Moms

The days blur and I've decided that's fine. Toddler is obsessed with him now, which is its own hazard. To anyone reading this pregnant with their second and terrified: it's chaos, and it's fine, and both are true at once.

You asked for this back in March — the card for the people who mean well and keep saying 'sleep when the baby sleeps'. It's up now, along with a proper piece on what to say instead. Print it, send it, leave it somewhere passive-aggressive. I won't tell.

Two teeth in a week and she's a different child. Not worse, just... opinionated. Is this teething or is this just her now?

Read a post from March about crying on Tuesdays when the partner goes back to a full day. It's Thursdays for me but it's the same thing exactly. Mentioning it at my appointment because of that thread. Just wanted to say the archive here is doing real work.

The audit thread is still going and I'm working through every reply. Biggest gaps so far: overnight postpartum support almost everywhere, perinatal mental health outside cities, and lactation help in the Mountain West. That's my summer. Keep them coming.

It's 3am. I'm pumping. This is my MOTN session and I've done it every night since February, and I'm typing this one-handed with the Baby Buddha going, because if I don't say it now I'll lose my nerve by morning.

LO is 5 months. EP since week 3. I have never once fed her from my body and I've made my peace with that, mostly, at around 2pm on a good day.

Here's what my life is. Five pumps: 3am, 7am, 12, 4, 9pm. Twenty minutes each, plus setup, plus washing — call it 35 real minutes a session, so about three hours a day. I make 31 oz. She eats 28. I have 340 oz in a deep freezer in the garage that we bought FOR the milk. I have three sets of flanges, two pumps, a wearable for the car, a cooler bag, and a drying rack that lives on my counter permanently and that I hate with my whole chest.

I'm the person who tells everyone else which pump to buy. I have a note on my phone with duckbill valve replacement intervals. If you'd asked me in March I'd have said I'd go to a year, easy, I have the systems.

And I want to stop so badly that I sat in my car in the Target parking lot on Thursday and cried about it, and then went inside and bought more milk storage bags.

Nobody is making me do this. That's what I can't get past. My husband told me to quit in May. He said it kindly and I snapped at him. My mom told me to quit. My best friend, who formula fed both of hers and whose kids are fine, tall, happy, told me to quit. There is not one single person in my life on the other side of this argument. It's me. I'm the entire opposition.

So I'm not asking how to wean off the pump. I know how. Drop a session every few days, watch for clogs — I've read all of it, I could write it. I'm asking when YOU stopped. And I think, being honest at 3am, which is the only time I'm honest, I'm asking somebody to say a number smaller than a year out loud so I can hear it and not fall apart.

Because here's the thing I can't say in daylight: I don't like her as much when I'm pumping. When she's crying at 3am and I'm attached to a machine and can't pick her up, I resent a five month old. And then I hate myself. And then I do it again the next night. Three hours a day of a thing that's making me a worse mother, so that she can have the good milk, from the worse mother.

I have 340 oz in the garage. That's twelve days. Twelve whole days of being someone who can just pick her up.

When did you stop? Did the guilt go away? Please just tell me a number.

Someone at a baby group said 'nursery water' like it was obvious and I nodded along and then googled it in the car. What else is everyone pretending to already know?

Halfway through the year, mid-year audit time. Where did you look for someone and find nothing? Care type, city, both. I do this every few months and it's the single most useful thread we run — last time it turned into 40 new providers in the Southeast.

Everyone in my NCT group is doing baby swimming and I can't tell if it's genuinely valuable or a very expensive way to get cold. Anyone done it and felt it was worth the faff?

I need numbers. Not "it passes!" Not "every baby is different!" I know every baby is different, that's why I want a distribution instead of one anecdote.

So I'm going to give you mine in full and then I want yours, and I want it in days or weeks, plus how old your LO was in WEEKS when it started, because everybody says "4 months" and I'm now fairly sure "4 months" is doing a lot of lying.

Mine: born February 24, so she's 17 weeks today. Started May 28, which was 13 weeks and 3 days. That's the other reason I want your numbers — mine started at 13 weeks and I spent the first week convinced it was something else because she wasn't 4 months yet.

Before: she was doing 7 to 8 hours. I want that in writing because I have started to wonder whether I made it up. Down at 7:30, dream feed at 10:30, up once around 5. Naps were 45 minutes to an hour and a half, four of them. I was one of those insufferable people who thought she had an easy baby, and I would like to formally apologize to everyone I said that to.

