Posting here mainly to vent after the sixth night wake-up of our sick one-year-old while my husband snores.

My husband and I had very little marital issues up until the birth of our first child together. He mostly cooked, did his own laundry, paid for a cleaning service, and more. I genuinely felt like our domestic duties were split fairly.

Cut to the birth of our son and I was immediately saddled with 100% of the nights despite many conversations about my desire for him to take over mornings (he always gets up around 5am so I can sleep uninterrupted). I went so far as to purchase and organize a second set of everything for his downstairs office/guest room so this could be done—extra crib, sheets, clothes, blankets, towels, etc. He never used it. It sat at the top of our steps until I finally put it away myself.

I even used to pump, keep up my over supply so he had bottles to give and had a stocked freezer for this very purpose. All while only getting 2-3 hours of sleep at a time for MONTHS.

At the time I justified the brunt of childcare falling on my lap because he was working long hours at a startup and I was only working part-time. However now that I am working more, watching my son full time, and going back to school to get a secondary degree, having to study late at night after my son goes to bed, I am STILL doing nights by myself.

Even more infuriating, if I’m not in bed and am trying to get work done for class, he will text me to let me know our son is up crying and I didn’t respond in a quick enough matter of time and it’s interrupted his sleep.

I’m so beyond resentful of him it’s destroyed everything I felt we had in marriage. He’s a good dad during the day, our son loves him, but he’s not a partner. He hasn’t even done a fraction of the work I’ve done and honestly I want to leave once I’m financially stable again, but I don’t want to do that to my son.

Anyways, there’s not really a point to this other than to express my growing resentment and frustration. I never thought I’d be in this situation either. I thought I married one of the “good” ones, but having a child has changed our marriage for the worst and I don’t know how it will recover.

TLDR: my son is one-year-old and my husband has never done a night shift despite us both working and me going back to school. I’m burnt out and resentful, this isn’t the man I married.

OH. Editing to add that I do basically 100% of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, food shopping, and household management.

I was on the fence about going to this postpartum baby yoga class near me because it's pretty expensive, $30 for an hour whereas all the other classes at this studio are $20 for 90 minutes. And money is really tight right now. But I thought, what the hell, I'll treat myself to one class and see what it's all about.

Class was at 10:45 so I started to get ready around 9 am. Got myself showered and dressed while baby was napping. Baby woke up at 9:45, I changed her, fed her, got her dressed in this cute little outfit to show her off, put her down under her baby gym while I ate breakfast. She was in a great mood and I was feeling proud of myself for leaving plenty of time to get ready. Got all her stuff together, diaper bag, change of clothes just in case, grabbed my yoga mat. At 10:40 just as I was getting ready to put her in her carrier and walk out the door (later than I was hoping to leave but the yoga studio is just down the street) she starts crying and rooting. I'm not proud to say, I immediately burst into tears.

I considered trying to show up late -- surely since she had just eaten 45 minutes ago this would be a short feed -- but that didn't pan out because she ended up staying on the boob until 11:20. I emailed asking if I could move my reservation to next week but I'm not hopeful since I didn't get my email out until after class had started.

So now I'm out $30 and my baby is all dressed up with nowhere to go. I feel like a complete idiot for thinking this was a good idea. Learn from my mistakes, don't try to go to mom & baby activities before 6 months. Save your money and stay home.

I have always had some health anxiety but now that I’m a mom I’m just so extremely scared of getting sick and dying.
Has anyone else had the same experience?
And yes, I have a therapist etc!

I’ll keep it simple since there’s no way around it. The hospital, Memorial Hospital down in FL, is charging us $27k for delivery our baby. The hospital is out of network for the baby but the hospital was in network for mom for the c-section.

Bottom line, apparently we had to find a hospital that was in network for both mom and baby prior to any of this so that we could get covered by both companies. As a surprise to no one we did not know that and now we are being billed $27k.

We already sent an appeal to the insurance which got denied, the hospital just points back at the insurance, and we have no idea what else to do. Looking for any advice from people in similar situations.

Also, out of curiosity, in a situation like this, what are you supposed to do during birth? Get the c-section at the designated hospital and then somehow convince the doctors to transport the baby to a different hospital that is in network for them?? Genuinely, this is baffling, i think i would have been better off sending my wife away to canada or something for the 9 months and then have her come back after everything was done 🫩

how do you feel about it?

