Hello parenting thread. Our first is due in a few weeks and I am wondering if anyone has solid first time tips for labor/delivery and those first few weeks. We've done a bunch of research and done online classes, and I'm sort of feeling prepared to feel unprepared, if that makes any sense. We haven't gotten to go to stuff as much as we would have liked to in a non-covid time. I always like hearing advice on stuff from forumers, so if anyone has some left field wisdom they think might be nice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Pack a go bag! Extra chargers for phones, blankets, some extra clothes, a brush and toothbrush so you can feel somewhat normal in case you're there longer than usual, change of underwear and socks. Maybe some granola bars for yourself that you can eat in the bathroom because don't you dare eat in front of her. Get everything perfect and ready so you are feeling more prepared for the day! Then you'll feel great when the moment arrives, you get her in the car, get checked in at the hospital, and realize the bag is at home. Everything is out the window! Edge of your seat, no planning, go go go!
Honestly? The best thing you can do for yourselves is to make sure you have a plan for your home. Do you have pets? Make sure you have a friend that can take care of them. Any maintenance things at the house need to be done? Sump pumps and such? You'll need someone to check on those too. Those are the things you need to plan ahead for.
The rest, honestly? No one is prepared. You can plan and research and read and budget and scrimp, but no matter what you do you will not be prepared for parenthood. We've all gone through it, we've all felt like we were completely unprepared and like we've failed. Just... go into it with love and an honest attempt to do right by the kid and you'll do fine.
For my wife it was among other things everything minty.
Good luck finding a non-minty toothpaste that's not some homeopathic bullshit.
There's always kids' toothpaste; that comes in more flavors usually. Or something like this, which is what I use. Their Sweet Spice flavor is mostly cinnamon and cardamom, and no mint.
It doesn't have fluoride - I haven't yet been able to find a non-mint toothpaste that does, and I hate mint - but my dentist otherwise approved (albeit somewhat grudgingly) when I showed him the container.
I was very briefly excited when I followed that link because I saw it came in a glass and metal jar (IE, fully recyclable) but was then very sad to see it has no fluoride. I would like more products which allow me to recycle their packaging and don't ship me water but DONT require me to use a non functional product please!
It's perfectly functional, though?
Fluoride doesn't clean teeth; it remineralizes them. It's perfectly fine to use a non-fluoride paste or powder for cleaning and then a separate fluoride rinse.
For my wife it was among other things everything minty.
Good luck finding a non-minty toothpaste that's not some homeopathic bullshit.
There's always kids' toothpaste; that comes in more flavors usually. Or something like this, which is what I use. Their Sweet Spice flavor is mostly cinnamon and cardamom, and no mint.
It doesn't have fluoride - I haven't yet been able to find a non-mint toothpaste that does, and I hate mint - but my dentist otherwise approved (albeit somewhat grudgingly) when I showed him the container.
I was very briefly excited when I followed that link because I saw it came in a glass and metal jar (IE, fully recyclable) but was then very sad to see it has no fluoride. I would like more products which allow me to recycle their packaging and don't ship me water but DONT require me to use a non functional product please!
It's perfectly functional, though?
Fluoride doesn't clean teeth; it remineralizes them. It's perfectly fine to use a non-fluoride paste or powder for cleaning and then a separate fluoride rinse.
We have used fluoride chewable tablets with our oldest until recently since stupidly, Vancouver does not fluoridate it's water.
Hello parenting thread. Our first is due in a few weeks and I am wondering if anyone has solid first time tips for labor/delivery and those first few weeks. We've done a bunch of research and done online classes, and I'm sort of feeling prepared to feel unprepared, if that makes any sense. We haven't gotten to go to stuff as much as we would have liked to in a non-covid time. I always like hearing advice on stuff from forumers, so if anyone has some left field wisdom they think might be nice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
As others have suggested, pack a bag for the hospital. With our first, I was quite nervous and even practiced driving the route to the hospital, even though we were planning on a home birth, which didn't end up happening. Install the car seat now, if you haven't already done so.
Stock your freezer now, the first week or so, cooking isn't something you may want to do. If friends/family want to do something after the baby is born, having them bring you some food is a good suggestion, if that is covid-safe where you are. Otherwise, they could do a meal or grocery delivery for you.
:so_raven:
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Hello parenting thread. Our first is due in a few weeks and I am wondering if anyone has solid first time tips for labor/delivery and those first few weeks. We've done a bunch of research and done online classes, and I'm sort of feeling prepared to feel unprepared, if that makes any sense. We haven't gotten to go to stuff as much as we would have liked to in a non-covid time. I always like hearing advice on stuff from forumers, so if anyone has some left field wisdom they think might be nice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
Figure out how your car seat adjusts, fits and is removed right now.
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Pack a go bag! Extra chargers for phones, blankets, some extra clothes, a brush and toothbrush so you can feel somewhat normal in case you're there longer than usual, change of underwear and socks. Maybe some granola bars for yourself that you can eat in the bathroom because don't you dare eat in front of her. Get everything perfect and ready so you are feeling more prepared for the day! Then you'll feel great when the moment arrives, you get her in the car, get checked in at the hospital, and realize the bag is at home. Everything is out the window! Edge of your seat, no planning, go go go!
