Myths vs Reality: Newborns

The books, the websites, the classes - they lied like rugs. And things would have been a little easier if I hadn't been fed these lines.

Babies sleep 14-18 hours/day - Ha! Not this one! Try 11-12, and yes, I've tracked it with iPad apps so that's not an estimate. Every single person who met him for the first three months - starting with a pediatrician the day he was born - commented on how "alert" he is. We decided that alert is a euphemism for awake, since most newborns that we met were asleep and he never was.

Babies eat every 2-3 hours - See, that's the longest a newborn goes without eating. In this case, I know E is normal. I've seen plenty of other new moms convinced that something is wrong because their baby eats every hour, or for several hours straight. Most newborns eat more often than every 2-3 hours, and almost all engage in "cluster feeding" for 2-4 hours (or more!) now and then, especially during growth spurts.

Babies sleep through the night by three months - Actually, he did this. Around three weeks, he started sleeping longer stretches, and from 3-12 weeks he reliably slept a 4-7 hour stretch every night. But after he was born, I found out about the four month sleep regression, when it all goes to shit. And he hit it a month early. So for nearly two months, he was back to sleeping in 1-2 hour chunks. Now, at 5 months, he's starting to alternate between bad nights and nights where he'll have one or two 3-hour stretches. So hopefully we're slowly coming out of that, although I know now that some babies don't sleep well til nearly a year. Just never listen to anyone who tells you that babies sleep through the night by X weeks/months.

Changing diapers is a nasty, disgusting chore - Reality isn't always worse than the myth! I don't mind the diaper changes at all (well, except when E is in a bad mood and screams through one). Maybe this is because cloth diapering slows the process down just a bit, but I often find diaper change time to be a nice bonding time. I sing him some songs, kiss his bare tummy, maybe even read him a book while letting him air out a little (but with a cloth over him just in case, of course). And everyone was right that exclusively-breastfed poo really isn't that bad. Sure sometimes a big poo that he manages to get on his feet while I'm removing the diaper is kinda gross, and he does pee everywhere now and then. But we change his diaper a good 10x a day, and those things happen maybe once a week. Overall, changing diapers? Not as bad as advertised!