Now, day 26: waking every 45 to 90 minutes MOTN. Every single one. Naps have collapsed into 28 minute cat naps — 28, not 30, it's uncanny, I've got a whole spreadsheet. Four to five naps. Wake windows 90-105 minutes and if I go over by ten minutes she's inconsolable. I dropped the dream feed on day 12 because someone said it might be the problem. It was not the problem.

Variables, so nobody has to ask: room 68F, blackout, white noise all night. Combo fed, mostly EBF with one bottle at night. No solids, not till 6 months per our pediatrician. Sleep sack over a swaddle, arms in, 1.0 TOG. Takes a pacifier and then loses it and screams about it, which is roughly 60% of the wakes. Not visibly teething, no drool, no fever. Leap 4 per Wonder Weeks lines up almost exactly, for whatever that's worth — I've decided that app is astrology for tired people but I still open it.

She rolled crib-to-back once, about two weeks ago, and hasn't done it since.

What I want from you:

1. How many days or weeks did it last, start to actually-over?

2. How old in WEEKS when it started?

3. Did it end, or did it just become the new baseline and you adjusted? Please be honest about this one. I think this is the real question and everyone dodges it.

4. Did anything you did shorten it, or do you just think it did because it ended eventually?

My husband asked me last night how much longer and I said I don't know and he said surely someone knows, and reader, I have been searching for eleven days and nobody knows. So I'm going to make a dataset. Give me yours.

Given what I read here in January about four-minute appointments, I'd like to walk in with a list. What did you wish you'd asked, or what got brushed off that you had to chase later?

Six weeks in with a newborn and a 2yo. It is harder than one and easier than I feared, in that order. The toddler has finally acknowledged he exists. Ask me anything, I'm awake anyway.

Filing this under things I wish someone had said out loud, because I've now had two people tell me they did the same thing.

My LO is 5 months now. When she was born I had a vague plan to get newborn photos "at some point." I thought newborn meant, you know, a newborn. A small baby. I assumed I had a couple of months.

I emailed a photographer at five weeks and she wrote back very kindly and explained that the sleepy curled-up posed shots — the ones I had in my head, the ones I'd been picturing for months — basically only work in the first two weeks. After that they uncurl. They startle. They have opinions. She said she'd absolutely still shoot us and it would be beautiful, but it would be a different kind of session, and she wanted me to know that before I booked so I wasn't disappointed.

I sat there and cried about it, which in retrospect was about 30% photos and 70% five weeks postpartum.

The thing is — when exactly was I supposed to have booked that? At two weeks I could not have told you what day it was. The window for booking the thing is inside the period where you are least capable of booking anything. That's a design problem and somebody should have warned me while I was still pregnant and bored and organizing things.

What I ended up doing: booked a lifestyle session at home at 7 weeks instead of a posed studio one. In-home, no props, she just followed us around for 90 minutes while we did nothing. $450 including digitals, which felt like a lot and now feels like nothing. There's one of my husband asleep on the couch with her on his chest that I will have until I die.

So — two questions, and I want the boring specifics.

When did you book, and when did you shoot? If you got the posed newborn ones, when did you actually reach out?

Studio or in-home? And did you use the hospital's photographer? I keep hearing mixed things about those and I'd like to know before I recommend anything to anyone.

Everyone talks about sadness. Nobody mentioned the flashes of pure rage over the dishwasher being loaded wrong. It passes in ten minutes and then I feel awful. Is this a known thing or just me?

Not general therapists — people who specifically work with perinatal mood and anxiety. It's the request I get most that I can help with least. If you've seen someone who understood it, please send them to me. This one matters.

My baby's one and I have four thousand photos and none of me in them. Just realized I'm not in a single picture from the first year. Did anyone actually book a proper shoot, and was it worth it?

Fourteen weeks. That's how long this took. I'm writing it all down because I could not find this anywhere when I was in it, and if one person copies this and skips even four of those weeks it was worth typing.

Background: baby's six months, I'm in Tucson, back at work since April. I saw an IBCLC twice — once at three weeks when my daughter wasn't transferring, once at six weeks for a pumping plan before I went back. $300 each. She's cash-pay, which I now understand is a choice most of them make on purpose, and she gave me a superbill.