Honestly? The best thing you can do for yourselves is to make sure you have a plan for your home. Do you have pets? Make sure you have a friend that can take care of them. Any maintenance things at the house need to be done? Sump pumps and such? You'll need someone to check on those too. Those are the things you need to plan ahead for.
The rest, honestly? No one is prepared. You can plan and research and read and budget and scrimp, but no matter what you do you will not be prepared for parenthood. We've all gone through it, we've all felt like we were completely unprepared and like we've failed. Just... go into it with love and an honest attempt to do right by the kid and you'll do fine.
A couple of things that caught us out a bit - maybe the classes covered this, our boy joined us mid-pandemic when such things weren’t rolling yet, so we lived on internet research:
Regardless of whether you plan to BF or formula feed, would suggest having some ready mix formula ready to go at home. You
do not want to hit BF issues and not have a solution on hand for a hungry baby.
If you do get ready mix formula, many places sell the little bottles relatively cheaply, but the nipples are sold separately. Make sure you get those too. We did not realise until far too late!
Similarly, regardless of if you plan to cloth diaper or disposable, have a box of newborn disposables on hand. Your washing machine might break, your kid might be allergic to diaper liners. Have a backup plan.
Similarly, we started with two types of diapers
And two types of formula, to see what worked
for him and us . Would recommend, if your budget can soak it.
Would recommend, if going disposable diapers, after finding one you all like, buying a box the next size up. You do not want to be caught short by a supply shortage trying to get bigger diapers when the kid is leaking.
The same applies to formula - if you have room and budget, have backups. We have a six week supply on hand, and with covid supply drama, we once got down to the last three days worth. That was no fun.
Also have more wipes that you think you’ll need. Newborns can poop a lot.
Also, they may not poop at all, for literal days at a time. Five was our record, and the ensuing outflow was apocalyptic.
The first baby poo will be black. That’s fine. Red and white poo are not good, call your doctor colours. Everything else is fine.
Keep a record of when the baby eats and how much,’sleeps and how long. This is really hard to do consistently when exhausted, but helps highlight systemic issues, like “our baby has eaten almost nothing for 24hrs”. Some people use an app like Huckleberry for this.
We slept in shifts for the first six weeks. It was brutal, but also the only way to survive. Once of us watched the kid, the other slept, and we shared one 8hr block a day. It was brutal. But leaving spouse to do all the overnights alone would have killed her.
Birth is traumatic as fuck. If you’re not the one giving birth, you are probably going to be on deck for food, laundry etc for a while. You’re also probably going to buy a fair bit of takeout. That is ok.
Baby gas pains are either agonising or hilarious to watch. I advise learning how to help relieve them beforehand. On a related note, a formula mixing pitcher helps reduce air bubbles and gassiness, if feeding that way.
If BF’ing with a pump, you can buy nursing bras that the bottles attract to, letting you pump “hands free”; great if you need to hold a baby, or do literally anything else.
If it turns out you can’t BF for whatever reason, that’s OK.
Don’t use neosporin on a baby, it can cause an allergic reaction.
Your parents advice is probably (your age) out of date. Listen to your doctor.
Get a baby grooming kit; their nails grow fast, you may need to trim their fingernails in the first week. If you don’t keep on top of this, they will scratch themselves and be sad, and you will feel like crap.
Babies can be hugely frustrating and rage inducting. Ask for help if you can, when you need it. If you can’t, put the baby down somewhere safeand go cool off for five minutes. They’ll be ok.
Recommended room sharing time is now at least six months.
Have a plan for what to do when your baby has a blowout at 2am, and you’re covered in their poo and so are they (like “Grab bale of wipes, clean hands, strip down baby, wipe down baby, rediaper with new diaper, put baby down in bassinet, rinse hands and arms, run baby a bath, bathe baby, re-rediaper, dress baby, put baby down, clean crap out of your hair, empty and clean tub” - or whatever, but think now while you have a functional brain, because you are going to be so tired).
Have stock of Vaseline and zinc oxide (Desirin, Butt Paste) on hand.
If using a bassinet, have at least two mattress covers, and number of sheets in line with how often you want to do laundry - I think we had five, and had to do an emergency load with them all a few times.
Baby bottles come with different size nipples, that scale up as the baby ages. Try and get bottles where replacement nipples are way to get (the boy loves his bottles, but it turns out the non-L1 nipples are hard to get; if we’d known we might have got another brand).
Have newborn and 0-3m clothes on hand. Yes those are different sizes, and yes they may grow fast enough you don’t need the newborn ones; our boy was in 0-3m around the wind of his first week!
If you can, put a diaper pail in every room you plan to change the baby in. We have one in his bedroom and one in the main living space, and not having to trek around holding a screaming baby, was a win. Love the diaper genie for this.
We had separate laundry for our baby - one for “soon wash” and one for anything drenched in bodily fluids, which needed to get done ASAP. Not sure it helped, but was organisationally useful.
If somewhere with private insurance, and BF, check the insurance covers breast pumps.
If not BF you may get some flack at the hospital. Just remember that feeding your baby is better than not, and if they’ll only eat formula, that’s fine, as s not a failing if you, a person.
Newborns are basically potatoes, happy when fed and snoozing. It may take them a bit to figure out smiling and laughing, don’t worry.
