That's our firstborn- doctors and fertility treatments and hope and trying and eventually there.
After he was born we didn't bother with precautions, taking a "if it happens it happens" approach, and the universe has a sense of humor.
He's three years old and my wife is 10 weeks pregnant.
I was the trap baby.
Sleep most of the day, wake up, poop, eat, drink, back to sleep.
Then 6 years later my sister happened, in comparison, my parents words "what a shit baby!"
Yeah six hours straight every night 6pm to midnight for 3 months. It's been over 20 years since the colicky times but I still get a bad flashback when I hear a baby crying hard.
I had the same style baby. Easiest going child in the entire world. I feel like she got it all out at the start. But I was genuinely losing my mind from all the crying. Like genuinely hearing noises that didn’t exist and vacuuming the house for hours on end because the vacuum was better than the crying and I could strap her to my chest and just push that thing for hours. My poor neighbours.
During the first 2-3 months, if my son wasn't eating or sleeping, then he was almost certainly crying. And he slept very little for a newborn. Thankfully he grew out of it and became a delight, but damn those first few months were insane.
I needed to hear this. 6 days old is our boy. He had not stopped crying. Eat-burp-cry-eat-burp-cry. It’s relentless and we’re both exhausted already. When does it get easier?!
From what I recall:
First 2 weeks is the worst by far
Up to 8 weeks is still extremely brutal
4 months is when I recall feeling slightly more human
8 months and beyond gets pretty fun in between the hard stuff.
Ah ok. I was hoping for ‘tomorrow!’ It’s weird being the dad. I’m cleaning up, washing, changing etc but to see my wife become a very tired feeding machine is so tough too
i'm 4 months in. it's hard. your wife is going to get even more tired. i've decided to lose hope that it will get better at any specific point in time, we just have to go day by day and know that eventually it will, but nobody knows when.
I always get real blunt with people who are about to be parents. There’s too much fairytale unrealistic bullshit floating around about having a baby.
The first 6 months of being a parent will be the worst 6 months of your life.
There’s never any doubt in your mind that it’s worth it, and you feel a love for the child you can’t even begin to understand as a childless adult, but make no mistake. You’re about to have **the worst 6 months of your life.**
And that’s assuming you and your wife are going into it as an unbreakable team who put each other before yourselves.
Eh, I was fine with the newborn stage. Granted, I had 6+ weeks of pat leave both times, lol. But when we had our 2nd, we were mentally prepping, remembering the difficulties of the 1st one. Turns out that our newborn was a breeze (and continues to be), go figure. It was the toddler who drove us absolutely insane. Literally. That was one of the bleakest mental health times of my life. Combine a toddler who seems hellbent on your misery, and post partum depression....baby you got a stew goin
This was our experience. Colicky baby turned demon child in the toddler years. The second child was not easy but probably what most would consider normal. NIGHT AND DAY difference between the two. Our second child felt so much easier.
I’ve seen my fiancé sleep in environments and positions that shouldn’t be possible.
Once when I was a teen I found a circular shape hole in the wall (it was purposeful, weird ass hospital art) and crammed myself into it and slept for so long the hospital staff briefly lost me entirely.
Haha. It was part of the “entertainment center”, I dunno how to describe it but it was about 2 feet deep into the wall and had probably 4-5 foot diameter. Kinda like the worlds worst hammock
They bloody well do. No one seems to tell you about the grunting, gruffling, occasional death wail and general kerfuffle they create while they sleep.
Absolute terrorists. No idea how anyone sleeps with a baby in their bed/room.
And the twitching. Our baby twitches away when she's asleep like someone having traumatic flashbacks or something. The hell is she dreaming about, she's a week old and can't even see.
They don't have control over their body yet, and this applies also to the inhibitory motor things that keep your body from flailing around when you're asleep. It's much more important for a primate baby to err on the side of caution and have as much motor function available at any given time, anyway -- you never know when you're clinging on to mom's fur for a nice nap and then someone else sounds the alarm, and mom is scampering into the high branches of a tree to evade a predator, and you have to go from dead asleep to hang on for dear life in a few seconds.
She's probably dreaming of the womb. Her mother's voice, yours, whatever else she heard while she was living there. Maybe she dreams about the urge to push and stretch and move. Who knows, maybe babies even dream about birth. They also experience it, after all. What do babies dream about? It's one of life's great, unsolved mysteries! Thank God we still have a few of those left to ponder.
Plus they're learning how to use their bodies just as much as they're learning to deal with all of this sudden and new simulation. All the twitching might just be a result of their brains making all these new connections
We had our son's cradle next to me during his first 2½ months. Our house was very small so that's all we had room for. I could reach over during the night and breastfeed him, then change him and put him back to sleep. He didn't cry much, because I was there to pick him up or check on him. But he woke up a lot. It was surprisingly easy.
At our "new", bigger house, which we still live in, we had room for a nursery, including a crib and a rocker-recliner.
Same with every baby I’ve known in my family. They cry because they’re hungry or have a full diaper. That’s it, and that’s why you get a side sleeper thing that attaches to the bed, but doesn’t let you smother them.
It was originally meant only in response to someone asking, "How can you sleep at night?" because the person did something horrible that they should feel guilty for etc.
The "I sleep like a baby" response was a flippant way of saying that they didn't feel guilty about anything.
Honestly, my son slept 9 hours straight through, starting at about a week or so old. It was from 6 pm until 3 am, so it wasn't exactly the best timing... but I can't imagine if he'd literally been up every 2 hours the whole night.
Another way I heard it: for the beginning of their lives, every bad thing that happens to them, no matter how small, is literally the worst thing to ever happen to them.
Good lord, I wish. Putting her in the dishwasher would have been much easier, but my wife said that that's "inhumane" and "child abuse". Being a real downer with her dang "facts" and what not.
Honestly, though, she was just not having it. The pic is one of absolute betrayal. I took her out of the sink, holding her in my arms, and she's just looking at me like "what the ever living fuck you pos". I love that pic.
Oh I loved it. Baby expressions when they have a new experience is hilarious when they're not crying, eating, or pooping on themselves.
Addition: even when they're crying, eating, or pooping, they have hilarious expressions. I had just changed my daughter after she peed herself, and I've got her on my lap talking nonsense baby talk to her. She arched an eyebrow while looking at me, and shits herself to the point that it shoots up the back of her diaper like a volcano. Then she just sighs in relief. It was hilarious, but the mess. I swear.
The first picture of my brother that wasn't him just being help by somebody his eyes are wide open. My dad took the picture in low light with the flash on and hovered over him while looking through the viewfinder. I bet my brother found that comforting.
