5 Challenges I Faced When Parenting a Newborn

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

A day you won’t forget.

21^st August, 2020. The day that lie-ins departed my life. It was also the day that Evelyn, my newborn baby entered my life. It feels like 10 years ago, not two. Having a newborn in your life, is both an amazing roller coaster of emotions, alongside what can sometimes feel like an overwhelming challenge.

In this post, I wanted to provide an honest account of some of the challenges I have felt and faced, when I was parenting a newborn baby. This post is not necessarily an advice piece, nor is it me stating that I have had a tougher time than others. The reality is that in comparison to a number of families, we had a largely positive experience when it came to the birth and early stages of Evelyn’s life. However, I just wanted to share my story. My hope is that if any other parents feel the same, it gives them a degree of comfort that they are not alone in how they felt.

1. Advice comes at you from all angles.

Advice can come straight away.

For those who have had children before, you may be able to relate to this point. Advice regarding the parenting of your newborn can start as soon as you let everyone know you are expecting. The advice starts to trickle in slowly from friends and family. The advice always comes from a good place, those close to you just trying to help. This advice can be around clothing, room décor, furniture, child names or how to care for your baby.

“As a new parent, the challenge you have is that you have little experience or perspective to draw on. This can lead you to feeling obligated to follow advice of parents more experienced than you are.”

However, this advice can often become overwhelming and give you too much to think about. It is very easy to start basing your decisions on what others are telling you, rather than what you think works best for you and your family. The reality is, what works for one child and one family, may not necessarily work for another.

Feeling obligated.

As a new parent, the challenge you have is that you have little experience or perspective to draw on. This can lead you to feeling obligated to follow advice of parents more experienced than you are. However, this is not always the best thing for you or your newborn. Furthermore, advice from various sources can often conflict with each other. It is common for one person to suggest one way of doing something, with another person suggesting a different way. My approach and that of my wife’s, has always been to trust our instinct and what would work for us. Even if this is to the contrary of the advice given to us.

It may ruffle feathers, or upset some people to not listen to their advice. However, if they truly want the best for you, they will respect the fact that you want to do it your way and learn your own way.

2. The impact of the COVID lockdown on us and our newborn.

Locked down.

At the time of Evelyn’s birth, the COVID pandemic was still very much a factor in all our lives. Leading up to the birth, I was not allowed to go with my wife to any scans or appointments. The day of the birth itself, there was a chance I was going to be sent home alone to wait until it was time for delivery. Thankfully when we arrived she was far enough along for me to stay. In the grand scheme of things, these were minor restrictions. However, it was our first insight into the fact that COVID was going to be a significant factor in Evelyn’s early life.

Bringing Evelyn home, we knew we were bringing her home to be locked down with us. Friends and family would not be able to visit, there would be significant restrictions on what we could do, where we could go, and nearly all support available to new parents had been stopped in our local area.

Importance of parent/baby groups.

Prior to COVID, my wife would frequently talk about her excitement of attending newborn baby and parent groups when Evelyn was born. Well when that time came, none of these groups were running. This led to a domino effect for us both. We both felt trapped in our home with our newborn, not knowing if the issues we were facing or the actions we were taking were “normal” or “right”. We feel this had a massive role to play in my wife developing Post Natal Depression. This was in part down to her not getting the chance to normalise the challenges we faced, incorrectly blaming herself for everything.

Everyone has had their own COVID challenges and stories from lockdown. Unfortunately, ours was learning how to parent a newborn child, locked away from family and friends. We were also without professional support groups, without an ability to take a break for ourselves as parents and we all caught COVID at the same time! We got through it together, as we all had to. But like most people, we have a number of scars that have been left from this period in time.

3. Mental health struggles.

“Typical man”

I am the “typical” man who does not often talk about how he feels or about my mental health. I have always been the type of person to bottle it up and keep it to myself. Unfortunately, I did the same thing throughout the early stages of Evelyn’s life, but the reality was, I was struggling.

In all honesty, I have still only shared with a few people how tough I found it in the early days. The reason being, that it should have been the happiest time of my life. I did not want it to come across as though I was moaning during this time. However, with time, comes perspective. I write about this now, as I imagine there are a number of people out there who feel/felt the same. As a result, I think it is important I am honest about the way I felt at that time and why I felt like I did.

