The book I liked best when preparing to be a dad for the first time was this one: The Poo Bomb: True Tales of Parental Terror. It paints a very frank, unvarnished look at the first year of being a new parent, and it’s funny as hell. There’s actually quite a lot of the book in the author’s old blog posts here, if you want to do some reading and see if you like it.
On equipment, I’ll say this: don’t buy blankets. The first thing people do when they find out you’re having a baby is buy you a blanket. You’ll have drawers full of the things, more than you’ll ever use. Instead, buy diapers (if you’re doing disposables). Buy a pack or two every paycheck. That spreads out the cost, and when the baby comes you may be able to go a month or longer without having to make a run to the store for diapers.
I have exactly zero useful recommendations for you, but I wanted to say “Congratulations!” I hope the pregnancy and birth go well and that you have as few poo bombs as possible.
Congrats! If you don’t have a lot friends and family you can consult with, I suggest browsing some parenting boards and see what things most consistently are mentioned as being useful.
This was the only book (and associated website) that we actually found to be useful. It’s basically Consumer Reports just for baby goods, and we found it trustworthy and helpful.
Congrats!
It’s been 14 years since my “baby” was born, but I remember most of it like it was yesterday.
While it’s been said several times, I will say again, you can never have enough diapers! We had the bottom of a closet lined with packages of diapers and still ran out in what seemed like a week.
Advice from a 9-1-1 dispatcher:
The “due date” is not set in stone. Don’t wait until the last week to have a car seat installed or pack a bag for you/baby/mom.
Small cars and some child seats don’t always work well with each other. Shop around, you can find one that works or buy a bigger car, your choice!
Always check the back seat when you get out of the car, even when you KNOW you don’t have the baby, start now, make it a habit. (mine can get out of the car just fine now, and I still check the back seat to this day).
Advice from a Dad:
I made my own diaper bag out of a back pack. I didn’t like carrying the baby with a low slung duffle/diaper bag too. A back pack worked great for me and held everything we needed. Make a small emergency pack (diapers & wipes) and just leave it in the car, it will always come in handy.
If you are heading to the store, always check your diaper and wipe supply before leaving the house. If you don’t check and you think about it while you are at the store, just go ahead and get them…(it will save you a trip in the wee hours).
Get used to hearing advice from everyone as well as horror stories about when they did something you are doing and how awful it was. It does no good to argue, a smile and “thank you” is about the only way to get out of hearing even more “proof” on why you are doing it wrong.
Never, never, NEVER tell your wife you are “babysitting” your own baby. It never goes well and you can only see my limp now if you watch closely:)
Lastly, especially in the first few months, if the baby is napping, it is wise to try to do the same. New parents and sleep deprivation go hand in hand.
Kids are great and a true blessing, you will be great parents, no matter what the internet or your mother-in-law says!
Thirded. They make inexpensive bottle warmers that use steam to warm a bottle in about 60 seconds without all the problems of a microwave. At 3AM, these will be your new best friend. They are absolutely worth the money and more.
Max the Vool, here’s something specifically for you.
Get a plastic file folder, the kind that closes with an elastic. Put a sticker on it with your name and contact number, just in case you mislay it. Do that now and put it in your hospital bag.
When the baby’s born at the hospital, they generate paper work! Especially the day before check-out. All sorts of test results, data about the birth, and so on.
It’s your job to put all that paper into your folder and make sure it all comes home with you.
That way, you don’t need to try to figure out what it all is, and if you need to keep it long-term, while you’re in the hospital in an excited, ecstatic, sleep-deprived state. The folder makes sure you don’t lose it, it all comes home, and when you’ve got time and energy again you can look through it and figure out what you need to keep and what you can get rid of.
When I said “specifically for you”, I meant you rather than Mrs Vool. She’s going to be tuckered out and tired. Your job is logistical support, including keeping all the paperwork.
The checklist here is a good starting point. Run it by friends/family and edit accordingly.
I’d also suggest making meals ahead and freezing them. New babies are wonderful, but you’re apt to be exhausted, and it’s amazing how hard it is to get to the grocery store, let alone plan and prep meals. A friend brought over a bunch of homemade meals she’d frozen before my first baby arrived, and they were a godsend.
In fact, when I buy baby gifts, I include a gift card for pizza delivery.
Hey everyone, thanks for all the useful responses. We’ve been in a bit of denial up until now, but we had our first parenting class today, and it’s starting to feel real.
A few questions:
(1) We do have dogs (two basenjis, around beagle-sized). My wife has a lot of experience and training with dogs, but any suggestions are welcome
(2) Has anyone here used cloth diapers recently? I like the idea of contributing less to landfill… but if they’re 25% more stressful and less effective at containing poop when we’re already dealing with what everyone describes as being overwhelming amounts of stress and sleep deprivation, maybe it isn’t worth it? And for anyone who did, did you launder them yourself or use a service?
(3) One purchase we absolutely positively need is certainly a car seat. We have two cars. Is it worth getting some fancy system where there’s a frame in each car, and then a seat that snaps into either one, and maybe that seat also snaps into a stroller, and then the seat can be replaced by a larger seat but keeping the stroller and frames and yada yada? Is there a well-respected product along those lines that anyone can recommend?