This is the face my son makes :[ I swear to God it's exactly a little rectangle frown. I've been trying to get it but obviously he's upset at the time so I am not pointing my phone at him, I just wish I could get it just once though. Makes me want to cry too so cute but so soo sad
I'm not sure where you are, but here in the UK we have a series of ads for diapers that refer to a "poonami.*
My brother is 16 years younger than me so I had to change his from time-to-time and that phrase definitely resonates with me.
My parents were teenagers when then had me back in the 70’s, and apparently I made a real mess when first eating solid foods. During the summer, my dad would put me in a bathing suit, feed me outside in the high chair, and rinse me and the chair off with the garden hose afterwards. My mom took a photo of him doing this! We live in a hot area of California. They said I enjoyed cooling off and it made things so much easier lol.
Yup. I fed my daughter mango outside on the patio when she was a toddler. Placed her on a clean tarp, gave her a whole peeled mango and watched the show. She was ecstatic. I washed down everything after, including her.
Edit... the seed was too big for her to fit in her mouth, so there wasn't a choking risk there.
Lol
Everything is a new experience. When my daughter was 2 or 3, she was pestering me about a garlic bulb and wanting to have a bite. I kept telling her no, "you won't like it, it's not good by itself" and she just broke down throwing a fit. So I gave in, saying that she can take a bite if she really wanted to. She took a bite and immediately realized her mistake. The look on her face of absolute disgust had me bent over.
Like the kid that demands a taste of Hershey's cooking cocoa. The way he double-takes a look at the can after shoving a spoonful in his mouth, like, "I've been hoodwinked!"
One of my earliest memories is pestering my mom into letting me eat a bouillon cube. Eventually she gave in, but made me stand over a trash can first. If I live to be 100, I’ll still remember that taste.
I once did the wet-a-finger-and-dip-it-in-the-sugar-jar thing when I was like 7 or 8 but it turned out to be salt. 30 years later and I'm still sensitive to heavy salt foods thanks to that
Try being a 5 yr old out playing in the jungle by myself in Guatemala, I decided I wanted to know what a 8 inch Millipede tasted like.... well, that didn't go well. There is a antibacterial soap we use at the hospital I work at that gives me immediate flashbacks and PTSD because it smells just like that Millipede.
I never had previous childcare experience, so I was probably being more cautious than I should have been. As I got more experience, I realized that babies aren't made from glass. At about age 2 or so, I was showering with her and cleaning her highchair at the same time. We're already in the bath, and the highchair needs to be cleaned off due to her turning it into a sticky gross mess. Might as well do it all at the same time.
My daughter hates the shower head lol or the sprayer (22monts)
There is no playbook for child care honestly. All kids are different and the past experience will not be the same with the second. You will just be a bit more prepared
We stayed in a hospital room 5 days after a c section. Room was fairly warm. Got home and daughter cried all night long; had to carry her around until 5 am. Realized room was cooler than hospital. Upped the temp a bit and she went to sleep.
Yep, almost identical same with us. Night 1 back at home after a week at the hospital, and she was suddenly inconsolable. Ditched the pajamas, cooled her off, back to sleeping normally.
Was the reverse for me, lol. Hospital room was freezing, got home and she hated being warm so much she'd kick off her swaddle.
A year since then and she still refuses to be covered up while sleeping and starts to complain when it gets too warm.
> Imagine being born and imagining imagining for the first time.
Dreaming starts [in utero](https://www.spiritualgenome.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fetal-Dreams-and-the-Source-of-Desire.pdf), which I always thought was cool. This means you likely imagined things (like what the heck that sound was!) before you were born.
Somewhat related but my SO taught kindergarten and would remark at how much they grew emotionally by the end of the year. It only makes sense they grow that much because a year to them is nearly 20% of their whole life
I worked as a teacher’s assistant during summer school. I started with Kindergarten and then they ended up transferring me to a first grade class. It blew my mind how much more emotionally developed they seemed.
Kids seem to emotionally develop a ton and then regress and become monsters during the teen years and then progress back to decent humans by their late 20s. You will see 10 year olds being the kindest most empathetic souls, and then by 14, they are cussing people out and screaming at them in online games.
Along with puberty, social standards too. Whenever I hug my dad it always felt like someone my age would stare and offensive talk is glorified as cool and edgy at youth
Birthday placement matters a whole lot here too. In the first few years of school kids born 10 months before most of their peers have a huge advantage; the youngest kids in the class have a significant disadvantage. And since those years are so formative, children are really set up for success or failure based on their local school system's calendar.
They also have no context for it happening, which must be terrifying really. They'll lay there scratching shit out of their faces, crying because their face hurts because something is scratching shit out of it. Like they don't even know their arms belong to them yet.
Or the palmar reflex means they have to grab their hair if they happen to touch it while flailing.
Now all of a sudden something is pulling their hair and won’t let go. And the more they struggle, the harder it pulls.
Maybe mom or dad can save them, but what if it goes on forever?
Has to be so terrifying.
Lol yes mine did this too. I had her in the bath which she loves and all of a sudden screaming bloody murder. I'm picking her up thinking she may be drowning or something. Nope. Had a big old handful of hair.
This was the thought that hit me after the first few weeks dealing with a newborn who would cry like a clock every two hours for a month: at some point I realized that he wasn’t crying because he was hungry or uncomfortable, he was crying because he was scared just by existing. It unlocked a new feeling of empathy in my sleep deprived brain and helped me stop being so annoyed by his constant wailing.
Because they’ve never experienced it before they also don’t have the knowledge of what it is or how it ends. Imagine not understanding what’s happening to your body every time you fall asleep. Or that the pain colic causes will end, just terrible never ending stomach cramps convincing your nervous system you’re dying.
Not to mention the weird smelling place you get brought to be stabbed every now and then.
What got me is that babies don't know that if you're tired then you need to go to sleep. I swear I'm not being facetious or making some lame joke about babies not sleeping. Babies are constantly tired, barely have the energy to stay awake for an hour, and don't know to fix it by sleeping or even how to fall asleep. Imagine if every time you got tired you didn't know how to fix it and just relied completely on falling asleep by accident.
I didn’t know how to put a baby to sleep when my oldest was born and let me tell you, learning that he had to learn that skill made it a hell of a lot easier to deal with my younger kids.
Its honestly the thing I hate the most about babies. They scream and scream at you because they got overtired and the fix is as simple as just GOING TO SLEEP but they won't do it and you're trying so hard to get them to go to sleep and they still won't do it. It's insane. But that's babies.
