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hi Sekhmet! congratulations! the love is amazing, isn't it - there are many things i couldn't have foreseen, but the strength of the love is definitely the most intense.
wow, i have so much to say i don't even know where to start...
firstly, to answer your direct question, now that Arlo is 3 and a bit months he has settled down quite a lot. but he is still a terrible sleeper (wakes about every hour overnight). as he's got older though he's had more of those awake happy periods during the day - so hang in there, i reckon they will come! we did buy a book about fussy babies, but ultimately the advice came down to 'hold your baby a lot, de-prioritise other stuff, and try to remember that things change - live in the moment and do what it takes to get through it'. which is pretty much what we have been doing.
it sounds to me like you are stuck in a really common situation - your baby doesn't sound unusually fussy to me. newborn babies are really fucking hard work, much harder than i ever imagined. your baby isn't unusual in wanting to be held and rocked - if you think about it from your baby's point of view if makes perfect sense given the close, warm, constantly moving environment they've just transitioned from. we couldn't have survived (still couldn't survive) without a sling and a fit ball - you might find this a good way to get some work done. put the baby in the sling and sit on the ball in front of the computer and she will sleep and you can get some work done (we don't work but we do both spend a lot of time in front of the computer). but really i'm with Thor - i would ditch the work if you can possibly afford to, at least until she is about three months. we even went as far as getting a cleaner once a week just to do things like vacuum and clean the toilet, just to take a little of the burden off us.
i have a bit of a thing at the moment about being annoyed with the way our culture expects women to be at home on their own all day with a baby, and then manage it all night as well because their partner is sleeping. it's so totally unrealistic and unfair. i don't have anything to offer on that except my absolute empathy and annoyance! i think it's no wonder that PND is rampant. babies need lots of people around them - parents, aunts, grandparents, friends - and i think it is a terrible tragedy the way western culture has conspired to isolate women and babies at a time when they need people around them more than any other.
it sounds to me like you are doing a fantastic job in trying circumstances. keep up the good work! and believe me when i say it does change - it definitely gets easier. and the baby gets more enjoyable too - now that Arlo is laughing and interactive he is a lot more fun to be around. there is a theory that i quite like, which is that because humans started walking on two feet, which changed the shape of the pelvis, the compromise is that our babies are born about three months early relative to other similar mammals. so you can think of the first three months of life as a 'fourth trimester', in which the baby's needs are pretty similar to what they were in the womb - to be held close, fed frequently, rocked a lot. And I have certainly noticed that even Arlo, who was always a very wakeful and engaged baby, has really come into the world much more since he hit three months.
of course now that we are that magic three months that i keep banging on about, we are expecting another one any day! i am now 39 weeks pregnant...crikey. |
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