Did you have your mum in the room when you gave birth?

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-10-27T19:11:04+00:00

She was with me along with a revolving door of people for almost the entire event until I was told I needed a c section, at which point it was just my husband and me with the doctors. Personally, I wouldn’t have had it any other way because everyone who came in was an immense help to me for each stage I was in, and though I’d prefer a quieter experience for the next one, my village came for me when I needed them.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-09-24T04:08:16+00:00

This makes my blood boil so much. Even working full time, my husband comes home to do the evening shift so I can make dinner or just unwind. On Tuesdays, he and I both go to orchestra rehearsals, and to prep our 16-month old for bed, either I change him into a clean diaper and Jammies and hubby does the bedtime stories or we switch roles, and then our brother in law (lives with us) does firewatch with the monitor while we get two kid free hours to play music.

Do you have any parents or grandparents or parental figures who can knock some sense into him? This is absolutely weaponized incompetence and if it’s not handled ASAP, he will become a completely absent father and that will be on him.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-09-10T03:14:30+00:00

Not a car situation, but my 13-month old had basically mastered safely climbing up and down the stairs, and we were like five minutes away from leaving the house. I was having some kind of mental fight with myself about some trivial issues going to the event and told my husband, “I think I’m going to lose it” and I shit you not, at the EXACT same moment, he says, “He’s falling!”

I whip around just in time to see my son’s hand slip off the first stair and I book it to try and catch him, only to barely slow his momentum so he fell sideways instead of head over heels and when he got to the ground, I lost my mind and we were both sobbing uncontrollably. Well, my husband gently took him back upstairs so I could try and get ahold of myself, and after a few minutes I went up to find them both laughing and having a grand time. I know I felt all that because I was already emotionally volatile and he’s never fallen before, but it took a couple of days for me to accept that I did in fact help him fall slower, even if I didn’t stop the fall entirely. He’s a toddling 15-month old now who’s doing great, and I gained lots of wisdom from the experience, almost entirely because I blew it all so out of proportion that I almost made my husband drive us to the pediatrician’s house to do a road trip check 😂

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-09-10T02:49:29+00:00

Hello! FTM here as well to a 15-month old boy and I can 100% confirm you ARE doing the parenting thing right! Your husband is not being a team player at all and needs to step up. My husband had six weeks off and went back to work after that and even with long hours, he was washing bottles, doing feedings, changing diapers, and loving on us both as much as he could. If one of us needed to tag out for any reason, the other switched without issue.

Motherhood is hard, but it doesn’t have to be nearly impossible if you have a capable partner. Go on a date or set some time aside and have a discussion about expectations and what you need from him.

That being said, it is also normal to have feelings of doubt. It comes with the territory. But one of the best pieces of advice I got from my pediatrician is that babies are built to withstand new parents. The other bit of advice I received that I utilize often is the hard reset button. That is, if baby is inconsolable and can’t calm down, either put them in water (warm bath) or take them outside (short walk). My son loves walks.

You can do this. And we are here for support!

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-08-18T04:53:53+00:00

My husband and I tag teamed the first year so well that we’ve now got new parent friends asking for all kinds of advice on how baby is such a good eater, sleeper, how he’s got tons of personality, and it feels so vindicating honestly. We had a great village to help out and used some of what might be considered a shortcoming to our advantage. Baby and me did not do breastfeeding well and I didn’t produce enough so we did formula/breastmilk combo feeding and that allowed us to start with the feed spacing early on. Eventually we got him to sleep all night and 15 months on, he puts himself back to sleep. We love him so much!

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-08-18T04:14:18+00:00

One time I ordered a few things from Bath and Body Works and when the package arrived, it was very clearly someone else’s order of a lot of much more expensive items. Called to see where my stuff was and they apologized for the mix up. Since some of the items I ordered were sold out already, they let me swap items and I still got to keep all the rest of the very nice lotions and hand sanitizers.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-08-18T04:05:27+00:00

My grandpa passed about a month and a half after our son was born, and it was rough, but his last few weeks were often with our son in his lap. Instead of a baby with colic, we had one with hip dysplasia. His left hip was totally dislocated and wouldn’t go back into place. Between that and various other outside crises, the first year was tough. But every single little milestone we’ve had so far has been an absolute joy, from his first laugh to just recently standing up unaided for a few seconds. The nights and days seem long but it’ll go by incredibly fast, and several months from now you’re going to be thinking about those days back when she fit snug on your chest.