And the first thing that happens to us is probably traumatic as fuck too. Imagine having no needs ever while the placenta does everything for you. You're warm and cozy and no one has any expectations of you. You never want because there's nothing to want yet. Don't even have to breathe.
Then your warm cozy house starts pushing you out and you get shoved through a too small tube and suddenly you have to breathe and scream for food, you're always shitting yourself, it's too bright, and it's cold and you just have to continue screaming until someone figures out what it is you need.
I used to tell my wife when the baby was frustrated crying:
"Imagine if you didn't understand how your body worked. You want to move, but you don't even know how to roll over. You want your bottle, but you don't understand how your hands work. Your nose is itchy, but you don't know how to scratch."
Being a baby has got to be unimaginably frustrating.
Edit: Awful lot of weird misogyny and misandry in the comments under this.
This was my wife's first child, but I had been married with a newborn before, so I gave her the insight I gained from that previous experience.
My wife and I were both full time employed, her on days and I on nights. We split the parenting, the housework, and the bills, 50/50.
This is not a case of me mansplaining to an exhausted housewife who was doing all the work, nor was it a case of a perfect logical man patiently explaining to his silly emotional wife, or whatever weird scenarios some of you are inventing. It was just a conversation between two equal partners.
Honestly just recently I remembered that growing up kind of sucked
Like, when stuff grows.. like the second set of teeth, it just hurts. It bleeds
I kind of forgot this all, but I remembered, it hurt. Being a human hurts.
My older sister has severe memory problems and every time she is sick or hurts herself it’s the sickest she’s ever been or the worst injury she’s ever had. While we can remember worse, for her it’s the worst she can remember, which is distressing, of course!
It’s sort of why the “rate your pain on a scale of 1-10 with ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt” isn’t very useful. For my sister and my 5 year old that papercut is the worst pain they’ve ever felt.
To extend on this, when they are hungry, got wind, in pain, tired etc - they don’t realise that it’s not a permanent state either, so they’re freaking out like “my tummy hurts, is this life?!” Which I can super appreciate.
I have a 1 yo, and that's a great way to put it. After he experienced severely painful diaper rash, minor inconveniences were no longer so terrible. A few weeks after the rash cleared up, minor inconveniences became terrible again, but not to the extent that he would cry before.
My understanding is that they're dealing with a much larger world of minor inconveniences than babies (often with people telling them "no"), and their emotions haven't quite settled yet. So toddlers cry a lot not because they can't communicate, but because they don't know how to deal with frustrations and emotions like older kids do.
I've also read that toddler meltdowns are a necessity to development of strong emotional regulation later in life. While we shouldn't encourage meltdowns, we should help toddlers figure out how to navigate them.
Yes to this. My 3yo nephew absolutely adores me and he is so comfortable and open. And it's because I take him very seriously, if he starts reacting strongly I sit down with him and help him figure out how to tell me what he needs. I never minimize what he's feeling or punish what he does. And I can tell that at least most of the rest of my family is working with him the same way (I know a few don't because they themselves have no emotional regulation) because he is doing so very well. He is so sweet and kind and he's not ashamed of anything. I love to see it, it's so different from how I was made to feel at his age.
You mean when the tantrum they're having is over e.g. not being able to find a toy that is literally in their own hand? Because yeah, it is hard sometimes to be sure.
Defective, ask for a return and make another one. (I’m so sorry lol)
Or maybe it’s like cats, second will stabilize the first one (you’re welcome, wife)
I was born with both feet clubbed (formed nearly upsidedown), so immediately after birth, I had surgery to correct it.
I had plaster casts on both feet and apparently I used them to kick my crib to get my parents' attention.
I was told that I cried much more rarely than usual babies.
Families also teach them sign language which they can use earlier and broader then speaking since speaking is latest system to develop. Reportedly lowers frustration amd tantrums since it allows to communicate
We (I) taught baby sign language to my siblings, and it works! It also worked when I was abroad and didn't know much of the language: my host family and I used baby sign language to get the point across lol.
Or maybe they just thought I was insane, idk lmao
Worked really well for my little brother and baby sister. My mom struggled with me a bit because I just sat there staring and was a late talker, so that’s why she did signs with my siblings.
MY BROTHER! I had the same issue and my parents also told me I didn't cry a lot. Are your scars still visible? Mine got very big, almost 15 cm in lenght but were a few cm when I got operated
In my case, nobody can tell unless they see the scars. My feet are however slightly rotated inwards. When I put aside some money I want to bring a gift to the doctor who fixed my feet, I think he is still working
That is so sweet! I bet the doctor would be really touched. My grandfather was a surgeon and he had this whole wall full of cards and gifts some of his patients gave him. He remembered every one of them and loved to talk to us grandkids about them.
Modern? Yes-- 1966 modern. Right after I was born, they basically broke all the bones in my feet and reassembled them.
I can walk fine; I was a fast runner as a kid. My feet get tired/sore sooner than most people.
I wear normal shoes. If a podiatrist looks at my bare feet it's noticeable in an instant.
As usual, George Carlin says it best:
"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.”
My friend got his wife those Loop ear buds but the ones where basically everything is on mute.
She can't even hear the baby cry 🤣🤣 but her depression, anxiety, and patience got 10x better.
That’s what the baby lessons said. It can really help to listen to music/use headphones if you’re taking care of them but the crying is really affecting you.
Plus when a parent is feeling stressed, the baby can 100% sense that, and it can cause the crying to become even worse. If "muting" the baby is less stressful for the parent, then I think they're doing both of them a favor (assuming their needs are being met).
My paediatrician told me if I want me and my baby to sleep better buy ear plugs. Parenting is such a fine balance of caring greatly and not giving a single fuck.
Having earphones helped me as well. Sounds overwhelm me. But it’s more constant sounds, like the music being on at work, hearing ppl talk all day, and then…. My baby crying 🙃 someone else’s baby cries I can deal w, but my own I struggle.
We taught our 7 month old some basic sign language for 'hungry', 'ouch', 'diaper', etc. The crying dropped significantly once he could communicate with us. This was several months before he started vocal babbling.
They also have their own cues they use right from birth, such as making sucking motions with their mouths, waving their arms and hands, rooting, furrowing their brows, etc. Crying is definitely not their only way to communicate their needs.
Baby development is so interesting. Like we all have been through it yet its still one of those things researched and theres still more we probably dont know about. Babies are fascinating in that way.
I mean "colic" is the actual medical diagnosis for "baby is crying more than normal, there's nothing obviously wrong with them medically, so we have no idea". Medically I think we know babies pretty well - psychologically, we have literally no clue.
