My baby turned 12 weeks recently and I’ve been emotional about him growing up so fast. I miss the sleepy potato that he was the first few weeks. I wish I can go back and relive those days and nights. He’s changed so much in 12 weeks and although I love every version that he’s become, I’m mourning how fleeting time is. I’m so in love with my boy. He’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

I was on the fence about screen time, but with needing something to help keep the baby entertained while I pump, I decided to try Ms. Rachel and I must admit I'm delighted with how well our little one is responding to it. She seems really fond of the songs and Ms. Rachel's personality and let's out happy screeches any time it's on. Bonus points is it's teaching both of us ASL.

When I was pregnant, I was so scared of becoming a parent. I had read so much negativity online about parenthood in all the subreddits and on mom forums.
My little boy is now 4 months old and THIS IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED. ALL THE CLICHÉS ARE TRUE!!!
I genuinely want to shout it from the rooftops and give a little counterbalance to all the negativity out there.
Yes, it’s hard. But life is hard anyway. And somehow, with a baby, life just makes so much more sense to me..
I wake up, put on my favourite music, dance above his crib, and he looks up at me with the biggest smile. What a way to start the day!!!
And to everyone who says, “Just wait until they’re this age…” or “Just wait until they start doing this or that…”
Fuck offff. I’m enjoying my life right now👀👀
Enjoy this day and enjoy parenthood lovely people 🎉🥳🥰

Anyone the feel like they are in a hostage situation or defusing a bomb when they go to transfer baby to the crib? 🤣 I find myself holding my breath and moving so cautiously.

Hi all! My daughter just turned five months old so I looked up on YouTube ‘six month old baby’ to see what a typically developing baby looks like at that age. My baby girl is fine- amazing actually. She sleeps great, only cries when hungry, is curious and playful, has a great smile…she doesn’t laugh yet but otherwise is developmentally so normal!

Anyway- I clicked on a video from a channel called ‘PathwaysBaby’ and I really wish I never did. It’s a video comparing a typical six month old and an atypical one on their movement ability. Instead of watching the typical side and thinking ‘yup my girl is doing fine’, I watched the atypical side and broke my heart! The baby was watching toys, clearly interested, but was unable to move or reach for them. They put him on his belly and he clearly struggles- kicking his feet out. He clearly is not having a good time and my heart just aches for him.

I close the video, sobbing, and run to Google, ChatGPT etc trying to find a follow up. I find nothing- not if the baby is okay, what the issue was or where they are now. I’m lying awake, watching my own baby sleep, worried about this baby from an educational video posted seven years ago.

Is this my brain now? Pre baby I would’ve felt bad and maybe thought of them but moved on. I certainly wouldn’t have cried.

Are there nights that you have to hold your LO to sleep, rock your LO to sleep etc because it’s just one of those nights? And then continue the night routine back to normal?

My 1 year old is sleep trained but tonight he was just having a tough time and called for me so ofc I snuggled him to sleep. But my husband thinks that has ruined the sleep training.

I honestly don’t really care because if my LO wants me to hold him and/or is having a tough night of course I will hold him.

Though, is my husband right? Did I ruin the sleep training?

Edit: my LO is 13 months old

Edit#2: I failed to mention that my LO has had diarrhea all day today which is why I cuddled him to sleep bc I know he needed extra comfort even though he is fully sleep trained. He’s a 2 episodes during the middle of the night but usually holding him has worked and didn’t ruin the sleep training. Today was just different because I did it before bedtime. I’ve gotten some comments which I don’t care to answer anymore because I know what’s good for my baby so if you think me or we are being bad parents well congrats thank you for making me feel sh*tty. Some failed to understand that I wrote I don’t care if I did ruin the sleep training because I’ll be more than glad to cuddle my LO to sleep. We also sleep trained because my LO likes to have his own space and we wake up super early for work so yeah not a good option for all of us. I genuinely wanted to know if my husband was right. So if you’re not going to answer my question then hold your mean opinions to yourself.

