Can I have an idiots guide please on bringing home the baby

[wiltshire]

Please can all of you mums help. I am 34 & DH is 50. We have no kids at all and not a terrible amount of experience. What I want is an idiots guide from the moment of pulling up outside the house, putting key in lock etc. Any tips & advice would be fab from temperatures to how often to do the washing. I have gained such huge knowledge from you lot already so I know anything else will be invaluable (beg & plead). If I sound like a loony, it's because I am but none of the baby books I have read are terribly practical, they bang on about you will feel tearful tired etc but nothing else. Baby is coming on 26th so not much time.

Wow, Angelmother! How civilised is that!

thanks again everyone. Can you imaging ever getting Kramzorgs here........no I can't either. Perhaps I should do a Hayley Cropper and go to Holland after the birth.

Haven't had time to read the whole thread so sorry if repeating anything. Just wanted to say that while you should feel at complete liberty to answer the door in your dressing gown and jammies at 3 in the afternoon, I found I felt so much better. I am a complete scruffy slob when it comes to clothes/make-up but in the early days with both dd and ds, I felt incredibly efficient and competant if I had managed to grab ten minutes to get myself straight in the morning. If I also managed to put on lipstick I felt like SUPERWOMAN! You'll be stunned at how difficult it is to grab the tiny bit of time that is required even for a shower, but if dh is around do try to make a bit of time for yourself. Call me shallow but when everything around you is in chaos it's nice to have some lippy on ...

Sorry - don't have my lippy on this evening so consequently inefficient and incompetant at everything including posting. I deleted a bit there - after the bit about jammies at three in afternoon I meant to say that I felt so much better when I had time to get myself straight in the mornings.

we had a single mattress on the floor in the living room so breast feeding lying down was not a problem (until I tried it sitting up - another story) cuddles in the afternoon in front of the telly - blissful

Good point about the lippy, Zippy. Seriously, its incredible how much better you feel if you manage to put a bit of face on, and it only needs to take 2 minutes.

I wish I'd had such good advice when I gave birth!

A few more tips:

Have a babymoon when you come back home, just you, dh and the baby, no visitors for 3-4 days, so you get to know each other a bit better.

Put a sign on the front door to warn people that there's a new baby in the house, so that they're a bit more patient...

Sleep when your baby is sleeping.

Get as much help as you possibly can.

Kamilosan is good for sore nipples.

When running bath for baby, obviously make sure it's not too hot, but also beware of it being too cold (they don't like it!).

Most of all, enjoy your new baby, as Aloha said, it's a magical time and it doesn't last very long.

Put fresh breastpads in when you have visitors. I remember my mum & step dad & grannie visiting 7 realised I'd leaked all down the from of my blouse & ran upstairs & wept with shame (those 1st few days are emotional!)

don't bother with fabric covers on the changing mat - they'll get pood on every time. We used 2 separate bits of kitchen roll - one for under head & shouklders, other for under bum. If you leave them joined, the inevitable runny yellow poo spreads up the kitchen paper to the head, but a break in the paper keeps it under control.

This time, I will not be creeping round trying not to desturb dh! How soft am I? last time I'd get up with babe & try my hardest not to desturb him. Sod that, this time it'll be computer, tv, whatever & he can puch off to the spare room if nec.

I religiously followed the advice on big bulky matwrnity/sanitory towels, and frankly, found them so bloody uncomfortable, al that extra bulk pressing on the delicate bits. this time I'm going to bravely ignore it & go for the ultra thin ones. Can't be any worse, surely.

Put towel of whatever under babies head in cot so you can just put a new one on if they puke.

Have another towel or muslin handy for feeding to stuf fover the other breast, even after 2 babies, I still regularly forgot & had to shout for dh to bring me something before I flooded the house every feed.

Wonderful thread!

Don't creep around when baby is asleep - make sure you still talk at a normal level, have the TV on/radio on, whatever. A friend of mine made this mistake and still has problems with her 2.5 year old who can't sleep unless there is almost complete silence in the house!

I completely agree with Copper - let DH do as much as possible without hovering around watching his every move. It doesn't matter if he puts odd socks on or a dress back to front!

I arrived home with my 3 day old twin DDs and went straight to bed - exhausted and very emotional. My mum and the in-laws were with my Dh and the babies and all was going well. As soon as they left both girls screamed the place down, both needed feeding at once and both needed changing but DH coped all on his own, didn't come and wake me - I have been truly amazed at him during the last 2.5 years.

When I first heard about muslins I thought, what are they for? Then I had a baby and knew. Never sit down to feed without muslins or kitchen roll. Babies are messy! I also put on makeup every day at some point, just to keep me in touch with my former self That's not a tip for everyone BTW, but it worked for me. Oh, and expect to take about 4 hours to leave the house the first few times. The minute you put a baby, beautifully dressed and warm, into the pram to go out, it will poo/vomit/need feeding or all three - I promise. Don't get on the scales! I love this thread. Lots of memories.

