A few tips for new mums

Quite a few friends have had babies recently, with a couple more due in the coming months. I get such a kick out of seeing my friends become mums, taking on the new responsibility with a mix of pride and trepidation. And of course I love to snuggle up to the newborns

A delicious newborn (not one of mine)

whenever I can! There’s nothing quite like holding a newborn in your arms; the floppy limbs, the milky smell, the unfocused stare… it makes me tear up just thinking about it. My hormones go a little crazy when new babies are around, and my resolve of being ‘done’ can start to unravel.

Here are a few things I wish I'd known when my kids were first born, and I thought it would be good to share them with my new mummy friends.

Think of the 1st 3 months as the ‘4th trimester’

The idea behind the 4^th trimester is to try and ease your newborn into this big, noisy world gradually and gently. Bubby has spent the last nine months 'inside' being rocked, held tight and listening to your heartbeat, so the outside world must seem terrifying at first. It helps to look at those first three months of bubby’s life as an extension of their time in the womb – keep them close, follow their cues around feeding and sleeping, and don’t expect them to fall into any kind of routine.

‘Wearing’ bubby in a good quality baby carrier like a Manduca or an Ergo can be the only

Manduca baby carrier

way you get anything done during those early months. It’s amazing what you can do with a little person strapped to your front! And just remember, you can't 'spoil' your baby with too much love.

Read up on The Wonder Weeks

I’ve written about The Wonder Weeks on this blog before. They are developmental stages in the first 20 months of a baby’s life when their brains take a massive leap forward and their sleeping, eating and behaviour can turn completely upside down. Understanding when your bubby is due to enter a new ‘leap’ can keep you from having a complete breakdown! 

Knowing when a leap will occur won’t change bubby’s behaviour, but understanding why they are suddenly waking 17 times a night and whingeing all bloody day can keep you from tearing your hair out (and blaming yourself).

If you want to read all the theory behind the Wonder Weeks there’s a book you can buy, otherwise the Wonder Weeks app has all the basic details.

Watch your baby, not the clock

There are a lot of parenting ‘experts’ that advocate strict routines for babies of all ages, with some of them being downright cruel in my opinion. While some babies do thrive on routines, it doesn't work for all of them. My first was a to-the-minute routine baby, you could pretty much set your watch by her, but my little man wasn't interested in doing the same thing more than two days in a row. He still isn't even at 15 months!

I’m a strong believer in learning to read your bubby; learn what their different noises, cries and facial expressions mean, rather than expecting your little one to be hungry at a certain time, or ready for a sleep simply because the routine says its time.

Dunstan Baby Language is an interesting concept; Priscilla Dunstan is an Australian opera singer who claims that all newborns make similar sounding noises to signify specific wants or needs, i.e. when they’re hungry, tired, or uncomfortable. I could never differentiate these noises with my babies, but I know other mums who’ve found DBL really helpful.

Think in Military Time

Bringing a new bubby home from the hospital can be exciting and terrifying all at once. You don’t know what to expect and you can’t imagine what the hospital staff were thinking letting you walk out with this tiny, helpless little thing. You don’t know what your baby wants and you’re not sure how you’ll cope. One thing you can just about guarantee is that you won’t have a full night's sleep for several months (possibly years), and it won’t be long before the sleep deprivation really begins to mess with you.

Military time on iPhone

I remember a few weeks after we brought Little Miss home from the hospital; I was sitting in bed feeding her (again), staring at the bedside clock which said 3:00. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me if it was 3 in the morning or 3 in the afternoon. No clue. I was in my pyjamas, but I’d been in pyjamas for days so that didn’t really help me. It was dark outside, but it was a wet and gloomy week so that didn’t help either. Mr McD wasn’t in bed, but he had been sleeping on the couch, so I was still none the wiser.  It left me feeling even more disoriented than I already was. So from that moment on I set all the clocks to 24 hour time, so I had some understanding of how each day was progressing. I also stopped thinking in terms of day and night; babies can’t tell the time, and they don’t really care whether it’s 3am or 3pm – if they’re hungry, they’re hungry and that’s all there is to it. But at least I knew when I should be getting out of my pj's.

Breastfeeding and drinking

Having a glass of red wine is something I really enjoy; it helps me to unwind from a day at work and to de-stress after a day with the kids ;) You can still have a drink when you’re breastfeeding, you just need to understand how alcohol goes through to your milk. Alcohol

Mmmm... wine

is present in your breastmilk at the same concentration as in your blood stream, so if you've got a BAC of 0.05 then that's the same in your milk. In the first month, babies are unable to metabolise any alcohol at all, so avoid drinking for at least the first month, and take it easy for the next two months as their little livers are still pretty immature. After that it’s pretty safe to have a drink, you just need to time it right. 

Alcohol takes about 30 minutes to enter your breastmilk, so, while you might get a few funny looks if you’re out at the pub, having a drink while you’re feeding is fine, and will also mean that by the time you’ve finished that feed (and your drink), your milk will be alcohol-free sooner. There are a few calculators available online to work out how quickly alcohol will be out of your system, and you can also buy Milkscreen strips to test whether alcohol is present in your milk. A good guide is to wait two hours for each standard drink, but people metabolise alcohol at different rates depending on their size.

The Kellymom website is a great resource for breastfeeding info, as is the Australian Breastfeeding Association website. 

Think about BLW

Once you get through the hazy newborn days you’ll need to start thinking about how you’re going to introduce solids to your little one. Baby Led Weaning (BLW) just means letting your bubby feed themselves right from the beginning, skipping the purees and mashes and going straight to finger food. I had great success with BLW with Little Miss; she was eating steak by 7 months, despite only having four teeth! My little guy took a bit longer due to his food intolerances, but got the hang of it by around 9 months. BLW is only recommended once a bubby is 6 months old and able to support themselves (i.e. sit up in a high chair).

BLW - fun but messy!!

The main thing parents are concerned with in relation to BLW is choking, but if you follow the guidelines about the appropriate size and shape of finger foods then there’s really nothing to worry about. Babies have a very well developed gag reflex; if they sense something going down their throat that shouldn’t be, their gag reflex kicks in and hurls it back out again.

If you are going to go down the BLW road I highly recommend getting some kind of splat mat to go under bubby's high chair. We eat outside during summer to minimise the mess inside, and often naked (just the kiddies, not me). Food will go everywhere, but that's half the fun :)

There are great videos on YouTube that demonstrate the difference between gagging and choking, just search ‘gagging vs choking’. Check out the BLW website for more info.  

My most important piece of advice to new mummies is to just enjoy your baby. Don't get so caught up in whether you're doing things 'right' that you miss out on the fun stuff. Babies are awesome! They grow up so quickly, so make the most of those precious months when they're completely dependent on you for their every need. Because it won't be long before they start rolling their eyes at everything you say and asking to borrow the car keys.

What do you wish you'd known when your babies were first born?