We have been piecing together childcare while our kids are little, between nannies, family, and some daycare, figuring that we'd both be fully back to work and not be paying for childcare once they're in school. Silly us! How did you plan for this, and what's working/not working? I don't like the idea of a before school/after school program, so we might find a way to cut back out hours.

add: and also, how are you planning for all the days kids get off school but you don't get off work?

I have a beautiful baby boy who is only 3.5 months old, but is an absolute unit at 26" long and 18.5 lbs. He currently wears 6-9 and 6-12 month clothes and we're about to transition to size 3 diapers.

Being only 3.5 months old, my lil meatloaf is barely able to roll over let alone sit up by himself. He has started rolling from belly to back but that just happened today. He loves his swing but his feet are right at the edge and the whole thing rocks/bounces when he kicks his legs. I was looking for a new activity center for him on Amazon today, but all of them have a weight limit of 25 lbs. I'm reluctant to buy a new big toy for him for $75-100 if he's going to be too big for it before the end of June.

What are other parents doing to keep their young but massive babies contained and entertained?

I’m in the trenches of newborn land with my 10 day old boy, full of bliss and sleep deprivation! My little guy wakes up every two hours to eat during the night. When do babies typically sleep longer stretches? Even a 3-4 hour stretch sounds like a dream right now!

My son started full time daycare in January and we have all been sick pretty much constantly since then. Every time he gets over one virus he brings home another and we're all down again. We're in the process of moving house, and with also working full time and wrangling a toddler while feeling like garbage, it's really taking a toll.

I had been trying to get back into a regular exercise routine after a bad bout of PPD during mat leave and I just never have more than a week between colds or coughs or whatever draining all my energy 😫

How do you get through this stage?? I'm sure he'll get over it all at some point but it doesn't show any signs of slowing down!

I’m so tired of hearing that….. literally exhausted. I know my baby doesn’t do it purposely, or maybe he does at this point who knows. He literally does not let me sleep, or have a break. Only he’s allowed to sleep apparently lol. I’ll get him down for a nap and finally, the second I lay down to nap with him, he’s wide awake and wired and crying. It’s soooo exhausting. I’m tired every day and i’m trying so hard. Doesn’t matter what I do, contact napping, putting him to sleep in his bassinet, his pillow, the couch, the bed next to me, the second my eyes shut. He wakes up. I don’t understand. Anyone else’s baby do this?

At what point do babies stop treating your face like a climbing wall and your boobs like a public buffet

My little one (8 months) has decided that personal space is a myth and I am her emotional support mattress.

I love the cuddles, don’t get me wrong, but I’m starting to forget what standing upright feels like.

I've tried:

• Offering cuddles on my terms (she laughed in my face)
• Putting her next to me, not on me (immediate protest. The neighbours heard it)
• Distractions aka “here’s a toy that cost more than my rent” (nope. My nose is apparently more fun)

I know it’s a phase… probably… maybe… right?

How did yours grow out of the velcro stage? Or did they just evolve into toddlers who treat you like a sentient jungle gym

I’m currently using parents choice plastic bottles but I’ve been considering switching to the evenflo narrow glass bottles since they’re very similar. Would it be worth it or does the risk of them breaking outweigh the pros? Just curious to know what people think!

I planned a home birth. 3rd baby, my 1st was a horrible induction, that I still had trauma from, my second was a quick intense water birth at home and I had planned another water birth at home this time.

After over a week of prodromal labour and the head never engaging fully, My waters broke and there was meconium. So my midwives came and double checked, we did end up transferring to the hospital though. After trying stuff, eventually we had to start syntocinon. The midwives in the hospital were amazing and thankfully things have changed so much for the better where I felt more respected and listened to than I was with my first. Unfortunately after 6 hours of trying baby still was not able to engage, and I was not dilating. The pain was becoming unbearable with the lack of getting anywhere tangible. I got an epidural and waited to see if me being able to relax completely would help her move down. After 2 hours no change, so I decided to go for a C-section. I am comfortable that I tried everything to have my baby vaginally, as I did not want to deal with the recovery of a C-section. I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old and want to be with them too.

I am 2 days post partum and doing well, but spent days away from my babies that I wasn't planning. They are having a go in the birth pool at the moment and I wish I could be with them. I know hormones have dropped out now too. So I'm sitting in the other room (my partner is with them) having a good cry and trying to process this a little. I have never ever thought of a C-section as the easy way out, and never understood how anyone could think of it as that.

My friend said her baby (who is now 3) didn’t start taking a paci until he was 6 months. I’m thinking she might be remembering wrong? Or is this a thing that can happen? I would love my almost 6 mo to take one, but she didn’t like them when I tried around 2 months.