We didn't know what to do when we first shut the door behind us then remembered about a tour of the house.'This is where you're going to sleep, this is where you'll have your tea....and so on' Makes me weepy just to think about it. Then DH made tea and biscuits and we retired to bed with DD.
Most my tips have been mentioned but I really appreciated having a lovely cotton dressing gown to chuck on and a hairband to get the hair off my face when it came to the night feeds. All the very best new mummies to be

One thing I found a bit help in saving washing was to put a terry nappy under babies head in cot etc to catch puke/ milk etc. You can just wip it off and the sheet will still be clean underneath.

In a similar way put one under your boobs on the bed and maybe stick a towel under the sheet where you lie. I'm always amazed how much they leak and this saves waking up in a wet patch!

Just had another couple of thoughts ...

• if you end up bottle feeding get one of those little tupperware-type pots which subdivides into three sections and has a lid which rotates so you can measure the formula out in moments of calm ready for mixing later on. I didn't have one with ds and my abiding memory is of him screaming his head off in the middle of the night while I tried to measure formula into the bottle with one hand and limited brain cells. I got mine in John Lewis but I've seen them in catalogues (Jo Jo Maman Bebe?). Worth every penny! Also, you don't need to warm formula milk. From day 1 with dd we have just poured the cooled, boiled water into the bottles which we then keep on the counter until she needs a feed, then we add in the (pre-measured ) formula and give it to her at room temperature. This saves a lot of faffing about with bottle warmers etc.

• talking about bottle feeding, don't get stressed if breast feeding doesn't work out. I made myself miserable with guilt when I couldn't bf ds and it ruined the first few weeks of his life for all of us. If you want to bf then go ahead and try every way possible to make it work, but if it doesn't work out please, please don't beat yourself up - more than anything your baby needs a happy mummy !

• hopefully you'll have a lovely smiley contented baby but if you end up with a highly strung screamer (aka my ds who specialised in throwing complete wobblies in public places) then remember that the screams of a screaming baby only sound deafening to it's mother. Other people in the cafe/bus/street are not all looking at you thinking 'awful mother' - they probably haven't even noticed or are thinking 'aw sweeeeeeet..'. DS's yowling fits turned me into a complete hermit for a while and I really regret that. BTW, having slagged him off I should say that ds is now a lovely, charming, outgoing two year old who rarely screams - so if you do yet a yowler the chances are he or she will grow out of it!

Enjoy your baby!

I second the formula-box advice. Used it all the time for dd1's daytime feeds - took it out with water in the bottles, mixed up everywhere (in a bus queue once) - no problem at all.

Also, remember to eat enough yourself. It's really easy to get to the point where food just seems another chore. My dear dp practically force-fed me the evening not long ago when he found me, dd1 and dd2 (then three weeks or so) all in tears. He was right; it did make me feel better. It's particularly easy to skip breakfast because you've finally got a chance of some sleep, and then the baby wakes and another day begins - well, at the risk of sounding too mummyish, DON'T.

HTH!

heaps of good stuff on here.
would suggest loads of sanitary towels (the purple always ones were pretty mega), a huge pair of jogging bottoms, plenty of clean long/short sleeve tshirts for you (it's nice feeling at least to be clean for a few minutes eachv day), lots of food treats for you, plenty bottles of water to hand, magazines or at least light reading for during breastfeeding, list of numbers of eg breastfeeding support groups, a cordless phone and make sure you screen calls, a breast pump to relieve pressure if like mine your babies are sleepy at first and taking a bit of milk out between feeds really does reduce the risk of getting blocked ducts/pain related to pressure.
good luck!

what sucks blood and has wings?

An always ultra!! Boom boom. Sorry if that joke is naff but the bit about purple always reminded me of it.

you can get the boxes in mothercare too for seperating formula

Quick tip that I have just discovered...if asking your DP/DH to get sanitary towels DON'T. Just asked my DH to get some as am now packing bag. Wrote down the name, showed him a picture, came back with like Always Ultra, and considering last time I needed 3 mattresses in my pants the Always aren't gonna cut it.

So get a lady, unless your DH is better trained than mine, to get your supplies

Are the purple ones the overnights with three little drips on the absorbency indicator, or are those dark blue? I used to use them when flooding, they are longer than the others so you get fewer in a packet but safer for sitting and lying down in.

janh, he got me these

Its just fustrating when I litterally did everything short of writing the bar code numbers. And he got the wrong nappies...

opps

copy and paste job:

www.sainsburystoyou.com/main/frameset.jsp?bmUID=1063900495257

I give up I'm having one of those days...

pie tell him to get you some pampers care mats much more useful!!

I would fio, but he'd probably buy a bucket.