I’ve got a 3 week-old newborn. During the day there are plenty of adorable moments and easy times. But it’s the middle of the fucking night, he strategically waited until I was switching diapers to piss on me and all over, then was flailing his arms and pushing the bottle out of his mouth even though he was very hungry, then shit his GODDAMN BRAINS OUT while eating, then after I burped him and cleaned him up and got him in new clothes and swaddled and put him down, he fucking screamed until I picked him up again.
Like, I’ve given him everything his tiny little brain and body could need. That coupled with the strategic shitting and pissing to require the absolute maximum amount of work from me.
The vent here, I guess, is that I fucking hate this. I loved my life with my wife and now we have next to zero intimacy(not sex, obviously, but even our normal physical touch). We have zero time for each other, one is tending the baby, while the other is desperately trying to keep up with cleaning bottles and keeping the house passably clean and there is no time for anything.
I would never let any of what I just said affect how I interact with the baby, but I’m fucking sick of having literally zero independence and I miss my wife (her being in the same bed and next to me most of the day makes it worse somehow).
Fuck.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Check out The Oatmeal, they’ve got a comic about having kids that’s painfully applicable.
Small kids pee when exposed to cold air around their private parts. It’s to avoid peeing on mom all the time. Some people use that to save on diapers xD they are not doing that on purpose, learning that helped me keep a strategic eye out for that.
My daughter is 10 now, but your comment triggered a memory I had buried so deep it was all but forgotten.
The rule was that we put the child on its back, undo her diaper and fold the front down, blow on her exposed nethers and then close the diaper again and wait. She immediately pees, every fucking time, I change her, she stays dry for longer, I get some fucking sleep.
I just reminded my wife of this ritual. We laughed. Take this forgotten knowledge from survivors of the bad times, whoever might read this.
Yeah, we have three. Number one is eight now, I feel this whole thread in my bones.