Baby!

Our baby was born yesterday at 1:00pm. 7 pounds 8 ounces born on the due date without any induction

Give me advice this is the first one.

Woot! Congrats!

Just a dog and two cats for us, so I'll leave the parenting advice to the rest of the team.

General advice:

- Don't be afraid to throw money at problems as they arise, for example, when identifying the proper brand of diaper or bottles. Expect you'll be buying one of each until you find one that doesn't leak, etc.

- But don't spend big bucks on things with limited lifetimes. You can spend an unbounded amount of money on a fancy crib and other such things. Ikea stuff does the job, it's cheap, and you won't feel bad ditching it later on.

- New babies are like crack to some people. They need to get their "hit" by looking at your kid. This is, at the least, a feature when recruiting relatives to be babysitters.

- Get out! It's pretty hard in the beginning to imagine going out for a proper date night, no kid. You have to do it. It's essential to your sanity.

Specific useful products:

- High-quality pacifiers: Wubbanub, which have the benefit that, once the kid gets some motor control, the kid can pick up and put back in.

- Don't buy a "diaper bag." Waste of money. Get a messenger bag (e.g., from Timbuk2). These tend to have rubberized interiors (good for hosing out when things get stanky), and they can be repurposed later on when they're no longer carrying diapers.

- Get a red bulb for a lamp you keep for those late-night feedings / diaper changes. Red light doesn't blow away your eyes' dark adaptation.

- There are all kinds of high-tech diaper trash cans. For #1 diapers, they work. For #2 diapers, expect to take more extreme measures (e.g., repurposing old plastic shopping bags to tie up soiled diapers).

- Don't be wooed by the "Baby Einstein" industry. What makes your kid smart is face time with you, not getting sucked into eye candy on TV. However, despite the pediatricians recommendation of zero TV before age 2, there are times that you really, really need 30 minutes to get something done. Baby Einstein videos can turn your lovely darling into a drooling zombie for those essential 30 minutes. Use sparingly.

- A camera to live in the diaper bag. Doesn't have to be the top of the line, although water-resistance is probably a plus.

- A kick-ass camera that you'd never let anywhere near the diaper bag. Remember, "it's for the baby."

- Car seats, in the beginning, are rear-facing. You can get a cheap mirror that mounts on the back-seat headrest that you can see through your own rear-view mirror. Very useful so you can assuage your guilt at not being able to see if your baby is okay.

- There are two schools of thought on car seats. Lots of people are sucked in by the "docking station" car seats. They make it easy to extract your kid from the car without waking him/her up. They're also very heavy and your kid outgrows them sooner than you'd think. We decided to focus on lightweight everything and use a car seat that mounts permanently. This worked well. (If you have two cars with back seats, you should also suck it up and get one car seat for each one.)

- Cool trick: your kid's bed is going to require sheets to be changed, sometimes multiple times in the night. You can lay down multiple layers of sheets (with "waterproof" barriers between), so changing the bed is just a matter of peeling off one layer.

- You can get these fabric padded contraptions for restaurant high-chairs and supermarket shopping carts. There are times when the only high-chair you've got access to have slime on them from the previous kid...

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

Babywise. Because sleep is priceless.

Congrats, by the way.

EDIT: note that above book is highly polarizing. Worked extremely well for both of my kids - sleeping through the night by 11-12 weeks. YMMV.

There's no single right answer for getting babies to sleep through the night. Read a couple of books, try a couple of things. Accept that, barring a miracle, you're likely to be sleep-deprived for the first two years of their life. Don't get stressed about it.

And, absolutely, make sure you spend enough time with your partner. Babies can be quite demanding, which can cause jealousy in one partner (usually dad), which can be destabilising to a relationship, so occasionally take time out to remember why you're together.

Oh, and congratulations. Enjoy it.

Congratulations.

Did you opt for the extended warranty?

pca

Congrats!

Congratulations! There's been some great advice already in this thread plus there are at least two other threads with a bunch more recommendations.

