This is going to be a short one because I have a 6 week old new born baby in his crib in my room and its already 11.30pm at night and I expect in 30 minutes or so he will be up for his midnight feed. Then depending on how his current physiology is at this age, he will be up every 1 to 2 hours after for feeds till morning.
Some nights, though rare ( 3-4 times at least since he was born), he gave us 3 hours.
Parents will know how tough it can get in those early weeks of a newborn’s life.
And even though this is my fourth child and I have my 3 month long maternity leave, it is still challenging for me and my husband, getting through these days.
Especially when I’m alone with him, and not to mention I’m exclusively breastfeeding.
To be fair, it has been 6 years since I last did this, and I’m ‘older’ now.
Anyway, as he finishes his Day 45 of life, my mind has mapped out a simple wheel of needs for him and I think it can be useful as a quick guide during those days when parents are not at their best due to lack of sleep and recovery (for mothers), and our brains may not be working at its usual optimized condition.
I requested ChatGPT to make me a basic image of newborn baby needs with below prompt:
‘Make me a wheel of newborn baby needs with the factors including tired (time for nap), hungry, overstimulated, gassy (prepare for farts and burps/spit ups), wet nappy, discomfort (diaper rash, too hot, too cold) and the unknown or multi factorial causes yet to be revealed.’
Here it is.
It did such a great job creating the image, and more importantly, I saved time from drawing it out on my own.
Now I have a visual of what I had in my head.
And you can use it too, if you wish and if you think it helps.
That is if you are in my shoes being a parent to a new born and devoting the majority of your days , and nights, to keep them safe, healthy, and thriving.
And to keep our sanity in check while they grow into their own little baby person.
Before I end this post, a quick shout out to ‘sleep’.
I took you for granted, and I miss you. It’s so broken now, sleep that is, I so want a good 5–6 hour uninterrupted stretch of it.
And now off to bed I go for the night watch, just before midnight.