Today is the 7th January. A date associated with several different cultural events. Orthodox Christmas is being celebrated in Russia, Blue Ivy Carter shares a birthday with Christian Loboutin, and on this day in 2005, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston announced they were splitting after 4 years of marriage (waaaa!)
However for myself and my partner, today marks 1 month since the birth of our first child, Matilda, born at 9:21am on the 7th December 2017. As I am writing this, the first draft of a blog that I hope other new parents can enjoy, I can’t believe how quickly the month has flown by.
What advice would we give other new parents about to start their parenting journey after 40 weeks (or in our case almost 42 weeks, after Matilda decided to show up 12 days late)? Well the answer to that is, none. However, we will always offer advice to anyone who wants it. Why? The answer to this is simple, every baby is different. Every Mum is different and every Dad is different. Not one piece of advice could possibly match one family in the same way it matched another.
The first night.
We proudly took Matilda home at 1am, I fed her and then we wrapped her up in some blankets and put her into her Moses basket for the first time ready for her first night sleeping in our room. Well, that was the plan. However, Matilda didn’t want to sleep. Unless it was lying on Mummy’s chest. Mummy hadn’t slept properly for about 36 hours at this point, and did not feel comfortable co-sleeping. She was so tiny! Matilda cried and whined every time Mummy put her down. This was the first moment we both thought ‘oh no, is this what night times are going to be like for the next 6-12 months?’ We didn’t panic, think about it, Matilda had slept inside the womb, with the soothing tone of Mummy’s heartbeat for the last 9 months. This is the scariest thing Little Matilda has ever had to endure, including being pushed out during labour. We slept in shifts so there was always a parent awake, allowing Matilda to get some rest clinging to Mummy’s chest.
Why is this important to a blog about advice? This is because the next day we were given (actually had forced upon us) our first piece of unwanted advice. Upon hearing the story of our first sleepless night, a visitor claimed ‘oh you mustn’t do that, you will get Matilda into bad habits and find she will never sleep by herself, you don’t want that. Don’t give into her. Just ignore her if she cries, she will tire herself out.’ We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. Being told to ignore our daughter and leave her to cry, not even 48 hours old! Naturally, we ignored this advice, and that’s okay. As parents, we felt we wanted to make our little bundle of joy feel as comfortable and secure as possible, and leaving her to cry herself to sleep did not seem like the best way to achieve this.
So if you are a new parent reading this, and have had similar issues during your first few nights, do not be dictated to by others. Do what you want. You created this little miracle, if you want to cuddle your baby in your own bed to help them sleep, do it, and don’t feel pressured to conform to what worked for others. Your new arrival won’t be this little and precious forever, enjoy the snuggles, relish breathing in the intoxicating new baby smell from their head. You will find times you are on the brink of exhaustion, but you lie awake just staring at how beautiful the little being lying next to you is, unable to take your eyes off them despite your eyes burning from the tiredness. It will feel like you are the only 2 people in the world, and it’s brilliant.
Enjoy it new Mummy’s and Daddy’s xxx.