The First Week

Jun 29

Often during pregnancy one’s focus ends at the looming birth itself, an almost blinding event that eclipses everything that comes after. It’s common to feel like you have to get every single thing on your to-do list done before your birth, as if there is no concept of life afterwards, as if the birth itself is the ultimate point of no return, and everything beyond its threshold is mere speculation or myth, an unknown beyond our capacity to comprehend.

But birth itself is not so much an event horizon as a gateway – a passage from one chapter of your life to a new one. And even though it is a one-way door, there is lots of light on the other side. The impending birth might cast such a shadow that we can’t see beyond it from our ‘before’ angle, but luckily there are plenty of people on the ‘after’ side for whom the sights are clear.

So let’s demystify this other side and shine a spotlight on what you might expect during the first week.

What is it like? Like most things to do with birth or parenthood, everyone’s experience is different. Your first week will obviously be coloured by your own birth experience, any health or medical influences (such as if your or your baby needs to stay in the hospital a bit longer), your own life situation (such as if you have family in town), your baby’s individual personality, and your own priorities and expectations.

But for most people, here are some general characteristics of the first week with a new baby, many of which you might encounter once you cross through the portal into parenthood.

The Big Bang
One of the most dominant characteristics of the first week is that people feel like they are thrown into a situation that is suddenly and shockingly chaotic. For some families, the first night is deceptively calm, and the big bang erupts on night two, which is called “Second Night Syndrome”. It is as if some giant force has uprooted everything you mistook for stable. Some people describe it as being unable to get a firm footing, as if the ground is constantly shifting under your feet and you can barely maintain any equilibrium as you are knocked completely off balance. It is hard to believe that this tiny, vulnerable, and guileless baby can be such an upending agent of chaos, and can turn our very universe inside out.
You might find yourself wearing the same pair of pyjamas for an unknown period of time, and truly have no idea if you last showered yesterday, three days ago, or a week ago. You might have meals at absurdly random times of night or day, with no regard to what time it actually is. You might glance at the clock and not understand if the “seven” you see means AM or PM. You might genuinely not know what day it is most days.
During the first week, we are not on earth time–we are on baby time. It is as if all the regular routines that anchor us from day to day get scrambled into meaninglessness because the magnetic force of baby time is so much stronger. Your baby (their needs, rhythms, cries, and heart-melting preciousness) is the most compelling force in your first-week universe. All your erstwhile structures are powerless against your baby’s magnetic pull.
Super Nova Emotions
You may have heard that people can be quite emotional after having a baby. This is true. It is very common to have emotions that swing wildly and explosively, from despairing darkness, to euphoric light that is almost blinding; from weepy and wistful, to contented and blissful. It is usual to be transported from a very low and heavy place to over the moon with joy in mere seconds. Fear, stress, feeling isolated, and having the baby blues, are all perfectly common and normal, but so are feelings of satisfaction, delight, love, excitement, and profound awe and wonder. Most people experience all of it during the first week.
But if your emotions are tending towards the negative most of the time, please check in with your health care provider. Postpartum anxiety and depression are common, and it is well worth finding support and resources. You deserve all the support there is.
Fractal Sleep
It’s not completely accurate to say that you will get no sleep during the first week, but it is accurate to say that you will get less sleep, and that it will be fragmented. Newborns need to wake frequently for food, comfort, and systems-regulation. This is particularly acute during the early days, before they have started to develop any circadian rhythms, because when they wake up, they do not go right back to sleep. And neither will you. Newborns have a very short needs cycle that they rotate through without pause, with wakeful periods following sleepy periods regardless of time of night or day.
The first week of your baby's life can be utterly exhausting. When your baby wakes up, they may stay wide awake for quite a while before getting drowsy again. Which usually means you are wide awake too.
The good news is that this phase is short. After about a week or so, even though your baby will still wake just as often during the night, they will usually start drifting back to sleep much more quickly once their needs are met, instead of staying up and alert until their next drowsy phase rolls around.
You will start getting more sleep as this happens. It will still be interrupted sleep, but the stretches of wakefulness will become shorter and more predictable, until your baby mostly just feeds and then falls straight back to sleep.
That first week of disrupted nights is often the hardest. But even though babies continue to wake at night for a long time, their awake periods get shorter, calmer, and more concentrated, and your own sleep will gradually increase.
Adaptation
During this first week of life, your baby’s systems are all rapidly, madly, intensely trying to adjust to life outside your body. The first three months are characterized by profound systems growth and development, but the first week is the most extreme. Some of your baby’s organs are working independently for the first time (lungs, bowels), some of their systems are in a state of heightened transition (digestive system, immune system), and some are just newly beginning to activate (circadian rhythms, temperature regulation). Your baby is still transitioning to being outside your body; the first week is one of dazzling adaptation.
This is one of the reasons babies can be so colicky during the first three months: they have to undergo incredible physical changes during a very short period of time.
Contact
During this week, your baby’s needs are few but fervent. Even though the baby is no longer inside your body, they are not yet remotely capable of independent self regulation. Babies still regulate through physical proximity to the parent’s body, through physical contact and closeness. Babies need to experience us with all of their senses (all 21 - 53 senses, depending on who you ask) in order to stabilize and organize their systems. Sometimes referred to as co-regulation, this is the baby’s way of continuing to rely on our body for life support even after the birth.