If formula feeding, have an easy way to count the number of scoops of powder you put in your batch jug or bottle. Sing a song, whatever. You will lose track of how many scoops you put in, sorry.
A bottle steriliser and a warmer will be your best friend for batch food prep and baby eating, respectively (and let’s the non-BF partner be involved more!
Have a go bag for each of you before the birth and two ways to reach the hospital in a hurry. External battery packs for phones were probably the big one for us.
Check your hospitals COVID policy before you go in; once we went in, we couldn’t leave, which affected what supplies we had to bring.
More if I think of it...
ETA: “sleep when the baby sleeps” is impossible, because you probably have other stuff to do like eat, do laundry, and try and figure out if your baby has a flat head over the Internet because covid means you won’t see your doc in person for months after the first few checkins. Makes my blood boil.
Also “put them down drowsy but awake” usually led to them being...awake..
Keep in mind that as new parents you're likely going to get a lot of advice and sometimes people will be extremely insistent about it. If it doesn't end very quickly with "take the baby to the hospital" feel free to take nearly all of it with a grain of salt and don't start beating yourself up because someone's advice isn't working.
Babies don't have instruction manuals outside of the very obvious things like make sure they eat, make sure they (eventually) poop, make sure they sleep, etc. Or rather it's more like there are a million baby instruction manuals and your particular tiny human will swipe sections from a very small number of them. Just because something worked with your sister's kiddo and you brother-in-law's kiddo or whatever it doesn't mean your tiny human is going to care about it at all. Try and do your best to remember that's not a failing on your part.
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Mojo_JojoWe are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourseRegistered Userregular
Oh yeah, everybody is basing their opinions on really small number statistics which means you end up with lots of bizarre rituals being handed around like they were tested science
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
Oh yeah, everybody is basing their opinions on really small number statistics which means you end up with lots of bizarre rituals being handed around like they were tested science
I have 100% success in the tested population that nibbling on children's ears while tickling their stomachs and yelling "I am a bengalese tiger" will break whatever 2-year old tantrum they are experiencing at the moment.
Oh yeah, everybody is basing their opinions on really small number statistics which means you end up with lots of bizarre rituals being handed around like they were tested science
I have 100% succes in the tested population that nibbling on children's ears while tickling their stomachs and yelling "I am a bangalese tiger" will break whatever 2-year old tantrum they are experiencing at the moment.
Scientific. Fact.
To be fair, I can totally see that working 100% of the time.
The most important thing you can do to prepare for a newborn is to buy nice, comfortable bathrobes/dressing gowns because you are going to be getting up at all hours to look after the baby and you might as well be comfortable.
I am reading this thread with a baby on my leg who is yelling at the roomba. He’s sad when it goes out of sight.
Meanwhile, ours points to the Roomba and says "Bobot scare me!!" and runs away if it's active. When she was still in the crawling stage it was the biggest game for her to turn it on and crawl away giggling madly. Kids are weird.
My tiny piece of advice with newborns (that hasn't already been covered) is try to practice swaddling at home; knowing the folds and tucks will help immensely when the thing to be swaddled is now squirmy. The first few times you do it are likely not swaddling them tight enough. I'd ask one of the nurses in the maternity ward to check your work as a good tight swaddle (for us) was critical for good sleep-time.
Kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) is a wonderful bonding experience for both moms and dads. I highly recommend doing it as much as you can.
I am reading this thread with a baby on my leg who is yelling at the roomba. He’s sad when it goes out of sight.
Meanwhile, ours points to the Roomba and says "Bobot scare me!!" and runs away if it's active. When she was still in the crawling stage it was the biggest game for her to turn it on and crawl away giggling madly. Kids are weird.
My tiny piece of advice with newborns (that hasn't already been covered) is try to practice swaddling at home; knowing the folds and tucks will help immensely when the thing to be swaddled is now squirmy. The first few times you do it are likely not swaddling them tight enough. I'd ask one of the nurses in the maternity ward to check your work as a good tight swaddle (for us) was critical for good sleep-time.
Kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) is a wonderful bonding experience for both moms and dads. I highly recommend doing it as much as you can.
My 2 years old just started getting scared of the vacuum cleaner which is strange since she's "helped" me vacuum the house every week for the approx 120 weeks she's been alive. Same goes for the hair dryer and food processor.
I think it's just that she is becoming aware that things in the world might be dangerous and is now slowly sorting out which things are safe and not.
It's like the neophobia of food that all kids starts through between 2 and 5ish. In the age they start walking around and exploring they also start being more sceptical of things. Those who weren't didn't get the chance to spread their genes...
We are in an apartment and have cats, but we toured the maternity ward and our hospital does allow us to leave and come back they just have to screen me each time (And I'm fully vaccinated and she's getting her first shot Friday so that's nice). Unfortunately we're in a town sort of far away from all our relatives but we do know a nice cat sitter service we've used in the past that I can call if necessary.
I put the car seat in and cleaned out my car this past weekend but the car seat feels a little more shifty than I expected, so we're going to a car seat technician event thing Saturday morning to get it checked out by a professional.
We got quite a lot of stuff at our baby shower so I have a lot of backup diapers/cloth diapers and formula, though we are planning to breastfeed but we've got backups just in case.
