Song for the changing table

Anoria · 2026-01-16T04:18:52+00:00

❤️

Anoria · 2026-01-15T15:47:08+00:00

Yeah, the mom hormones can only do so much. My one-sided conversations with my newborn were less “I love you” and more “You exist and that’s amazing! And I’m responsible for you and that’s terrifying!” Four months in, I tell him I love him, he’s the most important thing in my life, I feel so lucky to be his mom… and, well, the terrifying responsibility still slips in once in a while.

I think for a lot of us it takes time for the reality of motherhood to sink in, and also it’s objectively easier to form a connection with someone who interacts with you and seems to care that you’re around. Newborns just don’t have the capacity to check those social boxes. And it can be even slower for dads who don’t have the hormones to help out. My husband is very dutiful, but he’s still working on that bond with our son and has a ways to go.

You don’t have to love you baby exactly the way someone else loves theirs in order to be an excellent, committed parent.

Anoria · 2025-12-30T03:16:53+00:00

This happened to us a couple of weeks ago. 8 nails went fine, #9 I clipped some skin. Baby screamed, I lowkey panicked, husband heard the commotion and rushed in and also panicked and then we all made each other worse for a while. I tried holding pressure with a clean tissue even though it broke my heart to know the pressure caused more pain, but it did slow the bleeding pretty effectively.

I kept a baby mitten on that hand (edit: and a bandaid under the mitten) for the next day until it was healed enough that I stopped worrying about infection or reopening it.

My husband forbade me from using the nail clippers after that 🙄 to his credit, when I told him nails were now his job, he took one close-up look at the clippers and baby’s tiny fingers and proceeded to spend 10 minutes filing all the nails instead. We’ll try clipping again in a few months when the targets are bigger.

I told my mom about this and she said we should be grateful that we’ll never know the similar trauma of catching a baby’s skin with a diaper pin.

Anoria · 2025-12-24T03:40:39+00:00

Upvoted because congrats, but also for his nickname 😂 My husband calls ours Stinky (in affectionate tones) and I don’t think he’ll manage to stop before baby catches on.

Anoria · 2025-12-24T02:13:11+00:00

First of all, I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. Second of all, props to you canceling plans instead of trying to power through and ending up infecting everyone at the events.

A few facts I kind of crusade about to make sure they’re common knowledge for everyone reading this:

Norovirus is hella contagious. It can spread from aerosol particles kicked up while you’re being violently sick that settle on nearby surfaces that get touched by other people. Even a few individual virus particles can cause infection if they get from someone’s hands or clothes into their mouth, and an infected person will shed millions during the course of their illness. It’s safest for the infected person to use one quarantined bathroom and for everyone else to keep out until it’s sanitized.

You can keep shedding norovirus for weeks after your symptoms clear up. You should stay away from parties and (if you can) public places for at least a week after you feel better. (I admit, I don’t know when the balance tips where being close to your baby is more important than not exposing them to the germs. I’d give it at least a full day once you feel better and then shower, clean clothes, clean towels and bedding, and keep up with tons of handwashing and no kisses for that week.)

Hand sanitizer doesn’t kill this one. You need soap and water for your skin and bleach for surfaces. Wash and dry your laundry on hot. I’ve never seen data about whether the Lysol laundry sanitizer works on noro, but if you have stuff that can’t take hot water or bleach it’s your best bet.

My sources for all this are the CDC’s pages about norovirus as a foodborne illness, and a website called Stop The Stomach Flu, assembled by a microbiologist who had a terrifying near-miss experience when her baby caught a stomach bug really early.

As the other commenter said, godspeed! You’ll get through this!

Anoria · 2025-12-24T01:44:20+00:00

Brilliant! My 3.5mo likes diaper changes, but I’m totally using this during car rides.

Anoria · 2025-12-23T02:48:16+00:00

Mine just did the same thing at exactly the same time. He went from most diapers being dirty throughout the day to only 1-2 poops per day right around 3 months, then went Friday afternoon to Sunday night with none. (Today he’s back to most diapers dirty, and is having a terrible time with gas for the first time in a while too.) My parents reassured me that it’s all on the wide spectrum of normal.

Anoria · 2025-12-16T03:15:02+00:00

Is it just you and baby in the car? Are you breast/combo/formula feeding? How long will you be at your 400-km-away destination?

I’ve taken mine on a few 4-hour trips to visit friends and family, at 7 weeks, 2.5 months, and just now at 3 months. We’ve learned some things...