The ACA says lactation support and counseling is preventive care. Zero cost share. No deductible. It's not a nice thing my plan does, it's required.

Round 1 — denied. Submitted February 12. Denied March 3. Reason code 242, "services not provided by network/primary care providers." So: out of network, eat it.

The phone call that changed everything. I called Cigna and said: fine, give me the name of an in-network IBCLC within 30 miles of my zip code. Not a list of hospitals. A name.

She gave me four. I called all four. One was a hospital lab (a LAB). Two were OB practices where the front desk had never heard the word IBCLC and one of them offered to transfer me to billing. The fourth was a disconnected number. I wrote down all four names, the date, the time, and what each one said, verbatim, in a Google Doc. That doc is the reason I got paid.

Round 2 — the superbill was wrong. My IBCLC's original superbill had only S9443 on it, which is a lactation class code, and Cigna's rep literally said "that's educational, that's not a covered medical service." She reissued it with diagnosis code Z39.1 (encounter for care and examination of lactating mother) and CPT 99404 for the counseling. Denied again March 20, but for a different reason, which I decided to read as progress.

Round 3 — the appeal. This is the part that worked. I used the NWLC Breastfeeding Toolkit template letter, which is free and which I wish somebody had put in my hospital discharge folder. Three things went in it:

1. I requested a gap exception (some plans call it a network exception) — if there's no in-network provider who can actually deliver the covered service, they cover out-of-network at the in-network rate.

2. I cited the tri-agency FAQ, Part 54, which says in plain language that if a plan has no in-network provider who can provide lactation counseling, it must cover an out-of-network one with no cost sharing. Not at a discount. No cost sharing.

3. The Google Doc. All four names, dates, times, and the sentence "a lab" appearing in a document I sent to my insurance company.

Filed April 6. Paid May 22. $600, all of it, no cost share.

Nothing about this was clever. I was not smart, I was just annoying for fourteen weeks in a row while being sleep deprived and pumping in a supply closet. The denial is the opening offer. That's the whole trick. They deny because most people stop, and I have to assume it works, because I nearly stopped twice.

We're half a year in. 300-odd of you, a directory that's four times the size it was, and a handful of providers who've told me they got clients from here — which is the only metric I actually care about. What should the next six months look like?

Not the old self. A different one. I read the word 'matrescence' somewhere and cried at the kitchen table because someone had named it. Anyone else find that the identity part hit harder than the physical part?

Second baby, he's five weeks, and I have a 2yo who is currently eating dry cereal off the floor while I type this, so forgive the typos.

Around week two my nipples were creased flat coming out — like a lipstick, that shape everyone describes — and the pain was making me dread the letdown. With my first I never had this. I assumed second baby, easier, I know what I'm doing. I did not.

So I booked with a "lactation consultant" who does appointments out of a boutique baby store here in Sacramento. Her website said lactation consultant. Her sign said lactation consultant. She said lactation consultant on the phone. $225, cash, no superbill, and I paid it happily because I was in pain and I wanted help.

She watched maybe four minutes of a feed. Did not weigh him before or after. Did not put a gloved finger in his mouth. She looked under his tongue for a couple of seconds with her phone flashlight and said "posterior tongue tie, that's your problem," and handed me a card for a pediatric dentist who does laser releases. $700, cash, and he had an opening that Thursday.

I almost booked it. I was one tap from booking it. My husband — who is not a nervous person and does not usually push back on medical stuff — said something like, is she a doctor? And I said no, she's a lactation consultant, and he said okay, but what IS that. And I couldn't answer. I had paid this woman $225 and I could not tell you what her training was.

Here's what I found out. "Lactation consultant" is not a protected title in the US. Anyone can print it on a sign. The credential is IBCLC — board certified, hundreds of supervised clinical hours, an exam, recertification. What she actually had was a weekend "lactation educator" certificate. Which is not nothing! It's a real thing that helps real people! It is also not the person who should be pointing at my son's mouth and sending me to a laser.

I found an actual IBCLC through the ILCA directory. $250, which is MORE than I paid the first woman, and it was ninety minutes. She weighed him before the feed and after (he transferred 2.7 oz in 18 minutes, which she said was great). She watched me latch him three different ways. And then she pointed out that I was doing the whole feed hunched sideways on the couch with one arm out, because my 2yo was climbing me, and my son was getting a shallow latch because I was physically not able to bring him to me.

