Monday, January 10, 2011

What I wish I had known

The last two weeks since giving birth have been very tiring and a lot of fun at the same time. There are a few things that I wish I had known, that might have made things a little easier on us. I'd like to share them with you.

1. Unless there is a concern about baby losing too much weight, you don't have to wake baby up every 2-3 hours at night to feed. The first couple nights we drove ourselves crazy trying to wake her up (and failing) and it made me feel like a bad Mom.

2. Your cats are not going to jump in the crib and smother the baby. I'm not kidding; our first night at home M and I slept in shifts because we thought the cats were acting a little weird and were worried about what they were going to do.

3. Stock up on pads! GIANT diaper-like pads! I took as many as I could from the hospital and it was not enough. I was not prepared for how much bleeding there would be and my stockpile of pantiliners just did not cut it. Sure, you can go out and buy them right after you get home, but trust me, you are not going to feel up to anything other than sitting on your butt your first few days at home.

4. You're not going to break the baby. I swear it took me 15 minutes to change her diaper or her clothes the first couple days because I was so worried about dislocating one of her little arms or cutting off circulation to her legs. Babies are pretty resilient; acting as if they are akin to porcelain dolls causes anxiety and stress and is just not necessary.

5. Baby poop can be explosive, and this is normal. Poor M has been sprayed with poop a number of times now. Our carpet is another casualty. Invest in disposable or washable pads that go over your changing pad cover and something (like extra wipes or pads) that you can use to try to cover the poop fountain. You're welcome.

10 words of geekdom:

Kristin said...

YAY Congrats!!! Dittto on the pads! The bleeding is ridiculous! Hope y'all are doing well!

Amanda Westerlund said...

Told you those diaper pads with the extra liner are awesome!!! Hope you're having a great visit with Mom, and she's letting you sleep a little extra :)

Leah said...

Haha, thanks for the tips!! :-)

Jenny said...

such great tips! Thank you!

Cheerbuddy said...

Such good info. Thank you so much for sharing!

SSG said...

Always Infinity pads are awesome, they hold a ton, don't leak and are thin. Also the multi-use pads for the changing table are great. I get the BRU brand, the disposable kind. LIFESAVER. I also stash some in the diaper bag to lay down on those disgusting changing tables in public bathrooms, then put my changing pad on top of that.

Anonymous said...

We used prefolds to cover the changing table and dumped them in to the pail as necessary.

Lindsay said...

Oh my gosh, yes! Yes, yes, yes to all of this! I laughed at your point about the cats...this was SO us! I used to stay up until 3 a.m. and then my husband would get up and I would sleep until noon just so we could make sure none of our cats would smother the baby. They didn't. They were acting weird because we were, I'm sure. Haha!

geeklingdesigns said...

Get the "bladder control" type of pads (depends, etc.) for the first few days post-partum. They work really well! So do Always Infinty :)

Kat said...

I wish I knew about #1

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