A baby’s needs are mostly for food/hydration, sleep, safety, and comfort, all of which they get through contact with a parent, and all of which are funneled through their primary need, which is attachment. Attachment is a baby’s animating drive, their prime directive, and the need for which they feel the most ferocious and frequent hunger. This is why so many babies can’t sleep far from your body, and need to be comforted before they can be fed–because they feel deeply, internally unsafe, not ‘right’, and dysregulated when they are not in contact with you. Skin to skin contact is important for a baby’s physical and emotional health, their growth and development, and their sense of resiliency and vitality. None of these things are really separable for a baby, since they all come from their reliance on attachment.
The amount of physical closeness a baby needs (and biologically expects) can be shocking for a new parent. While the baby is already accustomed to being held by your body 24 hours a day, right from birth, for us the onset of having no free hands can feel sudden and overwhelming. Human babies thrive on contact, which can cause many parents to feel excessively ‘touched out’ during the first week.
Evolution
Your baby will be changing, growing, and evolving right before your eyes. From day to day–practically from minute to minute–they will behave differently, look different, and even feel different. Every time you think you are beginning to understand your baby’s patterns or cues, it is as if the mere thought triggers another change, and you will feel like you are learning all over again. Babies continue to change and grow forever, of course, but the rate of accelerated change is most acute at the beginning. By the time your baby is three months old, the pacing of change slows down enough that you feel like you can catch your breath. But for the first week, your baby will be changing, developing, growing, and evolving at a precipitous pace, like video on 10xspeed. A lot of this development relies on frequent feeding and sleeping, which explains why your baby does so much of both, and why each is so frequently interrupted by the other.
Matresence
One of the trickier things to convey about the first week, or indeed about becoming a parent at all, is the sheer enormity of the psychological shift. It is one of the biggest (arguably the single most powerful) life-changes we ever experience, and it can affect us in ways we didn’t anticipate. The word ‘matresence’ means ‘becoming a mother’, but aside from the obvious event of now having a child, it can involve a series of deeper and unexpected transformations that might upend or rattle our very self-perception. This odyssey is smaller for some people, and bigger for others, but either way it is nigh impossible to see the destination from the launching point. There is no way of knowing what it will feel like to inhabit this new planet, no matter how many pictures we see or descriptions we hear. For some people, I think this might be the defining feature of postpartum adjustment–the destabilizing feeling of inner change that alters our established sense of gravity, as our deep orbitational pull shifts from one centre to another, and our solar system realigns around our new role as a parent.
What Your Baby Needs
Many people describe the first three months after being born as the “4th Trimester”, a term meant to evoke the necessity of your baby’s extensive body contact with you, which fosters their ongoing development. During these first three months, babies thrive in the most womb-like environment, with lots of time on your body: sleeping, eating, bonding, developing, and co-regulating.
Of these first few months, the first week is the most extreme. If it helps, you can remember that we are “carry mammals”, like all primates and marsupials, which means that our babies have evolved to rely on almost constant body contact for stability and development. This is not a habit or something you need to discourage, rather it is a stage of development that your baby will gradually outgrow, more so if their present need for proximity is satisfied. Babies graduate from this stage when the need is fully met, and their access to you feels stable and reliable.
What You Need
For the baby, being in your arms or nestled in your embrace all day and night feels familiar, comfortable, and secure, but for us it can feel excessive and burdensome. No matter how much you love your baby, most of us aren’t used to (or physically/psychologically ready for) the sheer enormity of our baby’s need to be on our body. It can feel overwhelming and impossible to meet your baby where they’re at. Most of us need some hands-free time, and the feeling of having our body to ourselves, even for just a few minutes a day.
It can help to have some safe places to put the baby down, such as a mobile bassinet or cradle that you can move from room to room. It can also help to have support people lined up to take on other chores, so that you can relax into baby-mode without any competing obligations. This is so much easier when someone else is doing your dishes and bringing your tea. Or, when you need a body break, they can take turns holding the baby, while you relax in the bath, go for a brisk walk, have a nap, or just enjoy an hour of arms-free time. Another idea is to use baby wearing (slings or carriers) instead of a stroller, since this supports a more settled, contented baby while giving you a bit more mobility and access to your own limbs.
As parents, we have to meet our baby’s needs–all of them–as this is literally our new job-description. (Beware of books and social media bytes that try to tell you that you can ‘train’ a baby out of these biological needs.) But we also have to find creative ways to meet our own needs, so that we are not drained, depleted, or running on empty. Consider accepting all the help you can access, from family, friends, and professionals (postpartum doulas, dog-walkers, food delivery…), and consider leaning into being mothered yourself. Let people bring you food and do your laundry. The more we get nurtured, the more nurturing energy we have to share. I truly don’t think we were meant to do this alone. It really does take a village.
On that note, another thing that is known to help with postpartum adjustment is community. If you are lucky enough to have siblings or close friends who have been through it, they can be a wonderful resource of information and support. But consider also joining some local parenting circles, online or in-person. Nothing can replace the satisfaction we get from commiserating and having our experience validated and reflected back by others who are going through it too. Connecting with people who ‘get it’ can be a balm for our mental health.

So rather than letting your imagination be swallowed whole by the looming birth itself, consider peeking beyond this galactic event and planning for the postpartum. Check out this article on strategizing for the first few weeks. While it can be useful to brace yourself for the enormity of the experience, once you’re there, it helps to actually embrace it. If we are able to lean into the chaos, accept that we are fully on baby-time, and allow our orbit to adapt and reorient, we can lessen the stress that comes from resistance. Growth and change can be frightening, destabilizing, and hard. And this is probably the biggest instance of growth and change you will ever go through. But as the descendants of almost 7 million years of evolution, we are well equipped for this adventure. You’ve got this!