And yeah the parents have been trying to give us a lot of advice we've been taking with big grains of salt, plus I made my mom cry when I told her we didn't want her posting any pictures on facebook so that's been a lot of fun.
Really appreciate all the advice! Some of it is a refresher but there's so much it's good to have that.
bonding (kangaroo care) was really nice at the hospital and than also the first few weeks/months. Don't get to do that anymore really because she's not really a cuddler at the moment.
We never swaddled because she hates being constricted while sleeping. Doesn't like sleeping bags either. Or sometimes even just blankets that she thinks are too heavy.
@SniperGuy on top of all the amazing info, the only thing I'd add is to be very careful about visiting parenting sites on social media platforms. There can be a lot of wild and varied opinions, and a lot of them ignorant or harmful. Not to toot the PA horn, but I generally stick with the forums here after checking out other places. Most everyone here gives solid advice without dropping judgement.
Good luck!
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
I think my biggest advice is be prepared to just.. change as you need to. You can have a birthing plan, but be prepared to throw it out the window as circumstances change. I've seen so many moms set themselves up for disappointment by trying to have everything *just so*. Sometimes you need more medical intervention than you planned, or need more help with formula or pumping or whatever. And it's fine.
Also, lanolin.
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
I'll just say that you need to remember that you're the parents. Like others have said, you'll get very strong opinions on basically everything that will often conflict. But, you're the ones raising the kid and living your life, so you'll need to figure out which 'rules' can and should be broken for the sake of your family's overall health/sanity.
Same basic principle applies to the birth itself. My wife was just telling me that when she gave birth to our first kid the nurses told her not to get up and walk around because all the IVs and stuff were hooked up to her. I didn't realize that had happened, but I would have been pretty annoyed. Sounds like the nurse was just being lazy since all that stuff can go on a IV stand with wheels. It's pretty normal for women in labor to walk around. She walked around when in labor with our 2nd and thinks it helped a lot.
Edit: 1 more thing, keep living your life/exploring your interests. I know a lot of ppl who completely give up things they like for the sake of their kids. I think that's often going to far. Obviously you may need to cut back and some stuff will become less enjoyable or realistic, but it's also very important to do things that make you happy (including your kids in them when possible).
Yeah, we had one side cut off most of their visits once we let them know we weren't comfortable with them spamming Facebook with pictures. It's unfortunate, but the visits we're starting to feel just like photoshoots instead of real interactions so no huge loss.
Having some one-handed games available can help keep sanity during the early stages. Like, for both our kids, they would feed with momma then get passed over to me to sleep on my arm (which I had propped up with a boppi pillow). During those long, late-night sleep times, I would play games that I could with just my right hand. Slay the Spire, Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, Luck be a Landlord, FTL....basically turn-based stuff you can stop playing at a moment's notice.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
I am reading this thread with a baby on my leg who is yelling at the roomba. He’s sad when it goes out of sight.
Meanwhile, ours points to the Roomba and says "Bobot scare me!!" and runs away if it's active. When she was still in the crawling stage it was the biggest game for her to turn it on and crawl away giggling madly. Kids are weird.
My tiny piece of advice with newborns (that hasn't already been covered) is try to practice swaddling at home; knowing the folds and tucks will help immensely when the thing to be swaddled is now squirmy. The first few times you do it are likely not swaddling them tight enough. I'd ask one of the nurses in the maternity ward to check your work as a good tight swaddle (for us) was critical for good sleep-time.
Kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) is a wonderful bonding experience for both moms and dads. I highly recommend doing it as much as you can.
100% this, in both cases. Also, if you are not normally co-ordinated, swaddling can be really hard to do properly. We gave up after our boy broke free two or three times a night for a few nights. We picked up some swaddle sleep sacks that seal with velcro (we used Halo and Woolino, but there are loads), and it was such a relief just to pop him inot one of those, stick the tabs down and be done.
There is no perfect, you're just trying to make sure you all survive.
Oh: Puppy pads! We saw the hospitla use these on changing tables, and got a huge box for cheap, and stuck them on our own changing table; the amount of fountain wee's those things caught, or rogue squirt poos, was astounding. And you could just throw them away, rather than starting Yet Another Load of laundry.
Am I the only person that's weirdly invested in their kids growth chart? It's this thing I feel oddly competitive about and I'm very much not normally that person.
"LOOKIT THEM FUCKING NUMBERS, NO MALNUTRITION HERE DOC, HIGH FIVE!?"
RedTide#1907 on Battle.net
Come Overwatch with meeeee
We were horrible at swaddling or our kids are good escape artists, but they have sleepers with velcro! I think I'd add get Amazon Prime because the rapid shipping keeps you from needing to do a sleep deprived drive to the store.
In our cases, BF was very difficult for mom and baby, so much so that I still joke that humanity should've gone extinct long ago. Pay attention to all the instructions because you may need to assist until they both learn how. (even with the second kiddo, the baby still needs to learn how to feed even if mom is an expert). Lanolin because the baby will not notice or care when mom is getting mauled.
If you have any DIY projects nearly done, wrap all that up now because they're all going on pause for a long while.
