I’ve been a dad for 7 and a half months now and, like all new parents, I’m a total newbie. Nevertheless, I’ve discovered a few things during this time that I wish someone had told me before I became a dad, and so here they are in case they’re useful for others. Points 1 and 2 are for newborns, whilst point 3 is for babies of 4 to 7 months.
- The first months can be really tough
You hear of sleepless nights and constant poo and crying, but nobody told me that this period was also really not fun. The sleepless nights make you very grumpy, which makes the game of trying to guess what the hell your baby wants even less fun than it normally would be. Some people have described this period as like being high all the time, so I guess not everyone had the same experience as my partner and I, but some will and so be prepared, the first months can be really tough.
- If she’s fussy, she’s probably hungry
Our daughter has been through numerous cranky patches, where she’s just a bit moody and seems to complain all the time. Each time, over the first 6 months, it always came down to not eating enough.
The first time it happened she was still breastfeeding and we complained to the doctor that she seemed to be complaining more than most babies. He suggested giving her some formula alongside the breastmilk and from one day to the next she calmed down and became a much happier baby. Another time we moved from 180ml of formula per bottle to 210 and our baby instantly got happier, and a final time we were too slow in moving her from formula 1 to formula 2, and when we did it she got much happier.
On each of these occasions, it wasn’t that she was immediately hungry – sometimes we would offer her more bottle and would refuse – it was that she was not getting enough nutrients overall in a 24 hour period. This may be only my theory but I think there’s a difference between immediate hunger (argh I haven’t eaten for 4 hours) and overall hunger (argh I’m eating frequently but it’s not providing me enough energy to grow). Being able to spot when our baby was lacking nutrients was key to solving some of her most challenging periods.
- Give them a chance to fall asleep by themselves
For the first few months, Emma was a great sleeper but by around 6 months we were having trouble getting Emma to sleep through the night. For a few weeks we were waking up every hour or two and it was having a huge impact on our lives as we were constantly tired and cranky. Then our neighbours introduced us to sleep training.
There is lots to read about sleep training online and you can find both success stories and horror stories. In simple terms, the idea is to let your baby cry a bit when going to sleep before going in to help them. The extreme method is to close the door and leave them for the night but there are plenty of more gentle methods, and we settled on the following.
- Put her down in the bed when she’s calm
- If she cries, leave her for 5 minutes before going back in. When you do, sooth her and put her back down when she’s calm.
- Wait 10 minutes before doing the same again, and 20 minutes after that, etc (it never got above 10!)
The horror stories online are from people who had to listen to their babies crying for hours and hours, which is of course heart breaking. Our experience was far from that and the most crying we had to listen to was about 8 minutes.
The first night she cried for about 8 minutes when we put her down. We went in after 5 and 3 minutes after we came out again, she rolled over and went to sleep. She woke up once during the night and we resisted the urge to run in and help her (usually we would have run in straight away) and she fell back to sleep after 3 minutes.
The second night she cried for about 3 minutes and perhaps 1 minute during the night. Ever since then (it’s been almost 2 months now), she basically doesn’t cry anymore and we have never had to attend to her in the middle of the night. Sometimes she fusses a little when we leave her but just for a minute or so and then falls asleep.
The change is huge. Before sleep training, we tried all sorts of tricks to get her to sleep from rocking her, giving her a dummy, using white noise, etc, etc, but it turns out that all she needed was a little space. It’s crazy to think that all that time spent trying to force her to sleep was actually not what she needed.
Napping: The daytime has been a little more complicated because we’re never quite sure if she’s tired. At night it’s simple, she needs to sleep from 7pm to 6 or 7am, and she always does. But in the day you never quite know if she’s genuinely tired or not as we haven’t managed to established a fixed nap schedule yet. Nevertheless, she now naps more frequently, without dummy or white noise, and is generally better rested. Also, she doesn’t really cry when she can’t sleep, she just makes noise to let us know. We don’t leave her for so long in the day… if she’s still not sleeping after 10 minutes then we get her up and do something else until she is tired.
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