Newborns are all of life wrapped up in a needy package. They are equal parts exquisite and terrifying. So much humble neediness, so very much humble neediness. It is no suprise that “Newborns” was the very first “Dealing with Difficult People” post I ever wrote. I see that photo of a month old Max up there and I feel equal parts yearning and horror. There is no in between.
Now, I know it’s been a while since I’ve cared for a newborn (more than six years in fact), but I spent the past weekend sniffing the head of my friend’s eight day old bubba and I can’t get that perfection out of my own head. If I could wear newborn-smell as a fragrance I would be a very happy lady indeed.
In any case, while I was busy sniffing, my mate asked me for my ‘top tips’ for newborns – she said, “write me an article so I’ve got it right there” and so here we are. Hello Claire!
The first thing I want any mum of any new baby to do is read what I wrote right here. This is the most important bit. I will touch on it in my top 10 tips, but I want you to really focus on it because it might just be the difference between coping and not coping. Once you’ve read that, we are ready for my “top tips” for caring for newborns. Here goes nothing (and everything).
1. Start as you mean to go on
If you think you would enjoy patting your baby’s bottom for hours each night, every night for months and months on end, please, start patting. If you think it might get a little bothersome after a while, please, just don’t do the pat.
Always consider the bigger picture when you set yourself a parenting ideal.
2. Get the food right so you can get the sleep right
Food = sleep = food. Such is the life of a newborn. They can’t sleep on an empty stomach. They can’t feed properly when they’re too tired. This is not helpful to know when you can’t get your overtired baby to feed, but know it you must. Do everything you possibly can to get the feeding going well.
3. Don’t do too much
For the first six, maybe even up to twelve, weeks of a newborn’s life (roughly the amount of time they are a ‘newborn’ and not yet a ‘baby’), they don’t need you to do much. Change nappy, feed, skin on skin cuddles, put down to sleep, repeat six to eight times a day. Wash them when they do a volcanic poo.
They don’t need toys, bright colours, people going ‘gagagagaga’ in their faces, being passed around like footballs nor probably even that elaborate baby massage routine you’ve been working on. They don’t need ‘play time’, they just need to sleep. Really.
4. Buy the best pram, but not much else
Your pram and you will be joined at the wrists for years, so make it one you are comfortable with that can go all the places you like to go. Make sure it has lots of storage space underneath for the shopping and a cup holder on the handle for minding your bottled water. Check the brakes – you need super-duper good brakes.
You don’t need much else for a baby besides a good cot and lots of nappies. You can probably even get away without the cot, but definitely get the nappies.
5. Stock up your ‘go bag’
Lots of people call this a ‘nappy bag’, but we all know it’s really a go bag. It’s the bag you keep well-stocked so when things get rough you can leave the house immediately. You just make sure you’re wearing clothes and you grab your go bag and your newborn and you just go. The go bag is essential.
Now, I had a complicated nappy bag that I rarely used, preferring instead to just throw a nappy roll, some cloth nappies and some wipes into my usual handbag. A change of clothes also went everywhere with me, neatly tucked into a plastic zip lock bag. A bottle of water was the only other thing we needed.
When Badoo came along and refused to be breastfed, I added a bottle of boiled water in an insulated bottle pouch and a jar of measured formula to my handbag.
6. Invest mostly in size Os
Unless you have a very small bubba, most newborns will be out of OOOOs within the week. I kid you not, they really do grow that fast. OOO will last a couple of months and OO maybe three if you’re lucky. When they are sizes OOOO – OOO they are really only comfortable in grow suits and soft cottton, so resist buying the cute little jeans and the scratchy looking ballet skirts. There will be time for all of that. Babies slow down a little by the time they get to Os, so that’s where I focused the cute stuff. And please resist all temptation to put clips in your baby girl’s hair until she actually has some – oh, alright then, if an early introduction to accessorising makes you happy, go on then!
7. Take care of the newborn mum
It’s very tempting to get lost in your baby and forget about yourself. The overwhelming sense of responsibility you feel means that you are constantly wired, unable to sleep and existing on adrenalin for at least the first three months of their life. It’s a recipe for total meltdown, especially should your baby not be the ‘settling kind’ and those first few months of new mothering extend on and on and on. You will be oh-so-tired, so please try to nurture yourself along with your baby. Leave that awful housework alone – it will wait – and have a rest instead.
And I do like to remember, as often as I can, my own mother shushing me when I tried to protest that she was going above and beyond the call when Max was born. She simply said to me, “you take care of your baby, and I’ll take care of mine.” Accept help when it’s offered, especially from your own mum.
8. Try a dummy
The one thing I know about newborns is that they like to suck (they suck, they really do, heh heh – sorry about that). It’s a natural and soothing thing for them to do. Now, I know that a big glob of plastic with a bull ring thingy hanging out of your baby’s mouth seems like the least natural thing in the world, but bear with me. In a perfect world, a baby would be free to suckle at his mother’s breast 24/7, taking comfort and sustenance where needed. But we are modern mummas and 24/7 is time we cannot give (especially if it’s baby 2 or 3 or more). That Max-baby of mine had free and easy access to all things boob and he quite literally sucked me dry (both literally and emotionally). By the time I considered the plastic, hands-free alternative, he would not take a dummy. With both my girls, I introduced one quickly and without fuss and it was a wonderful tool.
Try a dummy. Just try it. I found it to be a comfort for both my babies and myself.
