Congrats!
Alot of good advice here but how are you prepared for your hospital visit?
I’m a father of 3 (and hopefully 1 more) and there’s a mountain of advice I could give you but I will concentrate on the trip to the hospital for you.
Here are a few things that made things smoother for us.
Take a tour of the hospital beforehand - take note of the emergency entrance, parking lot, pharmacy, gift shop, cafeteria, vending machines, payphones, etc… You’ll be spending alot of time there, maybe at odd hours, and your head will be in a fog. Book a private room - well worth the cost, believe me. Buy a parking pass for that week- if available, you’ll be in and out of there alot. Pack 2 bags- one for the delivery day and the stay at the hospital, and another for when you pick them up. This will save you from carting too much stuff around the hospital.
If you choose to use drugs, ask for them in advance or immediately upon your arrival. This will give the anesthesiologist lots of time to get to you. Wear comfortable shoes! - You’ll be spending a lot of time on your feet. Bring something to do, books, magazines, crosswords - You’ll be doing alot of waiting. Buy lottery tickets! - This is the luckiest day of your life, cash in on it.
When your wife and baby are all settled and in their room to rest, etc… go home and get some sleep. You’ll need it for the next 18+ years!
Good luck! Let me know, if you have any other questions.
Sign up for Amazon Mom and Subscribe and Save on diapers. You’ll save 30% right there and they often have a coupon you can apply. Most baby magazines also have coupon codes for Amazon. If you have Amazon Prime shipping is free and you get them in a day. It’s nice to never have to run out and buy diapers and the price is much cheaper. You can cancel any time. If you are running low just cancel and start a new subscription.
It’s a boy? Open the diaper slowly, let some cool air in and then close it up for a second. I’m not going to ruin the surprise for you if you chose to not follow this advice but I will hint: remember that boys come with a spray attachment.
Otherwise, take everybody’s advice with a huge dose of salt, don’t listen to all the horror stories (everyone will tell them) and don’t worry that your kid is .001 points behind the average on some chart.
Lastly, when another parent has to tell you about how their little Buffy or Brad is soooooo advanced in some area (they will), remind them that monkeys can walk long before humans. Early walking and talking is not a sign of being highly evolved, quite the opposite.
You can still go out to dinners and such with a new baby. They generally sleep a lot of the time.
You can amaze a 6 month old with a cube of ice on the table. My daughter would go from crying to absolutely fascinated when given an ice cube.
Some lactation consultants are complete crap (other are not so). If they are making your wife feel guilty (and you can be the barometer) get a new one.
Don’t feel guilty about letting the little guy sleep in the hospital room with the other babies while you get some rest.
Sometimes there isn’t an ‘instant’ bond with the baby - I learned this with one of my wife’s cousins who said that she didn’t bond with her baby until a few months went by.
Take people up on their offer to baby sit.
Try to put your baby to sleep in the presence of some noise. This may not always be possible, but it seems to me that if you try to get them to sleep in a silent environment then anything can wake them, including that crick in your knee that arrives at the scene when you try to leave the area.
Learn to love the swaddle. Also, I found the best baby on the block to be helpful (the swaddling, the ‘shhhh’, the swaying in particular).
Their time, their knowledge, their being calmer about this baby than you are - any of that which is available; please don’t take for granted that it will be, but if someone offers to help heck YEAH. There were things about my nephew and niece (and about other kids in my life before these two) which were evident to me, not so much to their parents, often because the parents were too stressed to realize the connection. An example: as newborns, The Nephew liked having his legs tightly wrapped and got anxious if they weren’t - on the other hand, his little sister would go into a screaming fit if her legs weren’t free to move. Both peeves were detected by relatives.
At night, if the baby requires a feeding/diaper change, don’t turn the lights on, don’t play music, don’t sing, don’t cuddle, don’t do anything to play with the baby. Change the diaper, pop the baby on the boob or pop the bottle in his mouth, then put the baby back down. You want to be all business in the middle of the night, so the baby learns from a very early age that nights are for sleeping.
Speaking of sleep, look into the Miracle Blanket (a product I can wholeheartedly endorse) or the Woombie (I never used this one, but others I know have and love it) for swaddling blankets. Someone earlier in the thread mentioned the ones with velcro–they’re a pain in the ass and my daughter always managed to wriggle out. The Miracle Blanket is amazing–it’s like a little baby straitjacket. My daughter was sleeping through the night at 6 weeks old and other than the typical wakefulness that breastfed babies experience at 4-5 months old, she has slept through the night her entire life.
