All mothers find these early months with a baby demanding. Most babies are hard work, requiring constant attention. Many babies are difficult to feed or settle, and cry a lot. Some are especially difficult. Days can be long and lonely, and new mothers often feel isolated. Familiar routines vanish, and new routines take time to emerge. Nights can be exhausting, with sleep patterns disrupted. Few new mothers get enough sleep, and few have the energy to take care of themselves properly. For new mothers, there are no holidays, no sick days, and few quiet times. New motherhood is physically exhausting, emotionally draining and full-time.

Learning to care for a baby takes time, and isn’t easy or intuitive. Often with little experience or knowledge to guide them, new mothers try to establish feeding, settling and sleeping patterns. All need advice and help, at some stage, and this isn’t always available. Partners usually work, and are unavailable to new mothers during the day. Parents and parents-in-law often work, or live too far away to help regularly. Neighbours and friends, too, often work, or are themselves raising young families. Having prime responsibility, and for lengthy periods sole responsibility, for a newborn can be daunting.

When she has a baby, especially a first, a woman will find that her relationships with people who are important to her will change in significant ways. Her relationship with her partner will change. Because a baby’s needs are so many, varied and time-consuming, the new mother and father may have little time for each other. The new mother’s relationship with her own parents may change as well. After having a baby, many women re-evaluate their relationships with their own parents. For some, this will remind them of unhappy times from their own childhood.

For men, the first few months with a baby can be a challenging time. Fatherhood usually demands major lifestyle adjustments, and some men find it difficult to adjust to a new relationship with their partner.

The birth of a baby will also prompt a change in both parent’s relationship with any older children. Siblings, too, have to adjust to different relationships and routines, and some find this easier than others. With parents having less time for them, some siblings become difficult. Having to cope with demanding siblings, and knowing that the siblings are not getting the time from them that each had before the baby arrived, adds to the stress on parents.