New baby tips for coping in the early days.
Those glorious first days with your newborn should be a time for enjoying every precious minute with your new bundle of joy, but often those days go by in a whirlwind of feeding, nappy changing and visits from family. These new baby tips will help you to not only cope, but enjoy those first precious weeks as a parent.
Food Prep
BEFORE little one arrives – stock up the freezer with easy meals to heat up or cake loaves for visitors! (The cake one: We all know cake is good for the soul right? It also makes you look pretty awesome – visitors won’t know they’ve been made weeks before!) Ideally this is great if you’re reading this while awaiting baby’s arrival, but if not – when you do next cook a meal – bulk up and freeze the leftovers. You’ll be thankful of those freezer meals when times get tough or you’re feeling really knackered. Take-aways are great in moderation, but they’re expensive and not ideal daily.
Stock up!
Stock up on baby essentials like the apocalypse (or pandemic) is about to happen. Seriously – make sure you have enough nappies, wipes and baby bits and bobs before baby arrives. The last thing you’ll feel like doing after just having a baby is nipping to the shops for nappy cream! If you’ve not done this and little one is already here – sort yourself a regular online delivery slot or amazon grocery slot to make sure you’ll not run out of those essentials. If due to finances, your shopping is more of a weekly thing – look out online for deals. Supermarkets often have baby events where you bulk buy nappies or wipes or cotton pads and save a small fortune.
Text Tip
Keeping in touch is awesome – but when you’ve just had a baby it can be exhausting keeping up with well-wishers! So, prepare a text reply on your smart phone for those lovely well wishers that keep calling because they can’t wait to see the new baby! Something like ‘Thanks so much for calling – busy with our new little one at the moment but will call you back as soon as hands are free!’ Most smartphones have an option to create a text reply to save when people call.
Set up a changing station
That gorgeous nursery you spent hours making beautiful and instagram-likes worthy? The changing station all decorated and organised beautifully? It’ll likely only get used mornings and at bedtime if you live in a house rather than a flat or bungalow. So – invest in a little basket of changing goodies for downstairs. It makes life easier. It’ll save your legs when you are shattered (or sore,) stairs are hard work with a baby when you’re feeling shattered. It’s also fab if someone offers to change a nappy – they won’t see the explosion of messy ‘I’ve just had a baby’ chaos upstairs! It keeps the visitors where you want them! Clever hey?
Buy twenty-million burp cloths!
You can honestly never have too many burp cloths/muslins! They are great for mopping up spills, protecting your clothes while feeding, protecting your favourite rug from baby sick (placed underneath baby) used as a cover while breastfeeding in public if you’re prefer to cover-up, used for peekaboo games, for collecting baby toys up and wrapping into a sack. They can even be used in an emergency ‘what do you mean we’ve run out of nappies’ drama!
More Tips…
There are lots more tips for those early days in my No.1 bestselling baby sleep book and on my social media pages, where I share tips and ideas in my daily posts and stories! Pop me a follow using the buttons below.
‘Your baby’s first weeks are about adapting to your new role as a parent and just getting through and enjoying that whole new baby bubble, as you adapt to the the new life you are starting.
Those days hit you in a way you can’t really prepare for so please just go with the flow and forget about routine.’
Fi Star-Stone