starryshadow
New member
• You'll feel a little sting of sadness when your baby grows out of adorable clothes that you gushed over during pregnancy. When my baby grew out of my favorite newborn sleeper, teary-eyed, I went online and purchased it in the next two sizes up.
• The other parent will eventually catch you doing something weird like singing Macarena and making baby do the choreography, upon which time you'll freeze for a moment before muttering "...mind ya business".
• Formula burps are gross
• You become panicky and hyperbolic when you think something's wrong with the baby.
Hubs: babe, something's wrong. She just spit up like 3 whole ounces.
Me: No she didn't
H: she totally did!
M: she only ate 2 ounces
H: ... She's a wizard...
• The first time they sleep for a long stretch after being colicky every night, you'll immediately think they're dead.
• You'll be grateful for how patient the pediatrician is- not just with the baby, but with you. You'll ask things like "her breathing is really loud, is that normal?" The pediatrician will explain that it's perfectly normal since babies have tiny air passages and you should only be concerned if it seems very labored, fast, and the area under their ribs or near their collar bones collapses while breathing or if they get a blueish tinge to their lips.
"... Yeah but,... it's like really loud, though".
"... Yes... That's normal..."
• Babies sometimes will get a tiny bit congested and you'll feel the veins pop out on your forehead while you stare at them and repeatedly clear your throat.
• you'll play baby Jenga when baby falls asleep on your chest and you and the other parent try to carefully slip the baby into a lounger, blanket, basinet, or crib without waking them up.
• changing diapers while baby is calm feels a lot like diffusing a bomb
• you'll have a lot of preconceived notions about parenting, you'll be wrong about a lot of them and honestly, nothing can possibly prepare you for it 100%.
• Sleeping babies can sense when their parents are trying to have alone time and they put the kibosh on that ish pronto.
• You'll probably forget food in the microwave and not remember for a few hours
• You have to eliminate the expression "I should be feeling (x)" from your mind. Every new parent develops differently and you can't compare your emotions to those of other people.
• Similarly, it also applies in telling other parents "you should/shouldn't be feeling/doing (x)". You never know another parent's story and as long as their child is happy, healthy, loved, and safe, that's what matters.
• Eventually, you'll trust a close relative to babysit overnight. You'll have very ambitious plans of cleaning, watching TV uninterrupted, nice dinners, or alone time... but will end up sleeping.
• Daddies with long beards (that occasionally catch food) may eventually play a rousing game of "identify the sauce on baby's head". Tomato? Taco? Sweet and sour?
• When baby starts whining in the middle of the night and you grab the paci and start furiously feeling around their face in the dark, trying to get the paci in their mouths before the scream... kinda feels like trying to put a pin back in a grenade.
• Some days you'll feel like Spock, other days you'll wonder why anyone trusted you to leave the hospital with a small human.
• The smell of clean clothes makes babies spit up.
• Before having a baby, you may say "I'll never do (x, y, and z)", but you'll do a lot more than you think in moments of desperation. For us, it was bed sharing (with a little co-sleeper bed for baby), albeit temporarily. See also: use a pacifier, let baby watch TV, give baby prescription medicine from the doctor, etc.
• Moms, you may have postpartum hair loss. It probably won't happen until 3 months out. It normally doesn't last more than a few months, though.
• "Mom brain" is not something that is made up by forgetful new moms. It's a very real type of brain fog. I recently forgot to bathe while taking a shower. Just washed my hair and got out
only realized it when I noticed that I still smelled bad (particularly like baby vomit). 
• Hearing baby laugh for the first time makes up for the crying leading up to that point and you'll experience a special kind of joy in that moment.
• The other parent will eventually catch you doing something weird like singing Macarena and making baby do the choreography, upon which time you'll freeze for a moment before muttering "...mind ya business".
• Formula burps are gross
• You become panicky and hyperbolic when you think something's wrong with the baby.
Hubs: babe, something's wrong. She just spit up like 3 whole ounces.
Me: No she didn't
H: she totally did!
M: she only ate 2 ounces
H: ... She's a wizard...
• The first time they sleep for a long stretch after being colicky every night, you'll immediately think they're dead.
• You'll be grateful for how patient the pediatrician is- not just with the baby, but with you. You'll ask things like "her breathing is really loud, is that normal?" The pediatrician will explain that it's perfectly normal since babies have tiny air passages and you should only be concerned if it seems very labored, fast, and the area under their ribs or near their collar bones collapses while breathing or if they get a blueish tinge to their lips.
"... Yeah but,... it's like really loud, though".
"... Yes... That's normal..."
• Babies sometimes will get a tiny bit congested and you'll feel the veins pop out on your forehead while you stare at them and repeatedly clear your throat.
• you'll play baby Jenga when baby falls asleep on your chest and you and the other parent try to carefully slip the baby into a lounger, blanket, basinet, or crib without waking them up.
• changing diapers while baby is calm feels a lot like diffusing a bomb
• you'll have a lot of preconceived notions about parenting, you'll be wrong about a lot of them and honestly, nothing can possibly prepare you for it 100%.
• Sleeping babies can sense when their parents are trying to have alone time and they put the kibosh on that ish pronto.
• You'll probably forget food in the microwave and not remember for a few hours
• You have to eliminate the expression "I should be feeling (x)" from your mind. Every new parent develops differently and you can't compare your emotions to those of other people.
• Similarly, it also applies in telling other parents "you should/shouldn't be feeling/doing (x)". You never know another parent's story and as long as their child is happy, healthy, loved, and safe, that's what matters.
• Eventually, you'll trust a close relative to babysit overnight. You'll have very ambitious plans of cleaning, watching TV uninterrupted, nice dinners, or alone time... but will end up sleeping.
• Daddies with long beards (that occasionally catch food) may eventually play a rousing game of "identify the sauce on baby's head". Tomato? Taco? Sweet and sour?
• When baby starts whining in the middle of the night and you grab the paci and start furiously feeling around their face in the dark, trying to get the paci in their mouths before the scream... kinda feels like trying to put a pin back in a grenade.
• Some days you'll feel like Spock, other days you'll wonder why anyone trusted you to leave the hospital with a small human.
• The smell of clean clothes makes babies spit up.
• Before having a baby, you may say "I'll never do (x, y, and z)", but you'll do a lot more than you think in moments of desperation. For us, it was bed sharing (with a little co-sleeper bed for baby), albeit temporarily. See also: use a pacifier, let baby watch TV, give baby prescription medicine from the doctor, etc.
• Moms, you may have postpartum hair loss. It probably won't happen until 3 months out. It normally doesn't last more than a few months, though.
• "Mom brain" is not something that is made up by forgetful new moms. It's a very real type of brain fog. I recently forgot to bathe while taking a shower. Just washed my hair and got out
only realized it when I noticed that I still smelled bad (particularly like baby vomit). • Hearing baby laugh for the first time makes up for the crying leading up to that point and you'll experience a special kind of joy in that moment.
made me laugh!
one thing that we think helped was a cloth over his chest that we kept putting warm water on. Also our own increased expertise meant we felt calmer and more capable- they know when we suffer impostor syndrome! Good luck!
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). Never thought I'd do it, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I thought to myself "if someone had told me that parenthood would mean staring at my baby's butthole praying for her to toot, I'd never have believed them."