Raising an infant is hard work. The books you read will not tell you this. They will tell you how to solve problems, but they somehow manage to skirt around the fact that it’s not just the problems that are difficult. Everything is difficult. Judging how Joshua is now and how long I know it will take him to shed some of his pesky reflexive infant responses and gain actual control of his motor functions, it will be difficult for about 6-8 weeks. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not much time. But when you’re working 24-hour days, minimal sleep and staring down starting back up with real world things like jobs and errands and chores it may as well be several millenia.

It’s a tribute to how rewarding children become that no parents seem to remember how hard the start of things is for very long. I don’t want to scare anyone away from the idea of kids, but I also don’t like the notion of seeing people get blindsided. So, here’s a look at some of the hard numbers with raising a newborn.

Diapers

Assuming your baby is getting a good amount of food and is processing it well, you’ll be changing a lot of diapers. Formula-fed babies less so, but with a breastfed baby, you can expect to be changing from 6 to 12 diapers every day. Joshua runs a pretty steady 8-10 every day. Changing a diaper is not a complex process, but it is hazardous. Moreso with boys. Babies will pick very inopportune times to relieve themselves. With Joshua, it tends to be when I’m picking his legs up to clean his bottom. This gets him in perfect position to pee directly into his own face. He has done this three times in as many weeks. To fix this issue, I’ve perfected a hold that gets fingers around each of his feet while I lift him and another that tangles a washcloth up and keeps in place so that when I lift him, if he pees, he pees into the cloth that can no longer slip out of the way. It’s a good thing I’ve learned this hold, else he’d have peed on himself 5 or 6 more times.

Babies also have a hard time figuring out where to focus when they’re pooping. Well, nothing like a jolt from a cold baby wipe on your bum to remind you that that’s where the magic happens. It’s pretty common that wiping your baby clean will be just what prompts your baby to have to go again. Since things with breastfed babies tend to be pretty runny, you’ll want to make sure to clear the blast radius. You can expect distances of 6-8 inches if your child is ambitious. My face managed to not escape the spatter zone once. I know better than to kneel in front of him while changing, even if I am tired.

Lastly, babies don’t like to be cold. Everyone has this image of babies that love to be naked and love bathtime and other such nudist activities. Well, newborns don’t really regulate temperature well, and they like it warm. Removing clothes upsets that delicate balance. Chances are your baby will be very angry when it’s diaper time. This will involve kicking and flailing and crooked limbs and general unpleasantness. This does not speed up the process.

All told, with the warm up (prepping your materials – have your new diaper open, your wipes ready, your washcloth and ointments at the ready), the undressing, the change and clean-up, the new diaper and the redressing a diaper change is a minimum 5 minute affair. Things get complex or messy and you could be seeing 10 minutes. We’ll split the difference and assume 7 minutes. So, 7 minutes and an assumed 10 diapers a day (wet diapers and messy diapers alike), that means you’re changing diapers for 70 minutes every day. Just diapers.

Breastfeeding

This one is super variable. It depends a lot on your baby and how well he feeds. Joshua is a sleepy snacker. He starts out eating vigorously for about 5-10 minutes and then dozes off. Then he sucks on and off as we poke at him. Until we had him weighed at the lactation consultant’s office (they weigh the baby before he feeds and then again right after to see how many ounces of milk he’s been taking in), we had no idea if he was getting enough milk when he would feed. So, since he would sleep so much, we’d keep him on a long time. This mean our feedings lasted 40-60 minutes. Remember the time between feedings is measured from the start of the feed. We’ve found that Joshua lasts between 3 and 4 hours between feedings before he gets fussy.

With that kind of spacing, that’s roughly 7 feedings each day. At the outside then, that meant that Janelle would spend 7 hours in a 24-hour period feeding Joshua. 35-hours a week is, in most surveys I’ve ever seen, enough to qualify for full-time employment. 7 hours. Just let that soak in. That’s a lot of time.

But, as I said, very variable. Now that we know Joshua is eating well, and we have some more tricks we try with him, we’re down to shorter feedings. Shorter still means about 30 minutes of feeding, which is still 3.5 hours every day, and that’s if everything goes well, or if he doesn’t get hungrier more than normal.