9. Relax into the forth trimester
The more babies I had (which makes it sound like I have 27, when really there were only three), the longer I stretched the ‘no visitors’ rule. With Max I had family actually present in the birthing room (hi Aunty C). By Cappers I had stretched this to only family until day 2. By the Badoo it was only family in the hospital at all and even then I didn’t actually receive a visitor for at least 2 weeks when we got home. You need space to develop a calm, soft routine so nurture yourselves through the forth trimester. Give yourself plenty of space to breathe in that baby smell.
10. Don’t fret if you have no instincts
I think one of the most terrifying things we tell new mothers is “trust your gut”. It’s is right up there with “only you know your baby” – I mean, way to make a mum feel completely petrified. The idea of that you’re the only person in the world who can really figure out this baby thing is exhausting even without the lack of sleep and the hideous relentlessness that a newborn routine can be. I don’t think I had a single mothering instinct come to the forefront of my being until my kids were about seven. Well, maybe a little bit before then, but you get the idea.
So when your baby won’t stop crying for no apparent reason (oh, the crying) and you’re at the end of your rope because you think you should know what the reason is because you’re the mother and you’re supposed to know your baby remember this: a newborn is a newborn is a newborn and newborn. Sure, he’s your newborn, a baby like no other, but his needs will pretty much be the same as any other baby’s for quite a while yet. If you’re stuck and you’re just not sure and that “gut” of yours isn’t telling you anything except “I need sleeeeeeep”, it’s okay to admit you’ve got no idea what the hell is going on with your baby. It’s okay to ask someone else what to do. It’s okay.
Incidentally, in my experience, 9 times out of 10 your baby is crying because he needs to go to sleep.
Got any more ideas for newborns? Do you have one right now? If not, do you miss those years at all?
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Reannon @shewhorambles says
After four babies I have learnt to go with the flow. I have learnt that it’s not one size fits all for babies. I have learnt that the saying “sleep when the baby sleeps’ is bullshit because when you have babies 12 months apart there is always a baby awake. I have also learnt that even though you feel like you are doing things wrong a lot of the time you really aren’t.
Maxabella says
This is so true and hindsight shows us that at any given time we are usually doing EXACTLY the right thing for our child. It just doesn’t feel like that at the time! “Go with the flow” is the perfect way to describe it, Reannon. x
Tash says
Brilliant Bron!
Having a baby after a nine year gap I wish I had read this eight weeks ago. Especially the rest during your fourth trimester bit! I thought I’d better do what I usually did and be as busy as I usually was, except with the added accessory of a baby. Woah that didn’t work too well. One frazzled mess later and I am now giving myself a break.
And the sleep is so important. There are so many over-tired babies wailing in shopping centres! Put them to bed mamas.. let them grow!
xx
Maxabella says
I don’t think I could go back after a nine year gap, Tash – you are doing a brilliant job! It’s amazing how much I forgot from one baby to the next and my gaps were small (ridiculously so!). Please give yourself that well-earned, much-needed break. I mean, we KNOW that we could all use a lot of slowing down and that is especially true when a newborn is afoot. x
Lucy says
Cook dinner in the morning! It’s the one thing I come back to after 11 years of being a mother. If everything else gets too busy, at least that one, important thing is done already!
Other things: swaddling was always fabulous and with my last baby we bought an all-in-one ‘swaddler with a zip’ – so handy!
Huge prams = huge problems getting around the shops, often something compact and zippy is much better, just make sure the handles are long enough though and you don’t have to stoop.
Even though you may have committed to washing nappies, be flexible when you need to – perhaps settle on disposables to start with and move on to the modern cloth nappies down the track.
Heaps more but a major one is ALWAYS be gentle on yourself! Nobody knows exactly what to do all of the time! Even though you may have people who can identify an easier way to do something on the spot, that is knowledge that has come to them by trial and error. It will happen to you too!
Rest a lot, sleep when they can, if you can, or use that time to slowly do some other things or something you enjoy.
Best of luck! We have 3 children and have definitely finished, but every now and then a newborn really stirs my heart!
Maxabella says
What great advice, Lucy. Do you know that to this day I still prepare a lot of my day in the morning ‘just in case’ – dinner, school lunches for the next day, bathtime stuff… all done by 10 o’clock if I can get there! x
Bec @ The Plumbette says
I love what your mum said and I can’t wait to use that line on my daughters when they are mums well into the future! Phoebe is my third and last baby so I do the patting and she won’t take a dummy so I let her linger on the boob to sleep while giving my other girls a craft or DVD to watch. Phoebe is nearly 4 months old and I can’t believe how fast the time has flown. The season flies faster when you have other siblings to care for too. Great post Bron. 🙂
Maxabella says
Four months! How did that happen, Bec? Like I said, you do what you know you can keep doing and as a third timer you know EXACTLY what you are capable of doing. x
Sonia from Sonia Styling says
Can you please email me this post when I call you to tell you I’m expecting? It’s seriously the most sensible advice I’ve ever read.
Mother Down Under says
I totally agree with number four!
I spent ages researching prams and three and a half years later I still love mine! So very worth the time and the money.
I would also say don’t read baby books…or read them with a grain of salt…so many of them are written for a US audience where mothers get about eight weeks of maternity leave and therefore have completely different needs than most Australian mothers.
And don’t spend too much effort trying to figure your baby out…as soon as you think you are on top of what they need and when, they go and change on you. Go with the flow.
All that being said….eeeeeek!
I am about five weeks away from being back in newborn land…I am equal parts excited and terrified!
Maxabella says
That’s the thing about newborns (and children!) – they are equal parts exciting and terrifying and we’ve just gotta love them anyway! x
Aimee says
This is the most sensible spot on newborn article I have read. Great advice, bookmarking this as a reminder if my time comes again! xx
Maxabella says
Thanks Aimee, that’s great to know! x