Post your top tips for surviving Christmas with a baby here.

Don't pay £60 for a turkey if your relatives will only eat the breastmeat, buy a pack of turkey breasts instead - you can get them in packs of six. Everyone gets a decent bit of meat, you can cook them in twenty minutes so no worries about food poisoning and you don't have to inflict 'turkey fritters' on people for the following week.

Top tip:

Either use having a baby as a great excuse why you can't have the inlaws to visit / can't travel 6 hours up the country to visit long lost relatives / spend any time with obnoxious nieces and nephews

Or use having a baby as a great excuse why you really need to go and visit people / have people stay with you, so they can do all the boring washing up etc and giving you loads of time with your baby. Or so they can help with the childcare and give you and dh some time together.

There, does that cover all possible senarios?

Let the kids play with the paper (as long as it has no sellotape or ribbons attached.) A bit of eaten paper really does no harm and you will drive yourself mad trying to prevent it.

Accept age inappropriate gifts for your children with good grace and immediately put them on a high shelf 'so they can play with them later when they've got over the excitement, so they really appreciate them' (or when I decide that a chemistry set is a good idea for a two year old, whichever comes sooner).

Invite doting grarndparents over on boxing day to deal with the over excited DC's while you sleep off the hangover.

I like to strap DS to my back and go for an artic exploration and be back home for the Dr Who Christmas Special with a bottle of Baileys and freshly acquired artic ice.

'surviving'

jesus christ

get a life

Do not listen to that carol about Herod killing all the babies. If you are already a bit drunk overtired and hormonal it will make you cry for ages.

you know, the whole list reeks of PFB. and you know it's not a term i particularly enjoy. but really... ask people to buy you nappies? really?!

Sounds like a typical case of PFB syndrome

Go to your Mum's or your family. Let them do the cooking while you just concentrate on looking after your baby. Much less stressful.

i loved getting a tiny sip of beer or sherry when i was a wee girl. didn't turn me into a loon.

Turkeyandsproutsx3. It really is only a taste he has and then he leaves it for us finish!

I love that tip Rebechuana. Wish I'd thought of it five years ago LOL!

If it?s your baby?s first Christmas, create a books wish list. At this age they won?t really know it?s Christmas and they certainly won?t be demanding the latest branded toy, so take this opportunity to build up a little library to take you through the next few years. Make the list really long so that relatives and friends still get the fun of choosing something. Amazon has a fantastic facility for creating a wish list and inviting people to look at it.

sorry prettybird - just read your post!

Tie your tree by the trunk to a door handle or something close by so they can't pull it over

Do not expect your children to like sprouts or to fight about over christmas dinner.

Drink plenty of sparkly stuff while opening the presents so putting together Lego city becomes a bit of a blur and you don;t get too cross.

Never let your children have a sip of alcohol - it really is totally unnecessary.

Have fun!

WulfricTheRedNosedReindeer - that's was the strategy I took both while pregnat and bf! (with the docotr's approval!).

The ds is now 7 and demands a wee glass every time we have wine, so that he can "taste" it too. So far, he tells us it tastes/smells "grape-y" or "wine-y" or "hot"

It doesn't matter who wrote it. Surely it is in all parents interest that these type of mistakes be corrected as soon as possible.

For the sake of the new parents (like the dad you mentioned Aitch)

Many mums have been pointing out the errors in the Philip Avent adverts. Yet weeks later, none of these errors have been corrected.

Leaving articles up with errors in them, makes a fool out of 'Philip Avent', Vicky herself (even if she doesn't write it) and sadly Mumsnet.

Hey but i thought you were not suppost to drink & breastfeed so caz your tip is out

I would say -

1. Get someone else to cook, while you sit on your bum.

2. Organise everything the night before.

3. Make the most of it because the year after no dounbt the baby will be jumping all over the place, pulling the chritmas tree down & spreading food up the walls, while they can't move there bliss.

ninebabies... i wonder if she even wrote it? could have been the mkting dept and she signed it off? who is she, really? we don't know her from adam.

there was a new dad on another thread asking how tiktok could possibly be contradicting the MN Avent site info on storing EBM.

he was very nice about it but it was clear that as a new person to MN he felt that the Avent site advice was endorsed by MNHQ and that Tiktok was the one being cavalier. she put him right, of course, but i was disappointed for him that this had been his first experience of MN.

What drives me crazy is that some of the innaccurate facts posted on the philip avent advert microsite can be easily researched online.

I would expect any 'expert' to either know this stuff already or at the very least check the facts are correct before publishing online.

it's all very disappointing, this... [po-faced]

i'm taking dd off to christmas at her aunt's. she's hosting because she WANTS to, because her baby will be three months old and she WANTS her child's first christmas to be surrounded by her family in her own home. we'll all bring a course as usual and it will all come together beautifully and an hour later than intended. (also as usual).

if Vicki was a twentysomething childless hackette asked to knock something up for Practical Parenting in twenty minutes i could understand this... but isn't she supposed to know more about this stuff than us? Isn't that The Whole Point of Vicki?

Yes Hatwoman, I thought the bit about buying things for you was daft! Imagine if you are going to someone else's house for Xmas and you ask your hostess to add your baby things to her already hugely long shopping list! Don't think it would go down too well.