5 Tips On Looking After Newborn Babies
.Babies are a profoundly life changing experience—once your first born child arrives nothing will ever be quite the same again. But although becoming a parent for the first time is tremendously exciting, it can also be incredibly scary, so it is a good idea to find out as much information as possible about how to look after a newborn baby.
Friends and relatives will probably be full of advice—some good and some bad. Listen to all of it, but be prepared to learn as you go along. All parents make mistakes, but most of us muddle through in our own way, so try not to get too stressed out about the prospect of taking on the responsibility of caring for a newborn baby—with a little help here and there, you and your baby will be absolutely fine.
5 tips for looking after newborn babies
Tip #1 Make sure you arrange for some help after the birth
Giving birth to a baby is joyful, exciting, painful, and bone-crushingly tiring. Some women are lucky enough to have a two hour labor and feel absolutely fine after a day, but for most women, the experience is somewhat different. Aches, pains, and a permanently full bladder in the weeks prior to the birth can lead to sleep deprivation even before the baby arrives, so once you have a baby that refuses to sleep to care for, the exhaustion is compounded and everything becomes so much more difficult.
Make the most of being kept in hospital for a few days after the birth and if you are clueless about taking care of a newborn baby, ask for help, even if you feel your questions are daft—midwives and nurses are there to assist, so do not be afraid of asking for help and advice if you are unsure of anything.
Once you are at home with your new baby, concentrate on taking care of the basic stuff like feeding the baby and yourself, resting and recovering. Nothing else matters, least of all the housework, so let others do it. Accept all offers of help from friends and family, and if you are a single parent, see if a friend or relative can move in for a few days to give you a helping hand.
Tip #2 Accept that newborn babies do not always sleep much
Some newborn babies sleep all the time, but many others barely sleep more than twenty minutes in one stretch, so no matter what you have been told be prepared for your baby to do it differently. One of the most frustrating things about becoming a first time parent is the lack of sleep in the early days and weeks following the birth. You are probably feeling shattered, but despite wandering around like the living dead, your baby refuses to sleep a wink.
You will have to accept that sleep patterns take time to establish and for a while your baby is not going to be able to tell the difference between day and night, so instead of getting stressed out about your lack of sleep, roll with it and snatch sleep whenever you can. This stage will not last forever and before you know it you will be screaming at a sullen teenager and demanding to know why they feel the need to sleep until 5pm.
Tip #3 Do not get stressed if feeding your baby does not work out as planned
Lots of mothers are determined to breastfeed their baby after the birth, but although they know all about the health benefits of breastfeeding and how much better it is for the baby, when the moment finally arrives, their longed for baby refuses to take the breast and does nothing but scream inconsolably.
Why does this sometimes happen?
Breastfeeding is supposed to come naturally to women, but sometimes things do not work as nature intended and for a variety of reasons, the baby cannot or will not latch on and feed properly. Sometimes the problem is only temporary and with a bit of patient perseverance, the baby settles and breastfeeding is established, but for other mums, the only solution is to swap to bottle feeding instead.
If this happens to you, do not fall into the trap of thinking you are a rubbish mother—roll with it and accept that in this instance, it just doesn’t work for you. Bottle feeding is a perfectly acceptable alternative and your baby will not suffer in any way because you cannot breastfeed him, so stop feeling guilty!
Tip #4 Keep it simple in the first few weeks
Although you will probably want to show your baby off to everyone and their grandma, try and limit the amount of socializing you do in the first few weeks of your baby’s life. It will take a while for your newborn baby to build up immunity to common colds and other viruses, so it is a good idea to keep him away from large numbers of people so he doesn’t pick up any nasty bugs.
The sooner you develop a simple routine for your baby, the faster he will settle down into regular sleeping and feeding patterns, which will help you catch up on come much needed sleep. Instead of parading your baby around every relative and friend within a one hundred mile radius, or worse, inviting them over to yours, take some cute pictures and post them on Facebook instead.
Tip #5 Enjoy your baby!
You have spent nine months waiting for your baby to arrive, so now that he is finally here, sit back and relax for a bit. In no time at all your newborn baby will be reaching new milestones, so enjoy the first few weeks of his life and forget about all the rubbish stuff like going back to work. Babies are not small for long, so make the most of those precious few weeks and take all the time you need for you and your partner to settle into the most important job in the world—being a parent.
