Advice for prospective parents?

[Dottygumdrop]

Most everything has been covered already, I see!

One thing I think you should be aware of is how important it will be to exercise before and during your pregnancy. The fitter you are and the more you walk and stay fit during your pregnancy, the easier your labour will be. I didn’t get this quite right. Although my induced labour was only seven hours from beginning to end, two hours of it was stage 2 (the pushing part), and boy was I exhausted after that! My mother told me she walked a mile every day when she was pregnant with each of us, and her stage 2 labour never lasted more than 30-40 minutes (even with my oldest sister, the first child).

Other than that, sleep when baby sleeps, accept all offers to help (especially babysitting and prepared meals) and listen politely to all advice (even if you plan to ignore it - it’s easier to smile and nod than to have a fight about it, trust me!).

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to cry. Don’t worry that you feel useless and can’t cope. Every first-time mother feels scared and overwhelmed, but soon enough you will realise that the intense love you feel for the tiny little person that YOU created will help you through most everything!

[Rick]

@thirdwarning

The hardest one was learning not to cover the youngest. Walk into the baby’s room and see the blanket off on a chilly night and what’s your first instinct? Cover the child, make her cozy. Perfect way to wake her up and make her cry. I had to force myself to pull my hand back and leave her free of covers. Then she was fine all night.

Do you know why babies and small children wear coats and sweaters?
Their mothers are cold.

[Auntbeast]

I was lazy, lethargic and cranky during my pregnancy. I never attended a birthing class. The thing is, the baby is gonna come out. It has no other options.

I was vastly unprepared emotionally. Yeah, I’d read the threads, the books, heard the stories.

You will kill for your child. You will die for your child. You would rip the still beating heart out of your own mother if you thought for one second she had harmed your child. You don’t have a freaking clue what love is. You will drink out of the glass they just drank out of, you will pick their nose. You will spend too much time wiping the poo off the crib and it will be as normal as breathing.

If you are extraordinarily lucky.

I went for an ultrasound at 8 weeks to make sure she was viable, I had had spotting for a while. I laid there, looking at the screen of an unmoving baby and was terrified for her life. She was fine, the tech pointed out she was sleeping at that her little, itsy bitsy heart was beating, and then…she moved.

1. Don’t be too loud or certain before you go into labor. Things change, focus on the health of you and your child AT THE MOMENT. No one gets an award for not taking the drugs. If standing on your head yelling Black Sabbath lyrics will get ya through, the do so.

2. The inside of a womb is like being inside a tornado. Never make it where it has to be dark and quiet for the kid to sleep. Best advice I got. My kid went with me as a chaperone for a kindergarten class. She slept right through 60 screaming 5 year olds. Yay!

3. There is this person you haven’t met yet. The Parent. You will be shocked when you meet them. It isn’t the you you knew. It will know much more than you think, will have better instincts than you could believe and really is a much stronger person that you could ever imagine.

4. Hey, guess what? They aren’t blank slates. They come with their own attitudes. May you be blessed with a benevolent little dictator.

5. Watch Nanny911 or SuperNanny. You quickly realize there aren’t very many bad kids out there as much as clueless parents.

6. Sleep, then sleep some more and then, well, try to catch a nap. Seriously. Being a new parent (especially a breastfeeding one) will give you new insight into sleep deprivation torture.

7. We aren’t sure what kids remember, but you have a few months of putting on clothes backwards, diapers fastened wrong, bottles too hot/cold, etc before they can remember. Use it wisely.

8. It is worse than any one can tell you, but so much better than anyone can ever hope to be able to describe to you. If I could give you a gift, it would be…your child running up to you when you come home, excitement plastered all over their little face as THE BEST PERSON IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD walks through the door. Seriously, to your kid? You are just freakin’ amazing. You are funny, lovable, fun, cuddly and well, awesome! (and it’s fun to bounce on your tummy and make you groan)

I just had to put my daughter back in bed because she woke up and Daddy is a complete freakin’ wuss when it comes to her and had taken her out of her crib to see if she would fall asleep with him. Of course, Daddy is way too much fun to just sleep next to, so Mommy had to be the bad guy. They are both sleeping soundly right now and tomorrow, she won’t hold a grudge at all.

May you be granted the greatest gift of all, the gift of life. The gift of being a parent.

Oh, and get a timer, yer gonna need one! (TIME OUT!) We’ve only been doing time out for about a month and already she’ll straighten up if I say “Do you want to go to time out?” I didn’t even think she’d get it yet, boy howdy, did she ever get it. She’ll be two in a week.

[CairoCarol]

So much good advice here. I would add that you might want to develop a mantra or two that you frequently repeat with a young child. The ones you use depend on what your child needs to learn and what your values are. For example, a friend of ours raised his children with “You know what Mick says.” He would then sing “You can’t always get what you want; you can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.”

Soon, his son could sing it. Soon, all dad had to do when his son started whining for something was “You know what Mick says.”

