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IHO of Tamb: What spastic mom moves did you pull in the first month
of popping out your first kid (because lets be honest, we all chillax for the subsequent ones:)
1. I would move his head to either side, while he was sleeping, because I was afraid of flat head.
2. I wouldn't let DH hold him while he slept for that long b/c DH runs so warm and I was afraid the baby would overheat and die of SIDs (yes, this was my rationing.)
3. I screamed at my mom so bad she started crying b/c I thought she had covered him with another blanket after I told her not to (I had this total overheating = death by SIDs paranoia going on, clearly.)
4. I would startle awake in the middle of the night and if I couldn't see if his chest was moving up and down, I would jostle him awake to make sure he was still breathing.
5. I would go into the kitchen and cry anytime someone other than me, DH or my mom held him in the first month b/c everyone else had germs and got WAY to much in his face (which is true - I'm still WTF about my SIL all up in his face and then telling me that newborns can't get sick.)
6. I yelled at my dad for taking pictures with a flash.
Dude, I was jacked up with the blues for the first 3-4 weeks FO'SURE.
Re: IHO of Tamb: What spastic mom moves did you pull in the first month
I held J for the first three months. I slept sitting up holding him. Seriously I never laid him down except to change a diaper. I even held him when I went to the bathroom.
I could not sleep at all if he was by my side. The noises, the moving, the worry with having him right there had me like this all night.
I had to move him out of my room to relax. That is weird right? I just could not shut off my head when he was next to me.
I hope this isn't the case with Leo as we are planning to keep him in our room then move him to Jack's room eventually.
Oh and I would freak out in the night and think there were all of these things wrong because "why was he crying so much." I remember once even driving around at 2 am trying to calm him down. Then I would be like "Oh maybe he just wants to eat again."
It was like I lost the ability to think logically. Of course a crying newborn even if he just ate should just be fed again. DUH
Eddy, I did the EXACT same thing re: crying at night (like between 7pm-10pm he would loose hisSHIT and I didn't know what cluster feeding was...so we just tried other methods of soothing, when I should have just fed him as much as needed.)
With N, I put the rock n play on DH's side of the bed. Hello, made a world of difference in my ability to sleep b/c it was like the "burdon" was on DH.
I would wake up in the middle of the night CONVINCED that the baby was in the bed with us (she wasn't, she was in her crib) and I would search around in the blankets until DH woke up and asked me wtf I was doing.
Also one time I woke up and realized I was trying to pull the dog into my lap.
You want to hear something truly spastic? One day I had loaded the baby into her car seat in the car only to turn around and realize that I hadn't put the brake on the stroller down, and the damn thing had blown clear across the parking lot. And I panicked because I COULDN'T LEAVE THE BABY IN THE CAR and I couldn't go running after it because of my c-section anyway so I got in the car and drove over to it, praying that it wouldn't blow farther away. And then I was so traumatized by this that I just stopped running errands and went home, lol!!
I am totally doing this. I have to have a c section this time so we will have to do it out of necessity at first anyways. WINNING
What crazy things didn't I do?
1. I was convinced she'd have brain damage if I didn't nurse all the time (to be fair, DH did this to me when he freaked me out about her high bilirubin count. That was pretty much the moment I went from chill 'I can handle this' to freaked out 'she won't survive'!!!)
2. I *still* think"Is she okay?" if I wake up and haven't heard her on the monitor lately. Then I immediately know i'm an idiot and go back to sleep. At first, I would get close enough to check her breathing.
3. I hallucinated a lot because of the pain/sleep deprivation/medication. I frequently saw and heard people in the house.
-The first night home, I was too afraid to sleep in our room. For what reason? I don't know. So I slept on the couch, and forced my H to sleep on the couch also. And we had DD in some contraption thing in between the two of us.
-When I finally DID go sleep in my room, I had to leave the lights on the entire night. They were dimmed, of course, but I could not have pitch black darkness in my room because I was scared. Again, scared of what? Who knows.
- I had the angelcare SIDS monitor on. In the bassinet. That was basically a cosleeper. With my hand hanging down into the bassinet the entire night, touching DD to make sure she hadn't gone cold from the tight grips of death apparently. I was afraid of SIDS, no doubt.
- I weighed her after every single feeding to make sure she had ingested milk. (I was breastfeeding and was going insane not knowing how much she was getting.)
- I wrote down every single feeding, how many minutes on each boob, and checked off every single wet/poopy diaper on a spreadsheet I forced my H to make for 2.5 months. TWO AND A HALF MONTHS!