Starting out by saying that me and my MIL have a good relationship and she is a good person but jesus she sucks with babies.

She only had one kid and my baby is 3 month old, she just doesn't listen. I tell her he is getting tired she says she is going to try to make him sleep but gives up after about 3 minutes into soothing him.

She puts toy after toy after toy on his face and think that's playing. She literally put him in his carrier and just stood there looking at him singing thinking he would just fall asleep.

How do you deal with your in laws or family overall when they are helping you taking care of the baby? I am a FTM so nothing that I would actually appreciate more than a more experienced mother showing me some tricks or sharing this heavy job with me.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? I’m really struggling with what happened to me yesterday morning and I honestly haven’t felt safe in my body since.
My son is 4 months old and usually wakes before my 2-year-old daughter. Yesterday morning, I got up with him and brought him out to the living room, where I put him on his foam play mat with his Kick & Play piano. I lay down next to him and ended up falling asleep.
At some point, my son started crying, which woke my daughter up. She got out of bed and came looking for me but couldn’t find me. Both of my children were then crying/screaming and apparently in hysterics for around 5–10 minutes before I finally woke up.
What has really frightened me is that I have absolutely zero recollection of any of it. I didn’t hear my son crying, I didn’t hear my daughter get out of bed, and I have no memory of them crying or screaming beside me. I only know how long it went on because our security camera picked up the audio.
Normally I am VERY easy to wake, even when I’m in a deep sleep. If my kids cry, especially right next to me, I would normally wake almost immediately. That’s why this has really shaken me.
For context, I recently started taking 25 mg of sertraline. I hadn’t been drinking alcohol and I hadn’t taken anything else that night/morning that could have sedated me.
I did contact 13HEALTH afterwards and they advised me to see my GP rather than treating it as a medical emergency, but I’m still really scared because this was so completely out of character for me, however my gp says she has no idea what could have caused it cause i didn’t have any symptoms of a seizure or stroke.

Has anyone else experienced suddenly sleeping extremely deeply or being unusually difficult to wake, especially after starting sertraline? I’m not looking for anyone to diagnose me — I’d just really like to hear from people who have genuinely experienced something similar, because I feel really unsettled and alone after this.

Granted I’ve never had high libido but I’m 8 weeks PO and breastfeeding and have zero and it’s taking a strain on my marriage

Edit: strain mainly bc it’s been an issue for the past 10-15 years. Maybe hormone imbalance but I have zero libido like I could go a year without and not care. Also we did not do it during pregnancy. So it’s been 9 months since our last time.

He does help out, I’m a newly SAHM and he wakes up with our toddler, gets him ready and takes him on a bike ride and lets me sleep in or feed baby. Then he’ll work. He helps cook dinner most of the time. He does some chores. And he will give toddler a bath and put him to sleep which can take a couple hours sometimes. Baby is BF and very colicy and needs me and takes hours to go to sleep so I’m just always too tired to want to do anything at 10pm

Our first baby is about 6 weeks old. Due to a lot of factors we are currently triple feeding him.

Therefore, he gets a lot of cold formula and pumped breastmilk out of the fridge unheated.
Several times now while family has been over they’ve seen me get a bottle straight out of the fridge and give it to him. They act like they’ve seen a second coming of Christ and can’t believe he’ll drink a cold bottle.

Before having the baby we saw all the bottle warmers and such and figured babies probably preferred warm ones but never thought too hard about it.

Is this really that big of a deal? Are we unknowingly really lucky not having to heat milk/formula up at 3 am or while we’re out in public?

I would love to hear from others about their experiences with cold vs. warm feedings.

I posted here a few weeks ago about my MIL planning a huge welcome party for our 5-month-old during our 2+ week visit. Well, we're finally home, and after the entire trip I feel like the party was only one part of a much bigger issue: I completely lost control of my baby's routine and my own parenting boundaries while we were there.

My MIL loves having people around and absolutely adores the baby, but there seemed to be zero consideration for naps, bedtime or overstimulation. There were constantly people visiting, wanting to hold him and interact with him, and whenever I took him away because he was tired, it was always “he likes attention!” or pressure to bring him back out. On top of that she talks SO loud when the baby is sleeping in the next room. Zero regard for a 5 month old.