She said, and I'm quoting: "I do see some restriction under his tongue. I'm not the person who diagnoses that and I'm not going to. If we fix positioning and you still hurt in ten days, I'll send you for a functional assessment. A lot of what I see under tongues never needs releasing."

Six days of side-lying and a rolled towel and the pain is gone. Gone. My son still has whatever is under his tongue. He doesn't need a laser, he needed his mother to not be feeding him at a 45 degree angle while refereeing a toddler.

I'm not writing this to trash the first woman. I'm writing it because I have a graduate degree and I could not tell those two job titles apart, and I was four minutes and $700 from a surgical procedure on a five-week-old. How is anyone supposed to know this?

First time round I napped. This time there's a two year old who does not respect the concept. Second-time moms — how did you survive the first trimester with an existing child?

Two weeks early, four hour labour, absolutely no time for the playlist. Thank you to everyone who answered my hundred questions since January — the day three warning was the single most useful thing anyone told me, and it was exactly as advertised.

A thread I want to keep and point people at, because I get this question in my inbox more than any other and I'm tired of answering it one email at a time.

Everyone tells you to "find a doula." Nobody tells you how. You search, you get a directory of names with no prices, you email four of them, one replies, she's booked until August, and you give up and tell yourself you'll manage.

So: if you hired someone — a birth doula, a postpartum doula, an IBCLC, a pelvic floor PT, overnight help, anyone — I want to know the boring parts.

How did you find her? Not "word of mouth" — whose mouth. Your OB? A local Facebook group? A friend? A directory, and if so which one?

What did it cost, actually? A number. I know this is the uncomfortable one and you can be vague about your city if you want, but the silence around price is doing real harm. People assume they can't afford something they've never been quoted.

Did insurance touch any of it? Even partially. Even after a fight.

How far did you travel? I'm collecting this one on purpose.

And one more, because I think it's the thing that actually breaks people: did you know what you were hiring? A birth doula and a postpartum doula are not the same job. A night doula is a different job again. A newborn care specialist is a different job again. An IBCLC is a credential — a "lactation educator" is not the same thing and the words look identical when you're 3 days pp and crying.

I've watched people hire the wrong one and conclude the whole category was useless. That's not a them problem, that's a nobody-explained-it problem.

I'll keep this thread linked from the directory. Be as specific as you're comfortable being — the specifics are the entire value here.

Working on the insurance thing I mentioned. If you've had any maternal care covered — doula, lactation, pelvic floor, mental health — tell me what, which insurer, and whether it was a fight. Even 'they said no' is useful. I'm trying to build a picture nobody's published.

One is crawling. One is not. The one who crawls has found the bottom stair. The one who doesn't watches like she's taking notes for later. I have approximately three weeks to childproof everything. What did I forget?

It's 9:30pm, both of them are finally down, and I'm sitting on the floor of the hallway outside their room eating cereal out of the box like a raccoon, so this is where we're at.

Boy/girl twins, Kofi and Ama, born October 2 at 35+4. So they're 31 weeks actual, about 26 adjusted, and I say that up front because I know somebody's going to ask and they'd be right to.

Where we were: both in one room, two cribs, room is 70F, 1.0 TOG sleep sacks, both rolled at 5 months so no swaddle, nothing in the cribs, white noise, blackout so dark I have walked into the dresser twice. Formula since about 5 months, solids started at 6, purees and some BLW. Ama takes a pacifier. Kofi rejects it with a level of contempt I find genuinely impressive. Wake windows are 2.5-3 hours, three naps, one of which is a 30 minute cat nap in the car because that's just my life now.

And they were waking every 90 minutes to two hours. Both. Not in sync, obviously, because that would be a gift. Ama at 11:20, Kofi at 12:40, Ama at 2:15, and so on until the sun comes up and I go to work. I have been doing this since roughly Christmas. I have fallen asleep at a red light. That's the sentence I'd like anyone who wants to tell me what I'm doing wrong to sit with first.

So Friday we started Ferber. Actual Ferber, the checks, 3 then 5 then 10.

Night 1: 47 minutes. Both of them. Kofi's cry has a sound in it I have not heard before and I would like to never hear again.

