Looking after baby

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Jane still hasn't opened her shop yet. So we're still at home. In general, I'm still finding parenting very frustrating. I've been trying to think of her as a small cute person rather than Khorne and Nurgle combined into a single entity. Weening is difficult.

I meant some type of plug-in nightlight or projector that makes pretty colours. Nothing fancy, no installation. Coloured light is really soothing to me and babies like it too. Just google "baby lights" or "baby light projectors" and see if there's anything appealing. Some look like stars, some look like water (not actual watercolour paintings), and some just glow like this.

Does she have colic or something? Or just teething problems?
Our baby had colic really bad, and he kept breaking out in eczema all over...so we looked it up, and found out that cow's milk can cause it, so we switched to a soy-based formula.
We just wish we would have discovered it sooner (or that mom would have been more strict with breast milk).

Retro,
I hope you don't think I'm trying to make this all sound easy. Parenting is damned hard work. It's exhausting, scary, and causes great anxiety at the best of times. It's hard for single parents (me), and it's hard for couples (you and your wife) -- because couples need to cooperate on so many important decisions. It's perfectly normal that you're freaked out about this big responsibility, even though you're glad to stay home with the baby. When I give advice it's only because I remember how daunting it was to raise children. I had no clue what I was doing most of the time and that's why I relied on books, old fashioned advice from my grandmothers, intuition, and pure adrenaline. It's a learning curve and I'm sure you'll manage through trial and error like the rest of us have. Being an autistic parent has it's own challenges, so try to be good to yourself and your own needs too. It's hard to have a change in routine like this, and it's normal to be a bit intimidated by babies.

It's especially difficult in this pandemic, because you can't just drop the baby off and have someone else watch them =/

She had colic for a long time. Then she outgrew it. Her teething problems began very shortly after the colic ended.

She's still biting on plastic things but I don't think she's crying about teething anymore.

At the moment it's seperation anxiety. Her mother or I (preferably her mother) have to be in the room with her literally every moment. If I leave the room for even a few seconds she'll start bawling.

I find this so frustrating. Sometimes I've been in the room with her for hours and I just want to leave the room for a short time to get a glass of water or go to the toilet but I can't. Sometimes she needs formula but I can't go to the kitchen to make it.

We probably could. South Australia has had very minimal lockdowns for the last two years. Just this month was the first time we had a lockdown lasting for more than 36 hours.

People have offered to babysit her but her mother refuses. She says she doesn't want to take advantage of them. But she's babysat other people's kids.

Sounds like my experience with my first, my son, who was eventually diagnosed with ASD. He did bond with his grandmother before the separation anxiety stage, but everyone else was impossible. I eventually spent a week introducing him to a part time nanny (her and I working side by side) and that seemed to do the trick. But when she wasn't there, it was still me, 24/7. For me, getting out and about as a top entertainment strategy started back then. It was just easier for me, pushing him around in the stroller with new things to engage MY mind in addition to his. The rest of the time, I learned to incorporate the things I wanted to do for me into mini-games that could entertain him. I don't remember a lot of details, but he pretty much stayed attached to my hip. I created my little coping mechanisms and got used to it. It is exhausting, though. I really needed the nanny days (I was working all that time, but just part time, which pretty much only paid the nanny bills ... and kept my professional license up to date). Anyway, I can relate. Some kids are just like that. And they do eventually outgrow it.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 30 Jul 2021, 8:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's really hard. There's nothing more stressful than hearing your baby cry, and feeling responsible. Please trust that this stage won't last forever even though it's difficult. Teaching her to fall asleep by herself is a really helpful first step. She will cry, but only for a week or so. If you know she's safe in her crib and especially if you can see her on a monitor, you can distract yourself with music or other means until the worst of it is over. Then when she has that ability she'll be a lot more confident on her own for a moment, in any safe situation.

She doesn’t know that you will come back after you leave. It’s not a bad sign, actually. It means she’s bonded with you in some way.

Isabella’s advice is excellent. And everybody else’s, too.

IT'S NEVER OVER O_O
Seriously, though, the molars and the canines are much worse. We caved in and gave him some Tylenol.
And the teething toys don't really work for those back teeth, they can't reach the spots, so he doesn't even bother with them anymore. He just finds other things to chew, like clothes and pillows.

I was very amused by a paragraph from a Charles Dickens story I was reading:
"It was a peculiarity of this baby to be always cutting teeth. Whether they never came, or whether they came and went away again, is not in evidence; but it had certainly cut enough, on the showing of Mrs. Tetterby, to make a handsome dental provision for the sign of the Bull and Mouth. All sorts of objects were impressed for the rubbing of its gums, notwithstanding that it always carried, dangling at its waist (which was immediately under its chin), a bone ring, large enough to have represented the rosary of a young nun. Knife-handles, umbrella-tops, the heads of walking-sticks selected from the stock, the fingers of the family in general, but especially of Johnny, nutmeg-graters, crusts, the handles of doors, and the cool knobs on the tops of pokers, were among the commonest instruments indiscriminately applied for this baby’s relief. The amount of electricity that must have been rubbed out of it in a week, is not to be calculated. Still Mrs. Tetterby always said “it was coming through, and then the child would be herself”; and still it never did come through, and the child continued to be somebody else."


