Babies can produce an amazing amount of poop. You’ll open up an over-flowing diaper and wonder how something so teeny-tiny can create so much poop.
Oh, yeah, seconding this. Go to K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buy a big stack of regular old washcloths and hand towels. They don’t need to be printed with duckies and bunnies. (You’ll get those as gifts!)
Plain white is best, because you’ll be washing them constantly, sometimes with bleach. It’s so much easier knowing you have plenty of towels and burp cloths for quick clean-ups, and knowing you don’t have to do laundry every day.
Oh Lord yes, what **Anaamika ** said. They’re people in miniature, right from the off.
This one may be a bit TMI, but although the books warn you that your digestive system may slow down a bit post-birth, I wish someone had told me how sloooooow it would get, and how uncomfortable it would make me. What with the bruising from the forceps, the stitches from the episiotomy and the uncomfortably full feeling, it was a couple of weeks before I was entirely happy sitting still for more than a few minutes.
On the happy side, I had no idea how incredibly entertaining, absorbing even, your own child can be. My husband and I spent endless hours gazing at our daughter with self-satisfied grins, and I assumed the rest of the world could see how superior she was (still is) to every other baby who had ever been born!
I bought two 24-packs of white washcloths at Costco, and had them stationed all over the house - invaluable. If you’re breastfeeding, Mommy might be leaking fluids as well as baby and need a handy rag. :eek:
Modern disposable diapers have a little “frill” at the legs where the elastic is. Be sure this frill does not get folded under the elastic - if it is, it will act as a conduit for stuff to get out of diaper. The last step of diapering should always be to run your finger under the elastic on both legs and make sure it’s not folded.
Even brand new babies are surprisingly strong in some ways. I was shocked that mine could pinch so hard, they grab with their little hands and it is hard to get them to let go without being terrified that you are going to break their tiny fingers. This came up often during nursing, she would rest her hand on my breast (awwww!) and then with no warning, close her hand into a tight fist (owwww!).
I swear everyone says to file or clip their nails so they don’t scratch their eyes, but seriously, the real motivation is so they don’t scratch YOUR eyes.
The one thing I really noticed is that people are so fond of telling you that “you’ll never sleep!” “You’ll be covered in poo!” etc, I wish more people had told me how much FUN it really is most days.
something that no-one mentioned to us was that Moms in particular are subject to tendonitis in the wrists, from picking up the little one so frequently. Mrs Piper eventually had to get some physio for her wrist pains. And, it was surprising how many Moms commented, “Yes, I had that too.”
So, no harm in getting some 3 or 5 lb weights right now and start doing some curls, just to help develop the wrist muscles and tendond.
Even though you know you’re going to hurt and take a while to heal after delivery, if you think it’s worse than you expected, mention it and get checked out. My wife thought she was healing really slowly - it turned out she had separated her pelvis, which took a long time to get better.
We showed up at the doctor’s office a day or two post birth for the baby’s checkup - her first time leaving the house - and realized we’d completely forgotten about needing to bring a diaper bag. We felt incredibly stupid. Take a diaper bag with you wherever you go, starting day 1.
Colic happens, and it sucks. For at least a month and a half, every evening after dinner, we’d settle down to a few hours of nonstop crying. That was the minimum. Sometimes it would last for most of the day. That progressed to her only being willing to sleep while being held, which meant hours spent rocking her during the day. Just remember: no matter how bad it gets, and no matter how much it seems like it will last forever, it’s just a phase, and it will change. Eventually. Then some other new problem will come along. But that will pass too.
The playing with private parts thing? Not just boys…
And delphica is correct: No one thought to warn us how terrifically entertaining a baby could be. The littlest one is now 15 months, and completely, totally, absorbingly amusing most of the time. (Completely maddening about 5% of waking hours, but not too bad a percentage.)
Most moms nibble off their baby’s nails for a long time, instead of using clippers or files. They just don’t admit it. I know, you think that’s completely gross right now. Wait until you see just how tiny and thin those nails are. It’s like trying to cut paper with an ice cream scoop.
If you don’t circumcise, do not try to retract the foreskin to clean under it. It won’t move without causing pain and damage until they’re… about 4, I think?
If you have a boy, teach him to shake his penis when he’s done peeing at potty training time. I didn’t know this as a single mom, and he got a hell of an irritated, infected penis as a result!
Kids tend to be “evens” or “odds”. Behavior, that is. If they have terrible 2’s, you usually have a breather while they’re 3 and they’re awful at 4. If you’re sitting there smugly thinking, “Terrible twos? Whatever are people talking about? I must be the best mother ever, because my 2 year old poops rainbows!”…wait. 3 will get you.
That said, 4 year olds are almost uniformly assholes at least some of the time. They have all of the self control of toddlers and all of the verbal skills of teenagers. They tend to get meltdown screamy tantrumy over things that make no sense at all, and that you can’t fix. (The best example was in a thread on another message board, where a poster’s kid was freaking out because the honey was too sticky. WTF can you say to that?!)
But the biggest thing I wish I had known from the start as a parent is that people are happiest when their power slowly increases. Don’t overwhelm very little ones with choices, or they lose their shit. But do slowly expand the things you give them choices about, and they’ll be happy and learn from their own mistakes in safe ways. For more on this, once again I recommend the only parenting book I’ve ever found to be worth a damn: Parenting With Love and Logic.