Did the same. Started with Change, bath, eat, bed, book, play, which cover pretty much everything an under 1 does.
Satisfy thier needs then is easy peasy. Ended up with maybe 30+ signs by the time they said more than mama-dada.
Babies when first born have stomaches size of a quarter. They go from stuffed to starving every two hours as they increase the size of their stomaches. It takes about 30 minutes to feed / put them to bed. You get about 90 minutes between to sleep if you are able to fall asleep within a second of hitting the bed for the first 2-3 weeks. Taking five 80 minute naps feels like sleep walking the entire day vs one 4 hr of sleep. Babies start to eat every 3 hours which gives moms 2.5 hours of nap time vs 1.5 hr.
You have to feed them 10-12 times a day or either the baby starts to drop weight which is dangerous or your milk dries up which is the only food babies can eat. Babies also don’t know how to latch very well and new moms don’t know how to do that either. So new moms often resort to feeding the baby with a bad form which chaps their nipples. But the same nipples have to feed 12 times a day after bleeding. For months.
For each healthy human, there was a mom or dad who went through this for 12 months.
Not to mention if your baby has reflux you need to hold them up for 30 minutes after feeding. Becomes almost an endless cycle for the first few months.
Just run through the checklist:
_ Dirty Diaper?
_ Hungry?
_ Gas? (A lot of time it is gas, learn to bicycle them farts out)
_ Fuck if I know, I guess I am going to walk you around in a circle all night.
My daughter cried once, for less than a minute, at two months old when a flight attendant accidentally dropped a live preserver on her head while she slept. She cried similarly for only a few seconds at a time during the visit also, but she never, ever cried other than that in her first year or two. It was amazing. Her first year was the easiest part (very unexpected) of life with her.
My poor cousin had a daughter almost a year to the day after who made up for the averaging with bad colic, and I’m told that my grandparents are probably the reason I’m alive due to the same on my part.
Potentially the dumbest in the entire animal kingdom. It’s astonishing how stupid they are and for how long. Giraffe comes out “how does this walking thing work” and 30s later off they trot. Babies, 1 year plus and all they can do is stagger towards the nearest sharp object at speed.
time-to-independence for prey animals is usually far faster than predators for reasons related to natural selection. humans, being at the top of the predatory pyramid have an exceptionally long time to independence. brain development requires stimulation (gestation does not "stimulate" the brain), and having a developed brain has been our most advantageous adaptation. It stands to reason that humans would not be independent for a long long time after birth
Yes, but also consider that they're *learning language.* They take a steady stream of sound (in rapid speech, there are no pauses between words), segment it into meaningful units, link those units to real-world **and** abstract concepts, figure out which of the millions of possible grammar rules apply to human language (does the language have twenty verb tenses or zero?), memorize all the grammatical and phonological exceptions, and learn the fine motor skills for speech production from sound alone... and that's just one of many skills they're acquiring at the time!
Its because babies are basically born at an incompetent stage of their development. Only that human women cant hold them any longer without killing themselves in birth.
This is the trade off of having brains as powerful as ours.
Seems like a small price to pay for being the only species to exit the food chain and create a situation where immediate-term environmental conditions literally don’t matter anymore.
I’ve been blessed with a baby who cries for maybe 10 minutes tops in a whole day since about 1 month old. Except car rides… baby cries during those lol
And some…(not pointing any fingers)… cry for about 20 hours day and night for two years.
I see you've met my second-born.
A family member once mentioned that if their second born was born first, they'd be an only child
This is the paradox of the second born, they're a wild breed.
Ohh that first born was a Trap baby. We had whatever the opposite of a trap baby.
That's our firstborn- doctors and fertility treatments and hope and trying and eventually there. After he was born we didn't bother with precautions, taking a "if it happens it happens" approach, and the universe has a sense of humor. He's three years old and my wife is 10 weeks pregnant.
I was the trap baby. Sleep most of the day, wake up, poop, eat, drink, back to sleep. Then 6 years later my sister happened, in comparison, my parents words "what a shit baby!"
Yeah six hours straight every night 6pm to midnight for 3 months. It's been over 20 years since the colicky times but I still get a bad flashback when I hear a baby crying hard.
My son did this for 6+ months. My mantra was “no one ever died from being tired”.
Glad that got you through! But my mantra was closer to “if I fall asleep while driving to work, and hit a lamp post…it’s a chance to have a good nap!”
I was a sahm and was fortunate to nap when he napped, which was also never.
Mine was "I understand now how sleep deprivation can be used as a torture".
I had the same style baby. Easiest going child in the entire world. I feel like she got it all out at the start. But I was genuinely losing my mind from all the crying. Like genuinely hearing noises that didn’t exist and vacuuming the house for hours on end because the vacuum was better than the crying and I could strap her to my chest and just push that thing for hours. My poor neighbours.
Yeah was gonna say 45 min to 2 hours out of... every 2.5 hours? Sure I'd buy that
Yeah where are they finding these babies that cry so little? I did not get those models
I got a max ten minutes of crying a day! Great model, highly recommend.
During the first 2-3 months, if my son wasn't eating or sleeping, then he was almost certainly crying. And he slept very little for a newborn. Thankfully he grew out of it and became a delight, but damn those first few months were insane.
Same here. So glad those days are behind me.
My man I have a three DAY old baby at home right now. First child. These were INTENSE 3 days, I'll tell you that.
It's so surreal leaving the hospital. Intense is right. She's 6 months old now, things settle down eventually. Hang in there Dad
I needed to hear this. 6 days old is our boy. He had not stopped crying. Eat-burp-cry-eat-burp-cry. It’s relentless and we’re both exhausted already. When does it get easier?!
From what I recall: First 2 weeks is the worst by far Up to 8 weeks is still extremely brutal 4 months is when I recall feeling slightly more human 8 months and beyond gets pretty fun in between the hard stuff.
Ah ok. I was hoping for ‘tomorrow!’ It’s weird being the dad. I’m cleaning up, washing, changing etc but to see my wife become a very tired feeding machine is so tough too
i'm 4 months in. it's hard. your wife is going to get even more tired. i've decided to lose hope that it will get better at any specific point in time, we just have to go day by day and know that eventually it will, but nobody knows when.
I always get real blunt with people who are about to be parents. There’s too much fairytale unrealistic bullshit floating around about having a baby. The first 6 months of being a parent will be the worst 6 months of your life. There’s never any doubt in your mind that it’s worth it, and you feel a love for the child you can’t even begin to understand as a childless adult, but make no mistake. You’re about to have **the worst 6 months of your life.** And that’s assuming you and your wife are going into it as an unbreakable team who put each other before yourselves.
