Useful things to have during the first few days of newborn life

[yelyahyoung]

Hey everyone ☺️ my due date was yesterday and I’ve done all the last minute things I wanted to do like changing the bed sheets and having clean spares, cleaning bathroom and towels, mopping floors, hoovering car, etc... just so it will hopefully be that teeny bit easier to keep on top of once baby is here lol. Now I’m just doing our online food shop and I’m wondering if anyone can recommend anything that they found useful during the first few days of settling in with their newborn? Whether it be food or just general items... or anything else house related that I should do now lol. I’m thinking of ordering mostly frozen and longer life items in case I don’t get a chance to cook with the fresh I would normally order before it expires. I haven’t batch cooked anything either, perhaps I should have..... lol
Thanks, I appreciate any suggestions

Watching with interest.

Get that freezer full of batch cooking!

Snacks you can eat with one hand like cereal bars etc are useful

Yep most useful thing for us was batch cooking. We had about 20 meals in the freezer, mostly casseroles with potatoes or pasta and curries with rice in the sauce so we didn't have to even chop and cook veg or carbs. Also loads of flapjacks in the freezer so there were healthy snack options.
Long-life milk and extra bread if you have room in the freezer.
Foods for easy sandwiches; cold meats, hummous, cheese.

Things you can eat with no or minimal preparation. Especially if you are breastfeeding, you may get really hungry so snacks like homemade flapjacks, fruit teacakes, bananas etc are useful. And nice biscuits or cake to offer all the many likely visitors!

Food! Anything you normally like that can be eaten with one hand.

A jug to pour warm water over your bits while you use the loo.

Lots of pants and clean soft clothes without bits that scratch the baby.

Food!!!!

Things to tie your hair back.

A partner.

Water bottle. Thermos cup with a lid

Agree with all the above although I could never be bothered with batch cooking so was more of a “nibbly bits” person. Something I found useful which is a bit weird is a small basket or similar to cart your “sofa” stuff around eg I needed to have my water, snacks, phone, kindle, baby bits like muslins and nipple cream, tablets, close to me, and I found it helped to keep them in a basket for when I moved around the house or went upstairs.

Congratulations OP, hope you are not waiting too long now!

I would recommend lots of washing powder/fabric conditioner and most importantly stain remover. I used a lot of stain remover in the first few months, and I just used the pink pot of Aldi own-brand stuff, it worked fine.

As others have said, lots of easy food that you can eat with one hand, Get yourself a feeding basket with supplies in that you can keep on the sofa. This is so that you have stuff to hand when you get sat down with a feeding/sleeping baby. Fill it with snacks, drinks (sports tops - easy to drink one handed), magazines, books, muslins, wipes maybe an extra layer/blanker to cover yourself up and always make sure the remote is in there!

Congratulations.

I'd say: earplugs sometime to change nappies for you a COOK shop or M&S nearby!

Don't spend these days batchcooking all day. Rest, see friends, Netflix etc....

*someone!

Lansinoh nipple cream if you don’t have it already

Water bottle/ jug to keep handy for BFing (it makes you super thirsty)

I think batch cooking is such a personal thing - I did and then we never ate any of the food. I was cooking dinner 48 hours after having DS (out of choice) and I loved the respite from the baby. I found frozen pre-prepared veggies great - so easy to just add into a stir fry or fajitas or whatever! you definitely want food you can eat one handed too; we had a lot of risottos and pasta.

I didn't batch cook anything, my DP is a good cook and we have a lot of 30 minute or less type meals we enjoy do cooking wasnt an issue between us.

I did however make sure we had lots of nibbly type foods in for when I fancied a snack

I also did what DragonOnFire did and had a basket I carried all over the house with me that had everything I could possibly need at hand. Invaluable.

Cardigans or nursing tops so you won't get cold when feeding all night.

I never batch cooked it's just not really something I bothered with. For first two weeks or so DH always cooked easy things like chicken, veg and rice or salmon etc then when he went back to work I ate loads of fresh pasta that took 6 mins to cook or I made salads and soup etc

For the first few weeks I remember just sitting around breastfeeding watching Netflix series.

One thing I would recommend to do is to practice tying the cloth sling and putting a teddy bear or something in it. The cloth slings are so nice when the babies are little but you do need to be able to tie them and feel confident

Watching with interest at 38 weeks!

Make sure you know how the car seat fixes in the car. If it's one that works with a travel system, make sure you know how to fix that. Make sure you know how to fix the baby in the car seat. Make sure you know how to collapse your buggy and get it back up again.

Then practice doing it all one-handed

In fact practice doing every thing one handed.

Haribo and chocolate.

Our freezer is tiny, I started mat leave today, my plan is to find some good quick recipes that we can use in the early days and stock the fridge up with that.
Need to find myself a basket for feeding to carry about the house as PPs have suggested! It reminds me of my lovely Nana who used to carry her handbag around the house with her for all her essentials, even though she very rarely actually went out!

I agree have lots of snacky bits which you can grab when you get super hubgry that even waitinh for pasta to cook would take too long.

My biggest regret however is not practicing fastening a doll or teddy into the car seat in the dark. We left hospital when the sun had gone down and it suddenly occured to us that fastening a car seat is much more difficult when you cannot fully see what you are doing. We really struggled to strap baby into the car seat with just a phone torch for light.

Stock up on paracetamol and ibuprofen, I needed to take the max dose of both for about a week after my second baby, and had to send DH out almost every day for more!

A dressing gown and slippers!

Difficult to predict really, we had to go on a few trips to boots etc to get things that suddenly became essential such as nipple shields but I wouldn't buy in advance as you may not need it.

On the food point, no stress here dh had loads of time to pop to the supermarkets and cook us fresh food from scratch during his paternity leave. A newborn doesn't usually need 2 people to look after it! The hard part is when your oh goes back to work.

Loads of tops and hand towels to sleep on, those first few days of leaky boobs are a bit unpredictable.
Totally agree with other posters, food you can just open and eat. A lidded mug. Tons of snacks. Bottles of water if tap’s no good.

A really cosy fleecy blanket to put round you when feeding endlessly, so you can sit with your top off and just be.

A couple of audiobooks!

Biscuits and tea :) I couldn't face eating proper meals!!! My body felt so strange, I just couldn't manage it! Ginger biscuits were all I could stomach. So snacks and things like that. I'm now pregnant and just made myself a little list of things to have in the house for the first few weeks. It'll sound very odd but I want to get flowers in the rooms too! You have to spend so much time pinned down by baby that little things to perk up the environment make a difference imho!