It does get better, Glory. If you can’t sleep when he sleeps, or at least lie down and zone out for a little while. We managed to find a predictable routine about 6 weeks in. Wake at 7-8, naps at 11, 3, and 7. Bedtime anywhere from 9:30-11. My favorite milestones were those first charges towards independence: batting at toys, grabbing, shaking toys, and oh, my gosh… reaching her little arms out to be held. That one still feels awesome. And the cheek kisses started about 4 months. You have so much to look forward to <3
None of mine led. I’m convinced that at least one of the big ones would have nursed through kindergarten, except…
I nursed until I couldn’t deal with teething anymore. Or maybe, in at least one case, until I couldn’t stand being touched. Yeah, not a proud moment, but my two oldest are only 17 months apart, and byten months into nursing the second, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. 
I’m feeling you on the cabin fever - my husband works long shifts + a long drive and is rarely home before 6:30, and between the cold and the early sunset I feel like I do nothing but sit at home with me watching TV and my little bug playing with toys. It’s making me feel like a really shitty mom. I’m also having a bit of mourning because I just returned my rental pump yesterday. I had wanted to give him a year of breastmilk (he was 7 months on Wednesday), but between his speed demon crawling and (TMI alert!) my cracked, bloody nipples, I just have to be done. I’ve got another month and a half or so frozen, and intellectually I’m happy with what I was able to do. Emotionally it still kinda sucks, though.
Other than that, we’re having a pretty good time - Ian is much more physical than I was as a baby, and I’m having a blast watching him explore the world. He crawls everywhere, is endlessly inquisitive, and is already starting to pull himself up on things. The trade-off seems to be that he is less “verbal” than I was; he enjoys his storytime but doesn’t particularly acknowledge specific words like “diaper” or “milk” (at least, not that I can tell). He’s starting to kind of give kisses, but it’s mostly just slobbering on my cheek if I hold his face up to mine.
Our first is due in April and we are woefully unprepared. As in, haven’t purchased a damn thing, not even a box of diapers. So, my question(s) are:
- what do we absolutely need?
- what should we get?
- what is superfluous but people will recommend anyway?
Obviously, we need car seats, etc. so my question is more about clothing and accessories (if that’s the right word).
Also, I want to use one of those baby sling wrap thingies–not sure what they are called but I would love to hear opinions on them.
Congratulations ** KSO**! I found a list on babycenter, but the clothing recommendations didn’t work for me. I bought several nightgown with elastic hems because my friends all recommended them for easy diaper changes, but I found them awkward to pick up and cradle the baby in. I prefer zip up one piece pajamas, and her dad finds those easier to operate than pants or layers.
Staples: diapers, wipes, diaper cream (use it around once or twice per week), baby wash, baby shampoo, cloth diapers make excellent burp cloths and all-purpose rags, and the swing was a life saver. A swing or bouncy seat with vibrator to keep the little one upright after meals will save you a lot of tummy aches and a lot of laundry.
Buy diapers, onesies, footed pajamas, nightgowns. Some socks (okay, lots - consider them semi-disposable, because you’ll never find both halves of a pair twice,) a few blankets, hats/jackets appropriate to your climate. If space or money is at a premium, get a pack&play with a changing table and the raised bassinet setting, and forget about separate items. (Actually, I have plenty of space and enough money for multiples, but I’ve used a P&P for my two youngest with no issues.)
Consider getting a bouncy seat - both of my boys and my second girl slept in those more than in their beds. Saved my life and sanity some days. My oldest girl and the now-3-year-old girl preferred their swings. Littlest Miss wants none of the above - just Mommy.
Have a couple of bottles and a couple of pacifiers on hand. You may not need them, but it can be a VERY long couple of days before milk comes in if you’re nursing - better to have and not need than vice versa. Go ahead and get the following for a MiniKSO kit: infant pain reliever drops, infant anti-gas drops, a nasal aspirator, cotton balls or pads, unscented baby soap and lotion (I’m partial to oatmeal-based,) a thermometer, and a pair of those teeny-tiny nail clippers with the built-in magnifier.
My biggest “who the hell needs that?!” item was the diaper Genie. Total waste of space, IMHO. I supposed, though, that if I lived in one of those places that’s phasing out plastic grocery bags, the DG might make sense. (I just place soiled butt covers in a plastic bag, tie it, and toss it in the outside trash.)
And I’ve used a sling. In theory, it’s a great idea, but the ones I tried were hard on my back.
Oh, and the sling! My doc recommended waiting until the baby was one month old because there are concerns about suffocation. I used it sparingly until she was 6 weeks, then she went into the Baby Bjorn. I’m still wearing her at 19 pounds, and she’s never cried a single time in it. We grocery shop, run errands, watch softball games, walk in the park and get too much attention from others in it, but very few people venture close enough to my chest to share germs. I love it; best invention ever.