The final straw was our last night. My baby already had a cough and congestion and we went to my husband's grandma's house at 8:30 PM even though I said it felt too late. By almost 11 PM he still hadn't slept, and I was sitting in another room holding my exhausted, uncomfortable baby trying to settle him. My MIL actually came in and told me to “come socialize.”

That was the moment I thought: WTF am I doing?
I knew throughout this trip when he needed a nap. I knew when he was overstimulated. I knew when something was too late for him. But I kept second-guessing myself because I didn't want to be the difficult DIL constantly taking the baby away or saying no.

We are finally home and I'm DONE doing that. If he needs to sleep, he sleeps. If he's overstimulated, I take him away. If something doesn't work with his schedule, we don't do it. Adults wanting time with him doesn't outweigh what he needs.

I have already told my husband, who agreed that future visits there will be much shorter because this trip clearly did not work for us.

But I'm sitting here in the middle of the night holding my congested baby who’s sleeping on me, feeling so guilty because I feel like I spent two weeks prioritizing everybody else's feelings over my own instincts as his mother. I could literally sit here and cry but that won’t do anyone any good right now.

Has anyone else had this happen when staying with family? How did you reset boundaries without becoming the “difficult” daughter-in-law who apparently never lets anyone see the baby?

Thank you in advance.

I really didn’t think I could experience gender disappointment. But I found out we are having our second boy. We only want two kids, so this is it for us. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t incredibly disappointed and grieving the daughter I thought I would have. I don’t doubt I will love this baby boy so much, just like my first; but I cannot pretend I’m not insanely disappointed and sad that I will never have a daughter. I have a great relationship with my mom and wanted to have that with a daughter.
Those who have boys; what did you do to help you overcome your gender disappointment? What are things I can look at as positives moving forward knowing I’ll be a boy mom?

I’m still pretty freshly postpartum (5 weeks) and I’m exclusively pumping. I’m 25 pounds heavier than my pre pregnancy weight and although I’m trying not to stress about it right now, the number on the scale is in the back of my mind. Is it even possible to lose weight while breast feeding? I want to get back to lifting weights and I do go for nightly walks with my family. I know my body did an amazing thing and is still doing an amazing thing by breast feeding but I’d also like to feel good about myself.

Hey folks,

My kiddo was born with pretty a severe hypospadias. The opening of his urethra was all that way at the bottom of his penis and his penis was kind of tethered down by his foreskin. We were told it would be a two stage surgery. We have been through the first stage already and the surgery went great. They moved skin around and untethered everything. Now we have to do round two where they will use the foreskin to help form the urethra. This surgery is going to be much more involved than the first one. He will have to keep the catheter in for two full weeks (the first time was one week.) My kid had his first surgery at 2.5 years and will be having his second at 3.5 years

I am wondering if anyone on here has dealt with their child going through a severe hypospadias surgery and if you might have any advice. Was there anything in particular that you found to helpful with the lead up to surgery? We have been talking about it a lot with him and reading Madeline with him. He talks about getting his surgery quite often and in a positive way. I just know day of he is gonna be scared and its gonna break my heart.

Also, do you have any advice post surgery? The double diaper situation was such a nightmare last time. I ended making a bunch of diapers with catheter holes and tape around the holes to prevent any kind of leaking of the interior absorbent stuff. Did anyone one try anything else? Simply running the catheter around the outside of the first diaper and into the second? Cloth diapers? Did anything help during changes to calm the kiddo? My kid is sooooo strong and I just want to avoid having to restrain him during changes and risking him accidentally hurting himself resisting.

Any advice on any aspect of dealing with the lead up or surgery itself is so very appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Cheers,

Franky

Anyone else experience this? I’m not concerned, just curious. My baby’s adjusted age is 10 weeks, and chronological age is 16 weeks.

Probably around 2 months home, I’d let my in-laws watch him for a few hours. It was nice, but now, I can’t stand to even be away that long. I think part of it is that he’s more alert now, and I feel like if I’m distressed without him, he must miss me too.

I also went back to work recently and have someone who babysits him in my house while I work from home. I hate it lol. I just want to take care of him.