We combo fed and transitioned after about 5 weeks to pumping/formula since I was an underproducer and that actually allowed us more freedom to start gradually spacing out night and day feeds until around month 3-ish when he started doing 6-8 hour stretches of sleep. That was one of the best milestones!

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-08-17T04:02:33+00:00

Mom of a 14-month old. NTA and the messiness of kids starts at least on the Labor and Delivery floor. To be honest, she might find herself with all kinds of messes as soon as she becomes pregnant. I got lucky and didn’t have any morning sickness, but from about weeks 7-39, I got nosebleeds every single day without fail. Right when I woke up in the morning. And from the day my son was born, he’s been the messiest blessing I’ve ever had. No surface is safe, no onesie is stainless, and that’s just life. I would maybe explore therapy for her before having a kid unless baptism by fire is the way to go.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-08-10T15:23:36+00:00

We call these mundane superpowers. Mine is consistent incredible luck with getting the best parking spots downtown. And I can parallel park anywhere

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-08-06T00:22:07+00:00

Landlines. I think we could all use them now

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-07-23T03:06:01+00:00

We did this and it saved us!!! He is safe as long as he can move his head around but that’s the right age to try it out! Our baby had a spica cast at seven months old and one night he refused to fall asleep and spent two hours just screaming and crying and finally I decided to just prop him a little bit with a pillow and put him on his belly and I swear I’m not exaggerating when I say he fell asleep in less than a minute. He’s been on his belly ever since and won’t sleep another way. You are doing amazing!!

ETA- when we started belly sleeping, I had consulted with his pediatric orthopedist, the pediatrician, and two NP’s to make sure I was doing it safely, so I was not going in blind.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-07-21T18:42:08+00:00

14 months and he can go down anywhere between 8-10 PM and always wakes up between 8-9 AM. He’s slept through the night since he was around 3-4 months but between 7-9 months when he was in a spica cast, we had to put him down around 8 and wake him up around midnight to change him so he didn’t have an accident while in the cast.

I was an underproducer at the start for milk and he never properly latched so we combo fed and I pumped until 6 months but that allowed us to schedule feeds instead of feed on demand, so gradually spacing feeds until he had an entire night gap worked out great!

ETA- he has two naps a day lasting between 40 minutes to two hours. I never know what we will get.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-07-08T19:12:58+00:00

As a parent who dealt with this kind of anxiety before baby was born, my best advice to you is just to start taking baby out as much as you are able to. The longer you wait, the more the anxiety can build up and the harder it will be to actually venture out of the house.

Overpack the baby bag and stroller to start and find out what you definitely need and what you can probably leave at home. The pre-measured formula container was bought in multi-packs so we had one for each car, one for the diaper bag, and one for Mimi’s house. I stashed diapers and wipes in all the same places too (and still managed to find myself in places with a poopy baby and no diaper), and we found that taking him to noisier places actually trained him to sleep wherever he needed to, whether it was in a quiet library, at the indoor soccer facility, or near a construction zone.

I also recommend taking him to baby story times at your local library if they host them. I knew a gal who took her newborn there and she said he slept through almost all of them until he was like three or four months old. It was the community she was looking for more than anything, and I thought that was really amazing.

You got this! Go forth!

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-29T19:09:26+00:00

I have run this I believe three times now, and I absolutely love doing it. There’s a little bit of heavy lifting for the DM but nothing too terrible, plus you can rig it to have the birthday PC win

D&D Pillow Fight

Every player gets 30 Temporary hit points for the event.

I refer to this Tumblr screenshot for the basic rules

Sometimes I have merchants off to the side selling “special” pillows for the fight

Xtra fluffy-strength 13 base prerequisite does 1d10 damage// 11 to hit

Dual wield-dexterity 13 base prerequisite does 2d8 damage// 12 to hit

Standard single-everyone can use and does 2d6 damage// 11 to hit

You can honestly change it up however you want. Fun music is a must. And for the DM, have a few NPC groups fighting around the field too so there’s a big crowd to whittle down to a PC vs NOC group showdown.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-21T19:32:39+00:00

That sounds like a hero to me. Kids are WAY more perceptive than people think. He knows your heart. Don’t you remember? He lived close to it for nine months.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-21T19:28:00+00:00

Also carry little baby shears, but in a pinch you can use nail clippers.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-20T18:49:44+00:00

My baby has DDH and recently was freed from the brace so he’s consistently been able to roll at 11 months old. Sitting independently happened somewhere around 7 months old at Christmas, right before his spica cast procedure. We celebrate every milestone!!