Above all, I think the thing to remember is that every parent and every child is different. Don't let those differences freak you or the wife out. Don't worry about trying to fit into anyone else's mold, because at the end of the day you've got to do what feels right and works for you.

I will say this however, the quicker you can get baby sleeping through the night, the more relaxed both of you will be. Getting to that point isn't a sure thing and like skinning a cat, there's more than one way to go about it.

Don't worry/stress about being extra attentive to baby during the first 6 months - you can't possibly give them too much attention nor spoil them at this age. If they cry, it's because they need something, they're not playing you yet. Getting up with them when they cry isn't likely to set any type of pattern at that young an age, so don't worry about it. Just try to get some rest whenever/wherever you can.


And as far as TV goes, out daughter is just a bit over 2 and she still won't pay attention to anything on the tube for 30 minutes. She's been great with the iPad however and letting her choose her own video clips is a real treat. She doesn't get all the words right, but she's singing a ton of songs and the entire alphabet, plus counting nearly to 20. Even if she doesn't know what everything means yet.

Everything I have bought has been off craigslist we got a ton of new stuff we probably don't need from showers though.



These are great ideas I didn't really think of. I even have a waterproof camera laying around I don't use much so I am putting that in the bag for sure.

I defiantly want sleeping through the night. We got a sleep timer for a gift. It pretty much is supposed tell you how long to let the baby cry before you check them and track it. Is the method in this book similar to that or something totally different?

I have read to not let them cry and attend to them immediately for the first three months. How long did you guys wait before trying to get them to sleep through the night?

I have heard this a few places and I always think it sounds crazy that I would be jealous of the baby. We have relatives close so hopefully we can get some baby sitting and do some baby free things so this does not happen.

My wife is breast feeding so right now all I am thinking about is what can I do to help her so she doesn't have to do all the work.

Definitely don't settle for that. A healthy baby (not collicky or experiencing other health issues) should be sleeping through the night (at least 6 hours) by 10-15 weeks. Two years is utterly ridiculous.

I've had flexibility in my work schedule for both kids, so I got up with my wife every two and a half to three hours through the night, got the baby, changed her, and brought her to my wife to feed. It's certainly not as much work as doing all the feeding, but I think that she appreciated that I was up with her at each feeding and that she could stay in bed. I'll admit that I didn't stay awake for the duration of each feeding though.

The first week or two the baby will sleep ALOT. After that, it's a big help to set aside some time to watch the baby so that your wife can shower, do her hair, put on decent clothes and just feel human again.

Number one thing I can think of is- love your child. Keep this in focus and the rest is just details (important details, but secondary none the less).

Due to issues I won't go into- I've been living much of the last two years (our child is two) as if I were a single parent. Because of this I've not exactly made all of the best choices and I've been at my wits end a lot, sometimes just having to punt (I don't have a lot of time and energy to read too many books on the subject). But even through all that, he is bright eyed, happy, and everyone remarks how joyful he is. This is the grace of God, of course, but I also know that HE knows he is loved, and that is evident whenever I walk in the room or hold him. If you could bottle that up, you'd be a millionare.

I guess it sounds obvious and natural, but from what I've seen it isn't. People can spend so much time fussing about doing the right thing and worrying about screwing things up, they forget that babies are pretty reselient to parental mistakes, but if you don't show them affection, that WILL matter.

On a more practical note- I love netflix. Lots of good half hour kids shows and I can just pick them whenever I want. He doesn't watch a lot of TV, but it's nice having the convenience of Netflix.

Avoid buying tons of toys. We had a huge 1st birthday party when he got a bunch of stuff, and since then I've put my foot down for most purchases. We still get a lot of mileage out of those items, and often what he wants to play with isn't store bought anyway.

Two best iPad apps that he likes- "I See Ewe" and "AlphaBaby Free", though actually the phone versions gets more use when I panick at resturants.

Congrats to both Dad and Mom, and the best of luck.

I should probably update my avatar, my son is almost at the cover face with sauce stage.

Congrats.

Babies that are on a regular schedule are easier than those that are not. You will be run ragged without this. Plenty of howto web pages.

