Helping dog adapt to newborn baby

[HighlySuspect]

Expecting first baby in a couple months' time, and already have a lovely-tempered 2 year old dog. Anyone have any specific advice on steps they took with an existing pup when bringing home a newborn? We've done a lot of work already to acclimatize her to loud noises, desensitise her to crying and generally get her used to small children, prams and babies and she's done great, but I want to make sure I haven't overlooked anything.

One thing I am concerned about is barking. We live in a rural area and she barks when someone approaches the house, which we have never previously discouraged; BUT her barking isn't quiet, and I'm just now realising it's likely to wake a sleeping baby. Has anyone had this issue / taken any steps to resolve it? Or conversely, do some babies sleep right through loud noises if you get them used to it?

With my DS, I had a dog that barked at the door... or anything he thought might be the door DS was a blooming terrible sleeper, but, the dog barking didn’t particularly disturb him.

Someone pointed out he’d been listening to a muffled version of it while I was pregnant, lol, so yep, entirely possible it won’t be an issue.

Most babies will seep through any noise that they've been used to, so let the dog bark, use the hoover and play music

If you can - training the baby to get used to sleeping through noise will make life easier.
Leaving a radio or some sort of noise on with the baby will make any sudden barking noises seem less loud to the baby.

Is your dog able to happily give up a toy on command?is you dog showing any jealousy around other dogs?is you dog happily moving off the settee when you tell him to?what I mean with those questions, is your dog showing any dominance behaviour and refusing to follow your commands.the barking noise wont be a problem at all.

Good luck OP.

My dog was 7 when I had DS1, when I was in early labour at home my dog was very stressed, he knew something was happening.

When we got home with the baby, he was asleep in his car seat, dog gave him a sniff.

Luckily for us, DS1 was a contented baby and didn’t cry a lot DS2 was a whole different story.

We never left dog & baby together alone.

I trusted my dog, but he had repeated ear infections and if baby/toddler touched his ears, when they were tender, obviously the dog would react.

Dog settled down very quickly, we didn’t have any drama at all. It will be ok, try not to worry about it.

I took a blanket into hospital with me for both our DC (not one that we loved, just a plain one) and had them wrapped in it for the whole time pretty much that we were in hospital, DH parents then brought the blanket home for the dogs to sniff and gave them loads of praise and treats when they were good and calm with it so they associated babies smell with positive things. When we brought DD home, our eldest dog would sleep under her Moses basket with the blanket and get up to check on her if she made any noise 🥰 she's not as keen now she's walking and pulling her ears though 😂 we are working on that!

We have an 18month old dog, our little girl is around ten weeks old, so not a new born, but not a ‘big’ baby either. We’re almost a week in and generally the dog isn’t an issue, he has woken her up a few times as he can be a bit noisey when he plays.

He’s had the odd sniff of her, but apart from that hasn’t shown an interest really, he knows off, so if she is on the floor we just say off when he walks on the edge of his blanket. Crying doesn’t seem to bother him, he happily naps through it.