How long did it take you to go back to normality?

[futuremum]

Hello !!!!

Thomas will be 4 weeks old on Thursday and I am still finding it difficult to organise my day. He has no routine at all, eats whenever, sometimes I can spend 2 full hours feeding him/winding him/changing him so cannot do anything during the day.

I try to get up for 8 am max, feed Thomas, then when he goes to sleep, I clean the kitchen, wash some clothes, have a shower and express some milk. then it is time for feeding again and from there I can hardly do anything because he is all over the place. Some days he will sleep and i can get on with things to do in the house, some days he is restless and I am spending all my afternoon trying to settle him down.

I feel guilty too because I am so tired I am finding it difficult to get up during the night and in the morning. Thomas settles down to bed very late at night/early morning so sometimes have not many hours to sleep. I hardly have any chances to sleep during the day either.

My partner keeps telling me I should be able to cope by now with the baby and the house duties so I feel a bit of a failure not to be able to cope, even when he helps me with the cleaning and the baby (which he does quite a lot), I cannot do what i have planned to do. I only managed to have a bath at 2.30 pm today because baby was restless, I could only have had it because my partner looked after him during this time!!!!

I keep telling people not to visit sometimes or refuse them to hold Thomas if he has just gone to sleep because usually that means he has been a struggle to settle down before. People must think i am weird!!!

I am due back to work end of March and am wondering how I am going to cope at all.

Is it normal not to be organised at all at this stage or is it just me not being able to cope with the situation?

 

[Skidoo]

Well, I haven't had my baby yet, but from everything I've heard and read it is perfectly normal to not have a routine at this stage!! I think your partner is being a bit unrealistic to think that you should be able to look after the house a new baby so soon!!

A new baby takes up a LOT of time and energy. Personally I plan to let housework go to the dogs (if my OH is fussed about it he can do it) and just centre my life around my LO for the first couple of months.

I'd like to be getting into a routine by around 12 weeks, but think it's unrealistic to think that a tiny baby can be persuaded into a routine much before that. Until v. recently your baby had no idea of the world outside and was perfectly cared for inside your body. It's a big adjustment for both of you - give it time.

If your partner wants a clean house he can do it himself or get a cleaner ;o)

[edited as it caught me at a ranty moment...]

 

[beanie]

I am so impressed by the fact you are up at 8am. Today me and Seren got up at 12pm, she didn't get to sleep till 2am, slept till 8 and then I fed her and we had a nap till half eleven. I have absolutely no routine aprt from my mother and baby group once a week. I also try and get out the house at least once a day. My house looks like a bomb has hit it, and I still haven't managed to have a shower though did brush my teeth so am getting there. I would like Seren to get into a routine but like Skidoo ddn't think it was possible till they were a bit older. I find that with demand feeding it is very difficult to have any structure to my day especially when she is going through a growth spurt. I hate the fact my house is a mess and that there is a massive pile of laundry but I also need to keep my sanity and sleep when I can. Like you I can't sleep during the day so that is why I have my lazy mornings. Your partner may think that you should be able to cope but I think it is easy for them to say. My OH complains that he has to go to work but earlier today when Seren was screaming the house down and the dog threw up on the carpet and I neededt he loo I would have quite happily swopped and put up some partitions on a building site. You are coping, your baby is still very young and you are doing a great job....don't let anyone tell you otherwise xxx

 

[futuremum]

If your partner wants a clean house he can do it himself or get a cleaner ;o)

He does help me a lot, do not get me wrong!!!! He has done all the cleaning since I have been back from hospital. He also looks after Thomas a lot, winding him, playing with him... But he thinks it is time for me to go back to "normal" if i want to be able to go back to work. He is getting tired and bored with the cleaning/tidying but at the moment i am finding it impossible to get on with any kind of normality!!! Me who use to go to the toilet every 5 minutes, i can hardly find any time to go now!!!! I do think that breastfeeding is the main cause for all this. Thomas is all over the place with his feeding/sleeping. Sometimes he wants to feed every 20 minutes sometimes every 3 hours so you cannot plan anything at all, even doing the shopping has become so diffcult to do!!!!