Nuts. Just nuts. All of it.
i got hardcore into the babywearing thing with ryan. he was happiest in the moby, slept the best in the moby, was calm in the moby, etc. he got in that thing in the morning and got out at night.
i was OBSESSED with making sure his chin was not resting on his chest. i was sure he would suffocate. so i was expecting my one week old baby to hold his head up in a baby wrap all day long or he would sure DIE!!
with jonah, i was one of those ONLY I CAN TAKE CARE OF HIM people and my totally indulgent church job not only allowed me to bring him to work, but encouraged it. between having him all night and then trying to take care of him and do my job all day, i was useless. however, instead of asking for help i considered running my car in to a tree on the way home one day so that we could both go to the hospital where competent people could take care of us.
I was dead set on bfing and when the dr told ME to relax and give him formula I got mad. When my gynecologist wasn't "sure" I'd be able to nurse with only one breast and told me I may need to feed him formula I started crying and didn't stop for about 2 weeks.
One of the first days back from the hospital DH got me to lay down and put earphones while he read by my side with Logan in his bassinet. I woke up freaking out at muffled cry convinced the baby was suffocating......until I realized he was just crying as always but I had earphones on. My DH had a funny mixture of worry and laughter in his face.
Soon to celebrate the day we met, even if the day before marks when we said goodbye.
For a full year I did that frantic wake up "where is my baby" search in our bed often.
The funny thing is we never once coslept. Not once. Why did I keep thinking my baby was in my bed lol.
I DID THIS!!! I forgot all about that!!
*raises hand*
Last night.
I did the same thing for the first several weeks. I would be half awake/half asleep and if a pillow or the dog was against me I would think it was the baby and be freaking out that I feel asleep feeding him. It was so disorienting!
I TOTALLY did this one of the first nights she slept in her bassinet for the whole night instead of in our bed. I was in a total panic because I couldn't find her.
And I still check to make sure she's breathing every time she's napping. She naps really quietly, and it freaks me out because she snorts so much at night.
Yup. I was convinced I was going to smother her to death. And I did the 'omg she's not breathing' nudge all the time. I also had a hand-me-down drop-side crib with bumpers, with blankets and stuffed animals on the mattress. She probably slept on her stomach too, since it was before the 'back to sleep' SIDS awareness stuff.
Much to my own surprise, I wasn't a spaz at all. Maybe a little too chill. I handed her off happily to people, slept through her waking up in the middle of the night (thank god dh is a light sleeper), didn't freak out when my aunt fed her chocolate souffle sauce for the first time when she was a 7 months old. Didn't wipe down every surface that she'd be in contact with. I thought I'd be a complete basket case before I had had her.
BUT I'd have the worst nightmares about leaving her on the bus or the subway or something like that often. I'd wake up in a panic then.
Aside from a lot of the things already mentioned, I had some hallucinations while I was up nursing in the night. Once I swore I saw a bedbug and I literally ripped the entire room apart and vacuumed every single inch of the bed, the frame, the baseboards and cracks in the floorboards.
Also, there was only one pacifier she would accept and one night we couldn't find it. After a major spaz, my H found it on the driveway, I had dropped it getting out of the car. I was convinced my H did it in purpose and that he was trying to *** with me bc he thought she didn't really need it and I didn't know how to soothe my baby. Hello psycho.
The first night home from the hospital H and I just decided we weren't going to put her in her crib. We were going to take shifts holding her. But we were too scared to go to sleep, so we each sat up for hours, lights on, holding her. WTF?
I still check them for breathing every night - both of them. I have woken them more times than I would like to say to make sure they were breathing.
PP hormones be cray cray, yo. Seriously, I'm laughing so hard at all of these. Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE TRUE.
OMG, what?
Less than an house after DD was born, she stopped breathing while I was BFing her (apparently, my breast was too big/heavy and it was blocking her nose? idk). The L&D nurse grabbed her and brought her back to normal like it was no big deal, but the next day, again while I was feeding her, she suddenly went completely limp and quiet after crying nonstop for hours. My husband and I ran out of the hospital room with her (I hadn't even gotten my breasts back in my top yet) and flew to the nurses' station in hysterics, crying about how she had stopped breathing again. It turns out, she had just fallen asleep.
We actually the heard the nurses laughing at us while we were walking back to our room.
How were you all on the worry scale before the babies came? During pregnancy, or maybe just in general?
Sometimes I worry (ha ha) that I'm going to be an inattentive mother because I seriously don't worry about any of this stuff. SIDS, germs, flat head. None of this concerns me.
Just wondering if this is a sudden on-set thing with the first baby, or if its possible to be chill throughout, or what?
Awww I don't even count this as a spastic moment but I am loling at you running with your boobs hanging out!
I still sometimes convince myself that L has died during the middle of the night. And then instead of going to check on her, I delay because well, if she is still alive, i want to shower in peace.
I think jermys once posted she does this too and it made me feel so good that I wasn't the only crazy one.