Night 2: 22 minutes, then Ama slept until 5:10 and I woke up at 3am in a panic and went in to check she was breathing, which I feel is worth including.

Night 3: 6 minutes. Six. I thought we'd done it. Then Kofi woke Ama at 1am and we were back to square one until 3.

Night 4 was tonight and I don't want to talk about night 4.

Here's the thing I actually need to say. Everyone told me the guilt would go away when it worked, and it's sort of working, and it hasn't gone away, it's gotten worse. Because now I have proof that it works, and that means all the nights I didn't do it were nights I chose not to. And on the other side of that, every time Kofi stops crying I feel this little flash of relief and then I think: did he stop because he's okay, or did he stop because he worked out nobody's coming.

I know the studies say no measurable harm. I've read them. I've read them at 4am, which is not when you should read a study. It doesn't touch the thing.

I'm not asking if I should stop. I don't think I can stop. I'm asking whether anyone else did this and felt like this, and what you did with it, because right now I'm eating cereal on a floor and I feel like something that used to be a person.

I asked what you actually wanted. Almost nobody said a gift. The top answers were: a full night, someone else to book the appointments, and to not be asked what's for dinner. I've turned it into something you can forward to a well-meaning partner without having to say it out loud yourself.

Bag packed, car seat in, brain absolutely nowhere. Someone tell me what the first 48 hours are actually like so I can stop imagining it.

Spending May on two things: filling the map in the Mountain West, and making it easier to find someone who takes your insurance. The insurance question comes up constantly and right now our answer is 'call and ask', which isn't good enough. Anything you'd put ahead of those?

Shower drain looks like a crime scene. I know it's a thing. I did not know it was this much of a thing. When does it stop?

Baby boy arrived Friday. Toddler took one look, said 'no thank you', and asked to watch Bluey. So that's going well. Second-time moms: how long before she stops pretending he doesn't exist?

Every year the internet decides Mother's Day is about brunch. If there's one thing you'd actually want — from your partner, your mom, your friend — what is it? I want to put together something honest rather than another gift guide for candles.

Can't sleep, can't walk far, can't be bothered. Tell me something good about the other side. Anything.

Simple ask. Reply with your city and whether you found what you needed here. I want to know exactly where the map is empty. Every gap someone names turns into a week of outreach on my end, and that's a fair trade.

The mother-in-law guide and the 5-5-5 partner guide are both up as printables. People seem to actually print them, which is the whole idea. What's the next one? I'm thinking a 'what to say to a new mom' card for the people who mean well and keep saying the wrong thing.

Not every day. Tuesdays. My husband goes back to a full day at the office on Tuesdays and something about the length of it undoes me. Is this the baby blues still, or is eight weeks past that? I don't feel unsafe, I just feel flattened.

I reorganized the entire pantry at 11pm last night at 38 weeks. Alphabetically. My husband found me sitting on the floor with the spices. Is this a real thing or have I lost it?

We walk everywhere and the pavements here are a disgrace. Everything I look at is either enormous or has wheels the size of a coin. What's actually survived real pavements for you?

I don't post much. I'm posting because I did the math this morning and it made me sit down.

We're rural. Nearest town is 20 minutes, nearest anything else is not. My LO is 8 months now but this was back at three weeks, when she wasn't gaining and my milk hadn't come in properly and I was losing my mind about it.

The nearest IBCLC — the actual credential, not a class — was 2 hours and 40 minutes away. I know because I called everyone closer first. There's a hospital 50 minutes from us with a lactation program but it's inpatient only, so unless you're currently admitted you can't be seen. There's a "lactation educator" 30 minutes away who I did see, and who was kind, and who told me things I later found out were wrong. I don't blame her. She wasn't trained for what I brought her. I just didn't know there was a difference between what she had and what I needed, because nobody tells you the letters mean something.

So we drove. My husband drove, I sat in the back next to the car seat, we stopped once each way to feed. Five hours and 20 minutes of driving for a 50 minute appointment. She weighed her, watched a full feed, found a posterior tongue tie that two other people had missed, and told me my flange size was wrong — which, by the way, was the single thing that changed everything and took her about 90 seconds to spot.

We did that drive four times.

Here's the part I'm actually angry about, and it took me eight months to be able to say it. That was never presented to me as unusual. Everyone I spoke to — my OB's office, the pediatrician, the nurse line — talked about it like driving five hours to get a baby weighed was just what you do out here. And it is what you do out here. But it being normal is not the same as it being fine.