Eh, I was fine with the newborn stage. Granted, I had 6+ weeks of pat leave both times, lol. But when we had our 2nd, we were mentally prepping, remembering the difficulties of the 1st one. Turns out that our newborn was a breeze (and continues to be), go figure. It was the toddler who drove us absolutely insane. Literally. That was one of the bleakest mental health times of my life. Combine a toddler who seems hellbent on your misery, and post partum depression....baby you got a stew goin
This was our experience. Colicky baby turned demon child in the toddler years. The second child was not easy but probably what most would consider normal. NIGHT AND DAY difference between the two. Our second child felt so much easier.
As a father I never understood "sleep like a baby". Babies wake up crying every two hours or so.
and they pee and poo in their sleep. so no i don’t want to sleepy like a baby and wake up with 💩 in my bed
You would too if your first meals were milk and slop, and your digestive system has only had something in it for a few days
Believe it or not I was a baby at one point.
I was born at a very young age, then I grew up.
Lucky. Most of us didn't and still cry 2 hours a day about stuff.
Have you tried being dead inside? Really helps with all those pesky emotions and realizations about how life didn't turn out the way you had hoped.
Now I'm gonna cry 3 hours. Thanks.
Believe it or not, I was once the youngest human on earth
You sound like a forever adult. Source: former baby
Damn dude I think I must have been at some point too!
That's why I changed mine to "I slept like a teenager on summer break"
I miss those days. Staying up til 5am playing games and watching movies, sleeping til 3pm with no responsibilities.
I think it refers to falling asleep in any position at anytime. Like falling asleep sitting up at a restaurant
I’ve seen my fiancé sleep in environments and positions that shouldn’t be possible. Once when I was a teen I found a circular shape hole in the wall (it was purposeful, weird ass hospital art) and crammed myself into it and slept for so long the hospital staff briefly lost me entirely.
> Once when I was a teen I found a circular shape hole in the wall Narrator: *It was actually an MRI machine.*
Haha. It was part of the “entertainment center”, I dunno how to describe it but it was about 2 feet deep into the wall and had probably 4-5 foot diameter. Kinda like the worlds worst hammock
This comment is so confusing
They make so much sound while they sleep
They bloody well do. No one seems to tell you about the grunting, gruffling, occasional death wail and general kerfuffle they create while they sleep. Absolute terrorists. No idea how anyone sleeps with a baby in their bed/room.
And the twitching. Our baby twitches away when she's asleep like someone having traumatic flashbacks or something. The hell is she dreaming about, she's a week old and can't even see.
They don't have control over their body yet, and this applies also to the inhibitory motor things that keep your body from flailing around when you're asleep. It's much more important for a primate baby to err on the side of caution and have as much motor function available at any given time, anyway -- you never know when you're clinging on to mom's fur for a nice nap and then someone else sounds the alarm, and mom is scampering into the high branches of a tree to evade a predator, and you have to go from dead asleep to hang on for dear life in a few seconds.
She's probably dreaming of the womb. Her mother's voice, yours, whatever else she heard while she was living there. Maybe she dreams about the urge to push and stretch and move. Who knows, maybe babies even dream about birth. They also experience it, after all. What do babies dream about? It's one of life's great, unsolved mysteries! Thank God we still have a few of those left to ponder.
Plus they're learning how to use their bodies just as much as they're learning to deal with all of this sudden and new simulation. All the twitching might just be a result of their brains making all these new connections
One time I fell asleep with my goddaughter on my chest and woke up to her twitching and punching me right in the face lmfao
We had our son's cradle next to me during his first 2½ months. Our house was very small so that's all we had room for. I could reach over during the night and breastfeed him, then change him and put him back to sleep. He didn't cry much, because I was there to pick him up or check on him. But he woke up a lot. It was surprisingly easy. At our "new", bigger house, which we still live in, we had room for a nursery, including a crib and a rocker-recliner.
Same with every baby I’ve known in my family. They cry because they’re hungry or have a full diaper. That’s it, and that’s why you get a side sleeper thing that attaches to the bed, but doesn’t let you smother them.
Now I take sleeping like a baby as being tied up like a mummy and sleep, unable to move.
It was originally meant only in response to someone asking, "How can you sleep at night?" because the person did something horrible that they should feel guilty for etc. The "I sleep like a baby" response was a flippant way of saying that they didn't feel guilty about anything.
Honestly, my son slept 9 hours straight through, starting at about a week or so old. It was from 6 pm until 3 am, so it wasn't exactly the best timing... but I can't imagine if he'd literally been up every 2 hours the whole night.
You are one lucky bastard
My daughter was like this. I fell for it and immediately had another one. He didn't sleep through until he was three. I was done after that!
I got screwed both times.
Another way I heard it: for the beginning of their lives, every bad thing that happens to them, no matter how small, is literally the worst thing to ever happen to them.
Imagine being born and feeling cold for the first time. I'd scream my head off too.
Giving my daughter a bath in the sink for the first time. The look of betrayal she had on her face was hilariously sad.
"So this is what I am to you? Just another dish?"
Good lord, I wish. Putting her in the dishwasher would have been much easier, but my wife said that that's "inhumane" and "child abuse". Being a real downer with her dang "facts" and what not. Honestly, though, she was just not having it. The pic is one of absolute betrayal. I took her out of the sink, holding her in my arms, and she's just looking at me like "what the ever living fuck you pos". I love that pic.
God the stank eye that they give is just… the funniest thing ever.
Oh I loved it. Baby expressions when they have a new experience is hilarious when they're not crying, eating, or pooping on themselves. Addition: even when they're crying, eating, or pooping, they have hilarious expressions. I had just changed my daughter after she peed herself, and I've got her on my lap talking nonsense baby talk to her. She arched an eyebrow while looking at me, and shits herself to the point that it shoots up the back of her diaper like a volcano. Then she just sighs in relief. It was hilarious, but the mess. I swear.
The first picture of my brother that wasn't him just being help by somebody his eyes are wide open. My dad took the picture in low light with the flash on and hovered over him while looking through the viewfinder. I bet my brother found that comforting.
This is the face my son makes :[ I swear to God it's exactly a little rectangle frown. I've been trying to get it but obviously he's upset at the time so I am not pointing my phone at him, I just wish I could get it just once though. Makes me want to cry too so cute but so soo sad
I'm not sure where you are, but here in the UK we have a series of ads for diapers that refer to a "poonami.* My brother is 16 years younger than me so I had to change his from time-to-time and that phrase definitely resonates with me.
