Things Learned in the First Month of Having a Baby
The first 10 days
Published in
5 min readNov 18, 2014
- I always wondered how I’d occupy the time during parental leave, since it seems like you have so much of it. Then I discovered that feeding baby is a 1-hour-ish process, which needs to be done 8–12 times a day on regular intervals. It’s like I wake up, blink, and suddenly it’s mid-afternoon.
- Every day feels like a week, probably because of the breaking up of sleep into multiple segments. Also: the sheer number of photos taken, which is about 7x the number per day compared to before.
- Newborns smell great! My baby’s scent reminds me of sweet cream and rice. Apparently this is a thing.
- Sometimes, when baby is about to get into a cranky mood, it looks like bad, over-exaggerated dramatic acting.
- My husband doesn’t know the lyrics to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It’s like he didn’t grow up on this planet.
- There is an entire genre devoted to lullaby medleys of pop songs. Like Lady Gaga lullabies, U2 lullabies, Madonna lullabies. Or maybe it’s just this one company that’s making a killing off of new parents.
- Hats. Hats are the best. I have yet to encounter a baby hat I didn’t like.
Days 10–20
- I’ve never used Google search as much as I’m using it now. I feel like an advertisement for a Google commercial. “What causes baby eye gunk?” (Answer: blocked tear duct) “When does baby acne go away?” (answer: weeks or months, see doctor if it persists after 9 months) “When should you start bottle feeding?” (answer: 3–4 weeks) *cue sweet lullaby music* *fade to white, with Google logo*
- Related to the above, I finally caught on to that thing young people have been doing for years which is watch Youtube videos for “how to do anything.” For some reason, my husband and I ended up watching a bunch of UK-produced videos, which means we’ve inevitably picked up a bunch of British baby terms. Like “wet nappy” and “remember to wind your baby” and “don’t forget to let your baby have a good naked kick-around.”
- Baby has never met a car ride she didn’t like. Which makes me wonder why isn’t there something in the market that simulates this exact feeling. Billion-dollar idea right there. (Another billion-dollar idea: figuring out how to bottle your baby’s scent.)
- Record number of diapers changed in one diaper-changing session due to “open air” accidents: 4
- Trying to get your baby registered as an official person when you’ve had a home birth without a doctor or midwife present is a lot like Minecraft in that you need to collect a bunch of “ingredients” before you can use them in a “recipe” for a better item. For example: doctor’s affidavit of pregnancy + 1 ambulance report OR 1 fireman’s report + residence power bill = 1 birth certificate. 1 birth certificate + 1 pediatrician’s report = 1 SSN card. Birth certificate can unlock more later on (like passport!) so it’s kind of like the crafting table equivalent of documents.
- Best “mommy” item purchased for self: Barefoot Dreams cardigan and blanket. Seriously it’s so soft it’s like how I imagine a garment spun from puffy cotton-clouds to feel. I live in this cardigan and blanket.
- Adventures in bottle feeding, the upside: getting 5 hours of straight sleep for the first time since before the baby was born!! The downside: body can’t even handle so much sleep in a row, decides afterwards that it’s going to refuse sleeping for the next many hours and instead focus an overactive imagination on questions like How will I talk to my baby about dating? and What’s the best way to help your child deal with societal pressures on body image?
- The excitement of baby gaining weight! (Because when else does adding pounds invoke so much delight?)
- The wistfulness of baby outgrowing her first few hats. (I coped by going on a larger-hat buying spree.)
Days 20–30
- Spending time with a newborn feels similar to being on a safari. The main activity is observing—watching the dozens of expressions she go through in a minute, seeing her little chest go up and down, looking at those little arms flail about. (She also makes a lot of little squeaks and grunts too, so there’s some listening involved.) Baby is a small creature governed entirely by nature, and so observing becomes a fascinating leisure activity.
- We’ve determined that a crying baby follows this algorithm:
switch (crying_baby) {
case HUNGER: return feed();
case NAPPY: return change_nappy();
case NEEDS_SOOTHING: return initiate_5_S();
default: return chalk_it_up_to_gas();
} - Pee is sterile. Which is why you can get away with not using wipes for a purely wet nappy. (Unrelated: I was also informed that this is also why you can drink your pee for hydration (once) if you find yourself stuck on a desert island…)
- Wearing your baby via a carrier is a gamechanger. All of a sudden, hands are free, baby doesn’t need to be watched every second, you have a personal little heater attached to your chest, and baby is happy with the arrangement. (When I do this, it feels like an extension of being pregnant. When my husband does this, it’s adorably kangaroo-like.)
- A common conversation around the house regarding baby: “Have you tried X technique? It worked yesterday.” “But today isn’t yesterday.” Seriously, just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of something, the pattern changes.
- Since feeding is such a time-intensive process, anything “productive” on my to-do list takes an average of 3 extra days than budgeted to complete. On the other hand, consuming is easy. In the past month, I’ve finished 4 books, listened to the entirety of Serial, watched 2 seasons of TV + 3 movies, read an average of 20 articles every day, and stayed up to date with every trending topic there is — comet landing, Kim Kardashian breaking the Internet, Ebola, chocolate shortage — this is the perfect time for me to get onto some current events game show, or attend cocktail parties where I can stun people with my vast knowledge of water cooler topics.
- Baby is growing bigger, stronger, and more alert by the day! Although, (besides more exciting tummy times), what this most practically translates to in the day-to-day is more dynamic and spirited crying.
- When I was pregnant, I thought that there might be times when I missed my pre-baby life—the freedom, flexibility, lack of accountability. Since then, the challenges have been daily, but so far, I don’t miss a thing. Life evolves, and the road ahead is wide open with too many shades of wonderful still left to be discovered.