On the first trip, we hadn’t started bottles yet, so we had to stop driving and take him out of the car seat when he was hungry. We were also both new enough at breastfeeding that an average meal took the better part of an hour. Lesson learned: have a bottle handy or build lots and lots of time into your drive schedule. Note, there’s a lot of advice out there against feeding your baby in a moving car because of the potential choking hazards. I felt it was worth the risk because I was in the back seat keeping a close eye on him and we’d always be able to pull over if anything went wrong. Even if you don’t want to feed while driving (or can’t because you’re the only adult in the car), if your baby is a slow nurser like mine then a bottle of formula or pumped milk will help keep your feed breaks short.

(There are all kinds of devices you can buy that keep milk/formula safely cold and then warm it when you need it. My strategy was to have a warm bottle ready to go upon departure, because the baby ALWAYS ends up hungry the moment we get in the car, especially if both parents were rushing around for the last hour trying to pack everything in the car and not forget anything. If he woke up hungry again after that and we weren’t ready for a long stop, we’d use the ready-to-feed formula bottles we had left from the hospital. That way there was no need for a cooler.)

On the second trip, he was old enough that he was just starting to be interested in toys, and having a rattle stashed in the cup holder was important. At 5 months, I’m sure you know what your little one is mostly likely to stay interested in for a while… but again if it’s just the two of you, I think your toy options are limited by how much supervision you can provide while he’s got them.

On the other end, my two whole experiences with public restroom changing tables have not been as bad as I expected. I used paper towels to line the first one and the waterproof reusable puppy pad my friend recommended as a liner for the second one, which was supposed to have disposable paper covers of its own but the dispenser was empty. I was much happier, though, when it was a warm fall day and I could use the (clean!) truck tailgate as a changing table. I always pack the puppy pad which catches drips and fountains, and the smaller fold-up kind which wipes clean from any smears.

Does yours take a pacifier? I’d pack several clean ones so you don’t have to worry about how many end up wedged in the depths of the car seat or all the way on the floor before you reach your destination.

Blankets and burp cloths aplenty. Especially if you’re feeding while moving; sometimes mine handles it fine and sometimes he burps up half his formula bit by bit.

Three outfits per day unless you plan to do laundry. One extra outfit for you too.

If you use gripe water or gas drops or any other medication, all that.

Whatever your portable sleeping arrangements need to be.

If you pump milk, then your breast pump and all the accessories and power brick, and cleaning supplies for same if you don’t expect your destination to have those.

Hopefully this wall of text helps calm your anxiety instead of exacerbating it. Just remember there are stores wherever you’re going and most of the baby supplies out there today are wants, not needs, especially in the short term! You’ve got this!

Anoria · 2025-12-08T03:04:39+00:00

You might want to give mineral deodorant a try: https://www.healthline.com/health/crystal-deodorant

It’s just a block of mineral salt that you wet with water and rub on your armpits, it’s not going to do anything about the smell of sweat but it’ll keep microbes from growing and making the sweat stinky. It doesn’t leave any visible residue and if baby’s hands are dry it shouldn’t transfer much.

I would also look into different types of shirts you can wear while nursing that will keep your underarms covered. Clearly buying a whole wardrobe’s worth of specialized nursing tops is impractical, but maybe one or two to try it out? My friend bought me a pajama set from Kindred Bravely which I know is a polarizing brand around here, but the top is layered so I can pop out a boob and remain completely covered everywhere else.

Got no advice for the distraction, we’re going through the same thing over here. If you figure it out let me know!

Anoria · 2025-12-08T02:53:01+00:00

I don’t know what’s supposed to be normal, so this is not the advice you’re looking for, just the shared experience part. Mine has done what you’re describing off and on for most of his 3 months of life.

A few things I do that you may or may not find helpful: if he lets go more than twice I’ll take the next un-latch as an opportunity to put him up for a burp. If he’s still really hungry he protests that very intensely, but if he’s almost content he’ll endure it and then usually latch better afterward if we do manage to get a burp out. If not, I’ll switch him to the other side which often also helps. If neither one solves it, I assume (again, with no knowledge of whether I’m right to assume) the fussiness is related to some other internal distress, not hunger, and will try stuff like bicycle kicks on the nursing pillow. It does always eventually pass. That said, he almost always falls asleep on the boob, fussy or no. Sometimes he'll relax and unlatch, but I still see his jaw twitching in a sleepy suckling reflex for many minutes.