As you and the baby learn to communicate the cries get more specific to the need, but at first its all guesswork. If the baby is dry, full, rested, and the clothes aren't uncomfortable but they're still very upset, sometimes I'd succeed laying them in the crib and leaving the room for a brief bit to let a new 'base state of the universe' set for them. Then I would return to the room and soothe them the same way I'd been trying before but it'd work because...now things were better than they were when I was out of the room?
Having some one-handed games available can help keep sanity during the early stages. Like, for both our kids, they would feed with momma then get passed over to me to sleep on my arm (which I had propped up with a boppi pillow). During those long, late-night sleep times, I would play games that I could with just my right hand. Slay the Spire, Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, Luck be a Landlord, FTL....basically turn-based stuff you can stop playing at a moment's notice.
For a while our first kid would only go to sleep in his crib if someone had a hand resting on him, so I went through a bunch of Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright games single-handed during those times, for the same sorts of reason.
Gotta be honest, the best naps you’ll ever have will be in a rocking chair with a sleepy, snuggly baby on you.
I assume you’ve done this, but make sure you’ve checked with your job(s) about their paternity / maternity leave policy. Get any paperwork done as early as possibly because you don’t want to have to deal with it post-partum if you don’t have to.
Having a plan for how you want things to go is good, but as the adage goes, “Planning is good; plans are useless.” Babies, especially, do things on their own time in their own ways and you have no real ability to influence that.
Having some one-handed games available can help keep sanity during the early stages. Like, for both our kids, they would feed with momma then get passed over to me to sleep on my arm (which I had propped up with a boppi pillow). During those long, late-night sleep times, I would play games that I could with just my right hand. Slay the Spire, Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, Luck be a Landlord, FTL....basically turn-based stuff you can stop playing at a moment's notice.
Pixel Dungeon for me. A very simple roguelike for phones.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
The things I can remember are:
Be prepared for the stay to go long. If waffles ends up having to have a c-section, you could be in that room for up to four days, which is quite the surprise.
Enjoy your kangaroo time (tarps off), they will never hold quite this still again.
Breastfeeding is nice, but there are a thousand reasons it might not work, and it will not harm your baby in any way to switch to formula (although its something you need to be aware of budget wise).
Try and have a changing setup where you are working at counter height w/o having a risk of baby falling off. Its so much easier on your body if you can change the baby w/o having to get down on the floor, or bend way over. (Maybe I am just really out of shape) We had a changing pad shaped like a Pringle kind of that we put on Saplings dresser.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Oh, one other thing, my first kid only ever learned one Sign, but baby sign language can be very helpful.
The most important thing I think, is to treat your baby like a full fledged person. It was something I read about prior to having our first, so I talk to babies like they can understand what we’re saying to establish a pattern of respect. This means for example, saying “I’m picking you up now” before doing so. This doesn’t mean not using baby talk if that’s your jam, but I generally didn’t.
Some people will say, oh kids don’t remember being babies so it doesn’t matter how you act, but you will remember and establishing what kind of parent you want to be from the start is easier than changing after years.
Also, change tables are a short term solution at least for my kids, after six months with each of them, they started trying to roll over during diaper change which means it’s safer to do the change on the floor.
Babies! As soon as you’re figured things out, they change!
:so_raven:
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
Having some one-handed games available can help keep sanity during the early stages. Like, for both our kids, they would feed with momma then get passed over to me to sleep on my arm (which I had propped up with a boppi pillow). During those long, late-night sleep times, I would play games that I could with just my right hand. Slay the Spire, Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, Luck be a Landlord, FTL....basically turn-based stuff you can stop playing at a moment's notice.
If you get a good slouch going you can play anything. Some of my best Destiny play was during baby naps while she slept on my chest.
On what to expect part it's different for everyone, but in my experience, the first month is the absolute worst, then it slowly gets better from there. Attachment can also take a while, I don't think I started enjoying the experience until about six months in, and it can take longer.
Finally, post partum depression is absurdly common, and therapy may be needed.
We are in an apartment and have cats, but we toured the maternity ward and our hospital does allow us to leave and come back they just have to screen me each time (And I'm fully vaccinated and she's getting her first shot Friday so that's nice). Unfortunately we're in a town sort of far away from all our relatives but we do know a nice cat sitter service we've used in the past that I can call if necessary.
I put the car seat in and cleaned out my car this past weekend but the car seat feels a little more shifty than I expected, so we're going to a car seat technician event thing Saturday morning to get it checked out by a professional.
We got quite a lot of stuff at our baby shower so I have a lot of backup diapers/cloth diapers and formula, though we are planning to breastfeed but we've got backups just in case.
And yeah the parents have been trying to give us a lot of advice we've been taking with big grains of salt, plus I made my mom cry when I told her we didn't want her posting any pictures on facebook so that's been a lot of fun.
Really appreciate all the advice! Some of it is a refresher but there's so much it's good to have that.
In the spirit of, everyone is struggling and doing the best they can, I want you to know that we also really struggled with getting our parents to realise we didn't want loads of photos on social media. I don't have any good solutions right now, but a) I empathise and b) thank you for letting me know we're not alone in that one iether!
We used a shared Google doc to track feeding. We found it have us a small feeling of order in a chaotic time and once I went back to work it was really useful to have a log of food and sleep so I could come home and immediately jump into the cycle. Plus once we started doing solid food picking out emojis to represent the different meals we were making was a lot of fun.
