You’re sleep-deprived, your body is a foreign landscape, and everything in your life has been turned upside down. Welcome to parenthood! You may feel alone in your struggles, but rest assured that all of your new mom stresses are very common—and, better yet, fairly solvable.
New Mom Stress #1: “My husband is completely useless in the middle of the night!”
My friend, Stephanie, 32, had her first baby last year, and when her daughter was three weeks old, she called me in a rage. “The baby was up four times last night, and every time she started crying, Jay pretended to be asleep, so I had to get up with her every single time!” I let my pal vent for a while, but eventually I had to break it to her: her husband probably wasn’t pretending to be asleep.
New moms develop “mother’s ears,” which means that you can hear a baby yawning from two houses away. Dads, meanwhile, can sleep through their newborn’s 100-decibel screams two inches from their ears. Annoying? Yes. Insurmountable? No.
The first thing you need to do is have a heart-to-heart with your husband—sometime other than when you’re ready to bash him over the head because he’s been sleeping while you’ve been walking the floors for the past four hours. Try to find a time when you’re both calm and relaxed and then tell him that you need more help. If your husband is willing to pitch in more, but simply doesn’t hear the baby when he cries, offer to wake him in the night when the baby needs attention. Try not to whack him too hard.
Many men believe that if mom is breastfeeding, there’s really nothing they can do. But it’s still possible to split nighttime duty, either with expressed milk that dad can feed in a bottle or by using the Henry Ford assembly-line model. You each have your duties, and you stick to them. When the baby starts crying, dad gets up (with a little nudge from mom) to change the diaper and bring baby to mom. Mom feeds baby. Dad takes baby back to her crib. It’s like baby room service for mom, and dad can probably sneak in a nap during the baby’s 20- or 30-minute feeding session.
If your husband is simply unwilling to help at night, well, that might require a few appointments with a marriage counselor when you’re better rested. But in the meantime, call in any cavalry that you have available. If you have the means, you can hire a “night nanny” to take care of the baby at night a few times a week. If you’re swimming in debt rather than cash, however, you’ll have to stick with free night nannies: grandmas. If your mom or mother-in-law lives nearby—or if they can hop a flight and stay with you for a week or two—they’ll likely be thrilled to help care for their new grandbaby, even in the middle of the night. Take full advantage of them, and don’t feel guilty for a second.
New Mom Stress #2: “I will never fit into my old jeans again. Ever!”
Logically, you probably knew that after your baby’s birth you wouldn’t magically return to your pre-pregnancy size overnight. But maybe a small part of you hoped you would be the exception to the rule. And despite what celebrities would have you believe, it is very, very, very (get the point?) unusual to drop the baby weight within a month. We’ve all heard stories about women who waltz out of the hospital wearing their usual size 6 jeans, but either they’re freaks of nature or lying. You know the old saying: it took nine months to out the weight on, and it’ll take at least that long to get the weight off.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors working against you as a new mom. People with the best of intentions will bring you huge lasagnas and casseroles and cakes for weeks after you come home from the hospital. It’s easy to reach for these comfort foods because they’re quick, easy, and taste great. And, really, it’s okay to depend on dishes like this for a while—at least until you come out of the new parent fog that engulfs you for a few weeks. Just don’t expect miracles on the scale if you’re inhaling ziti for every meal.
What to do? When people ask what they can do to help, tell them that you’d love a fruit salad or lean meats and cheeses for sandwiches. Just don’t go overboard. Eating right is great, but going on a strict diet isn’t a good idea—especially if you’re nursing. Not getting enough nutrients can lead to decreased milk production and a hungry baby.
If you breastfeed, you may hope that the extra calories you burn through nursing will help you lose weight. And while it’s true that nursing burns around 500 calories a day, it’s also true that most women’s bodies hold onto five or 10 pounds as a sort of “reserve” while they’re breastfeeding. So don’t get frustrated if those last pounds won’t budge while you’re nursing. If you’re eating right and exercising at least once in a while, those stubborn few pounds will probably fall off within a few months of weaning.