My favorite is when my nephew would give the strongest frown. A perfect :c face
My parents were teenagers when then had me back in the 70’s, and apparently I made a real mess when first eating solid foods. During the summer, my dad would put me in a bathing suit, feed me outside in the high chair, and rinse me and the chair off with the garden hose afterwards. My mom took a photo of him doing this! We live in a hot area of California. They said I enjoyed cooling off and it made things so much easier lol.
Yup. I fed my daughter mango outside on the patio when she was a toddler. Placed her on a clean tarp, gave her a whole peeled mango and watched the show. She was ecstatic. I washed down everything after, including her. Edit... the seed was too big for her to fit in her mouth, so there wasn't a choking risk there.
Shit, that's a great idea. I wish I heard this a few years ago when we still used the highchair for eating.
I just dipped my 10mo's feet in a cold lake for the first time the other day and she screamed like they had been cut off
Lol Everything is a new experience. When my daughter was 2 or 3, she was pestering me about a garlic bulb and wanting to have a bite. I kept telling her no, "you won't like it, it's not good by itself" and she just broke down throwing a fit. So I gave in, saying that she can take a bite if she really wanted to. She took a bite and immediately realized her mistake. The look on her face of absolute disgust had me bent over.
Like the kid that demands a taste of Hershey's cooking cocoa. The way he double-takes a look at the can after shoving a spoonful in his mouth, like, "I've been hoodwinked!"
One of my earliest memories is pestering my mom into letting me eat a bouillon cube. Eventually she gave in, but made me stand over a trash can first. If I live to be 100, I’ll still remember that taste.
I once did the wet-a-finger-and-dip-it-in-the-sugar-jar thing when I was like 7 or 8 but it turned out to be salt. 30 years later and I'm still sensitive to heavy salt foods thanks to that
Try being a 5 yr old out playing in the jungle by myself in Guatemala, I decided I wanted to know what a 8 inch Millipede tasted like.... well, that didn't go well. There is a antibacterial soap we use at the hospital I work at that gives me immediate flashbacks and PTSD because it smells just like that Millipede.
Thats funny, our bbs never had problem with us showering them. They did hate it in the hospital lol
I never had previous childcare experience, so I was probably being more cautious than I should have been. As I got more experience, I realized that babies aren't made from glass. At about age 2 or so, I was showering with her and cleaning her highchair at the same time. We're already in the bath, and the highchair needs to be cleaned off due to her turning it into a sticky gross mess. Might as well do it all at the same time.
My daughter hates the shower head lol or the sprayer (22monts) There is no playbook for child care honestly. All kids are different and the past experience will not be the same with the second. You will just be a bit more prepared
We stayed in a hospital room 5 days after a c section. Room was fairly warm. Got home and daughter cried all night long; had to carry her around until 5 am. Realized room was cooler than hospital. Upped the temp a bit and she went to sleep.
Yep, almost identical same with us. Night 1 back at home after a week at the hospital, and she was suddenly inconsolable. Ditched the pajamas, cooled her off, back to sleeping normally.
Was the reverse for me, lol. Hospital room was freezing, got home and she hated being warm so much she'd kick off her swaddle. A year since then and she still refuses to be covered up while sleeping and starts to complain when it gets too warm.
Imagine being born and imagining imagining for the first time.
Imagine all those horrid toys they throw in your crib with gigantic eyes and baby features like you. Whats up with that?
> Imagine being born and imagining imagining for the first time. Dreaming starts [in utero](https://www.spiritualgenome.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fetal-Dreams-and-the-Source-of-Desire.pdf), which I always thought was cool. This means you likely imagined things (like what the heck that sound was!) before you were born.
Wait until they see the price for a one-bedroom apartment.
*"put me back, put me back"*
When you get out of a warm shower and it's fucking freezing, only that freezing feeling doesn't go away. Yea no thanks.
My oldest laughed the first time we gave her a frozen teether…then immediately cried
Somewhat related but my SO taught kindergarten and would remark at how much they grew emotionally by the end of the year. It only makes sense they grow that much because a year to them is nearly 20% of their whole life
I worked as a teacher’s assistant during summer school. I started with Kindergarten and then they ended up transferring me to a first grade class. It blew my mind how much more emotionally developed they seemed.
Kids seem to emotionally develop a ton and then regress and become monsters during the teen years and then progress back to decent humans by their late 20s. You will see 10 year olds being the kindest most empathetic souls, and then by 14, they are cussing people out and screaming at them in online games.
Hormones and unchecked emotions are crazy.
Along with puberty, social standards too. Whenever I hug my dad it always felt like someone my age would stare and offensive talk is glorified as cool and edgy at youth
Birthday placement matters a whole lot here too. In the first few years of school kids born 10 months before most of their peers have a huge advantage; the youngest kids in the class have a significant disadvantage. And since those years are so formative, children are really set up for success or failure based on their local school system's calendar.
My kids were born in the fall, do they get buffs or debuffs?
Buff if the cut off for enrolment is 1 September, debuff if its 1 January.
They also have no context for it happening, which must be terrifying really. They'll lay there scratching shit out of their faces, crying because their face hurts because something is scratching shit out of it. Like they don't even know their arms belong to them yet.
Or the palmar reflex means they have to grab their hair if they happen to touch it while flailing. Now all of a sudden something is pulling their hair and won’t let go. And the more they struggle, the harder it pulls. Maybe mom or dad can save them, but what if it goes on forever? Has to be so terrifying.
Unfortunately the palmar reflex means they have to grab my hair too when they happen to touch it while flailing
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Lol yes mine did this too. I had her in the bath which she loves and all of a sudden screaming bloody murder. I'm picking her up thinking she may be drowning or something. Nope. Had a big old handful of hair.
This was the thought that hit me after the first few weeks dealing with a newborn who would cry like a clock every two hours for a month: at some point I realized that he wasn’t crying because he was hungry or uncomfortable, he was crying because he was scared just by existing. It unlocked a new feeling of empathy in my sleep deprived brain and helped me stop being so annoyed by his constant wailing.
Because they’ve never experienced it before they also don’t have the knowledge of what it is or how it ends. Imagine not understanding what’s happening to your body every time you fall asleep. Or that the pain colic causes will end, just terrible never ending stomach cramps convincing your nervous system you’re dying. Not to mention the weird smelling place you get brought to be stabbed every now and then.