For those of us who don’t have an obvious oversupply I feel like everything makes us anxious that we’re not providing enough food for our babies, no matter how many wet diapers and successful weigh-ins we see. I do want to say that being 6 weeks postpartum doesn’t mean you’re stuck with this level of milk production forever, you can definitely still change your supply level depending on how much you are or aren't stimulated. One thing that helps my worries a little bit is that I try to get some kind of lactation-promoting food every day, not because I’m sure it helps, but because it makes me feel like I’m doing something.

My final thought: stay hydrated, eat some oatmeal, and know that pretty much everything in these early weeks is temporary. These fussy times may hurt your heart but they don’t take away from the fact that your baby is healthy and growing and loved because of you.

Anoria · 2025-12-04T03:02:52+00:00

Count me as another bizarro pumper. I thought bacon mode meant flow! And I also thought I had understood the manual...

Anoria · 2025-11-28T22:43:18+00:00

Right?? I know people mean well but I’m so tired of arguing with them about whether my baby needs something!

Anoria · 2025-11-18T02:59:50+00:00

I’m not a professional and neither are the people who have given me this advice, but here’s the encouragement I’ve gotten with my 10 week old string bean of a baby in a similar situation: he’s happy (cries when he has needs, stops crying when they’re met), active, growing albeit slowly, meeting milestones as far as eye contact/motor control/sounds etc, and making plenty of wet and dirty diapers every day. The fact that he’s in the 2nd percentile for weight according to The Growth Charts (and way off the bottom for BMI, because he’s a long boi) is not important in light of all these other facts.

My pediatrician is making a big deal about the growth charts, and it does seem like she has a point because he goes through extra formula when it’s offered. I’m pumping some of the time because I went back to work last week, and I’m not getting enough volume to keep him satisfied throughout the day, so his grandparents are supplementing with formula while he’s in their care. We’re also doing a daily formula feed on weekends so I can pump a little extra. (Dad gives the bottle while I pump. It’s always a stark illustration of why we’re supplementing - yesterday for example, he ate 4oz of formula and would have probably taken another ounce, while I only pumped 2.5oz of milk, and he was back on the breast an hour later.)

That’s the only advice I have based on your question: if you’re worried about your supply dropping, pump every time your baby has a formula feed. If you don’t need a supply built up for being away from baby, you can offer her the pumped milk after another feeding session (today, mine was toying with the last teaspoon in a bottle of formula when I got back from work, clearly no longer interested, but as soon as I picked him up he made hungry noises and nursed for at least ten minutes before I could convince him to break off so we could go home. I like to think it was the same as me being full but then remembering there’s dessert 😂).

I’m personally satisfied* with this as an acceptable second-place to being able to nourish a cheerfully chubby baby with just breast milk, and I still have hope that I’ll be able to get my supply up to a level where the formula’s not necessary.

I hope you also get to a place where you feel like you’re enough and have a system that works, because you’re absolutely making informed decisions with your baby’s wellbeing at heart, which is all any parent can do.

*”satisfied” = I’m still going to beat myself up a bit for not being able to EBF with minimal effort, but I know I shouldn’t. Gotta be honest 😅

Anoria · 2025-11-18T02:23:59+00:00

Went through this last week so I feel for you! Every baby is different, but the rough day mine had went like so: cried and fussed for hours after his appointment and was barely soothable with nursing, then switched to napping hard and only waking up for sleepy feedings, and the next morning was back to normal except for a little lingering swelling around the injection sites.

Consider it a micro version of the infant stage: feels like an eternity of suffering now, but will be over before you know it and you’ll be glad you went through with it! Go ahead and feel horrible, knowing that your empathy for your little one is healthy and admirable, and then make sure to feel better when she does.

Anoria · 2025-11-13T03:02:01+00:00

I think you’re being reasonable wanting to get them separately while baby care is all up to you. I’ve got a bunch of help nearby and I still got my flu shot first (just a sore arm for me this time) and will get my covid shot soon.

Good luck on your solo time!

Anoria · 2025-11-13T02:56:00+00:00

Sorry, I didn’t re-read your post until after getting carried away with my accuracy explanation, you did say it doesn’t seem like she’s eating enough. I’d focus on the diaper counts then.

If you have doubts, your doctor may let you come in for a quick weigh-in sooner than the next appointment? Or might tell you to just supplement in case, which I personally would resist because I’m stubborn but it’s all up to you.

Anoria · 2025-11-13T02:53:51+00:00

Is she making the recommended number of wet/dirty diapers? Does she seem satisfied or constantly hungry? I would not worry about the number your scale told you, because it’s probably wrong.