Thanks! And I’ll certainly be rereading your responses and posting more questions as they come up.
(Btw: I’ve been reading a book called The Expectant Father, but frankly haven’t been getting too much out of it. Lots and lots of stuff about “here are some feelings you might be having” that are, in fact, not the feelings that I am having.)
If the dogs are well behaved you shouldn’t have a problem. Plus Basengis are quiet, I hear. The carseat thing, look for ease of use. And of course safety. The frame things seem a bit of a hassle, IMO.
Diapers, use disposable at first. Till you get your bearings, anyway.
Let us know how it all goes.
The click in car seats are awesome if you have a kid that likes to sleep in the car that way you don’t have to wake them up to get where you’re going. They get out grown fairly quickly though. We just dusted off the one we used kid 1 for the use of kid two. Especially when you add in the click in stroller it makes life easy.
We’ve got almost 300 pounds of dog between our two and they were great with kid 1 though our mastiff would get upset when she cried and try to comfort her by bumping her. If your dogs aren’t aggressive I wouldnt worry initially at least until the kid starts moving around the house. One suggestion it to make extra time for your dogs so they don’t get jealous of the kid. It took a while for ours too fully accept kid one but now I’ve got tons of photos of kid 1 sleeping on top of the dogs.
We did one car seat for two cars. Whoever left the house with the baby got the car with the car seat. It was mounted in my wife’s car. I think she agreed as she had a sedan and my work car was a bored out TransAm. 20 minute drive the the store in 9 minutes if you wanted. After the pregnancy and blues, she wanted to feel single available and desirable and that car helped.
I have no help with the pets. We didn’t get a dog until after the first child and he was outside until our last one was walking.
As for diapers, we did disposable. Mainly for convenience. She was the neighborhood babysitter when younger (1970-80s) and she swore to never use cloth. One thing, don’t stock up on the newborn sizes. We were in the larger sizes within a few days it seemed. The hospital sent us home with the pack they opened for us. Larger diapers will fit but not the other way.
To a very limited extent. Not so much that they were extra work, or didn’t work as well, but it was all so strange and foreign, and had to be negotiated with my wife. And perhaps it depends a bit on the shape of your kid and how much attention you are paying. If you’ve got the money, you can buy snuggly cloth shorts that don’t need to be tied or pinned.
But in any case, you still want to buy cloth diapers, ie small soft gentle towels with a low nap. Because you can’t have too many small soft gentle towels at this time. In theory you could buy an enormous pile of bath towels, but that wouldn’t actually work as well: the kid is small, the extra towel gets in the way and is heavy, only a small amount gets dirty but it’s really dirty, they are harder to clean, the pattern fades with repeated washing…you can cut up bath towels if you can get them cheap, but even then the fabric isn’t as suitable.
If 40 years ago counts as “recently”: they were as good as containing pee and poo as throwaway diapers (with which my recent experience is from 1 year ago).
We laundered them. Often they went as their own load; if there had been a, uhm, mass offload*, then that one went into the washing, any already-waiting cotton whites added and the wash started while the kid himself was being washed. I can tell you the amount of washing we did didn’t become lower when Mom switched Littlebro to the new throwaway diapers.
Pretty rare actually considering how many times a baby poops, but well, they do happen.
Cloth diapers are excellent for the following: when removing the disposable diaper, immediately put one on the pee-generating apparatus, and keep it there while wiping (and salving if necessary). Only remove at the very last secon before final fastening of the new disposable diaper. Babies are evil. They live to pee in your face. This contains the mess, and I believe also reduces the incidence rate of peeing-while-changing. Cloth diapers are also great as burp cloths. We tried cloth diapers as diapers, and I salute those who can do that for more than a week. You are better at being a good human than I am.
There will be all sorts of people trying to persuade you that you can’t raise a baby without X, Y, and Z. All of which cost money. But most of that advice is garbage.
My FiL got us some super high tech stroller. Probably cost $500. But we used it once and switched to a $10 umbrella stroller we got at Wal-Mart. More practical and easy to use.
Look for things like that. If it costs more than $25 question it immediately. There’ll be enough expenses that you don’t need to add to them as part of the consumer culture. Diapers, clothes - not too many at first, the kid will grow out of 0-3 month clothes at something approaching lightspeed - and other quick consumables are what you need. Early on what the kid needs is a mother and father…not a bunch of nonsense stuff they won’t even be aware of.
Exception to this rule: you’re going to be tired. Even exhausted. For baby showers these days I always get new parents a cleaning service. Have someone clean your home because it’ll be hard for you to do it. And a clean house is good for morale.
never be afraid of standing the little tike in the kitchen sink and using the sprayer to hose off the shitstorm, because at some point in time, they will have a major shitfest happen. Make sure the temp is correct, you have soap and a couple nice fluffy towels handy, and a standard cloth wash cloth. Stainless cleans up and sterilizes nicely, and then you won’t go through a tub of wipes going after one shitstorm. No, it isn’t gross.
ANd did anybody warn you of the first few diaper loads of really nasty stuff, they are just out processing what they sucked down in the womb.
Yes, babies do end up little mobile toxic waste generators, that is why they are so cute, to keep us suckered into having more of them.