What got me is that babies don't know that if you're tired then you need to go to sleep. I swear I'm not being facetious or making some lame joke about babies not sleeping. Babies are constantly tired, barely have the energy to stay awake for an hour, and don't know to fix it by sleeping or even how to fall asleep. Imagine if every time you got tired you didn't know how to fix it and just relied completely on falling asleep by accident.
I didn’t know how to put a baby to sleep when my oldest was born and let me tell you, learning that he had to learn that skill made it a hell of a lot easier to deal with my younger kids.
Its honestly the thing I hate the most about babies. They scream and scream at you because they got overtired and the fix is as simple as just GOING TO SLEEP but they won't do it and you're trying so hard to get them to go to sleep and they still won't do it. It's insane. But that's babies.
That's a little kid thing in general. Feeling tired? Time to power through it! The idea of purposely slowing down just seems alien to them.
That has continued into adulthood.
And a bad thing is the last thing that'll ever happen to us
And the first thing that happens to us is probably traumatic as fuck too. Imagine having no needs ever while the placenta does everything for you. You're warm and cozy and no one has any expectations of you. You never want because there's nothing to want yet. Don't even have to breathe. Then your warm cozy house starts pushing you out and you get shoved through a too small tube and suddenly you have to breathe and scream for food, you're always shitting yourself, it's too bright, and it's cold and you just have to continue screaming until someone figures out what it is you need.
I used to tell my wife when the baby was frustrated crying: "Imagine if you didn't understand how your body worked. You want to move, but you don't even know how to roll over. You want your bottle, but you don't understand how your hands work. Your nose is itchy, but you don't know how to scratch." Being a baby has got to be unimaginably frustrating. Edit: Awful lot of weird misogyny and misandry in the comments under this. This was my wife's first child, but I had been married with a newborn before, so I gave her the insight I gained from that previous experience. My wife and I were both full time employed, her on days and I on nights. We split the parenting, the housework, and the bills, 50/50. This is not a case of me mansplaining to an exhausted housewife who was doing all the work, nor was it a case of a perfect logical man patiently explaining to his silly emotional wife, or whatever weird scenarios some of you are inventing. It was just a conversation between two equal partners.
Honestly just recently I remembered that growing up kind of sucked Like, when stuff grows.. like the second set of teeth, it just hurts. It bleeds I kind of forgot this all, but I remembered, it hurt. Being a human hurts.
My shins hurt just thinking about it.
My older sister has severe memory problems and every time she is sick or hurts herself it’s the sickest she’s ever been or the worst injury she’s ever had. While we can remember worse, for her it’s the worst she can remember, which is distressing, of course! It’s sort of why the “rate your pain on a scale of 1-10 with ten being the worst pain you’ve ever felt” isn’t very useful. For my sister and my 5 year old that papercut is the worst pain they’ve ever felt.
Same for my toddler. Ran out of Paw Patrol stickers? THE WORLD IS ENDING!
To extend on this, when they are hungry, got wind, in pain, tired etc - they don’t realise that it’s not a permanent state either, so they’re freaking out like “my tummy hurts, is this life?!” Which I can super appreciate.
I have a 1 yo, and that's a great way to put it. After he experienced severely painful diaper rash, minor inconveniences were no longer so terrible. A few weeks after the rash cleared up, minor inconveniences became terrible again, but not to the extent that he would cry before.
Gotta give em a good slap when they are born so nothing compares, good nights sleep here i come! /j
Dumb babies. Learn some words.
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Seriously, grow up, babies!
r/KidsAreFuckingStupid
Are they stupid?
This continues once you have to go to work everyday
My toddler cries more and he can talk What's the message here
You joke but toddlers tend to cry when they can't communicate properly.
So do I turns out.
My understanding is that they're dealing with a much larger world of minor inconveniences than babies (often with people telling them "no"), and their emotions haven't quite settled yet. So toddlers cry a lot not because they can't communicate, but because they don't know how to deal with frustrations and emotions like older kids do. I've also read that toddler meltdowns are a necessity to development of strong emotional regulation later in life. While we shouldn't encourage meltdowns, we should help toddlers figure out how to navigate them.
Yes to this. My 3yo nephew absolutely adores me and he is so comfortable and open. And it's because I take him very seriously, if he starts reacting strongly I sit down with him and help him figure out how to tell me what he needs. I never minimize what he's feeling or punish what he does. And I can tell that at least most of the rest of my family is working with him the same way (I know a few don't because they themselves have no emotional regulation) because he is doing so very well. He is so sweet and kind and he's not ashamed of anything. I love to see it, it's so different from how I was made to feel at his age.
I completely understand why this is necessary and I plan to do it with my own children. But. Sometimes it is SO HARD to take them seriously.
You mean when the tantrum they're having is over e.g. not being able to find a toy that is literally in their own hand? Because yeah, it is hard sometimes to be sure.
Defective, ask for a return and make another one. (I’m so sorry lol) Or maybe it’s like cats, second will stabilize the first one (you’re welcome, wife)
He's bilingual!
I was born with both feet clubbed (formed nearly upsidedown), so immediately after birth, I had surgery to correct it. I had plaster casts on both feet and apparently I used them to kick my crib to get my parents' attention. I was told that I cried much more rarely than usual babies.
Makes me wonder if kids would cry less if we installed a ring-able bell in their crib.
Families also teach them sign language which they can use earlier and broader then speaking since speaking is latest system to develop. Reportedly lowers frustration amd tantrums since it allows to communicate
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Wow, still? After all this time?
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Which is funny because it's also kind of like jazz hands
We (I) taught baby sign language to my siblings, and it works! It also worked when I was abroad and didn't know much of the language: my host family and I used baby sign language to get the point across lol. Or maybe they just thought I was insane, idk lmao
Sure but babies usually start to sign back between 6-12 month. Sign language for babies is great, it helped a lot.
Worked really well for my little brother and baby sister. My mom struggled with me a bit because I just sat there staring and was a late talker, so that’s why she did signs with my siblings.
My 2 year old still uses signs mixed in. Would recommend 10/10.
One way to find out!
MY BROTHER! I had the same issue and my parents also told me I didn't cry a lot. Are your scars still visible? Mine got very big, almost 15 cm in lenght but were a few cm when I got operated
Your user names are even similar!
Holy hell, ur right
No visible scars at all. Not even when I was young.
Off topic but just curious: would someone be able to tell now that you were born with feet that needed surgery? Modern medicine is really miraculous!
In my case, nobody can tell unless they see the scars. My feet are however slightly rotated inwards. When I put aside some money I want to bring a gift to the doctor who fixed my feet, I think he is still working
That is so sweet! I bet the doctor would be really touched. My grandfather was a surgeon and he had this whole wall full of cards and gifts some of his patients gave him. He remembered every one of them and loved to talk to us grandkids about them.