Sleeping

It’s not expected that a baby will sleep through the night until they weigh around 12 or 13 pounds. It’s at this point the baby’s stomach is presumed large enough to hold enough milk to allow them to not feel hungry in the middle of the night. Babies average in at 7.5 pounds at birth, and doctor’s hope to see them gaining an ounce a day in weight. 16 ounces to a pound. That means you’re looking at about 72 days until your baby is likely to sleep through the night. At just under 21 days, we have a long damn way to go.

Even allowing Joshua to set his feeding schedule at night, he’s never gone more than 5 hours between feedings, which means the most sleep we’ve been able to get in a solid chunk since he was born is about 3.5 hours. But wait, you ask, if feeding took you at the most 60 minutes, why didn’t you get 4 hours of sleep? Ah yes. You assume that your baby has a regular person brain and wants to sleep when he is tired. Watch now as I laugh at you.

The great dilemma of the infant is that when a baby becomes overtired, as in: so tired they are upset about it, they will actually be unable to sleep. Yup. So tired you can’t sleep. Ahhh babies. Your best bet at this point is that they get so angry that they exhaust themselves and just plain give up.

That’s the worst case. Even in the best case, though, putting a baby down is hit or miss. Sometimes we put Joshua down immediately and he goes right to sleep. Sometimes this is because he is already asleep, but sometimes he’s just peaceful enough to lie awake and then soothe himself into dreamland. More often, though, I will rock him about for 5 minutes or so until he seems drowsy, then I will place him in the crib. I will hover there for a couple minutes, keeping a hand on him to reassure him and shushing lightly in his ear. Then I’ll wait for 3 or 4 minutes to see if he’s happy lying down. Then I’ll head back to my bedroom and read a book for a couple minutes and listen to make sure he’s still okay before I get into bed. Then I get into bed and look at the ceiling for a bit. Then I close my eyes. Then he starts to cry.

So, be prepared to spend as much as 90 minutes a night trying to get your baby to sleep and only around 4 reliable hours of sleep a night yourself.

You have been warned.

Breastmilk vs. Formula

When doing research about raising a baby, you’ll find a lot of equivocation surrounding many controversial topics. The books tend to tread lightly so as not to seem too polarizing and thereby limit their audience. A chief area where you’ll hear a lot of back and forth is the debate between breastfeeding and formula feeding. I’ll break it down square for you.

Breastmilk is without question the better choice for your baby. It is not, however, the most convenient choice and nor is it a choice that every woman will be capable of choosing due to various physiological reasons.

Formula has made many strides over the years, but there are vast quantities of helpful agents that are present in breastmilk that simply cannot be synthesized with modern medicine. Rather than break down all the particulars, I’ll give a quick anecdotal illustration. Breastmilk produces antibodies to fight illness. Let’s say Dad goes out to the store to pick something up and manages to have a flu bug latch onto him while he’s out. He comes home, the baby is exposed. When the baby nurses with Mom, she is also exposed. Since breastmilk is just this side shy of magic, when the mother is exposed to this flu bug, her breastmilk will begin to fill with antibodies to that illness, which are then passed onto the child while nursing. There’s a good reason why breastfed babies don’t get sick nearly as often as formula fed babies.

When the question of “What is best for the baby?” is in play, the answer is always breastmilk. But breastmilk sometimes just isn’t possible. Some babies can be allergic (a very small percentage), some mothers don’t produce enough milk for a baby to gain weight properly, some mothers have nipples shaped in such a way to make breastfeeding impossible. In many of these cases, using a breastbump to express milk and then bottlefeeding is usually a fairly simple solution (which also has the benefit of shifting some work over to Dad). The only issue with the pump is that it simply isn’t as effective at maintaining a mother’s milk supply as a nursing baby.

So, while formula is far from a bad choice, it’s just not the best choice. Is it wrong to choose formula over breastmilk? No. It’s just not the best choice.

That being said, I’ll really only be speaking to breastfeeding, as that’s my area of exposure.

The Useful Facts

Janelle and I had a hell of a time getting consistent info regarding breastfeeding. Here’s the info you need:

In situations where babies may not be gaining weight as easily as hoped, babies should be fed every 2-3 hours. You measure intervals between feedings from the start of one feeding to the start of the next (rather than end of one to start of the next).