And if some “well-meaning” person (like your mother-in-law) mentions how strange it is that you haven’t lost the baby weight yet, hold your head high and say something along the lines of, “My focus is on my baby.”
New Mom Stress #3: “Leaving the house now requires all the strategy of a major military maneuver!”
Remember when you could grab your purse and keys and simply head out your front door? Those days are definitely behind you…for a while anyway. Before you became a mom, you probably scoffed at all of the new parents who were late to church, to dinner, to parties—everywhere, really—and undoubtedly wondered why they couldn’t get their act together. Soon, you’ll understand exactly why new parents constantly run behind schedule.
Nicole, 39, laments that by the time she gathers all of the stuff her baby needs—diaper bag, stroller, food, and extras of everything—that her baby needs to be fed and changed again. “It’s ridiculous. I haven’t been on time since my son was born four months ago!”
If it’s a cliché for a reason, does that mean there’s nothing you can do about it? Not at all. Getting out of the house in good time is all about organization. For instance, keep your diaper bag stocked and ready to go. When you return from an outing, restock any diapers and wipes that were used, and keep a spare outfit or two in the bag at all times. You have more clothes for your baby than you can possibly use anyway, so you won’t miss the “diaper bag” outfit.
Also, if you’re nursing, baby’s meals travel with you. But it you formula feed, keep those essentials in the bag as well. You can get a divided container that holds several powdered formula servings, so all you’ll need to do before leaving the house is fill your bottles with water.
Another great tip is to adhere to the “Rule of Two”: allow twice as much time to get ready as you think you will and take half as much stuff as you think you’ll need. Do you really need 10 diapers for a half-hour trip? Or what about packing baby’s swing, stroller, and bouncy seat for a two-hour play date? Save yourself the time and stress by downsizing the stuff and building plenty of time into your schedule.
New Mom Stress #4: “I just realized that my life will never be the same!”
This is also known as the “what have I done?” moment that 90 percent of all new moms experience—and the other 10 percent are lying. Of course you love your new baby, but it’s also one of the biggest life changes you will ever go through, so it’s natural to grieve a little for your old, relatively carefree life. The problem is that most women don’t talk about that feeling because they’re afraid it makes them seem like bad mothers.
Take Trish, 40. “Although it was 13 years ago, I still vividly remember picking up my newborn for the millionth time that day and stopping dead in my tracks as it occurred to me, ‘I have to physically transport this baby everywhere he needs to go for the foreseeable future,’” she says. “And then that thought steamrolled into just how different my life had become. Let’s just say that my husband found a slightly deranged woman who looked an awful lot like his wife when he returned home.”
Trish felt incredibly guilty for those un-perfect mommy thoughts, but as soon as she got up the nerve to tell a friend about it, the floodgates opened, and her friend freely admitted to those same feelings. “I learned that it’s just part of the adjustment period,” Trish says.
One of the best ways of dealing with these thoughts when they arise is to decide what you need at that moment. Are you missing date nights with your husband? Girls’ night out with your best friends? Sleeping in on Saturday mornings? Dawn, 28, had a huge “aha” moment when she realized that she missed working outside the home. “When my baby was born, I ‘retired’ from my career in marketing because we could afford for me to stay home, and I figured that meant that I should. But after about three months, I was going stark raving mad and feeling very resentful of my beautiful child. Once I acknowledged that I needed a career outside the home, the transition to parenthood became considerably easier. It’s hard to juggle everything, but at least now I’m back to feeling like the woman I’ve always been—the same old Dawn with a gorgeous little daughter.”
It’s easy to understand why Dawn felt like her life had been turned upside down—it had! She went from a professional woman with no children to a stay-at-home mother of one very demanding newborn within the span of a few days. But your needs may not be as life-altering as going back to work full-time. You might need to go to dinner with your husband once a month or meet your pals for coffee on Sunday afternoons. Small changes can help you feel more like yourself again while you adjust to this exciting new chapter in your life.
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