Thanks for the quick responses! We are doing some shopping this weekend so this is very helpful.
We, or of course really my wife, were going to do breast feeding. And she did for 2 and a half weeks. Then she had to go into the hospital so we had to use formula. Fortunately my mother had just come to meet him so there was an ex;perienced hand on hand. I talked to the doctor and he said no more than 32(? I can’t recall) ounces a day.
So at the 2 pm feeding he was getting close to that and I called again. What if he’s still hungry? The answer was start him on barley cereal (yes at 2 1/2 or 3 weeks). Grandma said don’t worry if he chokes a bit at first. But no not YoungGuy he just gobbled it down.
Shortly he was reaching the limit on how much barley cereal he should eat and he got started on green veggies at a month and a half.
By six months of age he looked like a little Buddha. He didn’t crawl, but he did roll to get places. At ten months he took his first steps and all the baby fat quickly melted right off. Before he was a year old he was climbing on the dining room chairs onto the table and trying to get the chandelier.
It was an exciting first year. Hope you all have similar joy.
Haha that’s awesome, OldGuy! I’ve worried myself silly over introducing solids, my milk supply, when to wean, etc. And I could have just given her a burger two weeks in! So glad you shared that. Makes me feel a lot better about weaning 
Here’s the thing to keep in mind, though: Babies are some of the most resilient critters around. Your parents didn’t do everything (anything?) by the book. Your grandparents didn’t either. Their grandparents didn’t even have the book. And here we all are. When I was a kid, it was considered perfectly right and normal to put thinned baby cereal into a bottle for the nighttime feeding of a very small infant, on the theory that solid food would keep us full longer so we’d sleep better. Tonsils and appendixes (appendices?) came out almost prophylactically. We don’t do that any more, it’s not considered ideal, but a whole generation of us survived and had our own children to experiment on.
In my case, my mother couldn’t breastfeed. She tried all kinds of formulas, prescription stuff, goat’s milk. Nothing worked. Finally, one day my great-grandmother came over to help out - my poor mother was 19 years old, with a one-year-old and me - starving to death! Granny put plain old cow’s milk into my bottle, I drank it, drank another, and went to sleep. I was a thriving kid, never sick (okay, I had the flu and bronchitis once. And chicken pox. A few colds.)
And me? Even with five older kids to practice on, I still learn something every day about babies. No two are alike. For the longest time, Michelle wouldn’t eat solid food - I’d try about once a week from the time she was five or six months old, but she was having none of it. Finally, she grabbed food right off my plate and ate like a starving person. Turns out, she doesn’t like baby food - she likes real food! (And it’s hilarious to see her eat sometimes - tiny, delicate little miss, with the appetite of two farmhands and a stevedore, and the table manners of a teenage boy.)
You’re doing fine. Your baby is happy, she verbalizes and smooches and plays, she’s growing and developing. If you spend all of your time trying to make sure you’re doing it “right,” you’ll still screw up, and you’ll miss out on a lot of the fun you could be having while you do things well enough.
Not torture myself if breastfeeding doesn’t work. The two weeks I breastfed my daughter were the worst two weeks of my life, and she didn’t thrive on it. I had been so attached to the idea that of COURSE I’d be able to, I just couldn’t let go. I felt like the worst mother ever. And then came the day when I just gave her a bottle instead–and oh my goodness. Afterward we actually had time to cuddle and love on each other, for the first time ever. It was magical. My life went from unbearable to complete in the course of one feeding.
ETA, so my heartfelt advice to KSO is to have some formula and bottles in the house, no matter what your intentions.
mine is almost 10 months.
He hates baby food, but he loves spaghetti and chili. He’ll eat with relish food so spicy dad is crying (tbf dad’s quite the wuss with spice) He just doesn’t eat very much at a time, like he’s saving room for boob juice. I tried making the fruit baby foods into fruit leather. He liked it the first couple times but flat out refuses it since.
The biggest problem now is sleeping. He used to put himself to sleep with a pacifier when he was sleepy, but since his first tooth came in he’s pretty much rejected the paci (he’ll chew on it but not suck and certainly won’t use it to sooth himself), he wants to nurse or be held while he falls asleep and it sometimes takes him a long time to fall asleep at bedtime. He’s also exhibiting a lot of the behaviors Zjestika’s little one is showing.
He was so funny the other day trying to do Patty Cake. He’d only use one hand and pat it all around his lap. Then on the ‘roll it’ part, he got distracted by his favorite action of sticking his fist over his mouth and taking it away whilevsaying ‘aaaah’ so it comes out ‘mmmaaaaammmmaaammmaaa’ (is there a word for that?)