Colic.

“Despite trying my best to be supportive and understanding during this time, the reality was that I was struggling to deal with it all.”

I had identified pretty early, that my wife was struggling with her own emotional wellbeing and mental health. In addition to this, Evelyn was struggling with colic. For those who have had a newborn with colic, you know how challenging this can be. For those unaware, the way it impacted Evelyn was that between the hours of 4pm – 10pm each day, Evelyn would cry without stopping, no matter what we did to try and comfort her. This increased the pressure on both me and my wife, it became our daily routine to try and survive these periods! I may go into a lot more depth in future blog posts, but long story short, I made it my role to try and support both Evelyn and my wife through this period.

Despite trying my best to be supportive and understanding during this time, the reality was that I was struggling to deal with it all. Parenting a newborn is hard and being locked down all together probably didn’t help either. Day after day, week after week and month after month. I struggled being there for both Evelyn and my wife. I had to take a number of walks by myself to clear my head, speak to family and friends around me when I was feeling low. One particular evening, it did all get too much for me. Consequently, I had what I would describe as, a bit of an “emotional breakdown”.

My breakdown.

COVID restrictions were easing up and my wife was attending a wedding at a venue a few hours away. I was looking forward to having my first, “Daddy/Daughter day” with Evelyn. I had a day planned of going for a walk, visiting my parents and then heading home. As all new parents do, I packed as though I was trekking Mount Everest. The day went perfectly. Evelyn loved her walk, my parents enjoyed seeing her and spending some time with her and we headed home. I felt like I was doing pretty well, until 4pm arrived.

Her colic had kicked in. Evelyn started to get upset, which gradually worsened to the point of her crying her little heart out. I tried everything I could think of. I tried different positions holding her, feeding, burping, napping, changing, distractions, baths, nothing was helping. The hours kept going by and her crying continued at the same intensity. I could feel myself breaking. It was a combination of frustration, sadness and anger. I wasn’t angry at Evelyn, I was angry at myself for not knowing what to do.

Not asking for help.

“I remember previously watching “SAS Who Dares Wins”, on channel 4, where they used recordings of babies crying as a tactic to break someone. Well, I can completely understand why they do that and it definitely works.”

The ridiculous thing was, that I had both my parents and my in laws who lived within 10minutes, who would have dropped anything to help me. However, I never called as I couldn’t bare the fact that the first time I had to parent alone, I had to ask for help. I felt pathetic. After 6 hours of Evelyn crying, I eventually broke down. I was crying as much as her, repeating some sort of statement to her like, “What do you want from me? Please stop crying”.

I laid her down in her cot, still crying, as I laid on my bed doing the same thing. I remember previously watching “SAS Who Dares Wins”, on channel 4, where they used recordings of babies crying as a tactic to break someone. Well, I can completely understand why they do that and it definitely works. Despite all my experience of working with families and parents, all the training courses I had been on, 6 hours of crying had broken me. I was emotionally exhausted.

Feeling like a failure.

In the end, I think we both stopped crying out of exhaustion. Evelyn eventually calmed and fell asleep, whilst I awaited my wife returning home. I still remember sitting at the window, staring out and waiting for my wife to pull up at our house so I knew I had back up in case it all started again. I felt like I had completely failed Evelyn that night.

The reality is, that night stays with me to this day. However, with hindsight I can see that asking for help was not a sign of weakness at all, but more just the realities of becoming a new parent. Those first 6 months were a very challenging time in my life. It still plays on my mind to this day, as it is the first thing I think of when we discuss having more children. I consider what I experienced minor in comparison to what others experience, however, it just goes to show how long it can take to fully get over significant events in our lives that impact our mental health.

4. Parenting anxiety with a newborn.

“Is she breathing?”

Newborn babies are very skilled at causing parents to panic. I don’t know if other parents had the same thing with their newborn, but when Evelyn slept, she barely moved. She would be completely motionless. Even her chest movements were so slight, it was near impossible to tell if she was breathing or not without touching her! Naturally, the most commonly asked question in our house was, “is she breathing?!”

Grunting noises.

