Baby Blog: Night Feeding Truly Is The Devil!

Amy’s diary

My life has divided into three parts.

What used to be day and night, work and home or even week and weekend is now:

Feeding.
Nappy changing.
Sleeping (him, not me).

24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No negotiations.

Night feeds truly are the devil. The army could use night feeding as an interrogation technique - I’d say it would take about 11 days before they cracked. And apparently Freddy is one of the good ones - averaging about three and a half hours sleep at a time. I’ve heard of some babies who wake up every half and hour - worse still, some who won’t be put down at all.

Night feeding has no certainty, there is no definite end and you never know for sure how long you are in for. With this in mind, a fully charged iPhone, Netflix subscription and a good snack selection are essential.

I now have to pack (I literally fill a plastic Tesco bag) to go to bed, taking with me enough equipment for three feeding sessions a night.

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It could take 20 minutes (I would say that’s Freddy’s record), it could take two hours. During this one I watched four episodes of 'Peep Show' and fitted in two Mars bars. This was at 3am. There is no way of successfully predicting. However, what you do know is that you will be up again three and a half hours from the start of the last feed - so if it takes two hours you will be up again in one.

Babies have no mercy.

When the baby monitor goes off it’s the same struggle to get up I had in my old life, only now I do it three times a night.

Winding also quickly became the bane of my life and something I was certainly not forewarned about.

Yes, there is a lot to burping a baby. It’s time consuming and a fine art, if you ask me. I admire any soul who has managed to master the art of a wind free baby. I also admire the makers of Infacol - which has become known as ’the saviour’ in our household. For those who aren’t in the know, it’s basically Rennie for babies.

If you don’t successfully get the wind out a newborn baby it’s game over. He will go red and cry until you pick him up and have another go. It’s not like my old life, where if a job wasn’t working I would either give up or save it for later - with babies you don’t have this luxury. You have to get up, you have to rub his back until he burps even if you feel like you are about to get friction burns from his baby grow.

However, I seek solace in nappy changing. Which is handy considering I now do it 10 times a day (coincidentally the same number of times I get asked ‘Is he sleeping through the night?’ - NO). There is a comforting certainty in nappy changing, a definite start and an end. With nappy changing, you know where you are. Unlike every other aspect of caring for an 8lb chunk of human who doesn’t know where his hands are.

That is apart from when projectile pooing (yes, this is an actual thing) hits the wall to mix things up.

Before I gave birth I had great plans of set routines, reading all the books and I had even written down timings on an Excel spreadsheet. However, I quickly learnt that Freddy dictates his own routine and is very much the boss in this relationship. There is no waking him when is is zonked out and there is no settling him when he is hungry - whatever the time may be or wherever he is (even in the middle of Topshop).

However, once I gave into this reality everything fell into place. This is why I think maternity leave is essential. You have to be able to surrender yourself to your baby. For these short few months, they rule.

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Freddy’s diary

My Mum is struggling to get the message that I’m a man of simple pleasures.

As long as I’m either eating or sleeping I’m happy. My Nan keeps saying I’m a ‘typical bloke’, whatever that means.

My tummy is the size of a walnut so I have to eat much more often than my Mum which means she has to feed me even in the middle of the night. Don’t feel too sorry for her though, she also always manages to feed herself as well. She thinks I don’t know she hides chocolate biscuits in my changing bag.  

Something tells me she got quite a shock after she realised quite how much there is to looking after me. She needs to realise I can’t even hold my own head up so I can hardly change my own nappy or write her an itemised order of what I need. I wish I could. Then I’d also write her a note saying sorry for staining the carpet in the nursery after THAT nappy explosion.

Plus, this is all pretty standard baby behaviour and I really think she should have realised this when I was still in her tummy and she was blindly dithering around at baby yoga.

I’m an all or nothing kind of guy. If I don’t get what I want I will squawk until I do. Hey, I know what I want, OK? Plus, squawking is my only means of communication. Sometimes I don’t think my Mum knows what I want. The other day all I wanted was a bit of grub and there she was patting me on the back for half an hour.

Saying that, I think she’s finally getting the hang of things even if sometimes she does feed me with her eyes closed at night.