He has it a little bit, but it's not terrible. He'll cry for a little bit sometimes (especially when his mom goes shopping, or if I have to go to bed), but he gets over it real quick.

When I go to the bathroom, he usually sits right outside the door and pokes his fingers and toes under.

The kitchen is right off from the livingroom, so we're not out of sight, but he does whine a little when he sees me taking too long to pour him some (almond) milk.

Slightly good news, you'll be able to switch her from formula to milk next month.


Oh, we're not locked down, we just don't trust anybody.
Things are a bit better than they were last year (at least until Delta reaches us), but her mom fosters kids who are frequently ill (and she has a lot of anger issues), and my mom works a lot, so schedules have to be worked around.
...it also would probably help if we didn't live 40 minutes away...

That wouldn't work. Not when the mother's home. She gets mad at me if I let the baby cry for a few moments.

I feel like I'm trying to appese two irritable people. One is the baby and the other is the overbearing mother. There's stuff I know that will work for parenting but I know the mother will get mad at me.

For example I know I can get her to sleep within five minutes if I hold her in the crook of my arm and keep her arms still so she doesn't thrash them about or rub her eyes/face. She'll cry for 5 minutes and then sleep. Can't do that when the mother is about, mother wants her to stop crying instantly. Mother says I can't restrain the baby but it's nessessary to get her to sleep.

The baby gets very tired but can't sleep. She stimulates herself into wakefullness by thrashing about. If I stop her from doing this and keep her in a quite, still, warm environment she sleeps very quickly.

The mother's method of getting the baby to sleep is breastfeeding. I can't do that and formula doesn't have the same soothing effect. So I have to do what I can.

I know what you mean =|
A lot of times I just do what needs to be done, knowing that she'll get over it.
Sometimes I tell her that I'm overwhelmed and that she can do it herself (and sometimes he really does just want his mother).
I'm usually pretty cool-headed, but Long Covid makes me lose my temper a lot more easily =/ I have to be a lot more careful about staying calm, because it makes me feel sick.

But everything's been a LOT easier since he got over his colic.


Yeah, I'm trying to remember how long ago it was, but I know for a long time, on nights when he just couldn't stay asleep, I would put him in his stroller and rock him all night with my foot while I watched quiet TV or maybe played a video game. I tied one of his blankies across the bars so he couldn't thrash around or rub the eczema medicine off his face.

I think they make "swaddlers" for bigger babies...I think they call them sacks or something? It's kind of like a sleeping bag, like it's looser so they can still roll around. We never bothered getting one.


Sounds like she's overtired, is she getting good nap(s)? IIRC, anything less than 45 minutes is not productive sleep. You could also try putting her to bed a little earlier, I think that worked for me a few times.

No more colic? Is her formula milk-free?

Do you have a bedtime routine every day, at the same time? I always make sure we have dim lighting in the house an hour before bed, and as dark as possible in his room. I know "too bright" was always a huge issue for me when I was little (and still to this day), especially during daylight savings time.
We have a white noise machine too, but I don't know how much it helps.

There's a ton of tips for this sort of thing online, but most of them didn't work for me.

The old cliché of "lots of fresh air" seems to work on him, though. Any day where we spend a lot of time playing outside, he'll just pass out right away.


Does she not pump extra?

Not anymore. She's trying to ween.

Yeah, she's got sleeping bags but the sleeping bags have arms. She can move her arms freely.


Her naps are about two hours long.


The mum is a fan of very bright lighting, preferably with a cool colour temperature. This also causes problems for my bedtime routine.

She especially hates my timer that turns the lights red at 10:30 pm. If I set the timer a few hours earlier it might help the baby prepare for sleep.

A white noise machine is a good idea. The mum will play cocomelon in the morning, afternoon, evening, any time she wants to calm the baby down. This works in the morning because it makes her rather cheerful and bouncy but it's a bad idea at night. I think even the sleepy time music is far too stimulating for baby's bedtime.

I really like noise cancelling headphones when nothing is playing on them at night. Not that my house is really noisy, but you can hear the size of the room, if that makes sense. Put the headphones on and I can't hear the air in the room anymore so it feels like I'm in a much smaller space. Too bad they don't make them in smaller sizes.

Indeed you are trying to appease two different people, who have different ideas about what you should and shouldn't do.

All the suggestions made have been good ones.

But in the end, if you don't stand up for yourself, this is going to continue for at least another 17 years.