How did crawling happen for your baby? I feel like my baby wants to crawl so badly but he can’t. He army crawls to get to toys/people/the cat but I can’t get him to actually crawl. Hes 9 month old tomorrow so I know he’s not behind but he is getting so frustrated.

Hi!

Looking to hear from anyone with a very low Bishop score. I’m a third time mom at almost 40 weeks. My first two births were spontaneous around 39 weeks. This baby is measuring bigger but my bishop score for the past two weeks has remained 0.

I’m on the waitlist for an induction but very anxious. Would appreciate similar stories!

My son just turned 12 months old last week. From about 6 weeks old, he started only being able to sleep while contact napping with myself or my husband.

For about 4-5 months I saw this as a giant problem we needed to fix and spent so much time stressing about it and trying different “solutions”.

Now he’s 1 he still loves a contact sleep but will sleep elsewhere. But we now co sleep at night and he’s on mostly 2 naps a day but sometimes 1 and when I’m at home I’m so excited to lie down with him for his naps.

Looking back I’m kicking myself that I was so worried about it and stressed every time I rested with him. I honestly feel so happy every time I’m snuggled with him and especially now he’s at daycare and I’m back at work, I feel like that time at night we get to be close makes up for being away from each other during the day. I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way 🩷 just sharing in case anyone else going through the earlier sleep regressions is obsessing the way I used to!

I’ve always had sleeping troubles. My LO slept through the night when he was 2 months old, but since 3 months he now wakes 3ish times a night. I don’t know if its PPA, or what, but after I feed him I cannot go back to sleep. All I’m thinking about is how as soon as I get comfortable and sleep, he will wake up again. I usually fall asleep for 10-30 minutes until he wakes again. He starts waking at 3am and we usually get up for the day between 6 and 7. My husband is on a new work schedule where he gets up at 3am. Even today my baby didn’t wake up, but my husband’s alarm went off at 3. I tried to go back to sleep for over 2 hours, tossing and turning, no phone. Could not sleep. Baby woke at 5:30 and I just cried. Husband or baby sleeping in another room is not an option as we live in a 1 bedroom apartment. Husband offered to start sleeping on the couch but that makes me feel terrible. I can get 5 hours per night maybe a little more if I just totally give up on going back to sleep? I feel like the stress of trying to go back is what’s getting to me. I also just lost my health insurance so that’s especially inconvenient. Any support or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Can I ever wear my hair down again and have my big earrings? My 8 month old grabs everything he can and pulls my hair lol. I like to do my hair but now I just wear it everyday in a bun.

So, these thoughts have been stuck on my mind for a while, I figure it might help me process better to write them down. Trigger warning: my story mentions sexual harassment.

For the longest time during my teenager years, I did not like my parents. Growing up, I gradually forgave them (reasons to follow), because I finally realized they were adults who made mistakes, just like every adult in this world.

It started when I was sexually harasses by someone close to the family. 14 year old me was just hanging out in my room, when this man, who had hung out with my family, gone on day trips with us numerous times, came in and started to kiss and touch my body. Everyone was downstairs. I did not make a sound. I couldn’t even break away, I just sat there feeling helpless, then quietly walked to the bathroom after the incident. Thankfully it was just inappropriate touching, no more than that, and it happened only once. Every single time he showed up next, I’d hide in the bathroom the whole time, or stayed downstairs with my parents. They did not know anything. To this day, a lifetime later, only my husband knows about this incident.

My parents were financially indebted to the man. They thought of him as such a generous, super dependable friend of the family, who helped them out in time of need. I felt ashamed, and I felt like it was my responsibility to keep quiet so as to keep my parents from going bankrupt (14 year old me had no concept of money and just thought my parents would be in tremendous problem if he suddenly decided to get his money back). That it was my fault I did not know how to protect myself.

Growing up a little bit more, I started to understand it was not my fault. That it was my parents fault for not protecting me. To let that man freely be anywhere he wanted to be in my own home. And then I discovered my mom had an affair with him. I did not know the whole extend of the affair. I heard her on the phone with him, talking about meeting up somewhere and definitely doing shady sh!t. I started realizing that her behaviors had been strange for a while, so this had gone on probably for months, or years, who know. I didn’t want to know anymore than that conversation I overheard, so I shut myself down. I hated my mom. Somehow I also hated my dad for not knowing anything about everything that was going on.

