By the end of next year, you will be a seasoned parent. You’ll be a pro at a lot of things. Not in that “Oh, yeah, babies are hard” kind of way. More like “I understand that this stage takes around 2 days to pass. I believe it will pass because there was a time 3 days ago that the very same thing happened and it passed.” Timelines and stages will be etched in your memory.
But if you haven’t had a baby before, visualizing what’s ahead and asking others about their experiences, plus reading credible information from reliable sources, can make those early days easier. Still, it is really useful to have at least some basic information about what is typical in the first few weeks so that, when you are caught off guard, you can refer back to it.
The number 1 thing moms and dads and other parents learn when they become new parents? Not much is under your control. You can, though, take a few steps to set yourself up for as much success as possible.
Making sure that you and the people who come in close contact with your baby have all their vaccinations is super important. Vaccine-preventable infections such as whooping cough (pertussis) and even the flu can cause serious symptoms in all people, especially babies, so I recommend all the vaccines on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine schedule. (Please see the 2019 Recommended Immunizations for Children from Birth Through 6 Years Old on pages 156 and 157. For the most current and updated schedule, please visit www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/easy-to-read/child-shell-easyread.html.)
Now may not be the best time to take your baby to the company picnic or holiday party. Let your family members hold your new one, but first make sure they are not sick. A trip to a crowded store is not on my list of recommended activities. But if you want to go outside, take your baby on a short walk in the stroller with an appropriate weather canopy and an extra layer of warmth, if needed.
Make sure that all who touch or hold your baby first thoroughly wash their hands, each time, with warm, soapy water. Don’t be shy about asking your friends and family members to do this. They will all understand that you are trying to keep the germs away from your newborn.
The first month after your baby is born is not the time to expose your baby to recycled air on an airplane or around a host of people you do not know (and germs) in the airport. How often have you gotten sick after traveling? I don’t recommend air travel until babies have had their first set of vaccines, which can happen at 6 weeks at the earliest.
Babies can be slippery little people. Make sure you have a hand on your baby at all times if she is on an elevated surface. I have, unfortunately, had parents call my office multiple times after their babies fell out of beds or off of changing tables. It scares me when I see a baby by herself on an examination table in the office. You never know when she is going to roll slightly or propel herself in one direction or another. It’s always important to keep one hand on your baby at all times.
When it comes to your baby’s sleep, a lot of new products come and go in the mommy circles. Don’t be fooled. Even if “everyone” is using the newest sleep gadget, it doesn’t mean it’s safe or approved for sleep. Don’t use blankets or stuffed animals in the sleep area. Make sure swaddle blankets don’t cover your baby’s mouth. Back to sleep is best. Avoid side or stomach sleep positions.
One of my favorite things to do is see new babies in the office. As your baby grows, your pediatrician will offer what we call anticipatory guidance, not just to prevent injury and illness but also to help your baby reach his full potential when it comes to development, growth, and wellness.
At each doctor’s appointment, we weigh your baby, perform a physical examination, and talk with you about what is going well, what you need help with, and what you can expect until the next visit. We also take a look at vaccination status and make sure your baby received the newborn screening in the hospital, that the hearing screening was passed, and that there were no heart concerns while your baby was there.
Remember, your baby’s doctor is there to help you and guide you as you navigate those challenging early days.
The first 2 weeks are all about—you guessed it—learning the feeding patterns and habits. New babies tend to do a lot of cluster feeding during these weeks, when they just finish feeding and then seem to want to feed again 20 minutes later. They also sleep sporadically and are just getting used to their environment outside the womb. Here are the top 4 things parents consistently tell me are tough about those first 2 weeks and what you can do to address them.
Diaper rashes are very common because your baby’s outer layer of skin is significantly thinner than an adult’s, making it more vulnerable to damage. The diaper area is dark, warm, and wet—the perfect place for yeasts and bacteria to breed. Your baby is pooping and peeing all day long. Plus, the materials in most baby wipes can be super irritating, even if they are labeled as natural.
It’s typical for all babies to spit up, and most of the time, it is just a laundry issue. Every once in a while, though, it can cause discomfort for babies and can make successful breastfeeding difficult.
When you are a new parent, sleep deprivation is your biggest enemy. If you can get the sleep you need, everything is much better.
You’re all hyped up on hormones and anxiety. In the very beginning, the adrenaline coursing through your body really messes with your sleep. In the beginning, you will notice every little sound your baby makes, making it really difficult to get the shut-eye you need. By the time all that dies down, you’re left exhausted and feeling behind the eight ball.