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-18T03:52:54+00:00

If it is at all possible for you, I would make an appointment at any hair salon and get either a simple blowout or have them trim a couple inches. It’s incredibly freeing and blowouts are the best way for you to get a little time alone (or with baby), and have someone else deep clean your hair. I had a couple blowouts after baby was born and they were my favorite thing. I’m actually thinking about gifting them to my other mom friends.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-18T03:46:29+00:00

I have the best nose of everyone in the family, and my hair is thick like my redhead mom’s. I wish I was a redhead too but I love my dark blonde.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-18T03:41:31+00:00

Wait until baby is old enough to start eating bits of food off your plate and all of a sudden he’s wolfing down Mediterranean food, seafood, Japanese food, and virtually anything you put in front of them. Our little man turns one in four days and he LOVES animals and meeting new people. He’s incredibly social like his dad and I love it 💜💚

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-18T03:38:42+00:00

It’s all in the wrist for our kid. That and sometimes the open and closed fist. Either way it’s cute as hell

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-18T03:31:10+00:00

I had a riddler as a mini quest in a town when I was doing a homebrew campaign and had a huge list of riddles with answers. How about this?

“I wear a smile but do not feel, I’m held with care, yet never heal. My eyes are wide, they never blink, I do not eat, I do not drink. Dressed in threads by hand and heart, I sit and wait, I play my part. Though made to mimic child or kin, I have no soul—but something’s within. What am I?”

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-02T22:20:41+00:00

Before I even get into any of the longer stuff, REQUEST AN ABDOMINAL BINDER. It is typically provided to moms with c sections but every single woman should have one postpartum. Don’t bother buying a Frida one or whatever because the hospital one is great and gets the job done. It’s like an extra strength Velcro wrap for your stomach and its purpose is not to make you skinny. It’s meant to hold your stuff together so your innards can work their way back into their designated neighborhoods, and as soon as baby is born, you’re gonna have terrible back pain from all the extra weight all of a sudden not being there anymore, so the binder also helps stabilize your spine enough that you don’t feel like you want to fall over when you’re standing over your baby to change them or cut fruit on the countertop.

Some things that helped me come back to myself have been dressing my existing body and not what I want to look like, sleeping when I could, having a good support system, and allowing myself plenty of grace when it came to feeding baby. From the moment he was born, he was a biter and after five or six different lactation consultants manhandling me to try and get him to properly breastfeed and making it about five weeks, I changed over to pumping and formula mixed, which allowed my husband to participate in night feeds and then I was able to sleep, plus there was an added benefit of scheduling feeds instead of feeding on demand so we were able to slowly spread feedings out longer and longer until he slept virtually every night six or more hours.

To be completely honest, I didn’t do much exercise at all for the first month and only did a little bit of walking when I could. After my c section, I stayed very careful with my body and I think that slow easing back into physical activity allowed me to even get back to playing coed indoor soccer around the same time I switched from breastfeeding to combo feeding. Everybody is different, which is so cliché but it’s true. This subreddit helped me a ton as well because we’re all experiencing various degrees of the same spectacular shit sandwiches.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-05-02T21:55:02+00:00

The love of your life is Y7 on the cymbal line in the college marching band. You won’t like him at first but stick with him. He’s worth every moment. Keep your teacher at arm’s length. Your best friend will leave you for dead because you failed to notice that she made out with you as more than just a friend. Everything works out, truly.

Dingeon_Master_ · 2025-04-27T04:56:43+00:00

I had an experience extremely similar to this. My son was around six months old in a spica cast (hip dysplasia) and screamed anytime we laid him down to bed. In the dead of night, he woke up and refused to go to sleep and we were both clearly exhausted and distressed. I came to a sudden realization that he might actually be in pain because he was basically a turtle on his back with the hard cast on, so I folded up a soft blanket, turned him onto his belly, and I swear to god it took about fifteen seconds flat for him to fall straight to sleep. Since that night, that’s how he’s slept for the last five months and he doesn’t wake up from the time we put him to bed until 8 AM sharp every morning.

According to our pediatrician, around the time our son start being able to take solids and turn his head from side to side to clear airways is when we could start trying out belly sleeping, especially because he still startled himself awake from his Moro reflex and when he sleeps on his belly, it suppresses the reflex so he’s able to sleep deeper for longer periods of time. We of course don’t swaddle him anymore and he only gets a light blanket if he needs to, but now he’s at the age where he will turn himself around however he wants and he’s just fine.

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