I barely talked to my parents in those years. Coming home, I ate, I cleaned, I studied for my college test, I existed in the house but not having much connection with my parents. They chalked it up to me being a teenager, and tolerated my behaviors with occasional complaints. I still remember like it was yesterday, when I won an academic award (they announced the news through the phone, and my mom was the one who picked it up). She ran to me to let me know, and she hugged me tight, saying she was proud of me. I didn’t hug her back, I said nothing. She let me go, we stood in awkward silence for a moment, then she left. I could see her feeling hurt. I was hurt too, thinking maybe I should have behaved differently. But I couldn’t show any emotion. Deep down, I thought this life was hell. I couldn’t see a day when these torturing, conflicting thoughts would ever leave my head.

Fast forward to college, I had had a few short term relationships. The one that stuck with me for a few years, on and off, was a toxic one. After graduation, I met my now husband, who taught me what it was like to be in a healthy relationship. I finally saw what was wrong with my family, had some guesses for why my mom had behaved the way she did, and then I began the journey to heal myself (well not fully though), and forgive my parents.

There are more details to my parents story, but I don’t want to go into right now. Fast forward to about two years ago, I had been away from home for along time and finally had an extended period of time living with my mom again as she helped me taking care of my kids. She told me that the man (who sexually harassed me) was now in jail, because he scammed the wrong people for money. She still doesn’t know what happened to me, so she was surprised as I showed no sympathy for the guy. Although I did forgive her, I did not forget what happened. I gave her a moment of silence, then switched topic and we never talked about it again.

It gave me absolutely no pleasure at all knowing that the guy was in jail. There is a hole in me that maybe got smaller over time, but it’s still a hole. Right now it still feels like it’s never going to close, so I still carefully tread around it, avoiding it whenever I feel triggered. I have never mentioned this to anyone but my husband. Recently, for some reasons these thoughts have resurfaced. Maybe it is because I have little children now, and I have started to feel more protective of them, as the more grown up they are, the more they will be exposed to risks like that outside in the world. It gives me anxiety just thinking about what could be hurting them. What I can do better than my parents, is to hold them close and don’t let them ever be in a risky situation. Teach them about their bodies, teach them skills to protect themselves and find help. All those stuff have probably been triggering to me.

Anyhow, it has been a long rant. It feels good to get those out of my head. Thank you for reading til the end.

and this sucks. Or, first real day at work - I have been doing part-time from home with the occasional full training or conference day, but now is when I will be away continuously the whole day for the foreseeable future. I miss my baby.

My 14 month old daughter started daycare last week. I’m blessed to live in Canada where we have a 12 month mat leave, and I decided to extend for 2 more month.
I got back to work today and man, do I not want to… I work 14 hours a week, and will have 14 hours a week of internship + many hours of school work (I will officially be a therapist in April 2027).
I feel like my paid work will only make me earn pocket money, but will make me busy, stressed and less present for my daughter.
On the other hand, if I don’t go back to work, I will have to depend on my husband more, and it stresses me. I’ve always pride myself to be independent. I’m also in a circle where women are expected to work and I feel like I would be judged for my choice.
So I guess I’m wondering if anybody was in a similar situation before and what did you do ? Are you happy with what you did ? Would you make some things different ? Thanks ❤️

My mom meal prepped for my first and it was a huge help when I had a c-section. My second is due in early January and will be a second c-section. It’s a little different this time as my mom won’t be able to do the prep for me and I have a toddler. For those who have meal preped for postpartum, what were the family faves? bonus if it landed well with a consistenly inconsistent picker eater.

Hi everyone,

Mum to an 11 day old baby, and sadly I’ve got 0 breastmilk supply so he’s exclusively bottle fed. We’ve been using ready made formula, and now have a Nuby cool system to move to powdered formula.

My question: the scoop for actimel powder doesn’t nicely empty into the Nuby powder dispenser. Are there any recommended tips and tricks to make that easier that anyone’s aware of?

Thanks so much, love this community, it’s been so helpful so far 💜

Hey guys, I’m getting the itch to take my 6 week old camping. The thought makes me excited but then I think about all the things we need to bring and get a little overwhelmed… please tell me all the products you brought and or bought for your baby that made your life easier for camping.