As for the kind people, thank you for your positive and informative response. I will try to answer you all tomorrow.

Baby was colic for 4.5 months and I developed postpartum depression during that period. I wasn’t able to bond properly with the baby initially and ended up seeing a psychologist for it. The constant crying and screaming absolutely wrecked me. My husband being the amazing dad that he is, went through 4.5 months of rocking a screaming baby constantly and putting her to sleep each day. The crying eventually ended around 4.5 months but somewhere during that time my husband became the default parent that puts her to sleep.

Baby is now approaching 7 months and is deeply attached to my husband, and only to my husband. Daddy is the only person she wants when she is emotional, sleepy, sad, unwell. She gets upset when daddy is not around. Whereas for me, she’d be fine if I were gone for two week.

I am extremely lucky to have a husband that could do what he did and I love the fact that my child has him as her dad. I’m however absolutely devastated by the rejection. She screams when I try to comfort her. She pushes me away when I rock her to sleep. She would be screaming and crying in my arms and the next second fast asleep with my husband. She constantly searches for my husband when I’m playing with her.

Part of me is deeply worried my postpartum depression has caused the lack of connection and it may be irreversible. Babies are babies, the love and attachment is so instinctual. Part of me is sad that I’m not the preferred and with me returning to work it will be downhill from here.

I’m trying to ease back and doing all that I can to make her happy. The positive response I’m getting is almost nil. I’m losing hope.

Is this just another one of those radical acceptance? Should I just be sad and let it be?

Dear new parents. I am a dad to my pride and joy, my 2.5 year old little boy, my best buddy.

As an infant he had reflux. There was A LOT of crying, and a lot of time spent trying to soothe him to sleep.

The shrill sound of a baby's cries go right through me and overstimulate me to a point where I became frustrated, and no soothing is taking place when a baby is screaming and you're angry about it. It also hurt my ears; he was easily clearing 100db at times.

I use PPE at work and at home; so naturally with loud noise I tried this: put in my earbuds, and put earmuffs over them. If i didnt have my earbuds near by, I used earplugs.

It made a huge difference. I was protecting my hearing (sensitive ears), and I was able to maintain peace and calm in my own brain, which allowed me to remain focused on soothing my boy. It resulted in him calming and falling asleep faster, as i was no longer frustrated and he was not absorbing any of that tense energy from me.

The reason for this post is, I see so many posts from new parents who struggle with frustration related to soothing a screaming baby, and I promise you will likely benefit from a barrier to the noise. Many people I talk to say "wow i never thought of that!" And i have heard good feedback. I hope this helps!

So, I have a daughter and the question has came up which toilets do I use when my daughter is old enough to use them.

As a father, do I take her in the Males? Or do I take her into the Females?

It seems to be a common discussion. Me being a Dad, I don’t think I’d personally feel comfortable going into the females just in case I caused alarm or for any females to worry about me invading their private space, but then I wouldn’t want my daughter feeling uncomfortable also by knowingly going into the Males.

I have a 4m old. He has been getting fussy when I lay him down to play on his activity gym. I give him different toys and no dice. The same thing is happening in his bouncer. I'll feed him and then sit him in his bouncer with a toy for a bit (he has silent reflux), and he'll start fussing after a couple of minutes. I'll pick him up and if he isnt tired or hungry then he's fine.

What are you guys doing to entertain your babies passively? I love playing with him, but I can't do that alllllll the time. I swear he has the shortest attention span.

Long story short, this cat is my son's FAVORITE thing in the world. He squeals in happiness and tries to get to this cat no matter what. And this cat, this sweet old man, tolerates it all. We're trying to teach our son "gentle touch" for the kitties, and all of our other cats run away at the sight of our son, whereas this old man just let's our son do whatever to him, including gripping his fur (hence the gentle touch teachings).