Plus, you tend to have a lot of family around, and that can tire you out, as you are always feeling like a host. At my core, I am an introvert, and that personality trait did not change the second I had a baby. If you are an introvert too, the same will be true for you. In fact, your natural tendency will probably get stronger.
You’ll need a specific plan given that the postpartum period tends to be a particularly social one. When you have a new little one, people want to make you dinner and help you out as much as possible. They want to see the new baby and hold the new baby. Family, especially, wants to spend precious time with you right away. They also want to socialize with you. They are excited about your bundle of joy and want to talk all about it.
Add in that your baby snoozes all day and is awake all night and—boom!—the perfect recipe for disaster.
Sometimes the daytime sleeping tricks you into feeling as if you could get a bunch of chores done during the day. Your energy is up, and you feel as if you might as well get out of the house or at least put in a load of laundry. But then nighttime comes and everything goes haywire. Unless your houseguests are there to be on night duty, it’s just you (and your partner, I hope) up all night trying to figure things out and soothe your new baby and not disturb your houseguests.
When babies are first born, they don’t do much. They sleep and eat and then sleep some more. When they are awake, it can be difficult to know how or if to stimulate them. Should you buy a bunch of developmental toys? Does your baby need fancy activity mats or baby flash cards? Not necessarily.
They were straight-up petrified. A mom- and dad-to-be, sitting there on the couch in my pediatrics office. Wide-eyed and hopeful, hopped-up on information about “this year’s best stroller.” Filled to the brim with platitudes their friends and family all offered about what to expect when the timer dinged on their little bun in the oven. “It’ll be hard, but you’ll love it. Enjoy your sleep now, ’cause it will never be the same again.”
They had heard it all for months, and now they were looking for real answers as to what would happen to their lives in those first few weeks. Real answers to the steps they could actually take to prepare themselves for the new little baby who was about to enter their world and turn it completely upside down.
I see it all the time in prenatal meet and greet appointments in my clinic—the fear, the trepidation, to bring up the main question that is on (pretty much) everyone’s mind: How do I get my baby to sleep? Good news is, I’ve got the answer. Before we get to the strategy part, these 4 bits of knowledge are key.
Babies don’t realize we’re living in the modern world. They have no idea that you have a limited maternity leave. It doesn’t matter to them that you’ve already lived 35 years and have a social life. They certainly don’t care if you have a certain level of sleep you’re used to. Their needs and desires are the same as the needs babies had thousands of years ago.
When they are first born (and for the first 3 months afterward), they want only to keep things going as they were in that blissful, dark, loud, warm, cozy womb from which they just came.
Newborns have their days and nights completely switched up. Before birth, your baby is swayed by the motion of your body throughout the day, lulled to sleep by the small and large movements you make. At night, it’s party time. If you are pregnant and reading this right now, you know exactly what I mean. It’s reassuring on some level to feel a baby kicking around all night long, but it’s also hard to get any shut-eye some nights. All throughout the night, your body is not in motion, so your baby thinks it’s time to get active. Once you deliver your newborn, it takes a while for him to catch the drift that night is actually night and day is actually day.
You realize you live in the modern world. I know, I know, you already know that. That’s why you’re probably scared about this in the first place, right? But a new parent’s perspective gets thwarted easily. Somewhere along the line, people tend to forget a basic premise: this is not like all the modern things you typically do. They start trying to fix things instead. They try to make their baby get onto a sleep schedule starting week 1 (I think that bedtime routines and sleep schedules can be a great thing; they’re just not the solution really early on for most babies). They buy every product known. They fight and fight to get their baby to sleep.
I’ve been there too. I’ve gotten frustrated with my baby, with my husband, and with the whole lack of sleep situation. Even though I was already an expert in baby health and care when my first child was born, I lost sight sometimes in the early days that sometimes you can’t fix it. You just have to let it ride out, for a little while. The times I was able to accept that truth in my early parenthood experience were my most successful.
Let me give you a nonbaby example: think of the last really challenging exercise class or workout you did. The one when you had to psych yourself up even to make it down to the studio or to strap on those running shoes, because you just knew that there would be a moment when you’d think, “This is so hard.” Think of the moment you had to tell yourself, “Just keep breathing; use your resources (distracting yourself with music, focusing on your form, or thinking about your goal).” Think about how, at some point, your options were to give up or to keep pushing through.
There wasn’t anything you could do to make it substantially better; you just had to keep going. That’s kind of how, on some level, you have to approach new baby sleep. In the beginning, there are only so many things you can control (we’ll get to these in a second). Instead, you have to focus more on your own resources so that you can get through the tough time with resilience.