Once a baby is confirmed to be gaining properly (usually this is determined to be once they have gained back their birth weight, or close to it), it is safe to allow the baby to sleep until they are hungry. However, it is still a good idea to feed every 2-3 hours during the day to ensure that the baby sleeps longer at night. Even allowing your baby to sleep at night, though, don’t expect more than 5 hours between feedings for a couple months.

Do not introduce bottles or pacifiers earlier than 6 weeks, to prevent nipple confusion. If a baby learns to prefer the firmness of an artificial nipple, or the ease of feeding through a bottle, he will begin to turn away from the breast.

Do not wait longer than 3 months to introduce a pacifier or a bottle. At that point the baby will fight taking those items.

Babies have growth spurts around 2 week and around 5-6 weeks. During these times your baby will likely be hungrier than normal. Feel free to feed more regularly as well.

Every time a baby cries, it doesn’t mean he’s hungry. If your baby is crying and turning his head and opening and closing his mouth like he’s searching for a breast, he’s hungry. If he’s not crying, but is sitting around opening and closing his mouth and smacking his lips, that’s your first sign he’s hungry.

There’s no real problem feeding a baby before they exhibit signs of hunger… but don’t feed them too often. Feeding every hour (as a rule, not during a growth spurt, where this may be needed), may train your baby to eat in small, snacky doses. This is bad due to the composition of breastmilk. There is foremilk and hindmilk. The hindmilk is what holds most of the calories your baby needs to grow, and he will only reach this with longer feedings.

If your baby sleeps during feedings, it’s not a big deal, and doesn’t mean that he’s not getting milk. He may be an efficient feeder. Imagine if you ate real fast and then had someone snuggle you up all warm and cozy. It’d be nap time for you, too. However, to ensure that you baby isn’t dozing too quickly, the easiest way to keep him active as a feeder is to lift his arm. If he looks asleep, but upon moving his arm around you feel some muscle resistance, he’s still awake and the disturbance will likely prompt him to begin eating again. If you move his arm and just get no resistance at all, you have a sleeping baby. At that point you may want to try switching breasts, or (PROTIP) use this sleepy time to change his diaper. You may be able to get in a fuss-free changing and then get him back on the breast just as he’s waking up for some reinvigorated feeding.

It’s important to note that poop from a baby on breastmilk matches many of the descriptions books will give you of diarrhea. Baby poop from a breastfeeding baby will be green, yellow or sort of mustard-orange and will seem to have little sort of pellets in it. This is actually milk curd. It will be fairly runny. Diarrhea will likely just be a more liquid form of the same. But again, with a breastfed baby, chances of diarrhea are low.

Ladies Only

The perception of breastfeeding is that’s something strictly for the mother. Bonding time that she has alone in a quiet, dark room with her baby while the father does something else in the other room. Well, believe me when I say that this sounds much more exclusionary before having a baby than after. Afterwards, you may relish the notion of some downtime. But I digress…

Breastfeeding certainly does not need to be a female-only affair, and at the start probably should not be. Breastfeeding is difficult. There are many factors for the mother to keep track of. Is she seated comfortably? Can she support the baby for the length of the feed? How is the baby positioned? How are his lips positioned? His tongue? Is he swallowing? Is he still awake? On and on. Performing poorly means that your child doesn’t thrive and that you will be parcel to some unpleasant side effects like cracked or sore nipples or afflictions like mastitis. Until things become second nature for Mom, it’s best if Dad is around to help out.

For Janelle and I, it started out very much as a team effort. While Janelle would get situated, I would get Joshua prepped. Getting him unswaddled and undressed (skin to skin contact helps babies with the nursing process). When she was ready, I would hand him over and let her get him positioned. I would hold Joshua’s hands out of the way to make sure he didn’t interfere with his own lunchtime, which he is apt to do. When breastfeeding begins, Mom’s breasts will be very firm and the milk will not come easily. It needs to be massaged out until her tissues get more accustomed to just releasing it naturally. So, to keep her arms from getting too tired, I would massage her breast tissue and help with expressing milk. Then while Janelle would get cleaned up, I would change Joshua’s diapers and get him redressed. It made things less stressful for Janelle.