One last thing about sleep–it’s IMPORTANT. Fussy babies, with the exception of true colic, are almost always overtired. Establishing a good sleep pattern from an early age is crucial. Babies have a generally predictable rhythm of naptimes once they get a little older–when they’re newborns, they sleep almost all the time, then around 3-4 months they get into a predictable pattern of 3 daily naptimes. At about 9 months they move to two naptimes a day, and about 18 months they go down to 1. Once you figure out your baby’s naptimes and frequency, do NOTHING to disrupt this routine until the baby changes his or her own routine, unless absolutely necessary. This will involve declining a lot of invitations in the first year and a half of your baby’s life, but you will have a much happier child for it. Trust me on this one. It sounds draconian, but at least until naptime is no longer an issue, you have to adjust your life to fit the child’s, not the other way around.
Someone mentioned finding another baby, a few months older, to inherit things from. In my experience the ideal age gap is actually a year, because then clothes match up, seasonally.
If the baby has a minor eye irritation, or pinkeye, a squirt of breastmilk in the eye at every feed can clear it up.
(Haven’t read all the previous posts, forgive me!)
My advice is whenever you dress up and put on makeup, whatever the occasion maybe, take a moment, before you leave the house to grab the camera. Put a clean shirt on the kid, and a quick comb of his hair, now have someone snap a picture of you both. Why? Well, you may not notice for a few years, but if you’re not careful all the early baby photos will show baby looking adorable and Mom looking somewhat haggard, no make up, slobby clothes, etc.
So remember, “Hey, I look good!”= grab the kid and take some photos!
It may seem silly to read to your infant, but doing so at an early age seems to have instilled a love of books and reading in both of my kids. Along with this, make the library a regular destination when your child is old enough to walk and manipulate books on his or her own (without chewing them).
Yes, great point. It also encourages them to read, write, and draw.
I would echo the same for music, starting in utero. I sing, play, and listen to music with my kids regularly.
In fact, every time my wife goes out we clear out the living room and have a silly dance party. We dance and sing to everything from old 50s Rock and Roll, Surf, Progressive Rock , Flower, Metal, Disco, New Wave, Grunge, The Wiggles, Raffi, whatever… anything that gets us singing and moving. Then, as my wife pulls in the driveway, everything goes back in it’s place and we act like nothing happens.
My 3 kids love it and I would hope that it is one of the fond memories they have of childhood.
Many people will want to see and hear about the baby so have all the birth details and first pictures ready at all times.
Second, total strangers will want to come up and touch your baby. Jump in front of the kid and use a light saber if necessary to keep their hands off! I even put a ‘Don’t Touch’ sign on my kid. We are coming out of a bad cold and flu year, and A new strain of whooping cough has emerged.
Your new baby is the center of your universe, but dont forget to pay attention to the other centers of your universe. Occasionally talk about or do things with your wife that interest her, or the both of you, other than the baby. It will be hard, but it will be worth t.
Not silly at all. Reading to your kids before they go to sleep is also a nice bonding experience. Along the same lines, one should talk to their kids all the time, and explain what you are doing. It is a good way for kids to learn how to cook, for instance.
Try to be the late-night feeder. The hours I spent with the infants in the quiet house, just the baby and I, were magical. Best bonding ever.
Don’t be afraid of diapers.
Make a lullabye tape, and sing to them often.
Buy and read a book called “Babywise”, with your wife, and consider carefully what approach you are going to take to helping your child sleep through the night. the authors’ advice about later stages I had no use for, but both of our kids were great sleepers and I have to credit the approach of the book.
Get them used to sleeping in their crib early on, don’t let them share the bed too often. Hard habit to break, for both parents and kids. Dads are usually the first ones finished with ‘kids in the bed’.
BTW, babies can be very noisy sleepers, be conservative with baby monitors or basinets by the bed. All those snuffles and snorks can really mess up a deep sleep.
Get a good ‘baby backpack’ and wear your child often.
A sleeping baby on your chest is better for stress than Valium…
If you run, a baby jogger will help you stay in shape without having to take time away from the baby. I trained for several marathons pushing kids on my training runs.
You can teach them simple sign language for ‘all done’, and ‘more’ and a few other helpful concepts, long before they can speak. Very useful.
I’ve probably got more, but I should stop.
Congratulations!
