New Parent Advice

This is as much for my future self as it is for other new parents. In a couple months we’ll have a newborn again and it can be difficult to see the forest for the trees when deep in the woods of the newborn months. So this is like a Hansel and Gretel style bread trail out.

You just had a newborn and it’s the end of your world. It really is. So don’t beat yourself up when you find yourself wondering why everyone else who had a baby seemed to handle it just fine but you haven’t showered in 5 days, are too tired to sleep, and every room in the house smells vaguely like poop. It’s a facade. They struggled too.

So the good news is you’re right where everyone else who had a newborn was. Yes, I know, your kid has colic, or acid reflux, or won’t breastfeed, or your job makes this more difficult for you. Whether any or all of these things are true, it doesn't matter. Because this doesn’t go on for long.

I mean, it feels like it goes on forever. But I promise, at some point in the nearer-than-you-might-think future you’ll look back and those first months will be in the distant past. Don’t despair when the pediatrician says the baby will be sleeping well or calming themselves well by 12 months and you’re 4 months in. Sometimes doctors lie.

Also the situation isn’t as binary as you think it is. You’re stuck measuring time by whether the baby is crying or not but in reality time is moving on regardless and a lot of other changes are happening that are moving you toward a less stressful parenting phase.

Because that’s what parenting is, a set of phases. These phases don't have definitive endpoints so comparing your child’s phase to someone else’s (and certainly to the medical “average”) is usually fruitless. And different parents have different ways of dealing with these phases too. Some vent to friends or family, some bury themselves in the task of recording every milestone in baby books, and some ball up in the fetal position in the coat closet. To each their own.

There is often a lot of crying in a house with a newborn. And sometimes the newborn cries too. The moms should know their baby’s lack of contentedness isn’t a reflection on their ability as a mother. It’s probably not their husband’s fault either.

In short, you just need to know that it’s going to be ok. It really is. People have been having kids for a long time, even before the Internet was there to make them think they were doing it all wrong. And babies have been colicky and discontent ever since the Great Baby Revolt of 1743 (that’s a joke, no one knows when the revolution was).

So hug your spouse, get some sleep when you can, and don’t count the days. It won't be like this for long. Especially if you don’t count the days.