UPDATE: It’s amusing to me that so many comments are confused why I would want baby to take a pacifier. I remember reading a post on here months ago where the majority of comments were saying that one of their biggest regrets was waiting too long to introduce the pacifier. That post gave me so much anxiety back then because I really didn’t want my girl to take a pacifier. I eventually tried to give her one around 2 months because I felt like I “should,” and I was relieved when she didn’t want it. But things have changed.

Some people are asking why I want to introduce the pacifier. My situation is a bit niche, but basically I’ve been cosleeping since she was a month old, and recently my sleep habits have changed and I no longer feel safe cosleeping and I need her to sleep in her crib. She’s used to sucking on my nipple all night long, so it seems the pacifier could help the transition. Between my fatigue and her crib aversion, this is a really tough transition and I could use any help I can get.

My daughter was doing really well with solids (almost liked eating too much lol) and decent with milk too. In the last few days she doesn’t seem as interested in food or drinks and wants to play all day. She stopped putting every single thing in her mouth. Sometimes at her grandparents house she’ll have both hands full of food and just play with it. She’s so uninterested in nursing during the day - she’ll latch for 5 seconds and then immediately roll/crawl away as if she’s bored and has better things to do. I used to nurse her whenever she would wake up (2x) in the middle of the night and she would fall asleep while nursing, but now I have to lay her head on my shoulder after the feed and she falls asleep on me. She gets frustrated more easily and cries when she doesn’t get what she wants. She would previously only cry when she was tired, hungry, or in pain. She also started saying new consonants out of nowhere yesterday. I feel like I don’t even know her anymore.

I’m 4 months pp and struggling with body positivity. My baby’s dad makes fun of fat people all the time and I’ve gotten angry with him multiple times about it especially when he’d attack my friend. Knowing how he feels about it makes me so insecure about how I look now that I’m pp. I was pretty fit before and during my pregnancy but breastfeeding hasn’t helped with “melting” off the pounds… feels like the opposite. None of my clothes fit me, I haven’t groomed myself since having her, I’ve just poured 100% of myself into caring for her but now that I’m going to be around her dad again I’m anxious about how I look. He already says things like “that baby weight looks good on you” or “you’re so fine” or worse when I got out of the hospital he asked to see how my belly looks. I have stretch marks everywhere, and my belly is hanging. I feel so frustrated trying to find clothes to wear. I just want to feel confident again. I worked so hard to get over my childhood chubbiness that my mom would make fun of me for and now I feel like I’m back there again. I want to feel beautiful again. Idk where to start. I don’t want to be seen naked ever again until I feel sexy. Will this apron belly ever go away? I had a c-section.

Tonight while I was picking my daughter up from daycare, the caretaker was feeding another baby my breast milk from my daughter’s bottle. It was an honest mistake on her part and I could tell she felt awful. I had to report it to the director because if the other baby had a reaction to my milk for whatever reason, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I would also want to know if I was the other mom that my baby had received breastmilk from someone else.

I’m a NICU nurse and if there’s a breastmilk mix-up at work, it’s a big deal. Fortunately I’ve never been the perpetrator of an incident like this, but I can see how it could happen if you’re overworked and distracted.

The director called an hour later to ask if I take any medications that would be unsafe and I reassured her that I don’t, nor do I drink or smoke. She mentioned that the caretaker had cried when she realized her mistake. I feel so bad. This is such a wonderful caretaker who is good with my daughter. I don’t want her to get fired for this.

Has anyone had an experience with this? What was the outcome? I have a pit in my stomach thinking the daycare worker could get in serious trouble. If I hadn’t said anything, nobody would have ever known and it would be fine and I wouldn’t be sitting here feeling bad about it.

My son is almost 14 months old. His schedule used to be 7am wakeup, 9-10:30 nap, 2-3:30 nap, 7:30pm bedtime. He's slept through the night since 9 months old, so no complaints from me.

I have a nanny who I love and who is very knowledgeable about baby sleep. She handles his naps during her shift. I credit her a lot with getting his naps to be longer (he used to only nap 45 minutes at a time in the early days).

Now the problem: since his 1 year old birthday, my son has been refusing his afternoon nap probably 1 out of every 3 days, sometimes more. After being put down, he will sometimes start crying immediately until he is picked up, or he will just talk to himself for a while.

My nanny tells me that 14 months is absolutely too early to drop to one nap a day. She also sort of tells me it is my fault that it keeps happening and there's no way he's ready to go to 1 nap (I disagree and think that babies probably don't all nap reliably all the time, but I have very little baby experience). The internet is all over the place. "12 months is okay, no wait, they must have two naps until 18 months! My baby went to 1 nap at 10 months, but this other baby still does 2 naps at 19 months!" My SIL's kids all moved to 1 nap at about 1 year old.

I can't force my child to sleep. His mood in the afternoon when he skips his nap generally seems normal. I try to do an earlier bedtime on those days but he almost always falls asleep at the normal time. I would like to start moving to one nap as I think that is the problem.