Now, a couple weeks in, she’s practicing tackling these changes without me, since I’ll be returning to work months before she does. But I was part of the process. I helped get breastfeeding established and I know that while it would have happened without me, there would have been far more tears and frustration. So, I’m happy enough to sit on the sideline while Janelle gets her alone time with the little guy because I’m aware of how to contribute to the process. All father’s should consider helping Mom out with the breastfeeding, just to get an idea of how tricky it is.

While “Is he eating enough?” might be the biggest dilemma for the breastfeeding mother, “How can we get through the night?” is likely the cross of the new father to bear.

Sleep is a precious commodity as a parent. Your day is no longer measured from sunup to sundown. Your are on a 24-hour clock and you need to sleep when you can. That sleep will come in fits and starts, as well. At the start, expect to see anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes of sleep at a time at the most. Anything else means you are lucky, an outlier (unless you’re getting less, in which case you are unlucky). And while sleep is precious to Dad, it needs to be even moreso to Mom, and she likely isn’t as focused on it as she needs to be.

Mom will be concerned about the baby and want to ensure that he gets down to bed properly. You can have her wait in bed and try to sleep while you tend to the infant, but she won’t be able to sleep, not while he’s crying. But she needs to sleep. The production of milk turns new mothers into factories. Just sitting on the couch and eating bon-bons, Mom is now burning 500 extra calories a day producing milk. To give you an idea of how much that is, I’ve gone to the gym and run (not jogged, RUN) on a treadmill for 30 minutes, covering several faux miles, and only burned in the neighborhood of 300 calories.

Do not think of the baby as a barrier to your own sleep. If you think about the process as being one of problem solving, regardless of the timeline. You’ll do fine. As soon as you expect a result, or view the baby himself as the obstacle, you’re on the road to frustration and ruination. Come prepared to not sleep until he sleeps and you’ll be golden before you realize it. According to this piece from Runner’s World, Janelle would have to run over 6 miles to equal that kind of caloric burn rate were she not breastfeeding. What the what?! Basically Mom is training for a half marathon on about 4-5 hours a sleep a night, assuming things aren’t going too poorly.

So not only is getting through the night important, but the responsibility of making it happen is something that falls chiefly to Dad. How to manage and control an infant that cannot be controlled? It’s mostly a matter of managing expectations. If you go into your nighttime routine expecting that your baby will go down to sleep quickly and easily and will be calmed quickly and easily should he awake in the middle of the night then you will be primed for disappointment and frustration.

Be ready when you go to put your baby down that you’ll be spending 15-20 minutes getting him calm enough and sleepy enough to actually feel like falling asleep. Similarly, expect the same each time you need to wake up to help him get back to sleep. If you expect things will take a good bit of time, any time that it happens faster is a bonus. Not only have you earned some more sleep for yourself, you get a nice little confidence booster for being so awesome.

Also be prepared to be mobile. Calming a baby in the crib will only work for the most minor of fusses. You can either just lay down some calming shushing noises, or turn the baby onto his side for a bit (they like the side—beats me) and let him calm himself down. More likely, though, you’ll have a potential crying disaster on your hands and it will require more drastic actions. When you pick your baby up from the crib, try and do it gently and quickly. You want to be quick to act, but you don’t want to jostle and take him farther away from sleep. To start, see if body heat, some gentle shushing and simply the innate reassurance that someone is there to help try and calm the baby. Failing that, you might need to bust out the fancy tricks. Swinging him around, bouncing him, burping him. Maybe you need to head out to the living room and let him sit in his bounce seat. Maybe the car seat is magic. Maybe the car seat and a ride around the block in the family sedan is the thing.

How do you discover the magic nighttime tricks that will put your baby to sleep? I don’t suggest midnight experimentation. You’re likely tired and probably on your way to frustration. Not the best breeding ground for great ideas. Take note during the day of what does the trick. The two times that I’ve put Joshua into a front carrier and taken a walk around the block with him he has passed out hardcore. Mental note. Extra blankets for extra heat tend to make him nod off easier as well. Good to know. He likes to sit upright, and likes to be swaddled. Sounds like a car seat to me.

