If you’re new to parenting and motherhood lifestyle. I am talking about the newborn stage today and it’s been a while since I had a newborn. My son who is my second child he is now one years old and let me tell you when I was pregnant with my second I was confident that I knew what I was doing and I had it all figured out. I was absolutely wrong every single baby is different and they have different things that they like having another child into the mix after having my first that was also challenge as well. So today I just want to dive into some tips and tricks that I have learned along the way after having two babies.
Tip # 1 (Baby Language)
Each Baby is different from each other and hopefully this will help you out as well as you navigate the newborn stage and your own motherhood journey and these tips are in no particular order but I found each and every one of them extremely helpful. The things that I didn’t know with my first but figured out on my own as time went on and as I added my second child to my family so one thing that made me super confident knowing when I had my babies was knowing the cues and also knowing baby language but each different kind of cry that babies make means a different thing. The neck cry means hungry so they make an S sound with their crying. The ow sound means sleepy that air sound means lower gas means discomfort and F means they need to burp so I highly recommend looking at this if your baby does have a tongue-tied this will be a little bit more difficult for you to distinguish but this was extremely helpful for me with both of my babies another thing is great is to learn the cue so with when they’re hungry and when they’re tired so some of the hungry cues is that they’ll be searching for some milk and they’ll kind of sway their head sides slide they’ll certain clicking or licking with their tongue lip smacking crying. The sleeping cues to look out for are cooing pulling and tugging their ears yawning and rubbing their face I found these are just extremely helpful tips because it’s always good to know when your baby is tired and hungry so they don’t get to the stage where they’re super cranky and overtired because it can be really difficult to actually get an overtired baby to sleep and that’s hard on everybody.
Tip #2 (Stock up on Gripe water, Gas Drops and Probiotics)
Another great tip that I have is to stock up on gas drops and gripe water gripe water is amazing for calming your baby’s tummy. Whenever they have gas and it’s great for alleviating hiccups because when newborns have hiccups it’s actually, really sad because it makes them actually feel quite uncomfortable with my second baby my son he had colic and reflux so gas drops were actually extremely helpful for us for alleviating a lot of his gas pain and also to if you have a colic and reflux baby like my son probiotic drops are actually really helpful. I’ll actually be doing this next time that I get pregnant with my newborn is that I’ll be giving them probiotics right away because their digestive system isn’t super mature when they’re born, so it’s hard for them to digest certain proteins and the things that we eat if you’re breastfeeding and even in formula of course always ask your doctor if you’re wanting to start a probiotic. There are the drops which i used and you can easily find on amazon for you baby the link of this products are given below for your ease.
Tip #3 (Zip up Jammies)
I am not a Doctor if you’re interested in doing that stick to using zip up jammies. I had a lot of snap jammies with my first with my daughter and it took a lot longer to do diaper changes and changing them because we all know that newborns have a lot of blowouts when they’re small because they’re on a strictly liquid diet and so their poop is basically liquid and it’s really easy for blowouts to happen and so when you’re changing them you want it to be as quick as possible because babies love to be warm they left me snuggled in and they get pretty cranky when they’re not that way. I found that zipper jammies were just so much easier to use. I have added the link of the zipper pajamas which i used and the quality of this zipper pajama is also very nice.
Tip # 4 (Wipe Warmer)
I actually didn’t have this with both of my babies but now I’m realizing now that I now that I had a way that getting a wipe warmer is actually really helpful. My son hated diaper changes he would scream every single time I would put a cold wipe on his bum because with girls they don’t really care too much but with boys it’s a lot more sensitive when you’re putting something cold on their bum and so I found a wipe warmer was actually really helpful to make diaper changes. The link of the wipe warmer which is used is given under its was cheap and also built quality was good.
Tip #5 (Baby Tracker)
Its much easier and smooth for everybody to get a baby tracker app this is really helpful especially in the first 30 days because you want to make sure that your baby is eating enough sleeping enough if they’re breastfeeding bottle feeding and basically, their schedule and how much they’re getting because we all want our babies to thrive and to grow and so we want to make sure that we’re tracking these things to make sure that they’re on track another. I used Owlet Duo Smart Baby Monitor as with it you can monitor your baby every move and also know about babies heart rate and oxygen level. Its really a great investement for your baby and for the future babies. The link for this monitor is given below and is highly recommended.
Tip #6 (Ask for Help)
Another great tip is ask for help. I know that I was so bad at this because I felt like as a mom I had to put everything on my shoulders and that’s just not true asking for help is so important because having a newborn is a lot especially when you’re adding a new born into a family with multiple children it can be a lot of work and so it’s always great to reach out and ask someone to just take the older kids or for them to take the newborn baby so you can have some rest and just some downtime if you need to nap or you need to get some things done it’s just so incredibly helpful to have people come alongside you and support you in that way
Tip # 7 (Get a dimming Light)
Get a dimming light for nighttime you’ll know that newborns need feeding all times throughout the day and so when I would get up in the night time I this is great. I have a Himalayan salt lamp and had a dimmer on it so I could just turn that on it was a really nice soft dim light so I could see what I was doing when I was nursing my son but I wasn’t waking him up like with really bright lights because you wanted to have them know when it’s nighttime and when it’s daytime and so when it’s nighttime you want it to be dark and quiet and calm and you don’t want to turn on the bright lights to feed so then you kind of wake them up a little bit more so I found this extremely helpful
Tip # 8 (Babies Onesies)
one thing I didn’t know with my first is that with onesies you can actually use the flaps at the top and pull them down when they have a blowout these are actually designed specifically for this purpose which I had no idea instead of putting the dirty yucky onesie over your baby’s head you can actually pull it down over the shoulders and off of the legs and so you’re not putting poop on your baby’s head or you might be able to get poop on their baby’s head so this was actually really really helpful tip that I found that I use actually I still use it with my with my son who’s now a year because it’s just so much easier to not put things over their head
Tip #09 (Invest In a Good Carrier)
Invest in a good carrier now my daughter loved being close to me she loved being in the carrier my son at the beginning not so much but now he truly loves being carried in the carrier I have a bunch of different ones and the ones that I found worked the best are a baby wrap and one that I really love that’s pretty affordable and is really versatile is infantino three and one where you can have them on your back on your front facing forward or facing in it’s just a really great carrier that I’ve used with my second and I found that it’s been my favorite so far swaddle the quicker way now swaddling is definitely a must when it.
Tip #10 (Velcro swaddle)
Newborn babies they love to feel tight and secure and we always want to be mimicking the womb because that’s when they feel the most happy and the most secure so the one thing that I found extremely helpful for both of my babies is getting a Velcro swaddle you can actually pull them in there pretty tight and it feels nice and snug and they actually can’t break out as easy as if you were just using a swaddle blanket whatever you do prefer but swaddling is definitely must and these Velcro swaddles helped me so so much and they were so easy to use
Here are few tips which i know and might be helpful to you and i will upload more tips soon. Please fell free to comment to help us improve.