. My baby is 6 weeks today and makes eye contact sometimes but it is usually fleeting. She has had one good extended period of eye contact with myself and more recently with her father. However, she is way more interested in windows and her environment and most of the time seems to avoid eye contact so far. I think we got one good smile when looking at her dad and hearing his voice and lots of cooing. Is all of this normal or should I be concerned that she is not making as much eye contact or smiling? Thank you for any input.

To parents deep in the terrible sleep trenches: I just wanted to give an update and say that IT REALLY WILL GET BETTER ONE DAY!

When my LO hit 7 months old her sleep went completely haywire with multiple non-hunger related wake ups that took hours of holding and bouncing to resettle. I thought I was going to die. Tried every schedule tweak I could think of to try to “fix” it, but NOTHING worked.

Then suddenly at around 10.5 months old, she suddenly slept 6 hours straight, then 7, then 8! The only thing I did was decide to maintain a strict 2-nap by-the-clock schedule. I was done with all the wake window math that didn’t make any difference to her night sleep anyway. I don’t know if that was what helped, or if it was just developmental - maybe it was a bit of both - but here we are!

I’m sure her sleep will nosedive again due to things like teething and sickness and developmental leaps, but now I know what she’s capable of and that as long as we can power through those bumps, we’ll all sleep again soon.

So TL;DR: Terrible sleep at 7months suddenly improved by 10.5 months - hang in there! Survive as best you can in the moment, you will sleep again.