QTPie Baby Advice For New Moms

Helpful Housekeeping Hints

• Put a scented dryer sheet or a perfume fragrance card from a magazine in the bottom of your diaper pail to keep it smelling fresh.
• Since you can’t do laundry the minute stains happen, be prepared and buy yourself some time to do laundry.  Buy a pan to use as a soaking tub in the laundry room.  Fill it with water and detergent to soak soiled bibs, burp cloths and clothes until you can clean them in the washing machine.  Depending on the fabric, use bleach, bleach alternative or oxygenated cleaner for stubborn stains.  Note that babies are very sensitive to perfumes and dyes, so use cleaning agents that are safe for your baby’s skin.
• Mr. Clean Magic Eraser works great for cleaning crayon, pen and pencil off most surfaces.  Be careful not to scrub too hard or you can take off some of the finish.
• When your baby outgrows the need for burp cloths, keep them for dusting or cleaning your child's hands and face after meals.

Baby Products

• Don’t buy bibs with gripper tabs.  They stick to everything in the laundry, and over time they don’t fasten together well.  It is also too easy for kids to pull them off.  Buy bibs with snap closures instead.
• If you use a security blanket, buy two.  Rotate each one every week and wash the one not being used.  This gives you a backup in case something happens to your child’s main source of comfort at night, and it gives you a chance to keep them clean.

• Wipe warmers are nice, but they dry out the wipes and you end up throwing the bottom of the stack away.
• Try several brands of cheaper diapers along with the more expensive ones.  Chances are you will find a brand that works well, doesn’t leak, and costs much less than name brand diapers.  I found that what worked well for my first child did not work well for the second one.
• You will only use the newborn diapers for a couple weeks so don’t buy too many.  You can achieve the same effect of the newborn diaper cutout notch by folding down the top edge of a regular diaper so the umbilical cord site doesn’t get irritated.
• Diaper pails are great for the first year because you will go through so many diapers, and the pails that twist the diaper into a bag are a convenient way to limit the smell.  After the first year I put dirty diapers in one of the many plastic bags we got from grocery shopping and tossed them into the outside trash.  Once your child starts table food, no amount of scented bags will cover the smell.  It is easier just to toss the diaper into the outside trash, and your child will be down to about half the diapers per day at that point anyway.
• Some children love toys like exersaucers, swings and jump-up seats and others scream the minute you put them in.  If you are considering purchasing one of these items, see if you can “test drive” a friend’s or try a model at the store before you buy it.

Grooming

• When my kids have colds I put Vaseline or vitamin A and D ointment under their nose a couple times a day to keep their nose from getting chapped when I wipe it with tissues.  (I use the anti-viral tissues, and they do not have a variety with lotion already in the tissue.)
• Trim your baby’s nails with the scissor type nail trimmers because the clippers always leave sharp edges. With the scissors you can make one cut and round the edges at the same time. If nail trimming is traumatic for your baby try doing it when she sleeps.

Feeding

• If you are breastfeeding, drink as much water as possible to keep yourself hydrated and your milk supply up.  If you are having trouble get help sooner rather than later.  Your doctor should be your first contact, and he or she can help you find support groups or lactation consultants if you need them.  Also, the labor and delivery nurses at the hospital I delivered at were more than happy to answer questions I had when I got home.
• When your baby is about four to six months old, you can start introducing solid foods.  Introduce one thing at a time and wait a week before moving to something new.  This will help you figure out if your child is allergic to something you feed her.  I relaxed on this process with my third child and when she broke out in a rash, I had to go back and start over introducing foods one at a time until I could figure out what was causing her skin reaction.
• Baby food is easy to make and is much cheaper than jar baby food.  All you need is a food processor, strainer, ice cube trays and freezer bags.  Bake items like sweet potatoes on a cookie sheet in the oven at 400 degrees for one hour.  Peel the skin off the sweet potato after it bakes and put the potato in the food processor with some water to make it smooth and baby food consistent.  Add more water if needed.  Put the mixture through a strainer to remove any large pieces.  Keep some baby food in an airtight container in the refrigerator for immediate use.  Freeze the remaining mixture in ice cube trays.  After the trays have frozen, pop the cubes out and put them in freezer bags.  You can store the cubes in the freezer for a month.  When you want to serve the frozen food, put a few cubes in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds.  Always test the mixture to make sure it is not too hot before you feed your baby.
• You can also bake acorn or butternut squash in the oven at 400 degrees for one hour.  Split the squash in half and remove the seeds before baking on a greased cookie sheet.  Scoop out the pulp from the skin and puree and store the mixture as described above.
• I prefer baking vegetables over boiling them because I think they retain more vitamins.
• Check with your doctor on the latest list, but avoid peanuts, egg whites, strawberries, honey and chocolate until your child is a year old.
• If you are brave enough to take your baby to a restaurant, pack the following to keep him occupied: Cheerios (for babies six or seven months and up), small hardback books and drawing toys like MagnaDoodle or Etch-A-Sketch.  Do not forget a bottle/sippy cup and wet wipes as well.