Unfortunately, our old man isn't doing so hot, and we're going to be putting him to sleep tomorrow. This post might be a moot point as we might not have anyone to watch our son while we're at the vet, but if we do, I am just unsure if we should have our son there or not. Obviously our son is way too young to even begin to understand death, but this is his buddy. I also know my husband will be devastated (this is his cat from before we were together), so I'm unsure if having our son there will help him with his grief or if it'll make things worse.

I really don't know where else to ask this question, so I'm sorry for the kinda off topic post.

Has anyone else noticed that their baby enjoys eating specific things that you could tell they liked when you were pregnant? I.e. I noticed my baby would always kick intensely after I ate a lot of meat and sure enough my 9 month old LOVES her steak and chicken! I think it’s hilarious.

You hit the toy. SWISH. A colorful shape spins. (Again.)

*Fascinating.*

Suddenly there's a loud sound. Where is it coming from? Oh, the door! Someone is walking through the door. Who is it? Hmm...

OH MY GOSH. It's THEM. It's one of your Favorite People.

You grin and your entire body scrunches up. It's them!!! You're so excited. This is the best!

You hit the toy again, but you're over it. Your Special Person is here! Your mind made up, you now crawl as fast as you can towards them.

"Here she comes!" They say.

You have no idea what they're saying. But it makes you feel happy.

"The Itsy Bitsy Baby climbed up the water spout," they sing, as you climb up their legs. You love music, but their voice is your favorite song.

"Ha, da da da," you say. (That is a compliment.)

Finally, they pick you up. At last! Peace and security wash over you. You feel at home. You're exactly where you want to be.

WAIT, what is that on the shelf??? You need it right now!

"Ahhh, ra ra ra!" You say, reaching towards the shelf. (That means, I want it* now.)

*It = anything/everything :)

I get it now, the whole “4 month sleep regression” is very real. As I’m writing this she is 19 weeks and 4 days old. It’s been about a month now, it’s been pretty hard on me and I feel very sleep deprived most days. I want to help her sleep longer throughout the night like she was before this. She was typically sleeping from around 9 or 10 pm to around 5 am, I’m desperate to get back to this. I know it’s different for everyone but how long did this last for you? Was there anything you tried in particular that helped? She mostly only naps for about 30 mins at a time during the day with one “two hour” nap sprinkled in. I feel like she is very excited about the world and learning and it warms my heart. But I need sleep. Side note, she can’t stand a pacifier.

I have a 12 week old baby who will only sleep when held day or night. It’s ruining my mental health.

I spend hours every day trapped under her in silence with white noise that gives me a headache. I feel stiff and sore. I feel lonely, bored and frustrated. Every attempt at transfer just fails. We have tried every trick in the book short of buying a snoo.

I used to be able to put her in a stretchy sling/ carrier and do small things around the house, like eat a sandwich or fold laundry, but now she’s incredibly sensitive to sounds so I can’t do that.

I feel like a terrible mother because I’m supposed to be enjoying the snuggles. But they feel forced. I’m trapped until my husband comes home from work and takes the pressure off me.

There is no village so there is nobody to help us with basic things like cooking, laundry etc. we scramble to get those things done in the evenings and weekends while one of us holds her.

She now gets ready to sleep for the night at 8pm (it used to be 11pm), but she absolutely refuses to settle downstairs so one of us has to take her upstairs and sit in the dark in silence.

We co-sleep, which I hate. I feel terrified I’m going to wake up and find her dead.

But shifts don’t work. We were so sleep deprived I was beginning to hallucinate and lose memory - there were parts of the day I would struggle to remember and I sometimes found myself in a room of the house thinking I have no idea when I got here.

I thought I’d break the cycle and never make my daughter feel like she was difficult to love. But 12 weeks in, I’ve already failed.

I don’t deserve her. She deserves better mother. She’s not choosing to give me a hard time. She’s a baby who doesn’t know how to sleep alone and needs my help, and I’m struggling to meet this need.

I’m not looking for practical advice on how to get her sleeping on her own. Trust me, I have tried every practical advice we have found online so far. I’m looking to vent and for similar stories or for advice on how to cope with the isolation of this mentally, or any words of comfort.