Congratulations! Do be prepared for lack of sleep, but don't worry about it. Our first slept approximately 4 hours a day until he was nearly 2, as do all the males in my family, but the girls would have to be woken for feeds - YMMV.

One of the most useful things we did was to make the last feed of the evening from formula, which meant that I could actually do something useful that didn't involve the smelly end of the babies. Invaluable, both for me to get some time with the babies, and for SWMBO, to get some sleep.

Congrats!

Sorry, but I'm calling bullshit. Ours weren't collicky, and they've both been perfectly healthy (apart from the occasional cold or teething pain); they just didn't start sleeping more than 3-4 hours at a time until they hit 18 months.

My point is this: if they won't sleep through the night, it's not something you're doing wrong as a parent. Read some books, try some techniques; see what works for you and your child. Don't get stressed about it.

Yeah, it does seem crazy to talk about being jealous. But: I was. Don't be afraid to discuss it with your wife, or with other dads. Sometimes it's a taboo subject, but if you don't discuss it, it can be corrosive.

There's a load of books out there about how to introduce elder kids to the concept of a new baby, but, IMO, this could equally apply to a first-time dad.

I am pretty sure our dog is jealous. She is acting like when there is another dog around and we pet it. She doesn't do anything violent just comes over and trys to get you to pet her.

So far he has just been sleeping and we wake him up to feed him every few hours. The first couple nights for some reason he wouldn't go back to sleep at about 1:00am. We were not giving a pacifier because of hearing about breastfeeding issues and I don't want to deal with breaking the addiction when he is three but we gave him one now and it puts him to sleep pretty quick.
We will just have to try and break it before he is too old

Ha! We did the same thing with the first one! We only lasted a few days. Turns out that once the baby is latching on ok, it's no big deal. That pacifier will save your sanity...pop it in there.

Getting her off it wasn't too big a deal either. At around one year old, we started saying that it was only for nap and night time, and making her leave it in the bed herself. At about 20 months, we took the pacifiers with us to the toy store and had her all excited about trading them for some toys (we talked about it for a few days in advance). Then they were just gone. Now that we have them around again for our second one, we catch her occasionally sneaking one, but it's not really a big deal.

Well...we're 2-0 so far and I'm going to go out on a limb and say with 100% certainty (barring health issues) that when baby 3 comes in May, we'll have the same result. (I'll report back and let you know).

Our second one certainly took a lot more work than the first, but I assure you good sleep patterns can be taught.

How old are they when you start trying to sleep train?

We went to the lactation consultant today because we wanted a pump and insurance will pay for it if we go through her. She said the nipple confusion thing is a load of crap too.

I keep telling my wife when he is old enough for bedtime stories they are all going to be about potty training

Now my wife is saying she wants to get portraits done at some chain kind of place like Target. I hate those places because they take a bunch of pictures and they will just sell you prints. I just want the images so I can order from wherever I want. I guess DWallach is right about needing the fancy camera too bad I wouldn't know what to do with one if I had it

The chain photo places here will sell you the digital negatives as well - $$$. I have the fancy camera and a few speedlights, umbrellas, etc. Unfortunately my daughter just doesn't respond to me taking pictures of her as do other kids, so it's always been crazy difficult for me to get good poses from her. A stranger, and obviously one who does portraits for a living, has much better results with her. My wife took our daughter in for some photos in AUgust and I think the negs of the session were $120 or so 0 she only ordered a few prints for family though.

I agree with Roger here. Both our kids have reflux, but that is being medicated. Our oldest even had it much worse than the youngest, and they both take the same medication. Nevertheless, the oldest is a very good sleeper. He's been sleeping though the night since he was a few months old (apart from the occasional exceptions of course). The youngest, who is now 16 months old, is still a bad sleeper. She'll usually wake up once or twice per night, usually between 4 and 5 am. Sometimes we can suss her with a pacifier (dipped in honey - I know it's not the best thing to do, but it's the only thing that works, trust me we've tried everything else), but usually she doesn't stop until I bring her a bottle. Which I usually end up doing, even though I don't want to make a habit of it, but letting her whine isn't an option here since she'll wake up her brother then.
I doubt it's also a case of her being hungry. She eats more than her brother does. The only thing we can think of is that a lot of the times, she just decides it's time for a little "me time" with mommy and/or daddy, so she'll start to whine - even though it's the middle of the night... BTW, that's also a reason why we believe it's just a bad habit of hers: she doesn't cry in the true sense of the word: she just whines and eventually starts yelling if we don't respond quickly enough to her liking.