I read that something like a third of US counties don't have a birthing hospital or an OB at all, and that people out here travel almost three times as far for care. When I read that number I cried, honestly, because I'd spent eight months thinking I'd handled something badly.

I'm not really asking anything. I want to know who else is out here. How far is yours? Not your worst-case story — your actual normal. The drive you don't think about anymore because you've done it so many times.

Postpartum doula here. The advice I give most: put a basket next to wherever you feed, and fill it with water, snacks, a charger, lip balm and the remote. It sounds trivial. It is the single thing clients thank me for most. What was your version of this?

Sorry, this is long, and I know it's probably the hundredth version of this question. Feel free to skip me.

FTM. LO was born January 29, so she's just under five weeks old. She has been to all six of these tours in a car seat. I go back April 27 — I'm a dental hygienist, pediatric office, so there is no WFH version of my job, I can't clean a four-year-old's teeth over Zoom — and that's eight weeks from now.

Denver. Six tours, a spreadsheet with 14 columns, and I think I've made myself dumber rather than smarter. Here's what I've got:

Center A — big national chain, infant room 1:4, licensed, NAEYC accredited. $2,485/month. That is not a typo. That is more than our mortgage. Waitlist: I was told to get on it "ideally in the first trimester," and when I said the baby is already here, in this car seat, the woman did a face. She offered me October.

Center B — smaller, local, infant room 1:4 on paper. I counted while I was standing there and it was one adult and five babies at 10am. When I asked, she said someone was on break. $2,180/month. Available in September.

In-home C — licensed, six kids total, two of them infants, one provider plus her adult daughter part-time. $1,340/month. Spotless. She's done this 19 years and was the only person on any of six tours who asked me a question about my baby instead of about my billing preferences. Available April 20, which is suspicious to me? Why is she available.

Nanny share — found a family through a neighborhood group, roughly $1,750/month each for two babies, but they want to start April 1 and we'd be paying most of a month for nothing.

My actual questions, and I apologize for how many there are:

1. Is 1:4 the real number for infants, or is that just Colorado? Everything I read gives a different figure and I can't tell what's law and what's a recommendation somebody wrote in a blog post in 2019.

2. Center B was over ratio while I was standing there, on a scheduled tour, when they knew a prospective parent was in the building. Is that a walk-away, or is that just what a break looks like and I'm being naive?

3. In-home vs center. Every center person implies in-homes are unregulated, every in-home person implies centers warehouse babies, and I have no way to referee that.

4. Is $2,485 normal?? I keep saying the number out loud to people and they don't react, and I can't tell if that means it's normal or if they're being polite. My take-home is $4,900. I've run the numbers on quitting and the math is close enough that it's frightening, and I don't want to quit, and I feel guilty for not wanting to quit.

5. Nobody warned me you're supposed to do this while pregnant. Nobody. My OB asked about car seats. Not one person in nine months said "call daycares at 10 weeks." How is that not on a list somewhere.

I know I'm spiraling. She's five weeks old, she's asleep on me right now, and I'm supposed to hand her to a stranger in eight weeks and I can't tell anymore whether I'm evaluating these places or just hunting for a reason that none of them are good enough.

Honest question. If a friend told you tomorrow she was pregnant, would you send her here? And if not — what's missing? I'd genuinely rather hear the awkward answer now than keep guessing.

Due May, packing early because it's the only thing I can control. I've got the lists. What's on nobody's list that you were glad you had?

Due in April and my 2yo has no idea what's coming. We've read the books. She points at my bump and says 'baby' and then asks for a snack. Any of the prep stuff make a real difference, or does reality just land when it lands?

Sorry in advance, this is long and I know it's probably a stupid thing to be upset about. She was born January 29, so she's 3 weeks and 1 day today. I'm going to keep saying it in weeks because I want to be precise about what we're actually arguing about here.

Setup, so nobody has to ask: EBF, feeding every 2 to 2.5 hours around the clock, wake windows are 45-60 minutes and then she's cooked. Room is 69F. She's in a bassinet right next to my side of the bed, velcro swaddle, arms in, white noise the whole time, nothing in there with her. Hasn't rolled, obviously. I have read the AAP page so many times I could recite it. I'm not doing anything unsafe. I want that on the record before the rest.