Mind you, all the things i used to take for granted are well appreciated now when i have a chance to do it

 

[Urchin]

Futuremum it sounds like you are doing a really great job!
You're doing a lot more than me with your day... sometimes I won't get round to the washing up for 24 hours or so. You husband should realise that your time is mostly spent caring for your child and if maybe if it's an issue then he should carry on doing it himself whether the novely has worn off for him or not! Someone needs to do it why can't he carry on doing it?

 

[Rosebay]

I do wonder if there will ever be a "normal" again in our house! Mind you we wanted something to shake us about a bit as we were getting too comfy and bored and we certainly got it!!

Elliott is now 6 1/2 weeks (my ticker is playing up) and although he has settled down a lot in the past week it's still chaotic and I can easily do nothing but deal with him all day. Our house is a total tip, there is washing everywhere and I have to book time with my DH so that I can wash and blow dry my hair so most of the time it's a total state too!

In the past week I've tried to instigate a bit of a routine- very very loosely based on Gina Ford (boo hiss- I know!). I just looked at the way she and Tracey Hogg had this way of structuring the day in a feed, awake, asleep pattern and have fiddled with it to try and make sure he doesn't sleep so much during the day that he doesn't sleep at night and that he doesn't get so overtired that he cries and cries and can't settle as that's what he was doing a few weeks ago. Because I know that he'll sleep if I take him out I take him out between 12-2.30 for example as an afternoon nap and then wake him with a feed afterwards. There's no point trying to force them to do anything they're not about to anyway but if you keep a note of what they do I bet you'll start to see patterns emerging soon which will give you more of a chance to have some time where you're 70% sure you won't have to go to them. It doesn't work all of the time but even some of the time is better than none! I don't think you can get them in a routine before they're ready though and even then it's going to be a rough one.

Is there some way you can get your DH to look after your baby for longer than he normally does so that he gets a taste of what it's like trying to get something done while looking after them? Playing and the odd feed is one thing but actually spending all day and night with them and trying to do everything else is a different matter entirely. I reckon 4 or 5 hours would do it! It might give him a bit more of an insight into how hard it is. I don't think I'd appreciated how difficult it would be to do anything else. I used to read posts where people would say that they hadn't got dressed until 1pm and couldn't understand why. Now I do and what's more I am that woman! Our postman comes at about 11am and I always seem to be in my pjs holding a crying baby as he's mid-feed and I've had to stop to answer the door! I have no shame! This is with the two of us at home I might add as my DH works from home so I at least have a chance to leave him with him while I have a bath or cook etc. My DH has had to start going to the library to work for a few protected hours a day though (he writes and does graphic design) as he couldn't concentrate with us around so just being in a house with a young baby it's hard enough to get stuff done let alone being soley responsible for it!

Has anyone else found themselves becoming much more decisive? I used to be a ditherer but now if I think he's going to be asleep for more than 10 mins I'm on a total mission to get things done! Usually it doesn't work out though!!

+++

 

[tracyM]

Normality??? Normality has been non-existant in our household since Daniel was born 13 years ago - but it does get easier to manage the chaos!!!!

We knew from day one that we'd have to fit Alex in with the rest of the family and work so we've tried to make sure his feeds don't coincide with the school runs, meal times, bath times etc. Luckily he's mostly laid back and calm. My multi-tasking skills are being tested to the limit, but I know it won't be forever - if anybody visited our house at breakfast time, tea time or bath / bed time they'd run a mile - bath / bed time is like an industrial manufacturing process. Chaos still reigns at the weekends though, and I'm considering hibernating for a few weeks in the school holidays

Tracy xx

 

On your partners day off tell him to take sole responsilbity for baby and house and see how he copes, then you can sit back and laugh at him, the cocky buggar !!!!

im lucky as dan works from home so he see's whats going on, and alot of the time he give up working to play with alana whille i do some cleaning or laundry.

we still dont have a routine, we go to bed when we cant keep eyes open any more then lazy in bed until lunch most days, playing with alana and keeping her awake, then she will sleep all afternoon and i can get some chores done.

its kaos here too but were trying to sell the house so we have go to keep it tidy and up together, also with toilet training a puppy it can be a nightmare, but after the boredom i suffered at end of pregnancy this is actually fun