Baby photos is the biggest scam out there. In my opinion the only one you'll always sucker into because, after all, it's pics of your kids and so there's a BIG emotional factor involved. Women are usually worse suckers for this, but men can be equally bad.

My advise: find a professional photographer which will agree to just do the shoot, and then provide you with the digital stills. This might take some searching, but trust me, you'll find one if you really look. Most of the photographers don't want to do this because they make the most money from the developed photos or posters. But the ones who do agree to do this are usually the better photographers anyway, because they make the most joy out of the photographing itself and not the editing and sales of the photo's afterwards.

We've worked like this for all the photo's of our youngest since her birth, after having learned from several other photo shoots we had done for our oldest. Usually the photos were nice, but we always felt scammed nonetheless because the price of the printed photos was always astronomical (compared to those online printing services - easily ten - tenty times as expensive!). They always tried to justify this by saying that the quality of the paper they used was better or some other reason, which is total BS. The truth is the only reason they only want to part with the digital negatives is because the are hoping you'll keep coming back for extra prints, at the same astronomical price of course.

I was particularly angry with the last photographer we used since she didn't even want to give me ONE digital still I wanted to put on the desktop of my pc. 'Out of principle'. Well, that was the last time we used her services as well, I can tell you. Also 'out of principle'.

That was the time we started looking for a professional photographer which would only do the shoot and then give us the digital originals. We've found one now, and are very happy with the service she's giving us. So happy even, we usually do a shoot with her now every three to four months. My wife now makes the digital photo books herself, by using one of those only photo software packages. The results are very good, almost as professional as the ones those other photographers made for us (which they only made for us because they wouldn't let us do it ourselves....)

I'm (truly) glad for you, but the truth is that it's not all kittens and sunshine, and perpetuating that myth just makes parents that are having problems (with sleep, with feeding, with whatever) think that they're the only ones. This is a bad thing.

We are fortunate to have a good friend who is a professional photographer and has done free photos for us. She is VERY good- too bad no one is located here in Georgia to take advantage, because I'd easily recommend her.

From the first week. The biggest thing to concentrate on right now is feeding. They're going to sleep most of the time anyway. Try to focus on when you feed, making sure they get a full feeding. This may require trying to keep them awake if they drift off after 10 minutes or so. Feedings will likely take about 30 minutes or so at this age. Eventually they will get more efficient. You can keep them awake by tapping their feet or unzipping their onesie and rubbing their sternum. You won't be 100% successful all the time, but just keep working at it.

What this does is it allows them to go longer periods between when they feel hungry again. Otherwise, they'll slip into a habit called snack feeding, where they get just enough to satiate them for the moment, but feel hungry again fairly soon.

You'll begin to notice that if they get a full feeding at every feeding, they'll begin to slip into a routine of feeding every 2.5 to 3 hours all by themselves.

Here's the wrinkle - sometimes babies just get hungry earlier than that, especially when going through a growth spurt. So you've got to begin studying your babies' cues. Most people just knee-jerk - If the baby is crying, shove a boob in the mouth or change it. You'll learn as the baby slips into a cycle which cries are the hungry ones and which are just the "I'm uncomfortable" ones. There's no way to learn this except to study your baby and get to knows its cues. That said, if the baby is hungry, even if it's been getting full feedings, feed it again. The schedule is there to establish patterns, not to deprive your child if its really hungry. Just make sure that it takes a full feeding, and it will slip back into the routine on its own.