Your baby may not do what the baby sleep books tell him to do. If someone tells you that she can get every baby to sleep well every night using her methods, you’ve gotta be a little wary. I mean, come on, you are smart enough never to buy that when it comes to anything else in your life (think get rich quick schemes and perfect beauty tricks), so why would it be true for baby sleep, when families and babies are all so individual? No, babies are like Frank Sinatra—they do it their way.
A child’s temperament is a huge influencer of how well he sleeps from the very, very beginning. Environment and parents sure help, but in the end, temperament always plays a huge role. Some babies are just better sleepers than others. My first baby was all kinds of colicky. She just did not sleep at night. I worked and worked and worked at it, and eventually, she got it down, but it was definitely a full-time job for a while. My second daughter, on the other hand, followed the baby sleep handbook. She fell asleep easily, woke happily, and then did it all again a few hours later.
I’m not telling you this to scare you. I’m telling you because if you have a baby who doesn’t like to sleep or has a hard time getting into the rhythm, you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. It is not your fault. It’s just the way your sweet baby is wired. One day, your baby will probably be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But for those first 5 to 6 months of life, it might be a little rough in the sleep department. Repeat after me: “I will get through this.”
Feeling defeated? Don’t. There is a way to get through the throes of newborn sleeplessness with grace and resilience.
Create an environment that is conducive to good sleep at night. Make the room dark; get the white noise going. Watch online videos of how to soothe your baby.
Don’t expect that it will work perfectly. You want to avoid feeling stuck, as if you have no tricks up your sleeve. Get the basics down ahead of time and add to your toolbox as you go, making lists of calming tricks if you need to and putting them onto your fridge or phone so that you can refer to them as you get familiar with what works for your baby.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies be put to bed by themselves onto their backs on a flat surface with a tightly fitted sheet and no extra bedding or pillows to prevent sudden infant death syndrome. I wholeheartedly agree with this recommendation.
If you use something other than a swaddle blanket to wrap your baby, you’ll likely look on a site such as Amazon or Target for advice on what to purchase. Like most other gear for babies, if an item gets ten thousand 5-star customer reviews, it’s a great place to start, but it still might not be the best for your baby. You might have to try things out to see what will work for you and your family. Remember to check out safety information on sites such as Consumer Reports (www.consumerreports.org)—just because something is available online does not mean that it is a safe product for a baby. When swaddling, make sure that the baby’s hips and legs are slightly flexed, instead of fully straightened, and that the legs are not too tightly wrapped. This prevents problems with the development of the hips. Sleep sacks can keep the hips in a better position.
This is the most important tip I can give parents about their newborn and sleep. When I finished residency, I thought I would be all set to deal with sleep deprivation. I was used to staying up all night long, sometimes for up to 30 hours at a time for one shift. But the thing I forgot when I got into the whole new baby thing was that I was also accustomed, at some point, to having uninterrupted rest for hours at a time. Plus some weekends off. That is very different from the sinking feeling that you may never sleep again when your baby is brand-new. While you can’t completely control how your baby sleeps, you can make sure you optimize your own sleep. Here’s how.
You need to feed your baby really frequently in the early days and weeks, but you don’t need to be the only one who soothes her in between feeding sessions. That means your partner (or someone else—a family member or a postpartum doula) needs to step in and become soother in chief for a while. Otherwise, you will be at higher risk for postpartum depression and anxiety, and possibly resent the people around you, and be less able to enjoy your baby during the day. If (again, back to our ancestors) you lived with all 20 of your favorite relatives in one common dwelling, this would be easy. In our culture of isolation, it can be tricky for some new moms to find help, but it is so very worth it.
Even if you have someone designated as a soother in chief every other night for 1 week, it will do wonders for your mental and physical health. The whole point is having a time in the future you can look forward to when you know you will get sleep (even if that time is 2 days away).
While your baby is still in the snoozy phase, try to put your baby to sleep while he is still slightly awake so that he gets used to falling asleep on his own.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies sleep in their parents’ room for at least the first 6 months after birth but not in their parents’ bed. Evidence has shown that room sharing is associated with a reduced risk of sudden infant death. No one who is high or drunk should sleep in the same bed with a child. Ideally, pets and other children should not be sleeping in the bed either. Remove all blankets, pillows, and bumper pads from your baby’s crib. Babies should be placed onto their back on a firm sleep surface, such as a firm crib mattress with a fitted sheet. Don’t sleep in recliners or couches with your baby. The risk of unintentional suffocation is higher than in a bed.
