Hon, you’ll be fine. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence (and a distressingly large number of people that are dumb as a box of rocks) manage to figure out how to care for a baby without giving it terminal diaper rash.
Hospital maternity units frequently give mini-classes every day for brand-new moms in basics such as “How to give a newborn infant a bath”. So while you’re in the hospital, be alert for announcements along the lines of, “All new mothers are invited to come to the Nursery at 10:00 a.m. today for Baby Bathing Class.” The pediatric nurses are also founts of information on things like breast-feeding or how to change a diaper or care for an umbilical stump, so if you’re having trouble or are just plain baffled from the git-go, don’t agonize, just ask for help. Nobody on the floor will think you’re stoopid because as a Noob you don’t know something.
I freaked out myself, just a bit, at one point after bringing the baby home from the hospital, me, the intelligent, balanced, mature, stable 29-year-old. We were in Texas, and my mother had flown down from Illinois for a week for the event. So when it was time for her to go home, I saw her out the front door and into her taxi to the airport, and went back into the living room by myself–and totally panicked. “OH MY GOD!! WhatdoIdo if the baby wakes up and cries, whatdoIdo, whatdoIdo, whatdoIdooooooo?” But fortunately, after the initial wave of panic, common sense reasserted itself, and I went into the baby’s room and looked at the sleeping cherub, and everything was fine again.
But that was a bad couple of seconds there.
You’ll have that, too. Not to worry–it doesn’t make you a bad person, just a normal one.
Find a baby to practice on between now and September.
The biggest reason for my panic was that I had had zero experience in caring for infants in my life, never played with baby dolls as a child (Barbie doesn’t teach you how to burp a baby), hadn’t even done much babysitting in junior high and high school, so this infant was a completely new species to me. I knew more about caring for dogs than I did about babies.
What I should have done, hindsight being 20/20, was spend some time while I was pregnant with the babies at our church (those being the closest babies at hand), learning how to pick them up, dress them, feed them, change diapers, etc.
Commenting to the effect that someone is getting fat means you’re checking them out and reporting on it. Not cool.
“the construction zone”! So cute. Good luck to all the expecting Dopers.
That can be scary, but definitely try and find other babies you can practice on (know anyone with kids?) and take all possible classes from the hospital or wherever. I did, and I spent many years helping look after my (baby) brother and lots of babysitting. Check a community courses flyer or ask around on parenting boards/mailing lists for your area.
See if there are any parenting/pregnancy groups that you can get in on also. I spent the last few months going to a wonderful group that met once a week. It was a way to get out of the house, meet other pregnant women (I made friends with one and we still hang out only now with the kids too) and learn about babies and pregnancy since all of us were at different stages. It was great, and a big help.
That was my mantra. A jury of your peers (women who have been pregnant) would never convict you. Hell, we might make you president.
I bought a maternity bra but never did wear it. I found that tank tops with built in bras were the only thing I could wear. Heck, it wasn’t like my huge tatas were going anywhere.
Freakin’ cropped pants. I damn near killed myself trying to find a pair of PANTS. I had one pair of black pants I ended up spending $90 for because I MUST WEAR BLACK PANTS TO WORK. I can’t bear cropped pants to this day.
Find a pool Mousie. It is the only place you might feel like a human. Heck, I’ve got an inflatable one I can lay down in we paid $20 for. It would be worth it.
Pratice babies, that’s a good idea! I don’t belong to a church, and my nephew is now 10, so I’ll have to see what else is around. Maybe the rec center day care?
The hospital we’re using does offer classes for expecting parents. I’ve been avoiding a lot of things, but now I’ve got to get moving. ::shudder::
This is true. However, if you HAVE purchased (or been given) a used seat, it might be worth your time to call the manufacturer and ask if it’s still good. (You’ll probably need model and serial numbers.) Chances are fairly high that it won’t be considered safe, but they may offer to send you a brand new one for only the cost of the shipping.
I’d read about this, and told a friend whose budget was tight and had been given an old seat. It worked–she got a new seat, at far less cost than a department store’s prices.
And don’t worry about the weird hormonally influenced stuff you do. I once sat at the dinner table and sobbed and sobbed because I didn’t remember to get my husband a father’s day card from the cat. In my defense, he did ask me why I hadn’t since he had gotten me one for mother’s day.
Men need a training on treating pregnant women right.
Mood swings - who needs roller coasters? There are days were I feel a stay in a padded room would be a good idea.
