I’ve got a 3 week-old newborn. During the day there are plenty of adorable moments and easy times. But it’s the middle of the fucking night, he strategically waited until I was switching diapers to piss on me and all over, then was flailing his arms and pushing the bottle out of his mouth even though he was very hungry, then shit his GODDAMN BRAINS OUT while eating, then after I burped him and cleaned him up and got him in new clothes and swaddled and put him down, he fucking screamed until I picked him up again.
Like, I’ve given him everything his tiny little brain and body could need. That coupled with the strategic shitting and pissing to require the absolute maximum amount of work from me.
The vent here, I guess, is that I fucking hate this. I loved my life with my wife and now we have next to zero intimacy(not sex, obviously, but even our normal physical touch). We have zero time for each other, one is tending the baby, while the other is desperately trying to keep up with cleaning bottles and keeping the house passably clean and there is no time for anything.
I would never let any of what I just said affect how I interact with the baby, but I’m fucking sick of having literally zero independence and I miss my wife (her being in the same bed and next to me most of the day makes it worse somehow).
Fuck.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Check out The Oatmeal, they’ve got a comic about having kids that’s painfully applicable.
Yeah. All the times people say “sleep when the baby sleeps” or “You must be exhausted”? It’s because we’ve been there.
I will give one piece of advice. Alarms.
Need to make a call or check on someone? Alarm.
Dropping the baby off somewhere before work? Add an alarm (repeat if need be) to make sure the kids not in the car.
Cooking dinner? Add an alarm to check that the stove is off.
Super exhausted brain is rough and while it’s always a small chance it’s scary how quickly we can do something stupid or dangerous without realizing it.
Personally I’ve thrown clothes in the trash and put trash in the laundry hamper (learned not to carry both at the same time) and locked myself out of the house for an hour (trusted neighbor got a copy of our house key after that one)
Bonus tip: poison control is cool. Don’t be afraid to call when/if something happens. Kid got into teething tablets and ate them all? Not the first time they’ve heard of it and if there’s anything to be done they’ll tell you. They even checked back a little later just to be sure.
Bonus tip 2: if you have somebody willing to help with laundry, house, etc take it. It feels weird but a lot of the people offering know exactly what you’re going through.
I couldn’t tell you how many decidedly not-garbage items have been a split second from being thrown away
As for alarms, my memory was already shit before this, so I’m all over that. Thanks for taking the time to respond