When friends/family would ask if there's anything they can help with my go to was always "not having to worry about fighting out a meal would be great". That first month especially can be exhausting and meals have a way of sneaking up on you, having someone else remove that decision fatigue was fantastic. Plus with the rise of delivery apps it was something that my out of town parents could help with and in a manner that they would have done if they lived closer.
I ended up creating a website that I gave access to family members to (this was like 7 years ago). This way my parents could see their grandchildren and I didn't have to flood Facebook/Twitter with pictures.
I ended up creating a website that I gave access to family members to (this was like 7 years ago). This way my parents could see their grandchildren and I didn't have to flood Facebook/Twitter with pictures.
That sounds like a really damn good idea!
Imma going be doing that because I despise Facebook.
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Honestly? The best thing you can do for yourselves is to make sure you have a plan for your home. Do you have pets? Make sure you have a friend that can take care of them. Any maintenance things at the house need to be done? Sump pumps and such? You'll need someone to check on those too. Those are the things you need to plan ahead for.
The rest, honestly? No one is prepared. You can plan and research and read and budget and scrimp, but no matter what you do you will not be prepared for parenthood. We've all gone through it, we've all felt like we were completely unprepared and like we've failed. Just... go into it with love and an honest attempt to do right by the kid and you'll do fine.
Just be as mentally prepared as you can be to be more sleep deprived than you ever have been in your life. But you'll survive it. ^_^
Enjoy precious silence is my advice. Children are so mind bogglingly NOISY.
It's perfectly functional, though?
Fluoride doesn't clean teeth; it remineralizes them. It's perfectly fine to use a non-fluoride paste or powder for cleaning and then a separate fluoride rinse.
We have used fluoride chewable tablets with our oldest until recently since stupidly, Vancouver does not fluoridate it's water.
As others have suggested, pack a bag for the hospital. With our first, I was quite nervous and even practiced driving the route to the hospital, even though we were planning on a home birth, which didn't end up happening. Install the car seat now, if you haven't already done so.
Stock your freezer now, the first week or so, cooking isn't something you may want to do. If friends/family want to do something after the baby is born, having them bring you some food is a good suggestion, if that is covid-safe where you are. Otherwise, they could do a meal or grocery delivery for you.
Figure out how your car seat adjusts, fits and is removed right now.
A couple of things that caught us out a bit - maybe the classes covered this, our boy joined us mid-pandemic when such things weren’t rolling yet, so we lived on internet research:
Regardless of whether you plan to BF or formula feed, would suggest having some ready mix formula ready to go at home. You
do not want to hit BF issues and not have a solution on hand for a hungry baby.
If you do get ready mix formula, many places sell the little bottles relatively cheaply, but the nipples are sold separately. Make sure you get those too. We did not realise until far too late!
Similarly, regardless of if you plan to cloth diaper or disposable, have a box of newborn disposables on hand. Your washing machine might break, your kid might be allergic to diaper liners. Have a backup plan.
Similarly, we started with two types of diapers
And two types of formula, to see what worked
for him and us . Would recommend, if your budget can soak it.
Would recommend, if going disposable diapers, after finding one you all like, buying a box the next size up. You do not want to be caught short by a supply shortage trying to get bigger diapers when the kid is leaking.
The same applies to formula - if you have room and budget, have backups. We have a six week supply on hand, and with covid supply drama, we once got down to the last three days worth. That was no fun.
Also have more wipes that you think you’ll need. Newborns can poop a lot.
Also, they may not poop at all, for literal days at a time. Five was our record, and the ensuing outflow was apocalyptic.
The first baby poo will be black. That’s fine. Red and white poo are not good, call your doctor colours. Everything else is fine.
Keep a record of when the baby eats and how much,’sleeps and how long. This is really hard to do consistently when exhausted, but helps highlight systemic issues, like “our baby has eaten almost nothing for 24hrs”. Some people use an app like Huckleberry for this.
We slept in shifts for the first six weeks. It was brutal, but also the only way to survive. Once of us watched the kid, the other slept, and we shared one 8hr block a day. It was brutal. But leaving spouse to do all the overnights alone would have killed her.
Birth is traumatic as fuck. If you’re not the one giving birth, you are probably going to be on deck for food, laundry etc for a while. You’re also probably going to buy a fair bit of takeout. That is ok.
Baby gas pains are either agonising or hilarious to watch. I advise learning how to help relieve them beforehand. On a related note, a formula mixing pitcher helps reduce air bubbles and gassiness, if feeding that way.
If BF’ing with a pump, you can buy nursing bras that the bottles attract to, letting you pump “hands free”; great if you need to hold a baby, or do literally anything else.
If it turns out you can’t BF for whatever reason, that’s OK.
Don’t use neosporin on a baby, it can cause an allergic reaction.
Your parents advice is probably (your age) out of date. Listen to your doctor.
Get a baby grooming kit; their nails grow fast, you may need to trim their fingernails in the first week. If you don’t keep on top of this, they will scratch themselves and be sad, and you will feel like crap.
Babies can be hugely frustrating and rage inducting. Ask for help if you can, when you need it. If you can’t, put the baby down somewhere safeand go cool off for five minutes. They’ll be ok.
Recommended room sharing time is now at least six months.
