Bringing Baby Home: Adjusting After a Complicated Birth
Before delivering your new baby, you may have imagined meeting them for the first time, wondering what they would look like, how they would act, and how your family would adjust to life together.
For many families, especially those who experienced a difficult delivery or unexpected complications, adjusting to a new baby can feel overwhelming, emotional, and nothing like what they pictured.
Whether this is your first baby or your fourth, life changes in big and small ways. For some families, the adjustment may include managing oxygen monitors, feeding tubes, or learning to care for a baby with early signs of cerebral palsy or another birth injury.
For others, it might mean juggling the needs of older siblings while searching for answers about their baby’s condition.
As a baby nurse and a mother of two, I’ve supported families through both joyful and deeply challenging homecomings.
Here are three pieces of advice I often share to help parents adjust in those early days, especially when the transition home doesn’t go as planned.
1. Reset Your Expectations
As beautiful as it is to have a child to love and care for, it also requires a lot of patience and hard work. It may sound counterintuitive, but prepare to be unprepared.
You can do your best to know all about what newborns need (and you should teach yourself beforehand), but there will also be so many unexpected scenarios that you can’t prepare for until you are experiencing them.
For some families, that might mean learning how to bathe a baby with medical equipment nearby, or navigating doctor visits while still healing emotionally from the delivery.
Some babies may be recovering from a preventable birth injury, such as hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) or brain damage. That kind of uncertainty can be just as overwhelming as the physical exhaustion.
Still, you will learn and adapt. The first time you leave the house with your baby might feel scary, but it will get easier. Give yourself as much grace as you can — not every day will be beautiful, but each day will teach you something about your baby and yourself.
2. Learn Your Newborn's Unique Needs
It will take time to learn about your new baby. They have preferences for how they like to be held, what comforts them best, and what overstimulates them. Try different methods for putting them to sleep and remain flexible while you’re learning.
If your baby suffered a birth injury, spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), or had difficulty breathing, your day-to-day life may look very different from what you expected.
Do not plan too many activities or visitors in the first few weeks after delivery. Take this time to learn about what your baby needs and the boundaries that help you be the best mother you can be.
Even one visitor at a time may feel like enough, especially if you’re still recovering physically or emotionally from a complicated birth. For our family, that helped keep things calm for both my baby and me.
Take time to rest with your baby, heal your body, and do not worry about the rest. If you don’t have a lot of help, learn to make adjustments where you can. Buy easy-to-cook meals, only wash the laundry items you need for the next few days, and don’t try to keep the house perfectly clean.
Bonding with your baby is important, even if it looks different than what you imagined. Gentle skin-to-skin contact can be soothing for many babies and parents, but if your baby is sensitive to touch or easily overstimulated, take things at your own pace.
Do things that make you happy too, as it can be draining some days if your baby is having an extra fussy day. Walking outside, sunlight through open windows, or quiet music can lift your mood.
3. Help Siblings Adjust to Life With a New Baby
When bringing home a new baby, siblings may adjust easily, or they may experience some difficulty. They might need time to love the new baby and bond.
I encourage parents to give toddlers a new baby doll to care for. They will feel included this way. Have the sibling change their doll’s diaper when you change the new baby, and then feed and cuddle your babies at the same time.
If your baby has medical needs for birth injury symptoms or you’re often preoccupied with appointments, feeding challenges, or recovery from a traumatic birth, your older child may sense the shift.
Acting out, emotional outbursts, or extra clinginess are often just their way of asking for connection.
This is not bad, as most children do not know how to communicate what they need. If possible, take your older child out for one-on-one time.
Creating moments of connection for you and your older children is important. Mark out a time during the day when they know they will get your undivided attention, such as snuggles with a parent at bedtime.
Find Out If Your Child Has a Birth Injury
While there’s so much more I could share about adjusting to life with a newborn, these are a few pieces of advice I’ve seen help families, especially when things don’t go as planned.
Every journey looks different, and every day may bring a new emotion. Be patient with yourself and the season you’re in. Even in the hardest moments, you are showing up for your baby. That takes strength — and that matters.
If your baby isn’t meeting milestones or has had medical complications since birth, you may be wondering whether something went wrong during delivery.
You don’t need a diagnosis to ask questions or seek help. Our team includes nurses who understand what you’re going through and can walk you through what to look for.
Call the Cerebral Palsy Guide at (855) 220-1101 or get a free case review to see how we may be able to help.
Written by:Katie Lavender, RNKatie Lavender has over 10 years of experience as a Registered Nurse in postpartum mother/baby care. With hands-on experience in Labor and Delivery and a role as a Community Educator for newborn care, Katie is a staunch advocate for patient rights and education. As a Medical Reviewer, she is committed to ensuring accurate and trustworthy patient information.
