Ah, the newborn phase! Baby snuggles, cute little noises, and…no sleep! Some look back fondly on this part of parenting when their kids were just little babies (who didn’t ask for snacks and couldn’t talk back) who slept 18 hours a day and were just the cutest little balls of love. However, some recall the newborn phase as a not-so-wonderful time of sleep deprivation, spit up on every item of clothing, and basically no life.
One mom in the thick of it turned to the “Parenting” SubReddit to ask veteran parents if they ever miss the newborn phase because she is counting down the days for it to be over. Now, she wonders if she’s wrong for feeling this way and not soaking up every minute of those baby snuggles. (Why does everyone say that?!)
She actually prefers the baby stage, when they giggle and coo and give those little pieces of validation and acknowledgment that parents need sometimes to get through the day.
“Can I please ask parents who have kids who are older this question… do you actually miss the newborn stage if you didn’t like being in it?” she wrote.
“I’m a mum of two and I love my kids, but I absolutely cannot wait for newborn time to be over. Once my firstborn was 5-6 months old I felt like I was more able to understand a little more of what she was trying to say. But I’m back here again with my 10 week old who is actually way chiller than my first was and I still am just not enjoying it as much as I thought I would have.”
“And is it ok to just simply not enjoy this stage? I feel like so many people are just telling me ‘you’ll miss it…’ when I see pictures on my phone of my first born as a baby, I always tend to gush over the 5-6 month stage, not the newborn stage. Anyone else feel the same?”
After her post gained some traction, several Reddit users validated the OP’s feelings.
“Mine are 8 and 6. I rejoiced to be done with the newborn stage. It was not a good stage for me with either of them. But watching them grow and develop into their personalities is just so cool. They get cooler every day,” one user wrote.
Another echoed, “Do I miss my LO being that tiny? Yes. Do I miss that stage? Absolutely not.”
“Not for a single second. Mine is 11 and the independence, the ability to tell me what’s wrong and what she needs. Watching her personality blossom, seeing her grow as a person is way better to me than newborn times,” one user responded.
One user noted that they actually do miss the newborn phase but that doesn’t mean they would want to go back and do it all over again.
They wrote, “I miss it, but I would only want to visit. Like, I want to cuddle my small, warm, soft baby. I want to squish her cute pudding cheeks. I want to marvel at her tiny candy corn fingers and compare her little forearms to my index finger. I want to hum to her and rock her and see if some of my years of parenting her have made me better equipped to handle her infant phase. But would I want to turn back time? Would I want to do it again? Helllll no.”
One user said that they might like to go back to just remember more of the newborn phase, noting that it all went by in a blink.
“I miss my memories that I lost from that time. It’s such a hazy fog. I miss how little she was. I do not miss how hard it was …” they said.
Another joked, “Kinda. Now they’re walking, talking terrorists who demand snacks and paw patrol. Gone are the days of sleepy cuddles and just lying there like a potato.”
There is definitely a middle ground here, right? Seems like most parents miss the snuggles, the sweet nature of a sleeping newborn, and the smell of a newborn baby’s head (what is that smell?!), but would rather leave the sleepless nights and overall chaos in the past.