This bit is harder to share, but I had a bit of an emotional/bonding crisis after Christmas when we had to cut his hair. It was long enough to touch the tip of his nose and he kept getting frustrated with it in his eyes. He was born with a lot of dark brown hair and it just kept getting longer. I cut it myself with electric clippers, and as I wasn’t very good at it, it got a bit too short and uneven. The biggest shock was how light it was after the dark ends were trimmed off. He’s blonde now! He just didn’t look like my same little baby, and he looks more grown up like a big boy. Well, he’s got the same adorable little face, and the same silly personality so I’m getting over it. I just feel stupid for such a small thing to affect me so much.
Oh, kjbrasda, I know what you mean about having a little crisis like that. When my baby is asleep or nursing she looks like mine, my little baby. But sometimes when she’s crawling around or happily yelling sometimes she just doesn’t look the same. I don’t really know how to explain it. I have this… and, woof, this is hard to say… bizarre fear of what if I don’t like her? What if she doean’t like me? It’s a fear that’s not at all based in reality because so far everything she does is so amazing and she’s so cool, and she seems to like me a lot. But still, weird little fear.
Man, this thread has really brought out the realtalk in me. I better make sure to get a bath today!
Also, KSO, I loved using a sling- it was so much better for a trip to Target or the grocery store than using the carseat. But I hated the one I bought- the Baby Ktan. It was hard to use and killed my back. I think next time I’d get one that had more of a backpack style. And ditto on baby clothes with zippers. Over-the-head clothes and ones with snaps are so complicated, and you always snap it up wrong and have to do it again. Also, for yourself, a fridge full of greek yogurts and string cheese. High protein stuff that’s easy to eat. And bottle waters so you can have one right next to you on the couch when you nurse, and a Netflix instant acount and the remote. Because once you sit down with that baby to nurse you’re stuck in the same spot for, in my case, about 2 months. There is, no joke, a indent of my butt in the couch.
You really don’t NEEEEED most of the stuff that is reportedly “necessary”. If I could do it all over again, I think I would just buy stuff on an as-needed basis.
Most everyone in the US lives within a short drive of a store (WalMart, etc) that is open 24/7 that stocks most everything you could possibly need for a baby. Why take inventory risks yourself (and possibly wind up not using or needing something after all) when you can buy the smallest amount of stuff as needed?
Diaper Genie, big rip off. Sorry. Just put dirty diapers right into the trash. They’re not nuclear waste. It all goes to the same dump. Used as directed, and you could be burning through $20-25 a month just in refill cartridges. Supposing your baby is in diapers for 2-3 years, that could add up to some serious cash (~$500-750 not counting buying the unit) on something that benefits absolutely nobody, and is bad for the environment to boot.
I think the baby-wearing trend has got some really good sense behind it. Just be careful - make certain that you really know what you are doing with the knotting and carry angles.
Also, don’t underestimate the amount of stuff the hospital provides for a newborn. My babies were always provided with a certain amount of diapers (enough for a few days or maybe a week), baby wash, a thermometer, baby brush/comb, some diaper wipes, alcohol swabs for the healing belly button, etc.) right in their little isolette drawer. You’re going to get charged for that stuff whether you use it or not, so you might as well take it home, and not buy duplicate items until you know what you’ve got.
Yep, I found that I was constantly tugging and adjusting the sling and checking to be sure the sleeping bambino was still breathing. I’ve seen other experienced moms rocking these right through the first six months, but I needed better support for my back. I paid $20 for Target’s Baby Bjorn knock-off, and it’s great because Sam can face inward and sleep on my chest, or face outward and look around. When she was tiny it was easy for me to keep the straps tight and look down to see her face, which was usually staring back up at mine. Got her first social smiles this way.
My back was broken in a car wreck a few years back so wrestling the cumbersome car seat around just isn’t comfortable. Since I already hauled that weight for nine months, holding her in the front carrier required no adjustment at all. I put it on when she was 1 month old and 8 pounds, and used a doll to figure out the adjustments and settings for the straps. Plopped her in for our first grocery outing at 30 days old, and it’s been easy since. Even marathon Christmas shopping was a breeze with the carrier.
That is awesome. My little one isn’t crawling yet at 8 1/2 months, but will stand for long periods while leaning against furniture, take steps if we hold her hands, climb over pillows and toys, but has shown no hint that she’s ready to crawl. Putting choice toys out of reach, but so far the
oh my god, she just said mama gotta go
Roseola. Mimi must have roseola. She got a stuffy nose on Tuesday and spiked a fever on Wednesday. The fever has come and gone. She’s been tired, irritable, and hasn’t eaten much. Just now as I gave her a bath, I saw the pink rash all over. It’s unnerving to look at, but I feel better with an idea of what’s been going on with her. Also glad that I won’t catch it.
Good lord that looks awful. Where did it come from? 
She goes to daycare, that’s my all-purpose answer to germs she brings home.
Everybody gets it, usually before three years old, so be on the lookout!