If it has been three hours since the beginning of the last feeding, wake them up. This will be hard, because you're going to treasure the quiet moments. But it's necessary to establish the routine. This will also help to keep the baby full and happy. You'll find that after the initial minute or two of fussiness of being woken, the baby will indeed be hungry.

Last thing I can think of is that you should allow the baby to start sleeping for longer periods at night (after the late feeding around 10 or 11pm). A breast fed baby shouldn't go more than 5 hours between feedings though, so you should wake it up if it sleeps that long. You may risk under-nourishing the baby otherwise.

That should get your started. If you're interested in more later, either get the book or just ask.

EDIT: Your lactation consultant and/or the doctor will likely just tell you to feed on demand. Most people do this, because it doesn't take any work to feed the baby whenever it cries. This sacrifices long-term gain for short-term pacification. Your baby will eat the same amount either way if you do it properly and regain its birth-weight and beyond. It just takes more work on your part the first few weeks. It's actually quite liberating to have your baby on a schedule though, because you begin to recognize its cries and cues and you feel very confident that you know what you're doing - which is priceless as a first-time parent.

We were told to feed about every three hours and to wake him up to eat if he is sleeping which he is because that is all he does. It seems like at night like 1:00 am he wants more than my wife can produce or so it seems. We are thinking this because most of the time if he crys he will take the pacifier for a few minutes and fall asleep. Late at night that hasn't been doing it.

I have been trying to pacify him somehow when he is going through one of these moments because we are thinking if we were to feed him more than every few hours my wife wouldn't have anything to give him

I suppose if you want to look at it negatively. I think of it more as giving them hope. I'm not saying that there aren't legitimate biological reasons for babies not sleeping well, but if the baby is healthy there are things you can do as a parent to give them the best chance to do so.

Just because I can't solve a Rubick's cube doesn't mean it can't be solved. Just means I don't know the right method. My brother can take a good look at one and then solve it behind his back. How many times does he have to do it before I believe that it's not an aberration, or that he's not just lucky. The analogy eventually breaks down, but you know where I'm going with it...

Yeah. That sucks...her milk production should increase in a few days if that's the problem. If it doesn't, check with your lactation consultant, they can give you ideas like pumping after each feeding a bit to increase production.

EDIT: My wife says that her milk will typically come in within the next couple days, possibly even today. It's good to let the baby still suck, as that will help this to happen more quickly (stimulates hormones, etc...).

I have been looking for a local person that gives "digital negatives" for a reasonable price. No luck yet but I haven't looked too long.

We know a couple people who could do it but they wouldn't have any sets or props or whatever and my wife thinks we need some kind of stuff.

I have someone for you. He's in the Minneapolis area, but he did our family photos. I'll PM you details.

When we went yesterday and go the pump they had he feed the baby and weighed him before and after she told us everything is normal. The consultant did recommend pumping after feeding so she has been doing that now.

For what it's worth, you don't need a "professional" photographer to take good shots of your kids. You just need some sort of "advanced amateur" with all of this fancy gear sitting around. I've had multiple friends ask me to do things like this, and for a friend, I'll happily do it. It helps justify the money I spent on my far-too-expensive camera. Sigh.

The only thing the pros have that I don't have are professional strobes, with those neat reflector umbrellas, soft boxes, etc. Now, I have a friend who owns all that, and I can borrow it if need be, but then it starts to be less fun, and it's preferable to have a full-time photo studio where you've set everything up and balanced all the lights in advance.

You can very effectively compensate for this by shooting pictures on a *cloudy* (but not raining...) day. The clouds do an excellent job of sending you a uniform wall of light that give you great soft shadows.

We had this with ours; the first had reflux and sleep was really never for more than 3 hours at a time. After she went on medication (just until about a year) she was much better but still not all the way through by any means. We did cry it to sleep and that worked, though was kinda nerve-wracking.

The second was just the easiest baby in the world. We are *so* glad they came that way round; if it'd been the easy one first then the troublesome one, we'd have found it a lot harder to deal with.

Summary: every baby appears to be different. Some are easier than others. You do not know what type you'll get until you have it. Some people only have easy ones, some people only hard ones. They all grow out of it, though.