This week, I seem to be having a bad case of self-consciousness. Yesterday, I went at the rec center after work. I finished my work-out at the same time the local tween/teen gymnatics class was done. The locker room was full of svelte teenie-boppers! I just grabbed my things and drove home to shower. When I got in the door, Mouse_Spouse made some sort of joke about me being “tainted” by pregnancy. I burst into tears.
Yep, men need training.
This morning, I woke up late and dressed in a hurry. I feel huge and the shirt I grabbed isn’t helping.
Hey! Those hormones allow you the opportunity to mate year-around. Sit down, shut up, and be glad you’re not a salmon or any other species in the fuck-and-die catagory.
I complained of fatigue once with baby #2. My darling spouse replied, without joking as far as I could tell, “Right, like being pregnant is *that * hard.”
Amazingly, I let him live.
As far as going home with the baby, consider that you are already home with a baby right now - it’s just exponentially easier to care for where it’s currently residing.
In the “aren’t mood swings” fun category, I remember sobbing hysterically because I was trying to make a pie and my homemade, up-to-that-point-always-perfect piecrust had instead somehow become an unusable lump of nasty dough. “I lost my pie crust!” was my wail. (As it turned out, I was right; homemade pie crust requires a magic touch, and I did indeed “lose” it for several years! I finally got it back, however. Whew!)
It’s also amazing to me that so many men actually survive their wives’ pregnancy unmurdered.
Yes, it is. I guess they either wise up or shut up - in order to survive.
Mouse_Spouse has mentioned having a second child. I bite my tounge to keep from screaming “No way! You’re never touching me again.”
We were not planning on having children so soon. Years from now, I can embarass the Mouseling with this story: My birth control pills ran out just before we had a huge snowstorm. I was two days late starting the next cycle, and thought No big deal. We’ll be fine. Boy, was I wrong. No regrets, but occasionally I accuse Mouse_Spouse of being super-fertile. He takes it as a compliment.
Depending on your area and your financial situation, you might be able to get a new carseat from your local WIC office; that’s where I got mini-Marli’s. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it worked, from newborn to age 4. I never had a changing table; I usually just flopped down on the floor with the changing pad from the diaper bag. That way I didn’t have to worry about the little lump rolling around.
I had a hard time finding decent clothes when I was pregnant with my first, 16 years ago. Of course, I was still in high school and my preferred wardrobe of skintight jeans and hair band T-shirts wasn’t very suitable to an expanding belly. I gained so much weight and retained so much water that for the last 6 weeks or so the only clothing I could comfortably wear was a hideous tent of a baby-blue striped housedress with folksy little houses embroidered on the top that I bought on clearance. Gods, I enjoyed burning that horrible thing.
Things were a little better with the mini-Marli; I found some nice maternity shorts at a garage sale, and some decent plain maternity T-shirts at Target and Walmart. I didn’t buy much, maybe 3 or 4 pairs of shorts and 5 or 6 shirts; I figured it was only for 4 months or so, why buy a closetful?
I remember walking into my manager’s office one day when I was pregnant with mini-Marli, about 5 ir 6 months along. He did a double-take and said, “Good lord, when did that pop out? You’re getting huge!”
He was normally a pretty nice guy so I just maimed him a little.
Just got home from Pre-Natal Yoga. Some of the ladies are about the same stage I am. They seem to show more than me. My belly seems to be expanding *up * more than out. (I’ve been told that this is evidence of a boy. We’ll see.)
Of course, people will tell you all kinds of things. I know that sounds cynical, but it’s true. We heard that if the baby seemed to be high it would be a boy, then someone told us it would be a girl in that case, then we heard the stories about how it depends on what you eat. The idea was, if you craved fruit and stuff, it would probably be a girl, but if you craved meat-type foods it would mean boy. Mrs. Small craved a little of this and a little of that, and everyone swore that by all the “old wives methods” she was having a girl. Ha! We showed them. When we found out it was a boy, she was so happy just because that wasn’t what everyone expected. Plus, by the new ultrasound, it’s more than obvious that he is a boy.
Also, she is wonderful. Complaining a little today because she had to work midnights, not that she didn’t want to work, but that our puppy would be alone “all night for the first time ever by herself and she’ll be sad…”
It was cute. (In my defense, the puppy stays home about 8 hours a day alone between work and school, but never at night because if she goes anywhere at night she takes the dog with her. I just thought it was funny that 7 hours at night were worse than 8 in the day.)
Good luck to all the expecting Dopers.
This is great. I’ll be using this a lot.