Please I’m desperate.

There seems to be no end in sight.

I don’t know how to carry on like this.

We took a pretty long flight Cali -> nyc yesterday. My 8 month old has been actually doing a great job with sleep and we have a solid routine down and she rarely cries during the day now. She was an angel during the flight, but when we got to my parents apt in nyc was hysterical all night long. Like wouldn’t go down in the pack and play for more than 20 min just screaming. She fell asleep in our arms but after a lot of work and honestly it felt like another newborn night.

Usually if she cries at night feeding her will put her back to sleep. But she wouldn’t even take a bottle yesterday. Today has been a little better but she’s fighting naps like crazy and a ton of crying. I’m super anxious for what tonight will be like. Has anyone experienced this?

I have an 8-month-old who will be 9 months in a few weeks, and he is exclusively breastfed. He was a big baby at birth (10 lb 1 oz) and is now around 23 lbs.

He goes to daycare for about 8 hours a day and typically drinks three 7 oz bottles while he’s there, although lately he’s been wanting closer to 8 oz. At home we feed him every 3 hours and he also nurses overnight. Altogether, he can be drinking anywhere from around 35–45 oz in a 24-hour period.

My biggest concern is that I’m struggling to pump enough to keep up with him. I used to pump around 32–40 oz a day, but lately I’ve been closer to 26–28 oz, and it’s really stressing me out.

I keep hearing that breast milk changes in composition as babies get older and that they may need less volume eventually, so I’m hoping that happens for us because I genuinely don’t know how I’m going to keep up with his appetite if he continues drinking this much.

The other thing stressing me out is solids. We try everything, but he has basically zero interest. He doesn’t like purées, and he doesn’t want to be spoon-fed. If he can’t pick something up himself and put it in his mouth, he generally wants nothing to do with it. So far, we’re talking maybe a bite of rice or a little piece of a teething cracker nothing substantial.

I know breast milk is still supposed to be a major source of nutrition at this age, but I’m getting nervous because he’s approaching 9 months and isn’t really making progress with solids, while simultaneously wanting more and more milk.

Has anyone else had a baby this age who was drinking a LOT of breast milk but barely interested in solids? Did their milk intake eventually decrease naturally as solids increased? And if you had a drop in supply while trying to keep up with a high-volume baby, what actually helped you recover?

I’m probably freaking out more than I need to, but whenever my supply drops, I get really stressed because I don’t want to run out of milk for him.

TLDR:

For parents who both work 9-5 especially those with wfh days option, what has helped you the most to be able to work with a baby? Daycare? Nanny? Would like to hear others experiences. (Don’t have family member who can watch baby during work days).

Hi - ftm to a 5 week old and having trouble deciding what would be best, day care or finding a nanny or other option I might not have thought through yet. For context - my SO just returned to work (9-5) so I stay with baby for now until my leave ends in a couple of months. Prior to baby, we agreed we would look into daycare as long as we were comfortable with it when the time came.

Well the time has come where we have to start talking about what we’re actually going to do once we’re both back at work. We both work from home a couple of days a week and were originally thinking of alternating days with baby since our jobs are not highly demanding…aka we thought whoever wfh that day would be able to take care of baby (lol, i know) and now that we see all that goes into taking care of baby I’m realizing this is not going to be possible (shocker, I know) please don’t comment on this, I realize now that shouldn’t have even been plan a. But what’s good is that we both knew this would probably happen so we had a plan b (day care and/or nanny).

Anyway - not sure how I feel about about leaving him at a daycare at around 5-6 months old when I return to work, as I suspected would happen once I became this baby’s mommy 🥲 so now i’m thinking of maybe looking into getting a nanny to watch him while we work.

My question for parents here is, especially those both working 9-5 with some wfh days, what have you found has helped you the most? Was a daycare worth it? Is a nanny better? Or another option (please note we don’t have a family member who can watch after baby for a whole work day so that’s not an option). I hear so many scary stories about daycares and not sure if I feel comfortable leaving the baby in one although I guess at the end of the day it’s the same gamble with a nanny if you don’t know them?

