Mistakenly before my daughter was born, I thought that the newborn age would be a breeze. Newborns sleep all day, know inherently how to nurse when born, have the "newborn" cry, and if they don't sleep at night, you are off work on maternity leave so you can just sleep during the day, right? Right?!?! Everyone who knows better has now died laughing. Let's break this down by fatal flaw:
"Newborns sleep all day" - uhh then I ended up with the two odd children out. My pediatrician and my OB told me this before they were born. I wish that I would have punched then while I had the chance. From the day that she was born, my daughter wouldn't sleep unless she was being held. Not just being held, but clinging on to the side of you like a monkey. See picture for how we slept for the first 16 weeks of her life. After 16 weeks, she decided that she was done with it and went to sleep in her co-sleeper until 7 months. My husband and I had several conversations before she was born that we were not co-sleepers because we didn't want to have to break that habit in the future. This all went right out the window in the hospital when that was the only way to get Isabella to sleep longer than five minutes at a time.
My son was similar and woke up every 1-3 hours until he was over 7 months old and then magically one night decided that he could sleep 10-11 hours at a time. Scary, but needed.
"Newborns know how to nurse when they are born." - This comes with work from both parties. They should prepare you for that better before the birth. I think that, before my daughter was born, I just thought - hey I have boobs; my body will know what to do. I was wrong. I nursed both of my kids until they were about 3 months old and when I went back to work they went on formula. I have a lot of guilt about this but it was unavoidable for me. I am positive that I will touch on that more in future blogs - I am hoping to get some closure on the guilt about that at some point... perhaps this blog will help.
"Newborns have the newborn cry." My daughter did, but my son was the size of a toddler when he was born and he was born with a set of toddler sized lungs. My OB's office doesn't do the "here is ho big your child is" ultrasound and I wasn't sad about it because I had heard how off it could be. My husband was very interested in knowing and asked my OB as soon as I started pushing about how big she felt like our daughter would be. After a LONG 36 hour labor, I was really excited about having this conversation when all I wanted to do was sleep without the bowling ball between my legs. She said "oh I don't know probably 8.5 lbs." This sounded HUGE. Luckily she ended up being 7 lbs 6 ounces. However, we asked the same question about my son a little over a year later and she said a similar answer. She actually said that she was betting that he might be smaller than my daughter even though I was effectively overdue with him by about a week. When he came out I will never forget her going "OH MY He's HUGE!" 9lb 14oz. He was the biggest baby in the hospital at that time and they even had to go upstairs and get size 1 diapers and a bigger shirt because the newborn stuff wouldn't fit him. Now, I know that there have been larger babies but that just seemed huge to me!! Needless to say, he did not have a newborn cry and has screamed at the top of his lungs as a cry since the day that he was born.
I say all of that to say this: Newborns cry a lot. They cry and cry and cry. Sometimes for no apparent reason. They don't sleep as much as people want you to think that they do. And they definitely will need a diaper change the second that they drift off to sleep. However, they are precious. And life changing. And as miserable as it seems that I thought they are, I wouldn't trade mine for the world and would do it all over again.
- Sara
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