Be patient with your baby and with yourself. For some babies, sleep is great right away, but for others, you’ve got to wade through the murky water until you get to the fresh stream a little farther ahead. Use your resources and mindfulness, just like you would for any other challenging obstacle in your life. Of course, if your baby seems excessively fussy or you are concerned about illness, seek help from your baby’s pediatrician. Get help from a lactation consultant if things seem to be haywire in the feeding department.
Lana and Peter were parents who had to wait it out. Lana read every book under the sun and hired in-home doulas to help her during the night, but her baby still did not sleep well. She listened to her friends talk about their angelic babies and wished she had the same experience they did, but, in the end, there was nothing she could do but give it time.
Now that Lana’s baby is 2 years old, those sleepless nights are a distant memory, but in the moment, they seemed to go on forever.
“I remember the first time my daughter slept more than 4 hours at a time,” she told me. “I remember realizing there was nothing I did to make it finally happen. One day it just did.”
So is it possible for a newborn to “sleep like a baby”? Well, technically, yes. Newborns will sleep like the immature, womb-seeking, still developing humans they are. That’s the truth. Remember how primitive your baby’s needs are. Get your mind right. Get educated about how to soothe a baby and set up a sleep environment that optimizes rest for both of you. Above all, because babies aren’t modernizing anytime soon, make sure you get your sleep by forming a solid team around you from the get-go. That way, even if your baby isn’t quite up to speed on how to calm and sleep when he first arrives, you can teach him with patience and perspective until he finds his way.
During the day, baby swings can be super helpful if you are observing your baby in them and your baby is awake. Just remember that your goal is to get your baby to engage in less rocking and swaying during the day once you get your rhythm with feeding, so some times without those products are great. Also, they are not designed for sleep.
Carrying your baby has also been proven to reduce colic and, obviously, to help you bond with your baby.
There are a lot of options out there for carriers. I’m going to be honest and say that the long-piece-of-fabric varieties just never worked for me. I watched many tutorial videos on how to put them on, but my babies always “hated” them. The good news? This is an area in which the sky’s the limit, and the baby blogs are full of reviews.
He was holding her as if she might bite him, his arms outstretched and awkward, shoulders tense. The baby was crying, her arms also outstretched and flailing, as he tried to half bounce, half shush her. It was almost painful to watch.
“She doesn’t like me. She only wants her mom,” he told me at our first health supervision checkup in the office. “I’ve never been around babies. I don’t have any clue what to do with them.”
His face looked lost, surprised, and defeated. He felt as if he could not contribute and wondered if he would ever bond with the little alien being who had just arrived via his wife’s body. (I know this sounds strange, but the things that go through your mind as a new parent often are.)
My husband said he felt the same way when he held my daughter for the first time. Many new parents tell me they feel this way; unfortunately, it can be a self-perpetuating cycle of defeat when you feel as if each time it’s your turn to soothe your baby, your baby somehow gets crankier and crankier. You know how they say bees can smell fear? It’s clear that newborns can too. Well, maybe not smell it, but at least they can sense it. If you’re not relaxed as you try to relax them, they know it.
We spent 15 minutes that day walking through the basics of soothing a baby. In the end, he was by no means the baby whisperer, but he had the information and tools he needed to keep trying to bond with his little one.
Soothing your baby falls into 2 categories: getting ahold of yourself and then attending to your baby’s needs. You’ve heard the phrase on an airplane “Put the mask on yourself first”? That applies here as well. Earlier, we talked about getting your mind-set right when it comes to having a baby. Here we’ll talk about soothing your little one.
Our goal as parents should be to mimic the intrauterine environment from which they just came, which is dark, very loud (think blood rushing around and a loud heartbeat), almost constantly in motion (except when you are sleeping—that’s why babies tend to be more active in the evenings), and quite compact and secure.
She was already crying when I opened the door to the examination room. She sat defeated, her newborn snuggled closely in her arms, huge tears rolling down her cheeks. Try as she might, she could not get the latch right when she tried to breastfed. She told me she must be one of those “breastfeeding failures.” She had spent the past 4 days in pain as her baby clamped down onto her again and again. Now, exhausted and defeated, she wasn’t sure how to move forward.
I watched as she told me her story, her shoulders heaving as she took gulping breaths between sobs. I knew what she really meant: “I feel like I have already failed at this whole mother thing and I am less than a week into it. I am not the parent I’d hoped I would be.”
Breastfeeding is a parenting area ripe for disappointment. Society puts a ton of pressure on moms-to-be and then doesn’t educate them well before their babies are born on the potential pitfalls of this not-so-intuitive task. After birth, support from other experienced breastfeeders is usually minimal at home. Add in that we often put the onus on moms to do most of the day and night care within a family and—bam!—Stress City, here we come.