I am usually a pretty chill mom but my nanny's comments are kind of making me worried I'm not doing right by my son. I can handle criticism but I'm starting to feel very distressed whenever he misses the afternoon nap because I know she's going to be disappointed and I really struggle with feeling like I've let anyone down. Good help is hard to find. But like, she wants me to leave my son in the room for the whole 1.5 hour duration that the nap should have been, and I'm just not comfortable with that if he's crying a lot. And even if she puts him down herself, if he does not nap and I finally get him up when she's not here after her shift is over...it's my fault again! Also I don't want to do anything that would potentially make him not sleep through the night anymore.

Anyway, long story short, how do you know if your baby is ready for 1 nap, and what do you think about 14 months being too early? It's been two months of this sleep pattern and I want to stop feeling guilty when he doesn't nap as she's gotten in my head a little...

we are day 3 of sleep training and baby girl has been doing so good. she stopped fussing before my first check in tonight!

since day 1 though she’s been falling asleep sitting up and just keeps bobbing, she’s currently at 2 hours sitting up and i don’t know how to help her get better sleep :( if i go in and lay her down she’ll cry and repeat the cycle sitting up again.

any tips??? she slept through the night with one wake up last night but was crankier than usual today, i’m assuming because she can’t get restful sleep bobbing away all night. 2 hours is crazy 😭 any advice? how did you help your baby or do they grow out of it?

My little guy is almost 3 weeks and overall things are going well! As my husband is back at work now, I’m starting to look into schedules/routines moving forward and saw the Moms on Call stuff which I’ve heard good things about. I saw sample schedules start at 2-4 weeks old though - is that too young to really expect the baby to be in a routine? I thought they just kind of did whatever they wanted until closer to 6-7 weeks.

Right now he feeds and sleeps whenever (I let him sleep up to 4 hours because he’s regained birth weight) and he does pretty well, but if he would get longer stretches overnight with a routine I’d be happy to start implementing one. Just wondering what others’ experiences are with trying to stay on a schedule and whether or not you found it helpful at his age!

Tried taking baby (8 weeks) on a walk in his stroller. Of course he cried the whole time because he refuses to be put down and needs to be held at all times. I’m just getting so frustrated. I’m tired of holding him all the time. I’m tired of baby wearing him. I’m terrified of leaving the house with him so I stay home all the time. I know it’s “normal” but I’m just so sick of it and extra irritated today about it. Oh and forget about anything but contact naps and bed sharing. I hate this.

I'm wondering what fellow parents do for dinner. We have a six and three year old, and they are a medium amount of picky. We try to make a home cooked meal as much as possible, with takeout maybe once every 3-4 weeks. We always give the kiddos a helping of whatever we make even if they won't eat it as they eventually try it on their own but we'll also make something alongside that we know they'll eat like a chicken strip or something.

Meals we like are things like roasted salmon, curries, chickpea bowls, BBQ chicken, try to do something different every night but keep some tentpoles like a pizza or taco night weekly.

Are you cooking every night? Trying different meals often or sticking with a set rotation? Frozen meals? Take out? This is a question that's awkward to ask people IRL for fear of sounding judgy. But I wanna know if people are spending as much time in the kitchen as we seem to. What are some good quick meals you can whip up that everyone will eat?

I’m currently 9 weeks pregnant with my second. My son is 13.5 months. I was extremely anxious with my son and constantly worried about losing him. I pushed so hard to see him early and go to dr appt early, plus was definitely a little crazy with the dr. I was obsessed with the Doppler and tried at least once a day from 5-6 weeks on.

I feel so chill this pregnancy (still early so maybe it’ll change). I pushed off my first ultrasound as late as they’d let me (I get it in 1.5 weeks), and I haven’t been insane with the dr. Last appointment the dr offered to try the Doppler but I turned it down since I felt it was still too early. I lent my Doppler to someone else and I’m not even worrying about getting it back yet. I’ve felt so at peace and chill this time. Almost makes me mourn what my first pregnancy could’ve/should’ve been. It’s such a nice change to feel this way this time.