Have a plan for what to do when your baby has a blowout at 2am, and you’re covered in their poo and so are they (like “Grab bale of wipes, clean hands, strip down baby, wipe down baby, rediaper with new diaper, put baby down in bassinet, rinse hands and arms, run baby a bath, bathe baby, re-rediaper, dress baby, put baby down, clean crap out of your hair, empty and clean tub” - or whatever, but think now while you have a functional brain, because you are going to be so tired).
Have stock of Vaseline and zinc oxide (Desirin, Butt Paste) on hand.
If using a bassinet, have at least two mattress covers, and number of sheets in line with how often you want to do laundry - I think we had five, and had to do an emergency load with them all a few times.
Baby bottles come with different size nipples, that scale up as the baby ages. Try and get bottles where replacement nipples are way to get (the boy loves his bottles, but it turns out the non-L1 nipples are hard to get; if we’d known we might have got another brand).
Have newborn and 0-3m clothes on hand. Yes those are different sizes, and yes they may grow fast enough you don’t need the newborn ones; our boy was in 0-3m around the wind of his first week!
If you can, put a diaper pail in every room you plan to change the baby in. We have one in his bedroom and one in the main living space, and not having to trek around holding a screaming baby, was a win. Love the diaper genie for this.
We had separate laundry for our baby - one for “soon wash” and one for anything drenched in bodily fluids, which needed to get done ASAP. Not sure it helped, but was organisationally useful.
If somewhere with private insurance, and BF, check the insurance covers breast pumps.
If not BF you may get some flack at the hospital. Just remember that feeding your baby is better than not, and if they’ll only eat formula, that’s fine, as s not a failing if you, a person.
Newborns are basically potatoes, happy when fed and snoozing. It may take them a bit to figure out smiling and laughing, don’t worry.
If formula feeding, have an easy way to count the number of scoops of powder you put in your batch jug or bottle. Sing a song, whatever. You will lose track of how many scoops you put in, sorry.
A bottle steriliser and a warmer will be your best friend for batch food prep and baby eating, respectively (and let’s the non-BF partner be involved more!
Have a go bag for each of you before the birth and two ways to reach the hospital in a hurry. External battery packs for phones were probably the big one for us.
Check your hospitals COVID policy before you go in; once we went in, we couldn’t leave, which affected what supplies we had to bring.
More if I think of it...
ETA: “sleep when the baby sleeps” is impossible, because you probably have other stuff to do like eat, do laundry, and try and figure out if your baby has a flat head over the Internet because covid means you won’t see your doc in person for months after the first few checkins. Makes my blood boil.
Also “put them down drowsy but awake” usually led to them being...awake..
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Babies don't have instruction manuals outside of the very obvious things like make sure they eat, make sure they (eventually) poop, make sure they sleep, etc. Or rather it's more like there are a million baby instruction manuals and your particular tiny human will swipe sections from a very small number of them. Just because something worked with your sister's kiddo and you brother-in-law's kiddo or whatever it doesn't mean your tiny human is going to care about it at all. Try and do your best to remember that's not a failing on your part.
I have 100% success in the tested population that nibbling on children's ears while tickling their stomachs and yelling "I am a bengalese tiger" will break whatever 2-year old tantrum they are experiencing at the moment.
Scientific. Fact.
To be fair, I can totally see that working 100% of the time.
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But the definitons of what you might think icky, yucky, and revolting are changing rapdly with a kid anyway
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Meanwhile, ours points to the Roomba and says "Bobot scare me!!" and runs away if it's active. When she was still in the crawling stage it was the biggest game for her to turn it on and crawl away giggling madly. Kids are weird.
My tiny piece of advice with newborns (that hasn't already been covered) is try to practice swaddling at home; knowing the folds and tucks will help immensely when the thing to be swaddled is now squirmy. The first few times you do it are likely not swaddling them tight enough. I'd ask one of the nurses in the maternity ward to check your work as a good tight swaddle (for us) was critical for good sleep-time.
Kangaroo care (skin-to-skin contact) is a wonderful bonding experience for both moms and dads. I highly recommend doing it as much as you can.
My 2 years old just started getting scared of the vacuum cleaner which is strange since she's "helped" me vacuum the house every week for the approx 120 weeks she's been alive. Same goes for the hair dryer and food processor.
I think it's just that she is becoming aware that things in the world might be dangerous and is now slowly sorting out which things are safe and not.
It's like the neophobia of food that all kids starts through between 2 and 5ish. In the age they start walking around and exploring they also start being more sceptical of things. Those who weren't didn't get the chance to spread their genes...
I put the car seat in and cleaned out my car this past weekend but the car seat feels a little more shifty than I expected, so we're going to a car seat technician event thing Saturday morning to get it checked out by a professional.
We got quite a lot of stuff at our baby shower so I have a lot of backup diapers/cloth diapers and formula, though we are planning to breastfeed but we've got backups just in case.
And yeah the parents have been trying to give us a lot of advice we've been taking with big grains of salt, plus I made my mom cry when I told her we didn't want her posting any pictures on facebook so that's been a lot of fun.
Really appreciate all the advice! Some of it is a refresher but there's so much it's good to have that.
We never swaddled because she hates being constricted while sleeping. Doesn't like sleeping bags either. Or sometimes even just blankets that she thinks are too heavy.