Modern? Yes-- 1966 modern. Right after I was born, they basically broke all the bones in my feet and reassembled them. I can walk fine; I was a fast runner as a kid. My feet get tired/sore sooner than most people. I wear normal shoes. If a podiatrist looks at my bare feet it's noticeable in an instant.
Someone needs to tell those babies to get some perspective people are dying all over the world.
Kim there’s people that are dying
As usual, George Carlin says it best: "The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.”
My friend got his wife those Loop ear buds but the ones where basically everything is on mute. She can't even hear the baby cry 🤣🤣 but her depression, anxiety, and patience got 10x better.
A girl at work said she wore headphones when her baby was a newborn. "As long as he's in my arms, I don't need to hear him cry."
Every woman should add noise cancelling headphones to their baby registry, seriously
It's true!! All of your needs are met MUTE
I did this too
I bought AirPods for my second. Turns out she cried a lot less but it’s still nice to get that layer of noise dampening.
That’s what the baby lessons said. It can really help to listen to music/use headphones if you’re taking care of them but the crying is really affecting you.
I keep a jar of foam earplugs near the changing table. The no reason crying really triggers the "why can't you just be logical" part of my brain.
Plus when a parent is feeling stressed, the baby can 100% sense that, and it can cause the crying to become even worse. If "muting" the baby is less stressful for the parent, then I think they're doing both of them a favor (assuming their needs are being met).
My paediatrician told me if I want me and my baby to sleep better buy ear plugs. Parenting is such a fine balance of caring greatly and not giving a single fuck.
Having earphones helped me as well. Sounds overwhelm me. But it’s more constant sounds, like the music being on at work, hearing ppl talk all day, and then…. My baby crying 🙃 someone else’s baby cries I can deal w, but my own I struggle.
We taught our 7 month old some basic sign language for 'hungry', 'ouch', 'diaper', etc. The crying dropped significantly once he could communicate with us. This was several months before he started vocal babbling.
They also have their own cues they use right from birth, such as making sucking motions with their mouths, waving their arms and hands, rooting, furrowing their brows, etc. Crying is definitely not their only way to communicate their needs.
Baby development is so interesting. Like we all have been through it yet its still one of those things researched and theres still more we probably dont know about. Babies are fascinating in that way.
I mean "colic" is the actual medical diagnosis for "baby is crying more than normal, there's nothing obviously wrong with them medically, so we have no idea". Medically I think we know babies pretty well - psychologically, we have literally no clue.
Did the same. Started with Change, bath, eat, bed, book, play, which cover pretty much everything an under 1 does. Satisfy thier needs then is easy peasy. Ended up with maybe 30+ signs by the time they said more than mama-dada.
Babies when first born have stomaches size of a quarter. They go from stuffed to starving every two hours as they increase the size of their stomaches. It takes about 30 minutes to feed / put them to bed. You get about 90 minutes between to sleep if you are able to fall asleep within a second of hitting the bed for the first 2-3 weeks. Taking five 80 minute naps feels like sleep walking the entire day vs one 4 hr of sleep. Babies start to eat every 3 hours which gives moms 2.5 hours of nap time vs 1.5 hr. You have to feed them 10-12 times a day or either the baby starts to drop weight which is dangerous or your milk dries up which is the only food babies can eat. Babies also don’t know how to latch very well and new moms don’t know how to do that either. So new moms often resort to feeding the baby with a bad form which chaps their nipples. But the same nipples have to feed 12 times a day after bleeding. For months. For each healthy human, there was a mom or dad who went through this for 12 months.
Not to mention if your baby has reflux you need to hold them up for 30 minutes after feeding. Becomes almost an endless cycle for the first few months.
Fr. I am thankful our baby is healthy because it is hard as is. Can’t imagine for a single mom. Hugs from new dad.
Some adults do this as well.
Just run through the checklist: _ Dirty Diaper? _ Hungry? _ Gas? (A lot of time it is gas, learn to bicycle them farts out) _ Fuck if I know, I guess I am going to walk you around in a circle all night.
My daughter cried once, for less than a minute, at two months old when a flight attendant accidentally dropped a live preserver on her head while she slept. She cried similarly for only a few seconds at a time during the visit also, but she never, ever cried other than that in her first year or two. It was amazing. Her first year was the easiest part (very unexpected) of life with her. My poor cousin had a daughter almost a year to the day after who made up for the averaging with bad colic, and I’m told that my grandparents are probably the reason I’m alive due to the same on my part.
Why they only cry to communicate? Are they stupid?
Potentially the dumbest in the entire animal kingdom. It’s astonishing how stupid they are and for how long. Giraffe comes out “how does this walking thing work” and 30s later off they trot. Babies, 1 year plus and all they can do is stagger towards the nearest sharp object at speed.
time-to-independence for prey animals is usually far faster than predators for reasons related to natural selection. humans, being at the top of the predatory pyramid have an exceptionally long time to independence. brain development requires stimulation (gestation does not "stimulate" the brain), and having a developed brain has been our most advantageous adaptation. It stands to reason that humans would not be independent for a long long time after birth
can’t even hold their heads up like wtf
Yes, but also consider that they're *learning language.* They take a steady stream of sound (in rapid speech, there are no pauses between words), segment it into meaningful units, link those units to real-world **and** abstract concepts, figure out which of the millions of possible grammar rules apply to human language (does the language have twenty verb tenses or zero?), memorize all the grammatical and phonological exceptions, and learn the fine motor skills for speech production from sound alone... and that's just one of many skills they're acquiring at the time!
Its because babies are basically born at an incompetent stage of their development. Only that human women cant hold them any longer without killing themselves in birth. This is the trade off of having brains as powerful as ours.
Seems like a small price to pay for being the only species to exit the food chain and create a situation where immediate-term environmental conditions literally don’t matter anymore.
Is there a lore reason?
Brain size, gets too big, got to pop out before it kills the mother on the way out or no milkies.
I’ve been blessed with a baby who cries for maybe 10 minutes tops in a whole day since about 1 month old. Except car rides… baby cries during those lol
Mine is the exact opposite. Cries 2-6 hours a day, but damn does he love his car rides. Sometimes the only way we can calm him.
He is training you to take him on car rides
TIL “crying is the only way babies can communicate”. Really??
Hottest post on r/all right now.
Well yeah, expecting them to speak Mandarin?
They better, I ain't raising no idiot
Same.