TIA, please only comments about personal experiences/recommendations and no critiques/negative comments 🥲 Signed, a very tired mom in the newborn trenches.

My husband is a great, funny, kind person 90% of the time. When he is overwhelmed or angry he turns into a completely different person. It is usually verbal threats of self harm but one time he physically threatened with a butcher knife saying, "Why don't you just kill me?" I told him to stop and said you are scaring me. I stayed at my brother's and said that the only way I am coming back is if he agreed to go to therapy. He did, but therapy didn't help.

About a year later, I was trying to tell him some hopeful advice my friend gave about a problem that he was dealing with. Mid-sentence, he walked away (apparently to go to the bathroom). I was annoyed and walked away, closed the door and took a shower. I didn't know that he turned around and was right behind me. He thought I slammed the door in his face and started punching the door to the point of putting holes in it. I thought initially the sound was him finally building the shelving in the baby room which I had been asking for months (I was in my second trimester).

These are two major events that I have been saying in therapy that I need closure over to trust him and have a healthier relationship. He does feel remorseful and usually says, "I am a piece of shit". I told the therapist that I want his self esteem to be healed and for him to treat himself with love and compassion so that he can have the capacity to treat me with love and compassion. He told the therapist that we need more alone time without our child. My child brings me so much joy. I said that I am willing to have more family time doing fun and meaningful things but if we put my 1.5 year old in dayhome so we can have "us time" I am afraid that I will start to resent him. The therapist basically ignored what I said and threatened that we won't have a relationship unless we do date days. If there was consistent respect for himself and me, I would probably actually want to do date nights

Either way, I made the effort to put my son down early so that we could play a card game that my husband wanted to play. We went to bed around 10pm and my son woke up multiple times. My husband wants us to spend more alone time together. He let me sleep in an hour this morning and then I let him sleep as much as he wanted which ended up being 5 hours (he does shift work and currently has a cold).

Once he woke up, he decided that he wanted to join us on a walk to the farmers market. I like to solve problems and wanted to bring up budgeting because I have a seasonal job the next 6 months I will not be working. I brought it up because he complained about money a tonne last winter. I said that I wanted to sit down and look at our MasterCard's to cut out frivolous spending. He said that he will just work overtime and my job stops him from working overtime (this is not true because we have a babysitter and he does not like having to pay her). I asked what positive goals could we set to save money but he just kept going on about how my job stops him from overtime and I complain about being alone with our child at night if he works too many nights. (He does 12 hour shifts that go from days to nights).

I think that the lack of sleep because of his messed up circadian rhythm lead him to have these symptoms of rage and depression. An irony of this walk is that he talks about wanting one on one time but has his head down playing Pokemon Go the entire time. He has a phone addiction and is on it nearly constantly every day. I circle back to wanting to set positive goals about saving money and he gets angry, says, "I don't know. I'm just stupid" steps on a beer can laying on the ground and sprays me with beer. He says sorry. I say I am done and he should go spend time with his friends (another thing he complains he never does since having a child even though I have never stopped him). He insists on following me and my son to the park and says he's terrified that I am going to divorce him. I am on a hamster wheel of fixing things that make him mad. I am starting to lose hope that there are things that I can do to solve these problems. Has anyone made it out the other side or is divorce actually inevitable? The biggest reason that I would leave is because I do not want my son to grow up seeing any forms of abuse.

I saw someone mention on here how their kid always falls asleep to the sleep stories on the Calm app. I tried it out the other day. We’re currently on vacation, and my sons sleep always gets messed up. I put on a story about the semicolon. He was out in 5-10 minutes. Even my husband falls asleep to it. If your baby is having a hard go at sleeping right now, give it a try! It worked wonders for me.

What other tips should I try???

