When did your stitches stop hurting?

I just got home from the hospital and I had to stay over two nights because I got a forceps delivery and had a 2nd degree tear. Anyone have this experience? How long did your down there hurt? It’s so painful I can’t do much and I’m peeing myself because I can’t actually pee. I have to push tissue down there to make myself pee. Then it comes out in gushes when I walk around. I’m looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s so hard to care for a newborn when I can’t sit or stand anywhere without crazy pain.

in our community

Circumcision, please help

I know it can be a really sensitive topic, but I feel really underinformed about whether I should choose to circumcise or not if we end up having a boy.
For context: we are very non-religious, but I worry about the stigma of being non-circumcised when he would start to get interested in dating, navigating cleaning it and the risk of infection especially as he gets older and navigating potty training at daycare and stuff. I also worry about the increased risk of penile cancer. But then I also hate the thought of making my baby go through a major surgery unnecessarily and would prefer for them to make the choice when they are older if they choose to get circumcised.

How did you make your choice? Does anyone regret their choice?

How do I end this friendship

My best friend of 15 years and I are in similar stages of life and her behaviour has gotten increasingly erratic and triggering. I am about to have my first baby and she is struggling with postpartum from her second who was born last August. All the “normal” post partum depression symptoms I totally understand but she has also in my opinion made a lot of selfish choices recently.

She is constantly yelling and berating her husband and kids as well as flying off the handle at the tiniest things and it’s super triggering for me coming from a previous abusive relationship. She’s honestly being abusive to her family.

I feel like she always makes everything about herself and her reasoning has gotten soooo misconstrued. She acts only on her emotions and doesn’t care about anyone else’s. She never accepts any constructive criticism or advice even though she complains 24/7 about everything.

She says she hates being a mom and doesn’t want to be around her kids , hates her marriage, hates her job, and complains 24\7 and refuses to do anything to change. She also makes everything about herself including my baby shower we just had. She’s made rude comments to my spouse as well.

I don’t have many mom friends but at this point she is just not the type of person I want to be around because she is being so mean and wanting to bring everyone down with her. Also I am about to have my first baby and just want to focus on me.

no screen mums!!

are you absolutely 0 screens household? my boy is 6mo and me and my partner agreed no screens till 3yo, but I'm a sahm and showering is HARD when I'm alone, I've been thinking about recording myself singing the songs he likes and showing it to him for being able to shower.
What do you do?

Wake windows and entertaining

How are you keeping your 5 months old entertained.. and how long are their wake windows now?

Feeling guilty for co sleeping

My 6 month old has suddenly started to do abit of co sleeping in the night. She sometimes go back to her bed but alot of the time it’s out of pure exhaustion from me that I just let her sleep with me. I haven’t got any energy to be rocking her back to sleep and putting her down with possibly failing the attempt. But for some reason I feel a sense of guilt like I’m going to have problems later on if it continues. Someone put my mind at ease please?

Feel like I’m solo parenting

I’m so sick of arguing with my husband over this.

My daughter is 11 weeks old, and my husband works Monday to Friday. I look after her all day every day, and on the weekends and some evenings he goes out cycling. I don’t mind this, he gets extremely ratty and stir crazy if he doesn’t go out, and it drives me mad.

Lately. My daughter’s sleep pattern is all over the place in terms of the second stretch. She tends to go for 6 hours, then has a feed, then either goes for another 4 hours, or starts to fuss at about 5:30 am. (I realise this first stretch is a dream, please believe me I’m not complaining about that.

My husband starts work at 7 am from home, or leaves at 6 am if he’s going into the office.

This means that he comes home, feeds her once while I’m in the shower, while I handle all of the other feeds/ settling her off at night. I rarely go back to sleep after as I’m so wired. He also struggles to sleep once he’s awake, so when she fusses for her night feed, he’s up from around 4 am regardless of feeding her or not.

I see him for around 3 hours a day apart from weekends, and in that time I cook, he does the dishes and cleans the bottles. We then bath/wash LO, he feeds her, then we watch a film or show until her next feed at 9:30 pm.

He has gone up to bed early to try and get more sleep because he feels like he’s exhausted to the point of headaches. (I am too, but it seems like this isn’t as important because I don’t go to work. He acknowledges that it’s hard work looking after her all day, this isn’t the problem). I have stayed downstairs with her, because to me, disturbing a sleeping baby only to put her in a crib for 30 minutes after settling her again, to feed her and then have to restart the process is ridiculous when she’s asleep already.

I feel like I do everything. I feed and settle her every time. When he can’t calm her down within 10 minutes he passes her back despite me having her all day and him not seeing her.

I love my daughter more than anything, and my husband is lovely, I swear. It’s just a really tough time with her sleep, and I’m struggling to cope. I’m so, so tired. And he doesn’t seem to realise this, because he is. We have talked about this so many times, but it just turns into an argument. Please tell me this will pass?