To ask for tips from mothers?

[AlmostaMamma]

I’m pregnant with our first and super excited. Also slightly terrified. All the feels. 😊

To all the mums on here, I’d love to know - what’s the one piece of solid gold advice you wish someone had given you when you were expecting your first baby? It might be something about giving birth, a seemingly inane life tip, or a life changing realisation you’ve had since becoming a mum, but please share.

For me it was doing combi feeding from early days with all of mine. This meant DH could help with night feeds and grandparents could help out during the day. I honestly didn't know what real tiredness was until I had a baby. The sheer relief of having my mum or MIL come over to hold the baby so I could sleep was immense. Also like others have said you don't need half the stuff you think you need.

You can make an ice sanitary pad too. Bliss 😊 Soak a pad in water and freeze then put on your vag after birth. There's some trick to it, like having it in a plastic bag, so it doenst leak but I'm sorry I don't remember. They gave them to me at the hospital

If you have a girl and she’s got a dress on, button up the vest before you pull up the tights.

Always leave yourself with extra time before you need to go anywhere, you’ll probably have to change a nappy right when you’re leaving the house and it will inevitably require a full outfit change.

If you’re going out in the morning, get the baby’s stuff ready to go the night before, it’ll make it less overwhelming while you’re getting used to the change.

Do not beat yourself up if you struggle to breastfeed (if that’s your plan), you have choices and your baby will be fine.

You are still a person and you must wash daily.

You can have a drink if you breastfeed and don't need to pump.

You don't need to change the nappy at every feed if baby isn't soiled/wet (yes I did this because the book said to change after each feed..I remember changing dry nappies in the middle of the night because my baby fed every half an hour ).

You can't hold a baby too much..it is not "spoiling them".

When it comes to weaning, we did naked mealtimes in the house and stripped baby to nappy! Much easier to clean after (straight in the bath-I do have a downstairs bathroom next to the kitchen!). Also the ikea highchair is the best! Easy to clean and cheap!

Don't bother with baby sensory at 7 weeks old..bsby will sleep through and you pay a small fortune for the classes.

Babygrows are perfectly acceptable clothing for babies in the day...they don't need to be wearing actual outfits. Babygrows are comfortable and easy to put on.

Love the Nuna so would disagree with this!

I agree about valuing sleep. Mumsnet ‘doctrine‘ is absolutely atrocious when it comes to sleep. So many posters see it as a ‘nice to have’ rather than something the mum and baby actually need, and that it’s the lowest priority activity. It seems the norm on here for children not to sleep through the night (10+ hours) until they reach primary school. It’s no wonder mums find parenting so stressful, how can anyone feel mentally and physically well on such crap sleep?

I’m due to give birth in 2 weeks and I’ve been building up a stash of colostrum. When the baby is born I intend to hand him over to DH with the syringes and go to bed for a proper stretch of 6-7 hours. Last time I didn’t do this, I was hallucinating through lack of sleep after a
gruelling induction and labour and several days of breastfeeding. It was awful.

I also wouldn’t recommend cosleeping or ‘sticking baby on the boob’ for every complaint. It might buy you a little extra sleep initially but it becomes an ingrained habit and at the point where other babies sleep for longer stretches, the feed to sleep/cosleeping babies still wake like newborns. 8/10 of the ‘I can’t cope I’m exhausted’ threads are about babies who are fed to sleep and co-sleep.

Rather than worrying what other people want, make your baby your absolute priority. Try to empathise with the new person joining the world and be their comforter and protector. They really do grow up so quickly.

(And breastfeeding is all about getting proper latching on and feeding frequently)

It's relentless and gruelling (and if I had known I might not have done it to be perfectly honest) ... but my, oh my ... how much you will love this baby, more than anything in the world. It will be so hard, but try to live in the moment. Maybe even if each day spend 5 minutes 1:1 focused on your little one.
All the best OP, you are in for the ride of your life 💞

There's no manual. We're all winging it.
Don’t depend on anyone else much, in the middle of the night it will come down to only you. Even that terrified alone in the dark feeling will be worth it in the end. Because you coped, and you made it okay.
Love them hard when they're little and soak up every minute because it goes by too fast, love them harder when they're older. They will know.

Don’t bother with a really expensive travel system! There’s much cheaper and lighter prams that’s can lie flat and be used from birth.