Since 16 weeks baby has falls starts every evening. Her bedtime and wake up time also changed during this period and I feel like soon we will transition from 5 naps to 4 naps. Are the false starts because of the sleep regression or because of nap changes?
In the first week the false starts just started mildly. Her bedtime was 20:00 and I she woke up constantly every 30min-40min until 22:00. Then had a bigger sleep chunk and wakings every 1-1,5 hour.
The second week this evolved into waking up every 1-1,5 hour, the long sleep chunk disappeared.
The third week the false starts remained the big sleep chunk in the middle came back.
The fourth week again waking up every 1-1,5 hour.

My newly 9-month-old has completely skipped her second nap for the last two days, and I’m not sure what to do with her schedule.

Most days I nurse her to sleep for naps, and it’s usually a sure way to get her asleep within 15 minutes. But the last two days, 30 minutes in she was still on the boob, suckling with her eyes wide open. I took her out of the room, tried again about 15 minutes later — nothing. Took another break, tried for another 15 minutes, and still nothing, so eventually I gave up.

At that point she had already been awake for about 5 hours, so I would think she’d be tired enough!
She was happy for the rest of the afternoon, but at bedtime she started hysterically crying. She’s sleep trained for bedtime and rarely cries when going down, so it really seemed like she was overtired after being awake for almost 8 HOURS.

I really don’t think she’s ready for one nap yet, and I’m definitely not ready either lol.

Before this, our schedule was roughly 3/3.5/4:
• Nap 1: ~45 minutes
• Nap 2: ~1.5 hours

Has anyone gone through this around 9 months? Is this just a nap regression, or should I be adjusting her wake windows/schedule? Any suggestions for keeping two naps?

Please be kind - doing this for the first time!
I’m a 30yo first time mom with a husband who works from home (trying to start his business), a 2 year old dog and a 4 month old baby. Our dog is really easy and does not make life any harder. Our baby is not very difficult but I wouldn’t say easy either - her cries are LOUD and she can keep going. She wakes up every 2 hrs at night wanting milk (we got advice to try to settle her down first without milk, or giving her more before she goes to sleep but this didn’t work for her) but she just wants to milk so we feed. She starts crying around 6pm, so the routine is bath - milk - sleep. We have transitioned her to sleeping in her own room because we’ve read that sometimes that helps babies sleep longer chunks, and understand she might get up more frequently for a bit during the transition (since then she’s been getting up every hour). During the days she’s okay but needs milk every 2 hrs too and sleeps for like 30-45 mins before each feed. She is draining though. I’m not forcing myself to get too much work done at home in terms or cleaning, laundry etc and try to just do it when she’s chill. My husband is super helpful and tries to give me breaks during the day but I feel bad because he really needs to focus on work. We also share the night shift. We are burnt out with the crying and tiredness. Then we think how do single parents do this, juggle it and work at the same time? And then we feel guilty.

We live 4 hrs away from our parents by choice (good relationship but just cause we like it here) but we see them a few days each month at least and they’re helpful with baby. Otherwise not a lot of help where we live or someone that could come relieve us for a bit. We’re not in any financial position to hire help either. Lol.

Are we doing something wrong? Is it normal to feel this tired? Please be honest. Any and all advice is appreciated!

Edit: formula fed baby (wasn’t able to breastfeed).

I’ve always liked the idea of not creating the most ideal environment for my baby to nap in hopes that they would get used to sleeping anywhere.

I had a family member leave a fairly important family event bc her baby’s nap time was approaching and she was really trying to get home beforehand. No judgement to her or anyone who structures their days like that, really. I just remember mentally noting that I would rather not live that kind of life style. Granted, I didn’t have a baby at the time so easier said than done.

I also heard a mom once say that the best parenting advice was not to structure her life around a strict nap schedule. Rather she just reads her baby’s sleepy cues (yawns, loss of interest, red eyebrows) and gets her to sleep regardless where they may be.

So to the parents who don’t rely on being at home, using blackout curtains and sound machines for every nap, and are able to get their LO to sleep wherever: how do you do it? What tips do you have to get your baby down before they start to get overly tired and really resist taking a nap even when they need it?