Making Memories

• Buy a journal and write you baby a letter each month to describe the progress he/she has made.  Your baby will change noticeably each month for the first two years.  Keep writing monthly letters until the baby is two years old, and then continue writing a yearly letter thereafter.  Give the journal to your child when they are old enough to understand and appreciate it, such as when they leave home, get married or have their first child.
• Buy a large keepsake box to put items you want to save you’re your child over the years such as their coming home from the hospital outfit, baptism outfit, and special toys or stuffed animals.  Be choosy when keeping things because no one wants to purchase their first home and be bombarded with 20 boxes of additional items from Mom and Dad from their childhood.
• You will receive many, many children’s books during your child’s life.  Inside the cover, write who gave the book and the occasion (and the child’s name if you have more than one child).  Keep some of you child’s favorite books to give them when they are adults.  It is fun to look back and see where the book came from when the child grows up.
• When you bring your baby home, take a picture of him/her on top or your or Dad’s t-shirt. Every year after, keep taking a picture on the child’s birthday wearing the shirt until they graduate high school and "fit" the shirt. (Idea from Mary Kaye Woods.)
• Keep some of your favorite wrapping paper from the baby shower and use it to line drawers in the baby’s room.

Parenting

• Two things to research and understand before you need them are how to get your baby to sleep through the night and how to potty train your child.  There are many good books available on these topics, and trying to read them at 3 am or after your child has soiled themselves and the rest of the van is not a good time.  By about 12 weeks many babies can sleep 8 hours.  By 2 years you can potty train your child.
• A lot of different parenting styles exist, and for the most part we have all survived no matter how extreme our parents were.  Stay away from parenting extremes like never correcting your children or only focusing on what your children do wrong.  Balance your discipline and love.  Try not to yell at your children, and follow through with consequences for disobedience.

Your Body

• Get a pedicure a couple weeks before your due date.  The foot and leg massage feels wonderful.  Chances are you will be too big to cut or paint your own toenails.  Also, your toes will look nice up in the stirrups during delivery.  If you don’t get the chance to get your toes done before delivery, wear socks.
• Some people are lucky enough to regain their figures and the rest of us suck it up and accept that we will never be the exact same shape again.  But given the choice, I would take my children over my old stomach any day.  Stretch marks do fade over time, but don’t completely go away.  Depending on how much weight you gain, your stomach muscles and skin may have outstretched their ability to return to normal.  You can either get surgery to correct this or learn to love your new self.  Exercise definitely helps by toning your muscles, helping you lose weight, and giving you energy to make it through every day.
• Speaking of body parts that change during pregnancy, no, you don’t get to keep your new chest size.  In fact, you may be left with two empty stockings when it is all said and done.  Right at the point you think, “I might actually get to keep these,” nature comes and takes them away.  Again, you can correct this with surgery or temporarily by having more children.
• When you get home from the hospital you may feel great, but limit what you do as much as possible for four weeks.  You are very weak physically and your body has been through a major change.  Sleep deprivation also wreaks havoc on your body.  If you overdo it when you first come home it will be harder to recover from the childbirth. 
• Keep a bottle of hand lotion by your sink to use after you wash your hands.  Your hands will get very dry from constantly washing them after changing diapers.

Time Savers

• Keep a notepad near the phone for someone to keep track of who called and visited when you first have your baby.  You may be sleeping or incoherent at the time and it is nice to know who checked on you later. 
• Keep your baby book and thank you notes, stamps and your address book near you throughout the day after you come home from the hospital.  Whenever you feel up to it, fill in the baby book and write one or two thank you notes per day to keep these tasks from becoming overwhelming.  Dad can do his fair share too.
• Much of the information in the baby book can be filled out before you have the baby and right after you bring the baby home.  A lot of the pages are dedicated to your history and the actual birth of the child.  We bought a disposable Polaroid camera for the birth of one of our children so we could get instant pictures and not have to worry about printing them at home or getting them developed.
• Write baby’s “firsts” in your personal planner or calendar as they happen and then transfer them later to the baby book.  You won’t have time to write everything down in the baby book when it happens, and childbirth kills too many brain cells to remember when your baby did each thing.
• Use kitchen scissors to cut up your toddler’s food.  It is a lot easier and faster than using a knife and fork.

Safety

• Put your baby to sleep at night on his back or side to reduce the risk of SIDS.  During the day, let your baby spend some time on his tummy to prevent him from getting a soft spot on the back of his head.
• From personal experience I can tell you that you should never put or carry your baby in a car seat if she is not strapped in. No matter how young your baby is, she can wiggle out. You would think this is just a common sense thing, but parenting kills brain cells. I have had other parents tell me of cases where they were carrying their child in the car seat, and the handle flipped up suddenly dumping the child out because they were not strapped in. 
• At some point your child will explore every cabinet and drawer you own. Go through every cabinet and drawer you have that is three foot high or less and remove any dangerous products. Cabinet and drawer locks are a good idea as well. Be careful what you get though because my son was able to open one of the safety spring latches on a drawer before he was old enough to control his impulses. 
• This brings me to my next tip which is never trust a child who is playing quietly. I have had to repaint rooms, fix a flooding toilet and repair numerous house fixtures because my children were "playing quietly." If you are not in the room with your child and it gets quiet, go investigate.  
• Outlet plug covers are a must as well. Kids can’t help themselves from finding something to stick in outlets.