Once your baby is in a deep enough sleep, you don’t need to continue your tricks until dawn. Place him back down, walk away and cross your fingers. Chances are you’ll have to pick him up again, but again, try the gentle approach first. If that fails, though, start the cycle over and keep going until he’s been down enough times to get the point.

Now, the problem here is that I’m writing to the assumption that your baby is being fussy for the sake of being fussy, or because he’s tired. That’s really the only time that any tricks or tips will get you anywhere. All the other reasons will require a specific response. Dirty diaper? Gotta change it and hope that doesn’t cause more problems than it fixes. Hungry? Time to wake Mom (assuming the timing is right—check out the next post for tips and tricks on breastfeeding). Upset tummy? Well… you’re just screwed aren’t you?

The upset tummy is one of those things that you just can’t do a damn thing about. Similarly, while the above tricks may work and are good starting points, there’s no fast guarantee that they will get a baby to stop crying. Most of the methods described are reasonably foolproof as they activate triggers in the baby’s brain that they should be cool. Did the kid throw any tantrums in the womb? Nope. Why not? Tight space. Warm temperature. Well fed. Rocked constantly. Perpetual white noise. Using any of these tools is likely to send your baby back to the good old days when he lived in a luxurious square foot apartment. Likely—but not guaranteed.

With an upset tummy, all you can really do is hope. Try burping your baby, try laying him on his back and pumping his knees up to his chest to help with gas. Trying switching up positions to crunch his tummy and push those air bubbles out to the surface. But consider the very real possibility that you just need to ride it out. Just as babies don’t know how to use their limbs for some weeks (hell, they don’t even realize those arms belong to them for awhile, something just keeps hitting them in the face), they don’t really know how to poop or pass gas. There’s a good chance that at the same time you kid is trying to push down to work out some gas he’s also clenching his little butt for all he’s worth to keep it in. Now if that isn’t just the picture of hell, I don’t know what is.

Expect putting your baby to sleep to take time. I’ve found that I need to stay awake while Janelle feeds so that when it’s time to put Joshua down, I’m awake and ready for the throwdown. If I tried to sleep until the main event, I would wake up both groggy and on stage and I would just be too damn grumpy to do either of us any good. I’d ask him why he felt the need to be so difficult and what, after all, the big deal was. He’s a baby. Life can’t be that bad. But a Michael that’s awake and ready to go is a Dad that’s ready to be patient and keep trying different positions to hold the little dude until it’s actually bedtime.

Crying it Out

Letting a baby cry themselves to sleep at night is not something I ever considered an option. It is, however, a fairly popular idea thanks to the research of Dr. Richard Ferber. Ferberizing a baby isn’t quite as simple as letting babies cry until they fall asleep. It involves staging up the amount of time you let a baby cry before you soothe them, and when you soothe them the point is not to pick them up. This is intended to teach a baby to calm itself and to sleep through the night.

But, really, what’s the point?

The Ferber method assumes that you child is a manipulative little monkey. The presumption is that your baby likes to be held and so will wake himself up from sleep and cry just to get you to come and comfort him. So, you take your infant and you begin withholding care from him. If you’re going to go ahead and make the assumption that you baby knows enough while this young to mess with you, then you also need to make the assumption that your baby knows enough to understand that you’re simply not coming. That’s not a lesson that I like the sound of. I’m not trying to raise John Connor here. “Learn to sleep while you’re young, little dude. No one will be there to hear your screams in the middle of the night.”

It’s not even an approach you can really consider economical, as it involves ever increasing intervals where you wait before trying to calm the baby. You start at, for example, 3 minutes. Then up to 5, then 7, then 10, then 15, then 30, etc. You’re looking at an hour of essentially hoping that your child stops crying. What if their tummy is upset and what they need is being held upright for 3 minutes so it can settle? Or if some extra body heat will be just the thing to push them over the edge into sleep? Picking a child up and trying a few options to see what calms them down or puts them to sleep could be the kind of thing that takes you 2 minutes.

The notion is that the Ferber method will train a child faster to sleep through the night, but considering that you’re looking at a couple of months before the kid is ever going to be likely to do that anyway, you’ve probably got an idea of how to calm him anyway. So… why abandon those methods?