Now, I was planning to raise my son with the same mantra, but as it turns out, while my son is deeply flawed in many areas, he virtually never whined (really) so “You know what Mick says” was never necessary. However, at various ages we have frequently said:

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, kid.” (It was hilarious when he started telling our friends’ little babies the same thing!)

“Parents always win.”

And the one we needed most, and still use from time to time:

“It’s nice to be smart, but it’s smart to be nice.”

[Dangerosa]

@TokyoPlayer

I’ve stayed away from threads like this for a while, (anyone interested in the whole story can search for threads started by me with baby in the title) and I don’t want to cast any gloom on this great thread, but there are always possiblities that things don’t work out. Same thing with any part of life, I guess.

Unfortunately, not everytime do things go smoothly. What is most important, is that you love and accept life and each other no matter what happens.

That and don’t let anyone one scare you. The vast majority of things work out perfectly so don’t get scared over every little thing.

Good luck! It’s great that you are studying first!

True. We have one adopted and then a surprise. We were once where Drain Bead is - and three years later we had a Korean son.

I have a friend with a severely disabled daughter from problems during birth.

And then there are stories like yours.

If you plan to get pregnant, take your prenatal vitamins, conceive on schedule, have an uneventful pregnancy followed by a fairly uneventful labor (everyone gets labor stories) and have a healthy baby who you raise to adulthood with only the normal trips to the emergency room for stitches or a broken bone and only the normal trips to the school principal, and sometime in their twenties you dance at their wedding to a lovely person - you are lucky. Most of us will have some level of adversity thrown at us. Sometimes it will be easily overcomeable - at one time our infertility was tragic - now we have our son and it was an unseen blessing. Sometimes it will haunt you.

Babies are easy. You’ll figure out how to diaper and when to feed and when to nap and how to get little arms and legs into sleepers. Parenting is hard.

[overlyverbose]

One other thing I forgot to mention: never say never.

In other words, I remember when being pregnant, I always said, “I’ll never feed my baby formula. He’ll only have home-made baby food and we’ll never, ever co-sleep.”

Well, when my milk didn’t come in, guess what? I had to supplement. Which meant that any one feeding took an hour and a half - first, I let my child nurse as long as he wanted on each side - that took about an hour. Then I made him the formula. He needed to burp after every half ounce. Another half hour. Since I was working full time, I was too exhausted to make all his baby food when the time came for him to start solids, though I did make a lot of it. Eventually I realized I needed to cut myself some slack or spend his first year exhausted and cranky. Two promises broken.

Then my son got sick Christmas night with RSV and couldn’t breathe. Hello, co-sleeping. We needed him nearby so we could monitor his breathing and give him a shot of albuterol if he had trouble. We still co-sleep for part of most nights. My family, my mom in particular, is horrified by this idea. But if it means that we get to sleep vs. not sleeping, I’m willing to do it. It’s not forever and there’s nothing better than waking up in the morning with a grinning little boy giving me slobbery kisses.

Seriously, there’s nothing wrong with making promises, but remember to be flexible. Things don’t always turn out as you expect them to.

[Max_Torque]

@overlyverbose

Then my son got sick Christmas night with RSV and couldn’t breathe. Hello, co-sleeping. We needed him nearby so we could monitor his breathing and give him a shot of albuterol if he had trouble. We still co-sleep for part of most nights. My family, my mom in particular, is horrified by this idea. But if it means that we get to sleep vs. not sleeping, I’m willing to do it. It’s not forever and there’s nothing better than waking up in the morning with a grinning little boy giving me slobbery kisses.

I know I’ve mentioned this in Drainy’s livejournal already, but for those who haven’t heard of it, this thing was really great: Arm’s Reach Co-Sleeper. Basically, it’s a collapsible bassinet that attaches securely to your bed with straps, so it can’t be accidentally knocked over. One side of the bassinet drops down, so it’s like you’re sleeping side by side with your little one, but there’s no chance you’ll roll over on her. And in the night you can easily reach over and soothe her if she needs it.

[Shirley_Ujest]

It is not necessary to buy an $800 stroller (yes they make such an animal, my son sells them at Babies backwardR Us) You kid will do just fine in a $10 dollar umbrella stroller from a yard sale.

What’s wrong with you!!!1111!!! Don’t you know that little Amber or Little Dakota’s entire FUTURE depends on what kind of stroller his parental units shell out for him!!!111!!! He will be scarred for life if he is not perambulated about in some decorative overpriced cushiony barge.
Number One Rule of Parenting

Never Miss an Opportunity to Take a Pee
Number Two Rule of Parenting

Never Miss an Opportunity to take a Nap.

Today was the first day of school for my progeny.

What did I do after punting them off to State Sanctioned Day Care?

Came home and slept three hours.
I still have lots to make up for since enduring The Death March Through Summer Vacation.

[ENugent]

@Drain Bead

Um, no. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

:o Oops - sorry!