Good luck!
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Also, lanolin.
Same basic principle applies to the birth itself. My wife was just telling me that when she gave birth to our first kid the nurses told her not to get up and walk around because all the IVs and stuff were hooked up to her. I didn't realize that had happened, but I would have been pretty annoyed. Sounds like the nurse was just being lazy since all that stuff can go on a IV stand with wheels. It's pretty normal for women in labor to walk around. She walked around when in labor with our 2nd and thinks it helped a lot.
Edit: 1 more thing, keep living your life/exploring your interests. I know a lot of ppl who completely give up things they like for the sake of their kids. I think that's often going to far. Obviously you may need to cut back and some stuff will become less enjoyable or realistic, but it's also very important to do things that make you happy (including your kids in them when possible).
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100% this, in both cases. Also, if you are not normally co-ordinated, swaddling can be really hard to do properly. We gave up after our boy broke free two or three times a night for a few nights. We picked up some swaddle sleep sacks that seal with velcro (we used Halo and Woolino, but there are loads), and it was such a relief just to pop him inot one of those, stick the tabs down and be done.
There is no perfect, you're just trying to make sure you all survive.
Oh: Puppy pads! We saw the hospitla use these on changing tables, and got a huge box for cheap, and stuck them on our own changing table; the amount of fountain wee's those things caught, or rogue squirt poos, was astounding. And you could just throw them away, rather than starting Yet Another Load of laundry.
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Am I the only person that's weirdly invested in their kids growth chart? It's this thing I feel oddly competitive about and I'm very much not normally that person.
"LOOKIT THEM FUCKING NUMBERS, NO MALNUTRITION HERE DOC, HIGH FIVE!?"
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In our cases, BF was very difficult for mom and baby, so much so that I still joke that humanity should've gone extinct long ago. Pay attention to all the instructions because you may need to assist until they both learn how. (even with the second kiddo, the baby still needs to learn how to feed even if mom is an expert). Lanolin because the baby will not notice or care when mom is getting mauled.
If you have any DIY projects nearly done, wrap all that up now because they're all going on pause for a long while.
As you and the baby learn to communicate the cries get more specific to the need, but at first its all guesswork. If the baby is dry, full, rested, and the clothes aren't uncomfortable but they're still very upset, sometimes I'd succeed laying them in the crib and leaving the room for a brief bit to let a new 'base state of the universe' set for them. Then I would return to the room and soothe them the same way I'd been trying before but it'd work because...now things were better than they were when I was out of the room?
For a while our first kid would only go to sleep in his crib if someone had a hand resting on him, so I went through a bunch of Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright games single-handed during those times, for the same sorts of reason.
I assume you’ve done this, but make sure you’ve checked with your job(s) about their paternity / maternity leave policy. Get any paperwork done as early as possibly because you don’t want to have to deal with it post-partum if you don’t have to.
Having a plan for how you want things to go is good, but as the adage goes, “Planning is good; plans are useless.” Babies, especially, do things on their own time in their own ways and you have no real ability to influence that.
Get an infant rectal thermometer.
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Pixel Dungeon for me. A very simple roguelike for phones.
Be prepared for the stay to go long. If waffles ends up having to have a c-section, you could be in that room for up to four days, which is quite the surprise.
Enjoy your kangaroo time (tarps off), they will never hold quite this still again.
Breastfeeding is nice, but there are a thousand reasons it might not work, and it will not harm your baby in any way to switch to formula (although its something you need to be aware of budget wise).
Try and have a changing setup where you are working at counter height w/o having a risk of baby falling off. Its so much easier on your body if you can change the baby w/o having to get down on the floor, or bend way over. (Maybe I am just really out of shape) We had a changing pad shaped like a Pringle kind of that we put on Saplings dresser.
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The most important thing I think, is to treat your baby like a full fledged person. It was something I read about prior to having our first, so I talk to babies like they can understand what we’re saying to establish a pattern of respect. This means for example, saying “I’m picking you up now” before doing so. This doesn’t mean not using baby talk if that’s your jam, but I generally didn’t.
Some people will say, oh kids don’t remember being babies so it doesn’t matter how you act, but you will remember and establishing what kind of parent you want to be from the start is easier than changing after years.
Also, change tables are a short term solution at least for my kids, after six months with each of them, they started trying to roll over during diaper change which means it’s safer to do the change on the floor.
Babies! As soon as you’re figured things out, they change!
If you get a good slouch going you can play anything. Some of my best Destiny play was during baby naps while she slept on my chest.
Finally, post partum depression is absurdly common, and therapy may be needed.
In the spirit of, everyone is struggling and doing the best they can, I want you to know that we also really struggled with getting our parents to realise we didn't want loads of photos on social media. I don't have any good solutions right now, but a) I empathise and b) thank you for letting me know we're not alone in that one iether!
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When friends/family would ask if there's anything they can help with my go to was always "not having to worry about fighting out a meal would be great". That first month especially can be exhausting and meals have a way of sneaking up on you, having someone else remove that decision fatigue was fantastic. Plus with the rise of delivery apps it was something that my out of town parents could help with and in a manner that they would have done if they lived closer.
That sounds like a really damn good idea!
Imma going be doing that because I despise Facebook.