Of course, as a pediatrician, I support the Breast Is Best movement when possible. The benefits of breast milk and breastfeeding are super clear, and I want to help breastfeeding parents reach their breastfeeding goals. But those who cannot or do not breastfeed often feel (or are made to feel) as if they are somehow parenting failures because of their struggles or decisions in this one area.
Breastfeeding is not the only opportunity to feel, potentially, like a parenting failure. What about when we raise our voice at our toddler when we’re stressed or realize we’ve been ignoring our baby while we peruse our social media feed? How about the time my doctor friend missed her own kid’s case of pneumonia? Yeah, those feel like real Mother of the Year moments too.
What about the bigger, longer-term fears new parents have? That the core issues we deal with ourselves are going to royally ruin our kids in some way? Your mild anxiety (or your a-little-too-laid-back personality), your own parents’ failures, your lack of expertise in all things child related—all these insecurities can get in the way of doing your best day by day.
One mom in my office put it so well: “I handle multi-million-dollar sales transactions daily. I sit in a conference room with other business leaders and can influence their decision-making at the drop of a hat. But getting my toddler to put on her shirt? Somehow, I fail every day at doing that without getting flustered and losing my cool. It’s so demoralizing. I’m scared of what I’ll mess up when she gets older and it really counts.”
Social media feeds our worries on this as well. You’ve seen the articles: “10 Things That Will Mess Up Your Relationship With Your Teenager,” “The 5 Tips You Need to Raise Brave Girls.” They are well-intentioned, and they often have really useful information, but read enough of them and, in the end, they can leave you feeling stuck, not motivated, if consumed without the right perspective.
Our friends, our parents, and our significant others—pressure and guilt can come from all sides, piling on a sense that it’s all-or-nothing. That good enough is never enough. That only the best will do.
The real secret to successful parenting is understanding and dealing with our own personal struggles and pain points, not pretending they don’t exist or acting as if we just smile a little brighter, others won’t notice our humanity. Going to therapy, or to lactation, or to the pediatrician for help. Understanding we are not as in control as we think we are most of the time. That sometimes we do our best and take all the classes and read all the books and it still doesn’t work. Taking a look at our own “weaknesses” and fears—these are the things that really make a difference.
I looked that sobbing mom in the eye, took her hands, and told her what countless moms (including me) have needed to hear at some time or another: “You are an amazing mother. What or how you feed your baby does not define that. In fact, you can use that you overcame this challenge (either breastfeeding in the end or not) to show your baby how to be resilient in his own life. All moms have moments when they realize it is impossible to be flawless and that it is better, in the end, not to be. You are more than OK. You are just what your baby needs.”
Of course, that’s when I started tearing up right alongside her.
I knew some reassurance would help, but the look of relief that washed over that new mom’s face? It was stunning to see her whole body relax and her demeanor change.
Baby and mom ended up just fine. They found their way. We got mom the help she needed, but more important, we addressed one of the most foundational worries of motherhood directly.
The Day Your Baby Arrives 
I want to tell you that you are going to be an amazing mom. Don’t worry about being a perfect mom. Remember that on your best days and on your worst days. Remind yourself that your baby is a gift specifically meant for you. Don’t beat yourself up if just a few days or weeks into this thing called motherhood, you do not feel as if you are the parent you’d hoped you would be. None of us are. But you have the resources here to start you on your way.
Years from now, whether you’re tending to your 3-year-old’s scraped knee or patching up your teenager’s bruised ego, you’ll still see him as your little baby, and you’ll still remember the monumental moment you became his mom. You’ll remember holding him for the first time and telling him you’re going to try to be the best mom ever but that you’ll need a little grace along the way to do it.
Try your very best. Lean on your partner. Take time to reset when you need it. Deal with your own issues head-on; get the help you need to support yourself and provide yourself with the parenting tools that will allow you to rise above your most challenging days. Know your baby will learn the most about how to grow into a healthy adult as he watches you authentically work to take care of him to the best of your ability while, at the same time, making space to take care of yourself.
Remember, when you become a mother, you have a unique opportunity to learn from a whole lot of largely unavoidable mistakes—some that you’ll laugh about and some that you’ll cry about later on. You have a chance to develop true resilience, understanding yourself and your world more clearly in the process. You join a community of other women who have done the same and are stronger as a result. Lean into the opportunity. Learn to see it as a sometimes complicated but always beautiful journey, one that’s exciting, and challenging, and life changing, all at the same time. Your children will thank you for it when they’re navigating their own parenting paths years down the road.
