Marissa and I welcomed our son Stellan into the world a month ago. It’s been an intense amount of fun.
The most tiring part has been the constant uncertainty. We hadn’t been around newborns much so with everything Stellan did, we had to figure out if it was normal or indicative of a problem. In the hospital we learned that sometimes a newborn will stop breathing for 10 seconds and then resume breathing as normal. This terrifying behavior is a totally normal and expected thing.
Shortly after Stellan was born, we wrote down a few things that we found unexpected about the birth experience. Now, a month into it, I’m cleaning up those notes.
For some context, Stellan was born at NYP Hospital in NYC - a large, modern hospital. We didn’t have a Doula or do anything else woo-woo.
Nurses matter more than doctors. When picking a hospital, I thought the doctors and facilities would be the most important. But for most mothers, nurses will have much more impact on the quality of your time than doctors.
If something is going wrong, you want the doctor making good decisions. But if things are going relatively smoothly, the doctor only comes by a few times a day for a few minutes at a time. The nurses are with you for hours a day and you rely on them to teach you how to care for your baby, bring you meds, take your baby to the nursery, and basically everything else.
Fortunately, our nurses were pretty good overall. But there seemed to be pretty large variance. We had some nurses which we loved and a couple nurses that made us feel a little uncomfortable.
Hospitals will trade off a lot of sanity for a little bit of health. And this is very frustrating!
The hospital is incredibly optimized for measurable health outcomes. I assume that baby and mother health is the primary outcome.
This means that if they can increase likelihood of a good health outcome by 0.01%, they will probably do it! That means that they will check the mother’s blood pressure every 2 hours, even if it would be beneficial for her sanity to sleep.
If you can, induce at 39 weeks. There was a big clinical trial (ARRIVE) that randomized mothers into two groups - induction at 39 weeks and waiting for a natural birth. That study found the same overall outcomes across both groups.
Being pregnant is hard, especially at the end. So if you can give birth at 39 weeks, you can skip some of the hard part of pregnancy and start getting to know your baby sooner.
Inductions don’t progress linearly. We had heard this from a friend but it was hard to really grasp.
We induced and things went pretty slow, then very fast, then slow again, and then fast again. From induction to birth was under 24 hours which is quite quick! But for the majority of that time it felt like nothing was happening and it might take a few days.
It’s really hard to know what to expect with inductions. It can feel like it’s going slowly but then quickly speed up.
Babies aren’t always difficult. I thought the baby was always going to be crying. (Apparently, I was crying for the first 3 months after I was born.)
But it’s actually not too bad! Stellan can get unhappy and cry for 30-40 minutes, but most of the time he is deep asleep. He needs to wake up and eat every couple hours, but when he’s sleeping you have total free time to do whatever you want.
All babies become much cuter than you could imagine - for mom and dad. For the mom, this must be a partially hormonal thing. But it works on the dad too. I think you care so much about your baby that the empathy carries over to other babies. (Especially since a newborn doesn’t really look that unique…)
It’s incredibly helpful to have family around. We had Marissa’s parents around for a few weeks after Stellan was born. So incredibly helpful.
You have to sleep when the baby is sleeping. Right after the baby was born when we were still in the hospital, we would hang out with the baby when he was awake. Then when he slept, we would watch him sleep to make sure he was ok. So we were awake when he was awake — and awake when he was asleep… That didn’t work.
This sounds obvious, but you need to sleep at some point. The medical system makes you terrified of SIDS - but it’s pretty uncommon! You need to sleep when the baby is sleeping.
Formula feeding is so much easier than breast feeding. There is a lot of controversy and false claims thrown around about the benefits of breast milk vs formula. You can do your own research there.
But the overlooked thing is how much incredibly easier formula feeding is to breast feeding. For most new mothers, breast feeding is one of the most challenging parts. You have to wait for your milk to come in, you wake up every two or three hours, your boobs hurt, you may need to pump to store milk, you have to warm frozen milk, and on and on.
Formula is like baby Soylent. Just pour it in a bottle and you are good to go. Mom can sleep for up to 10 hours if she wants to.
The baby is a great excuse to reconnect with old friends. I’ve had friends worry that having a baby would be isolating but I’ve found totally the opposite experience.
It’s been a great excuse to call old friends and invite people to visit. And your friends and family all want to hear about what’s happening with your baby.
Postpartum hormones are intense. The postpartum period is incredibly challenging for the mother. You just went through a really difficult physical feat and most mothers experience intense hormone surges that affect their emotion and ability to think rationally.
There’s not a solution but it’s helpful to know that it’s difficult and it’ll eventually pass, just with time.
Overall - it’s been a lot of fun. If you’re considering it, you should have a baby!