hospital bag

[kelbel]

any tips and hints for what to pack for me and baby?

Comfy knickers,Night shirts,Warm socks,a couple of changes of clothes for the little one including a hat,plenty of nappies and wipes,peg for your nose for the first few nappy changes,change for the pay phone,Lucazade energy tablet sweets(to keep your energy levels up both during labour and after).Mini hand held fan-some hospitals have the heat up so high its gross.I,m sure there are loads of things i have forgotten......

midwife tip: olive oil or calendula oil is great for cleaning the bums of those first few meconium poos.

defo a hat for the baby.

bit of lip salve as the entonox makes your lips a bit dry.

warm socks are unnecessary as the rooms are so darn warm - they have to be for the babes.

Silly question from me, do you pack a baby bag and a mommy bag or combine the two into one. Preggie Brain

I had my warm socks on during labour my feet and hands were freezing!!!!I'm sure babes dont need to be as hot as it was on our ward all the staff had fans on them while we were all melting.There is warm and there is just silly hot.

Oatcake,i would put them in together so everything is at hand.

Doh!Ruva not oakcake.

Am laughing so hard you are going to pop my laproscopy scar and spill my baby-I guess thats a big suitcase then!

ruva agreekeep it together- you dont get loads of space BUT keep the stuff you only want in labour separate so birth partner can take straight home afterwards, means you dont haev to cart around all the extras should you be in for a few days or whatever.

Extras- OK magazines as baby will sleep in the day and its often so noisy you cant sleep yourself and can get a bit boring; money- not just change for the phone, lasyt hospital I birthed at had a token system where you could only get a phone card for a minimum of a fiver! (one fot hsoe TV / net systems all combined).

treats or yourself- eg some nice instant hot choc that can be amde with readily available hot water but doesn't have the up all night caffeine of the constant tea and coffee barage; cordial if you're not a water fan esp. if you plan to BF as you will get very thirsty.

Can also be useful to have a disposable camera- my sister's posh digital state of the art thing wouldn't operate under flourescent lights in SCBU, so they missed photo's of Baby for first day- disposables work fine though regardless of type of lighting.

ruva,Going off on a tangent.Im going in a laproscopy next month to have cyst drained-nice-and adhestions removed.Was worried it may affect my chances of falling preg again.Any advice on what to expect?

Hi nobody's fool,
Sorry ladies to go off target, I had bad i mean nasty pms, went for a scan where i was advised to have lap, but it took me One and a half years to decide as i did not have enough support, was scared went private as waiting list was long was told that i had a scar in my uterus, endometrisis, blocked tubes and was told to have ivf, to be honest the gynae must have vacummed something as i paid for ivf and was about to start my cycle only to find out i was pregnant- 3months after lapro- so i think it helped.
Good luck-p.s i also drank kombucha tea.

You must be over the moon.Congrats.The joys of being a woman eh?!

I,m off now ladies ds has woken up from his nap good luck with the bag packing x

congrats ruva!

my tip is take half as much as you think you'll need and it will still be twice as much as you'll use!

you'll have visitors in hospital and they can bring in anything you need.

I was in hospital for exactly 5 1/2 hours this time and took a bag that would have done a family of 4 for a week! I obviously can't take my own advice.

just answered thread the same as this, so to hear my fab words of wisdom its over there somewhere

that some food for yourself - cereal bars, dried fruit, anything ath you can bung in your bag and it will keep ok. If you give birth in the evening you won't necessarily get a meal and will be starving after all that hard work.

i agree with loler though i took far too much stuff and you can always get your dp to fetch things for you.