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

[OliviaMumsnet]

We have some more tips from Vicki Scott, Philips AVENT'S first baby feeding and wellbeing advisor. This time, Vicki's covering surviving Christmas with a baby which you can read here but we'd also love to get your top tips on how you coped with your first few Christmasses.

Everyone who sends a tip will be entered into a prize draw to win a Philips SENSEO Pod Coffee Maker (RRP £50) and a Philips Aluminum Juicer (RRP £100).
Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

For those with newborns: Don't invite anyone over. Don't go anywhere. Stay indoors with a Findus frozen Christmas dinner and a cracker stolen from your DP Christmas party.

For those with older babies: Don't invite anyone over. Don't go anywhere. Stay indoors with a Findus frozen Christmas dinner and a cracker stolen from your NCT group Christmas party.

For those with older children: Don't invite anyone over. Don't go anywhere. Stay indoors with a Findus frozen Christmas dinner and a cracker stolen from your child's nursery/school Christmas party.

What is all this "surviving" Christmas with a baby FFS! What's wrong with enjoying it? Its not that bad!

Stick on a silly hat and go with the flow - who cares if you eat the Turkey at 10.30pm at least you will have had a few drinks and won't care if it is dry

Am loving the Avent-bottles-as-cocktail-shakers idea. You could fill the steriliser with ice and use it to chill champagne as well.

don't children just make christmas, I don't survive christmas with them, I delight in it.

Dear God - what next - 'surviving' Christmas with a baby!

What the heck is wrong with people that they have to start from such a negative perspective?

It is nuts, nuts I tell you!

Perhaps we should all rewind a few thousand years and ask good ole Mary, how she survived Christmas with a baby.

I think MN should think carefully about there association with this woman! She's not exactly a positive spokesperson for parenthood is she?

Oh and while we're at it, shall we ask Mary how she coped without an AVENT (MNHQ emphasis) baby feeding and wellbeing adviser?

Make the most of them not being able to ask for all the latestest gadgets, they won't be disappointed in your present, infact they won't even be aware of having presents. They won't care that Christmas lunch was a takeaway or was burnt.

As others have said, how about people just enjoying their first Christmas? Relax, soak it all in, take loads of photos. If it's a case of "surviving" it, why not forget Christmas altogether? FGS - whatever next?!

First Christmas as a family, that should be.

But Christmas with a baby is lovely!
You don't have to survive it.

Yes what exactly is it with this surviving business? If all there is to having a baby is stress and hard work, why the hell do we all bother?

I plan to cope by filling DS's first ever Christmas stocking, watching his face light up on Christmas morning, seeing him have his first taste of Christmas pudding, enjoying playing with his new toys and generally having a lovely time, thank you very much. Oh the stress of it all!

This is just plain odd.

Just enjoy your baby and get someone else to cook/use frozen eveyrthing

I have to say to Mumsnet Towers that you're quite possibly shooting yourselves in both feet with this one. I always thought Mumsnet was aimed at the thinking woman, the woman who didn't need to be a slave to so-called experts. I thought that was why there isn't that much info on your site other than the absolutely brilliant talk boards. Why try to be all things to all people? There are so many other sites covering all that crap.

Just my humble opinion.

this isn't serious right?

top tip put them in a red baby grown add ribbon through arm holes and hang on tree until hungry

aw I love mn, any other mumsy site would be flooded with replies directing useful ways to distract babies from trees and how to puree a turkey dinner so 'the baby' can join in...

But no not sharp mnetters. Surviving! Pah! Throw a bit of free-range turkey at the kids and have them loving the pretty lights!
{grin]

Ooh just seen. there's a prize right then, well then that's different.
So...

Throw a bit of free-range turkey at the kids and let them enjoy the pretty lights.

"surviving" Christmas with a baby?

What's the problem? [puzzled]

I've had Christmas with a 3 month old ds and Christmas with a six month old dd and cannot for the life of me see where there were any problems.....

Got a fab photo of dd at 6 months trying to get to the lovely shiny paper!!!!

I have to agree I find this a bit odd. You "survive" Christmas with a baby in exactly the same way as you "survive" all the other days with a baby and all the other christmases without one.

Christmas with babies is lovely - at one and the same time you feel you're doing Christmas as a family, but, in reality, they don;t make much difference. With a baby you can sit at the dinner table and indulge and be adult - and you can relish the whole cycle thing of life - you're probably starting to find adult christmases a bit tedious and samey, so you can gaze adoringly at your baby and think ahead about Christmas with a toddler, christmas with a four year old...etc.

I started reading Vicki's tips but had to stop when I read that if you;re going to stay with friends to ask them to buy nappies for you. wtf? how pfb is that? you have friends who are entertaining you, cooking you lovely food, and you ask them to get some nappies in. if they didn;t have kids they woule recoil in horror. if they had kids they would quite possibly be tempted to tell you that perhaps they already had enough on their plate. if they were polite.

ds1 born late xmas eve

top tip - put on xmas paper hat, hand baby to dh and get pissed by lunchtime xmas day

eat and drink all the stuff you werent allowed to for 9 flippin months

sing karaoke till the wee hours of boxing morning

and get into the swing of things the next day

But then, if having a baby wasn't so difficult we wouldn't have to buy all those lovely labour-saving devices now, would we?

I have never loved xmas as much as when I have had my children. If you can only hope to survive xmas with babies you're doing it wrong! It's no harder than any other day, but better, you don't have to rush off to work/school/nursery, you don't have to fret about entertainment cos of all the relatives about and there's lots of stuff to do together.

So top tip, enjoy each other, sod difficult relatives and don't fret too much about social niceties, make up for fohpahs the rest of the year

Get your friends to buy in nappies for you?!!?!? But it is your baby! You wouldn't expect em to buy you some fresh knickers

wine, chocolate, wine, more chocs, more wine.........

of course, if you are BFing, then wine isn't recommended, so then you could try....

hot chocolate, scrummy biccies, hot choc, scrummy biccies.

oooh, and a good sense of humour....always handy.

(of course, this may warrent serious tips, but with the mornign I am having right now I am hiding upstairs while the kiddies sort their own fights out so humour and wine and choc is what I am dreaming of and all sensibleness has left the building)

I'm hoping that Turtle arrives before Xmas - I'm really excited about having a newborn at Xmas time!
And I certainly won't be asking people to buy me nappies - family and friends have already been more than generous in buying baby bits and pieces!
I'm making sure I'm prepared by getting all my Xmas shopping done nice and early, cooking up loads of food for the freezer and will hopefully be looking forward to a lovely Xmas
Ooh and I've stocked up on some pate, I've sooo missed pate!!!