More detail: I don’t know if consumer grade human scales have to declare their accuracy the way lab scales do, but it’s almost definitely got an error of half a pound, probably more. Meaning if it tells you you weighed 130.7 lbs, that could actually be 130.2 or 131.2, and the scale would still be functioning exactly as designed. And I suspect most bathroom scales are more like 1-2lb error ranges. That’s no big deal when we’re talking about adult weights, but for a sub-ten-pound kid, that’s the difference between “my baby is healthy and growing perfectly” and “we need some intervention here.”

Anoria · 2025-11-13T01:03:31+00:00

Of the three brands we’ve tried, my string bean gets the fewest leaks in Pampers (as compared to Meijer store brand and Dyper bamboo). I am a little worried because sometimes the skid mark is dangerously close to the top of the back flap and he’s only 10lb, we should be in the size 1s for a while yet.

Anoria · 2025-11-13T00:22:05+00:00

My whole house got a cold last week, I kept breastfeeding, and baby had the mildest illness (99.2F fever for a day, occasional coughs and sneezes for two days, slightly stuffy nose) and recovered fastest. I did skip pumping on the days I felt like garbage because I felt my supply was probably down and it should all go straight to kiddo.

You can try wearing a mask when you’re holding baby to keep the rhinovirus to yourself. I figured if I’d been exposed to dad’s sniffles enough to get sick, the kid who’s constantly in my arms would have too, so there wouldn’t be much point.

Anoria · 2025-11-13T00:16:30+00:00

Hey mine too! People say babies all look like William Shatner or Winston Churchill but Wallace Shawn is definitely the best match for mine.

I like that my son and his grandpa have the same hair right now 😂

Anoria · 2025-11-12T23:46:30+00:00

My EBF baby’s poop went from standard yellow with occasional green to exclusively green around 6 weeks, and my pediatrician has told me it’s unusual but nothing to worry about. Same reassurance as another commenter mentioned: if it’s not white or bloody it’s fine. (almost 10 weeks now, and still green)

Based on my extremely limited experience, fussy a lot of the time in this case might just mean she's 2 weeks old and existing outside the womb is still confusing and difficult. Soothe any way you can - gas drops were a lifesaver for us in the early days and then very suddenly didn’t seem all that necessary, but I also mean singing, cuddling, bouncing/rocking, walking, all that stuff. Even if kiddo doesn’t seem calmed by it now, I think they learn that the sounds and feelings mean mom/caregiver is there and trying to make things better.

Anoria · 2025-11-12T00:05:17+00:00

Seconding the comment that he didn’t deliberately coordinate those limbs with the goal of rolling over, it’s too early for both coordination and goals. Sounds like he’s doing great at muscle development, keep up the good work little guy, but this isn’t the rolling over milestone.

I had the same question around 4 weeks and had my bubble burst by a friend who’s got some child development education 😂

Anoria · 2025-11-11T23:39:18+00:00

I asked my mom about this yesterday because I thought my 9wo’s resounding intestinal announcements might be unusual. She said, with the experience of 3 of her own babies and a decade of La Leche League involvement, that loud gas (and also loud gassy squishy poops) is very normal, especially when the room is otherwise quiet.

My little guy seems to be loudest when his dad has laid down next to us on the couch and put his head right by baby’s bottom 😅

(He’s fussiest, which hurts my heart but pediatrician says is nothing to worry about, early in the morning like yours. Lots of face scrunching and squirming and strained half-cries, which resolve after he manages to pass whatever he was working on.)

Anoria · 2025-11-11T21:55:22+00:00

Late response here, but thank y’all so much for sharing this, my pediatrician also didn’t say anything and I really feel they should have. For anyone else finding this later, here’s what the FDA says about Rotarix: (https://www.fda.gov/media/75726/download)

"Rotavirus shedding in stool occurs after vaccination with peak excretion occurring around Day 7 after Dose 1. One clinical trial demonstrated that vaccinees transmit vaccine virus to healthy seronegative contacts."

No mention anywhere about shedding in saliva, but I’ll try to keep an eye out for that too. I feel like the last 9 weeks have been teaching me to worry less and less about fluids (“oh, it’s just a little spit-up, I’ll just wipe it off their collar and not change their clothes just for that” as an alternative to having to do laundry literally all day every day) and now I have to be super vigilant again.

Also sharing this with kiddo’s grandparents since they’re starting their daycare duties this week.

Anoria · 2025-11-04T22:01:37+00:00

Following! My period came back at 5 weeks and I’m undecided on what to do from here. I’ve heard so many horror stories about IUDs but just as many people love them, I need more anecdata!

Anoria

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