When they are crying, fighting sleep and what seems like angry or miserable all the time (even though really it’s not all the time), remember, they’re not doing it to you. The world is big and everything they see, hear and feel is new and you, mum, are their safe space. They can’t communicate so they cry to let you know they need you and even when dad tries, it will still be you they want which is so special but can be hard too. I have to remind myself of this sometimes and it helps.

That there is no one in the world that can be a better parent to your baby than you. The early days/weeks/months (honestly even years!) can bring a heap of self doubt with them, muddled up in all the love. I know everyone always says it but be kind to yourself. No one ever tells you when you're little that you're watching your parents grow up with you, but it's true.

Also that literally nobody has any idea what they're doing when it comes to raising kids, everything really is just a phase, and that people will find the most inopportune moments to tell you to enjoy every minute because it goes too fast But it really does go too fast. Wishing you all the luck in the world, OP. You'll ace it

Do not take turns with each nightly feed/change. If you're bottle feeding, take a whole night each.

Nights on absolutely suck, but nights off make it worth it! Then at least one of you has had a (hopefully) decent night sleep.

I also agree with PP. Make sure you do as little as you can to leave the room. We initially used ready to drink formula (putting the rest in the fridge to use the following day, when more awake, and opening a new bottle each feed) but moved on to the perfect prep machine and powder. Also had the machine in the bedroom.
There's also now something called a nuby rapidcool and you can use with a thermos flask or a baby kettle to make the formula to guidelines and cool it (as the perfect prep isn't to guidelines but I swear it saved my life with my first, when I couldn't handle them crying for more than a few seconds when hungry)

FSG, just sleep train. Sleep deprivation is torture for a reason.

Some great tips here.

I agree with raspberry leaf tea. It can't hurt. My first labour ended in an emergency C-section but second time round I had two hours' active labour and five minutes of pushing.

I also highly recommend you get yourself some glycerine suppositories. If planning a vaginal birth, take one in early labour to make yourself have a poo. When you get to the pushing stage it will feel like you need to do the biggest poo of your life. The midwife told me I needed to push as though I was doing a poo and not to worry about any poo coming out because if I was self conscious I wouldn't push properly. Having used one of those beforehand and being fairly sure there was nothing up there made me a lot less self conscious! They're also amazingly useful post birth if you have stitches (either in the perineal area or in your abdomen if you've had a C-section) because you won't want to strain any muscles near your stitches for a while.

Cuddle your baby as much as possible and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Get outside for walks every day, especially if the weather is nice.

You will probably get given lots of baby clothes. Get some storage boxes from IKEA (do it now before baby is here) and have one box for each size. When baby has outgrown one size you just move on to the next box. If you don't do this (or something similar), the chances are that the beautiful expensive sleepsuit that someone bought you from JoJo Maman Bébé in size 6-9 months will get forgotten about until your baby is 10 months old.

Other than gifted clothes, and especially as your child gets older, Vinted is your friend. I bought so many things from shops like JoJo or John Lewis in the sales, thinking I was getting a bargain, but now my husband is buying equally nice things from Vinted for a fraction of the price.

Oh and DO PELVIC FLOOR EXERCISES.

In France every woman who has given birth does pelvic floor physiotherapy afterwards. Sadly in the UK you'll only do that if you're having serious continence issues afterwards (and sometimes not even then) but it really is virally important.

If you're not the kind of woman who can remember to do kegels every day whilst watching Netflix, get a Perifit and play angry birds with your vagina.

And my midwife says that you should squeeze your pelvic floor muscles as hard as possible before every cough and every sneeze for the rest of your life.

This isn’t a fair thing to say, if anything my partner did the majority of night feeds!

Film them a little bit when they are small. The photos are lovely and we have loads of them but there is something special about little videos of them- looking back I love hearing their voices because they change so fast, and seeing the way they wiggle and that newborn scrunch. We have some videos of them just playing as toddlers and they are so sweet.

Throw away the parenting books. In the early years do what makes life easier at the time. Co-sleeping, fine. Dummy, fine. Pureed food, fine. None of these things will make any difference in the long run.

Buy a flask. It’s the only way you’ll get a hot drink most of the time.

Enjoy the early days before they start moving around, everyone says the newborn days are the hardest but that's a load of crap, they don't do anything but eat, poop, cry and sleep! If you put them somewhere, they stay there. Once they start rolling, crawling and eventually walking, it's chaos and you'll question your life choices on an hourly basis

Another one:

Buy the book, The Wonder Weeks.

You and your partner should both read it now and refer to it until they are 2.

😂😂

I wish I could re-do it all. I wish that I could get that time back.

Go easy on yourself.