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[li]Your baby has not read the baby books, and doesn’t know that he should poop x times per day, or that he should sleep through the night at x months, etc. My son, from the time he was about a month old until he was… 7 or 8 months, only pooped about every 2 weeks. If it was 10 days we were surprised, because that was on the early side, and we didn’t get worried until it had been like 18 days. And it was 2 weeks’ worth of poop every time, believe you me![/li][li]Especially for the first 12 weeks, acquire sleep by any means necessary. You aren’t going to “spoil” your baby by sleeping with him, etc. I slept on the couch with my son on my chest until he was like 4 months old, and it worked GREAT. We all slept! In between the feedings, of course. But we slept and it worked really well for us.[/li][li]I’m stealing this from Moxie (which is a GREAT resource), but: YOU are the best parent for YOUR child. You’ll know your baby better than your pediatrician, or than your mom, or your best friend. Trust your mama instincts and go with them! If you think crying it out is/is not right for your child/family, stick to your guns. When other parents tell you “what you should do,” especially if you didn’t ask for their advice, ignore it - YOU are the best parent for YOUR child. This doesn’t mean you’ll always be confident, or that you won’t solicit advice or ideas from other parents, but you’ll have a better idea what will work with YOUR kid than they will.[/li][li]Not all baby boys pee everywhere. I think my son did that maaaaaybe once. He didn’t do the tugging thing either.[/li][li]That thing that your baby does, that none of your friends’ babies do, that you’ve never heard of a baby doing? Someone else’s baby does/did it, I PROMISE. You can probably find them online, and commiserate.[/li][li]Enjoy your little one! I’ve seen “one line a day” journals out now and I WISH I’d known about them when my son was a baby - I tried to blog, but was so busy and tired. But a little line about what the baby did today… that feels do-able.[/li][/ul]
When you start giving him real food, there’s going to be a new smell around the house. If you thought the old one was problem, you are in for a surprise.
If it’s a boy, as soon as you get that diaper off, drop a towel on him. Amazing how well we can aim at that early age.
Oh, the diaper bag! Yes, you need one, but pack light. If you’re going somewhere for a couple of hours, you don’t need 15 diapers and 3 changes of clothes and 10 pounds of toys. Keep it simple!
One of the best things that I discovered for immediately after birth was frozen diapers. Get some newborn sized diapers (I used Pampers Swaddlers), wet them down, and freeze them. Put them in your underwear after you give birth. They gave them to me at first in the hospital and I made my own afterwards. Not everyone knows about these. I lived in them for days!
I may be hated after this, but all I ever heard from everyone was how terribly hard breast feeding was going to be, so I went into the whole thing armed for bear. Books, equipment, and steel determination to make it work! Started lubing my nipples up with that nipple paste stuff a month in advance so they wouldn’t chap and bleed like all the horror stories tell. And when I tried to convince my son to latch as I was trying desperately to stay awake after giving birth to him… he latched immediately! I breast fed for five months, and he took to it like a pro! I never had to see a lactation specialist. Never had to read the books for pointers, never needed to be taught what to do. Granted, it is not so easy for everyone, but don’t panic if it is easy. Frankly, it was so easy, that I was afraid I wasn’t doing it right!!! I thought I was starving my son, because if it didn’t hurt and it wasn’t a pain in the ass, how could I possible be doing it correctly! He gained weight just fine, ate like a pig. Totally awesome.
One of my favorite ever gadgets was the Itzbeen. It tells you how long it’s been since you… fed the baby, changed the diaper, put him down for a nap, and whatever else. There are four little, simple timers, and for sleep deprived parents it is totally life saving!
A rocking chair pulled up close to the bed, feet propped up on the bed, feet propped up, a neck pillow, and a breast feeding pillow… I slept like that a LOT!
My son did this to my dad shortly after he had surgery to correct a deviated septum. BAM! Right smack in the nose. I’ve been nailed a couple times like that as well.
Oh yeah: the first time Baby gets hurt? You’re gonna feel like the biggest failure since that skier on the Wide World of Sports. You aren’t a failure. Happens to every parent. It will still terrify you and break your heart.
And yes, do learn to trust yourself and do what works for you and your baby. For me, it was breastfeeding and co-sleeping. For you? Whatever works. If Baby is happy and healthy and you are able to see to your needs somewhat, who can say that your method is “wrong”?
This. My wife took #2 in for his well-baby check (don’t remember how old - six months?) - doc didn’t even really look at him (healthy as horse, huge for his age) - he wanted to know what happened to her face. The boy had basically head-butted her a few days earlier, and, it turned out, broken her cheek bone.
I’d put Babby on a blanket on the living room floor with a few toys in the morning. She’d sit there and amuse herself for a few minutes while I tidied up or washed a few dishes in the next room (kitchen). One morning I heard plaintive wailing and poked my head around the corner to see: nothing but the blanket, no Babby! Babby had, unbeknownst to me, mastered the art of crawling and was clear across the room. Not only that, but she had pulled herself upright and was clinging to the sofa cushion and couldn’t get back down. So she was between 6 and 8 months old. I’d never seen her crawl, and it was a real surprise to both of us. That day, we set up the playpen…
