Enjoy the Slowness of a New Baby

You’ve got a new baby at home, it’s your first one, and they are not doing anything. You’re up multiple times per night to feed the baby, but they don’t really do much at all. They just kind of lay around a little bit outside of sleeping and eating. You were expecting things to be a little more exciting than they are now. Enjoy the slowness while you can - things will get crazier.

Having never been a parent before, you often don’t know what to expect. There are so many unexpected experiences that you will go through with your child. You have to be flexible and expect things to go wrong, a lot. Whatever ideas you had about parenting are going to be turned on their head once you have your baby home and as they grow older. Hang on and try to enjoy the ride while you can because things will move quickly.

Every child is different. Some kids are poor sleepers, some are loud screamers, and some are really calm. There’s really no way to know what type of baby you will be bringing home, so you can hope for the best while preparing for the worst. You’ll love your child no matter how they act, it’s completely natural. However, you can still hope for a calm child.

You’ll likely come to find though that those first months of having a baby at home is quite boring. Sure, you may not be sleeping a lot at night, but other than changing diapers and feeding the baby, you’re not doing much with the baby. Your baby will want to sleep a bunch outside of those things. They’re getting used to being in the world and you’re getting used to having them.

Enjoy the calmness while it lasts. You do not need to sit and try to constantly entertain your new baby. In fact, you should let your baby check out the world on their own as much as you can. Don’t leave a newborn alone, but sitting next to a baby while you read, or do something else that you need to is not a bad thing. They can sit and watch you or look at other things going around them.

You can also sit and watch them as they try to look around at the world and see what’s going on. It’s always fascinating as a parent to see what your new baby is doing. However, you don’t have to sit and try to entertain them while they’re awake. This will certainly become boring quite quickly for you. Let them be independent from when they’re little. If you let them build their independence from the baby phase, you’ll likely find that in the toddler stage you also won’t have to try to entertain them all the time either.

The main reason to not sit and entertain them all the time though is because soon enough they will be crawling and then walking all over the place. Once this starts, you’re not going to have a lot of quiet self time for the next several years as they will begin talking and want more attention. You’re not going to have a lot of chances to simply sit next to your child while they sit and look at the world. You’re going to be up and moving after or with them all the time.

The boring phase of parenting is a time for you to step back and look at what things you’d like to enjoy right now while you can. Be prepared to lose some of the quiet time as your child grows older. While it won’t happen overnight, it will come quicker than you’d expect. By the time the toddler phase starts, you’ll likely be wishing that you had some of those baby moments back to just sit and enjoy a bit of your boring life again.

Enjoy your kids in whatever phase of life they are in. Just because it seems boring now, try to enjoy it as much as possible because you never know what tomorrow will bring.