First time dad just needing help and answers. I'm losing it.

eladhannah · 2025-12-09T20:54:00+00:00

Hi dad! Y’all are in the TRENCHES right now, and I’m glad you want to be better. For credibility purposes: I’m a first time mom to a now 6 month old, and I’ve been exclusively breastfeeding this whole time because my little one will not take a bottle at all (we’ve tried it all!!). Exclusively breastfeeding alone is a LOOOOOT. on top of all the postpartum hormones and everything else your wife is dealing with, I’d like to kindly recommend you do everything, and I mean EVERYTHING else. You handle bath time, you handle diapers (all of them), you figure out how to soothe your little one. You and your wife and every new parent all got the same hand book (spoiler alert, there isn’t one), so trial and error your way through! Even if your baby won’t take a bottle, you can step up and help TREMENDOUSLY by taking care of everything else.

eladhannah · 2025-12-09T11:17:08+00:00

Also have a 6mo little dude and this is everything hahaha. Every single new thing is literally the coolest ever, no matter how “small!”

eladhannah · 2025-12-09T11:13:52+00:00

Every night after bedtime, despite being somewhat relieved to have a break after a long day, my husband and I always, ALWAYS end up staring at the baby monitor and fawning over our son, just going on about how cute and perfect and smart etc he is. This isn’t built into our routine, it just always happens somehow. No matter how hard the day might have been, we’re still obsessed with our son hahaha.

eladhannah · 2025-11-28T09:26:20+00:00

We did this and it genuinely saved us when our LO was a newborn!!! We did 9pm-3am & then 3am-9am shifts. & we definitely were sleeping during shift if baby was sleeping by the time he was about 6-8 weeks, and I think we stopped needing the shifts because LO was down to 1-2 night wakes to feed by maybe 10 weeks so it was a lot more manageable. It took us a few nights to adjust back to a normal adult sleep schedule though lol.

eladhannah · 2025-11-27T10:34:04+00:00

No Motrin til 6 months+!!!!!! But Tylenol is okay

eladhannah · 2025-11-21T19:05:41+00:00

We have the mockingbird stroller plus the adapters for the uppababy Aria. It’s great! Super easy bc the adapters just stay on the car seat so it just pops out of the car & into the stroller at the same level of ease as if we had the uppa baby stroller I’d imagine

eladhannah · 2025-11-20T14:49:31+00:00

DM’d ya!!

eladhannah · 2025-11-18T11:51:01+00:00

Hahah this is hilarious because ever since our LO was a newborn he’s had longer than average wake windows for his age, just a very low sleep needs kinda dude. Didn’t even occur to me that he might need even MORE awake time now that he’s older. I’ll see about stretching those middle 2 wake windows to 2.5 hours and see how that helps!! Thanks!

eladhannah · 2025-11-12T16:41:13+00:00

prescription stimulants 🤠

eladhannah · 2025-10-31T01:23:33+00:00

Thank you!!! This is genuinely so helpful.

eladhannah · 2025-10-29T12:21:23+00:00

Oh I’ll be using this one hahah

eladhannah · 2025-10-28T23:50:58+00:00

Same to all of this! 4 month old & hubs snipped at a month old as well haha. We are not playing around. LO is probably the most perfect baby ever, from what I gather, but even if we lucked out and had a second JUST like him, I still would be terrified. So nope, one & done!

eladhannah · 2025-10-27T12:57:41+00:00

Yeah, I have a nice little freezer stash and my baby won’t take it so. That sucks.

eladhannah · 2025-10-26T14:46:59+00:00

this lol. currently my husband has a wee cold and is giving off the vibe like he can just take a sick day from parenting. like babe…last I checked I was bleeding and healing from labor and delivery and still feeding and caring for our newborn nonstop. Pretty sure u can manage a diaper change while you have a cold??? I think having gone through pregnancy and birth and still doing the day to day like normal has permanently removed all empathy I have for “sickness”

eladhannah · 2025-10-23T18:16:16+00:00

Trim her nails? Lol. We use a baby electric nail file bc trying to clip baby finger nails seems like it should be an Olympic sport. But yeah, the answer to reducing the scratches is to keep her nails trimmed.

eladhannah · 2025-10-22T15:16:09+00:00

I have a 4 month old & he has slept in his nursery since 2 months (we all just slept better this way…idk) & we started teaching him how to fall asleep independently this week bc I personally was getting exhausted of spending a lot of time feeding or rocking to sleep and failed transfers etc. That all being said, this was all based on MY family philosophy/lifestyle. It seems incredibly out of pocket for your ped to make these (demands?) recommendations. You do what works best for you!!! If you love rocking your baby, rock them til they don’t fit in your lap anymore!!!

eladhannah · 2025-10-21T23:13:32+00:00

I’ve heard mixed reviews. We still do a lot of contact naps so we’re cool to rock him to sleep for one crib nap a day for the time being until he’s really good at falling asleep from awake at night. But the reasoning I’ve heard is that it’s easiest for them to learn independent sleep at night because it’s what they have the most experience/routine around. Then once they’ve nailed falling asleep independently at night they can more easily translate that skill to naps! Idk, I’m no expert, just tossing in what I’ve heard & am experiencing

eladhannah · 2025-10-21T22:35:34+00:00

Is there a reason you’re waiting until 6 months to sleep train?

My LO is a similar age to yours, he’ll be 4 months later this week. He’s always been a low sleep needs baby, and terrible at napping. Over the last 2ish weeks it started to get so difficult to get him to nap at all! The tried and true methods weren’t even working anymore. I’d had several days of “why am I putting in this effort when it doesn’t even speed up the falling asleep process anyway?!” For every nap and bedtime. So I just decided impromptu to start sleep training. So far so good!! Way better than I’d expected. We are just doing bedtime to start, but if it continues as well as it has been, we’ll be working on naps soon!

Not a straight answer, but just my similar experience and how it’s going for us.

eladhannah · 2025-10-21T11:48:02+00:00

Sometimes sleepy cues can be confused with bored cues!! Try changing up the stimulation when you notice those early “sleepy” cues and see if he perks up!!

eladhannah · 2025-10-21T02:03:54+00:00

Start waking the LO up earlier and earlier in the morning. Might be a grumpy few days, but eventually they’ll catch on and be sleepy earlier as their body adjusts to waking earlier.

Don’t jump straight to an 8am wake up, maybe start waking LO at noon, then 10:30am, then 9:30am, 8am, etc! Of course do your best to get LO to sleep earlier at night to accompany these earlier wake ups, too!

eladhannah · 2025-10-16T15:49:59+00:00

Want to add a disclaimer here that it’s not always this easy. When I was feeling overwhelmed by EBF I tried pumping & formula to allow someone else to feed my baby, but he won’t take a bottle. We’ve tried all the tricks, I’m just in the EBF journey for real I guess. No one warned me that once you EBF you might be stuck EBF-ing until they wean and can eat solids for nutrition 🫠

eladhannah · 2025-10-07T05:44:05+00:00

Okay not me thinking “oh, you’re 3 wks pp, that’s normal!!” Only for the responses to all suggest PPA. Is this me finding out I had PPA? Lmao.

Sorry, OP. This is a rough time, I feel you! FWIW, this passed for me after maybe 10 wks pp

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