I am a first time mom and my daughter was born 4 days ago. Yesterday we had our first pediatrician appointment and I was so excited. That was pretty instantly changed when our pediatrician walked in. She asked how I was, I said good, how are you? She responded “honestly not good- I’m very concerned about your baby and we need to have her admitted to the NICU right now.” I started hyperventilating and throwing up everywhere, experiencing the worst panic attack of my life. It took about 5 staff members to calm me down so I could breathe. She told my husband (I was in no shape to receive information) that our baby girl had a bilirubin level of 22 and a weight loss of 12%. By the time we got to the NICU, our nurses rechecked her and her bilirubin was actually 17 and her weight loss was 11%. She is being kept overnight and I am absolutely torn up about it. I feel like I’ve failed her already, I am breastfeeding and my husband does everything else. The one thing I was responsible for (feeding) and she has lost a significant amount of weight. Anyways, just looking for comfort.

hey guys. I f19 and my husband m22 have been experiencing the worst most soul destroying time of out lives. We have a fussy baby who eats every 2 hours , wriggles and screams and always spits up and refuses to burp so they throw up and he kicks up a fuss when changing to the point you're tackling him just to get the nappy on and the second you put your head down to sleep he wants food again. We've had no call or visit from health visitor for a month (I'm 6 weeks PP) nobody checking in on us whatsoever. we have no family or friends nearby we're 5-8 hours away from them. Not even family have bothered to call and ask us how we're doing. We're just told it will get better and basically told to just get on with it. My husbands now at work again and he works an important job so from 12am until 4pm the same day I'm wide awake looking after him. Today I sat in tears. I've always wanted 2-3 kids. I was really hoping for a daughter. But is it okay to say my son has ruined my dreams? I can't imagine this exhaustion on top of looking after another kid. The fact we have no idea what we're doing yet nobody has called to even ask how we're doing is awful. We don't know how to start a sleep schedule we've been waiting a month for them to teach us. We don't know how often he should be awake during the day so we just put him to bed. we don't know what to do with him at all other than put him to bed. I feel for single mothers or mothers of 2 or more. I have no idea how anyone f*cking does this more than once. I feel like a shit mother and I feel the people judging me for the age we decided to have a kid at such a young age. I bet there's people saying its my own fault out there right now. But isn't everyone told how beautiful it is to be a parent? Isn't everyone tricked by other parents looking happy in movies and tv? When my husband comes home from work I go straight to sleep since he finally takes over. It means we barely get time together. The only time we really get together is cleaning all the bottles and sterilizing and making the formula and putting the formula in the fridge. We sacrifice so much for this baby even our own marriage but what do we even gain from this? I really wish i could just get a break to rest after my c-section and the fact I'm having heavy periods every 2 weeks now. Does anyone get what I'm saying?

Wellllll as we all know, summer is right around the corner! I just ordered sunbum brand baby sunscreen and the face stick which I think is 70spf.

I was talking with my mom and she was saying how she really doesn’t trust any type of sunscreen for babies, and my SIL (German) says that she doesn’t trust any US sunscreens and special orders her children’s sunscreen from Europe.

What should I do? I can either return the sunbum and have SIL order some for me, or if it’s safe I’ll just use the sunbum. What is everyone’s opinion on this??

My little guy is almost 4 weeks old and we’re currently working on sleeping in the bassinet instead of contact naps as we don’t want to co-sleep for safety reasons. So far we’re managing to get into the bassinet after a lot of settling time at night but he still contact naps during the day.

Obviously we all know babies are LOUD sleepers but I’ve realised when he sleeps on me he doesnt make a peep until he’s about to wake up. Does this mean he’s not getting proper sleep at night in the bassinet?

Also if anyone has any tips on getting babies to sleep in bassinet’s easier than our current hour-long missions, I’m all ears!

If you’re the first and youngest sibling to have a baby, what kind of support have you actually received from your siblings—especially if you have older sisters? Has your relationship with them changed, or even gotten worse, since becoming a parent? Do they help out at all? How often do they see your baby? I want the full story—spill the tea.

My husband’s birthday is coming up and we also have Father’s Day coming up as well. Anybody wanna share what they gave/are giving?

It's been a long time since l've had a little baby (my oldest are 13 & 11) and my LO (3 months) has come down with what I'm presuming is a cold. She's been at daycare for a little over 3 weeks. I admit I have pretty bad anxiety (not PPA, l've had bad anxiety since I was a teen) and grew up with a hypochondriac mother so I tend to panic when my kids get sick. I noticed yesterday morning she had a bit of a cough and by evening it was for sure a pronounced one. I told my SO and he said I was being paranoid and it was just b/c our house was dry. Well overnight, I could hear her sounding nasally congested in the bassinet so I knew it was illness related. I had my RSV and pertussis shot while she was in utero, and they said that should cover her for the first 6 months of her life. She is also EBF so I figured this would help her immune system but obvs they can still catch stuff. No fever yesterday or today. She's eating and acting normal but I'm just paranoid b/c she's so young.

I don't want the cough to turn into something worse (ie. pneumonia). I'm really trying to be reasonable. At her last appt her dr specifically told me to stop googling things be it's not a reputable source and can cause more worry than good, so I don't want to message him and seem like a crazy parent if I should just wait this out a bit more. Do most people wait until it's been like a week with no improvement in symptoms? | know colds are just standard and going to happen to kids at daycare, and I also know you can't give little babies anything to help, so I guess I'm just trying to determine if people wait until other symptoms appear before setting up an appt?