My parenting anxiety peaked one night, when we could hear Evelyn making a strange grunting noise when breathing. She was fast asleep and we were checking on her before we went to sleep. I noticed the grunting noise and it wasn’t something we had heard from her before. She hadn’t had a cold that day and had been fit and well all day. We were a little perplexed as to why she was making the noise. Therefore, we made the age old mistake of going to google for answers…yes I know. We had identified a couple of things it might be, but we could not settle to go to sleep without more advice. So we called the NHS 111 number to get that advice.

We took them through the symptoms and they asked some questions about her health and breathing. It was quite late now, we were in the early hours of the morning. Once all the questions had been asked, we were then given the following statement by the health professional on the phone. “Ok, so we are going to send an ambulance to you now. We need you to go and collect the nearest defibrillator, as soon as possible”.

Searching for the defibrillator.

Naturally, my brain went into meltdown and panic. They gave me the details of where the nearest defibrillator was, which was a 5 minute drive away in the local Town Centre. I quickly got dressed and drove off to collect it, while my wife stayed with Evelyn waiting for the paramedics. It was all a bit of a blur. All I remember is running around the Town Centre in the dead of night, with nobody around, looking for a defibrillator box. My whole thought process at that time was, this is so much worse than I thought if I need a defibrillator!

By the time I had returned home, the paramedics had arrived and were with Evelyn. I walked through the door and gave them the defibrillator, to which they replied, “Oh, we don’t need that don’t worry.” All of that panic and rushing around…but I was very relieved. Thankfully, there were no major issues at all and the paramedics soon left. Needless to say though, it did my parent anxiety no good at all!

5. The first day with a newborn.

Waiting around.

Day 1 of becoming a parent for me, was a bit bizarre. My wife went into labour on the Tuesday morning, we found ourselves waiting around for a few days with nothing happening. I say nothing happening for me, my wife would say there was definitely a lot happening for her! However, on Friday evening, it was time to go to the hospital. We arrived around 6pm, Evelyn was born at 9:23pm. Our newborn baby was here!

This is when it all started to feel very strange. Suddenly, there we were, with a little newborn baby, when just a few hours before we were sat at home watching TV. My wife stitched me up straight away, when the nurse asked if we wanted to put the nappy on or if we wanted them to do it. I was more than happy to let the experienced midwife do it. My wife thought different and decided to pipe up and say that I would do it. I put it on backwards.

“Just a few hours before I had watched the birth of my daughter. Now I am back in the house on my own, eating a curry, watching Friends at 2am.”

On my own.

By the time we were able to just sit and relax on our own, it was the early hours. Unfortunately, due to the COVID restrictions, I was not allowed to stay the night. As a result, I had to say goodbye to both and go home alone. I got home and made some food, as I hadn’t eaten, then put the TV on. I was completely zoned out. Just a few hours before I had watched the birth of my daughter. Now I am back in the house on my own, eating a curry, watching Friends at 2am. What was going on!?

I couldn’t pick them up until just after lunch time the next day. Therefore, I spent the morning finding anything I could to distract myself and kill time. Eventually, I parked up at the maternity ward doors. I went to collect the bags, packed the car, then we spent what felt like an eternity getting Evelyn into the car seat. The car seat had been all set up and prepared…we had practiced with a teddy bear. However, we were both so conscious of Evelyn being comfortable and safe, it took us an age. All whilst being watched by the midwives, who must of thought we were useless!

“Now what?”

We arrived at home, took the car seat out the car with Evelyn in it, went into the house and sat Evelyn down in the living room. “Now what?” we thought. It was such a strange feeling. We were at home, where we were so used to being in just by ourselves, now had another little occupant and we felt like we had no idea what we were doing. The reality of parenting a newborn was starting to hit home.

That first nap, first feed, first night alone, all were very stressful. We would ask, is she ok? Is she full? Is she tired? Does she need changing? So many questions and you just have to figure it out as you go along. I found the first day with our newborn both amazing and bizarre, but one thing I would say to any expectant parents out there is, throw your expectations out the window!

Question for the comments: Are there any newborn challenges you faced that you are happy to share? How did you find parenting a newborn for the first time?

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Useful links:

• Which Child Age Range is the Most Challenging for Parents? (2023)
• Being a Parent and Struggling with Your Mental Health – The Importance of Seeking Help and Support
• What Fears/Worries Did You Have as a First Time Parent? (My list of 10)
• Advice for First Time Parents: 20 Parenting Tips for New Parents