She naps 20 minutes in the bassinet. Twenty. I've timed it enough times that I can now call it — I set her down, she's out, and at minute 18 her hands come up. On my chest she sleeps 90 minutes to two hours, sometimes more. So during the day I hold her. I sit on the couch with a burp cloth on my shoulder and my phone in one hand and she contact naps on me and that is the whole day. That's it. That's what I do now.

My mother-in-law came Sunday. She was here about four hours. In that time she said, and I'm not paraphrasing because I've replayed it enough:

"You know you're creating a habit."

"She'll never learn to go down on her own if she's never put down."

And then, to my husband, in the kitchen, not quietly: "I put you boys down awake in the crib and you were fine. She's setting herself up."

Then she offered to take her so I could shower, and when I said she'd probably wake up, she said "well, good."

Here's the part I can't get past. I don't think she's right. I've read enough to be fairly sure a 3 week old can't form a habit in the way she means. But I sat there and I didn't say any of it, and now it's Thursday and I'm still sitting on the couch with her asleep on me and I feel like I'm getting away with something. Like at some point a bill comes due for this and it's going to be my fault.

I keep opening my phone and typing "how long can you contact nap before it's a problem" and every answer is somebody's opinion. Taking Cara Babies says one thing, my pediatrician's handout says put her down drowsy but awake, my MIL says I'm ruining her, and she is 22 days old and warm and asleep on me and it is the only part of my day that doesn't feel like drowning.

So I guess I'm not really asking about naps. I think I'm asking whether I'm allowed to do this. Which is a ridiculous thing to ask strangers. Sorry.

Two and a half weeks in and I'm waking up drenched. Sheets, pyjamas, everything. I assumed something was wrong and my midwife said it's just hormones flushing out. Why is this not on any of the lists?

I mentioned this here in about two sentences back in January and then let it go. I'm 10 weeks pp now, it's had time to marinate, and I want to write the whole thing down properly. Second baby, vaginal birth, second degree tear.

The appointment was four minutes. I timed it, because I'd gotten a newborn into a car seat and driven 40 minutes for it. She looked at the tear, said it healed nicely, asked what I was doing for birth control, asked if I was feeling sad, and cleared me for everything. Exercise, sex, all of it. Nobody put a hand on my abdomen. Nobody asked about leaking. Nobody looked at my pelvic floor at all, which I'd assumed was the entire point.

So I said, out loud, in the room: I have a gap above my belly button I can fit two fingers into, and I leak if I sneeze hard. And she said that's very normal after two babies, and that it usually resolves on its own, and did I have any other questions.

Very normal. That's the whole answer. I got the same sentence for both things.

Here's what's actually bothering me, and I've been chewing on it for two months. "Cleared" doesn't mean what I thought it meant. I thought it meant somebody checked and I'm fine. It means the incision is closed and she's not liable if I go run a 5K. Those are completely different sentences and only one of them was said out loud.

And it was the LAST appointment. That's the part that gets me. There is no next one. Whatever shows up at four months, at eight months, when I try to run again, there's no visit for it. The system had one scheduled touchpoint with my body after it did the single hardest thing it will ever do, and it spent four minutes on it and closed the file.

My LO gets seen at 2 weeks, 2 months, 4 months, 6 months. Somebody weighs her and plots her on a chart and asks how she's doing. I get four minutes and a pamphlet about IUDs.

I'm not even asking for advice really. I want to know if this was everyone's experience or if I got a bad one. Because if it's everyone's, then it's not a bad doctor, it's just how this works, and that's a much worse thing to find out.

Baby girl arrived Jan 29th, 7lb 4oz, after 31 hours that I will be processing for some time. Thank you to everyone who talked me down in December when I was convinced I wasn't ready. I wasn't. She came anyway and we're figuring it out.

Right now we've got Feeding, Sleep, Pelvic Floor, Fitness, Travel, Nutrition, Work Life and a few more. I'm looking at adding Mental Health and Multiples. What else would you actually use? I'd rather have six topics people post in than twenty ghost towns.

One thing I hear constantly: everyone asks how they can help, and you're too tired to project-manage them. So we made a printable your people can just do — no decisions required from you. Stick it on the fridge and let them get on with it. Would love to know if it's useful or if I've missed something obvious.