New Mum Tips

These are my tips that don’t fit into the other categories (sleep, nappies, breastfeeding), but are hopefully just as useful!

Tip 1: Get your partner involved. Seriously, there’s no reason they can’t do just as much, if not more, than you. If you’re breastfeeding they can wind the baby, change nappies, do bath time, create a bedtime routine, have sleepy snuggles. 

If you’re not breastfeeding, there’s obviously making up bottles, feeding the baby, cleaning and sterilising bottles to add to this list. And if you’re expressing breast milk and bottle feeding, they can feed the baby while you pump. They can also do the housework. For some reason, there seems still be this expectation from a lot of people that one person does all the housework. If you’ve just been through labour, and you’re recovering, your partner should be doing the majority of household chores. Even when they’re back at work after their parental leave, looking after a newborn (and older baby, toddler, child), is a full time job and you cannot do it all.

Tip 2: Meal prep before you give birth. We prepared a week’s worth of dinners in the run up to my due date, which was really helpful, but I wish I’d done more. After being in hospital for a week, and then exclusively pumping, I was exhausted, meaning that John was having to do most of the cooking and household stuff. Having those dinners in the freezer, ready to put in the oven was fantastic, but having lunches prepped and another week of dinners would have been even better.

Tip 3: Research products before you buy them. There are so many products out there that aren’t safe for babies, and a lot of these are used and even promoted by influencers. The NHS, Lullaby Trust, and NSPCC all have information on safe sleep, feeding, and toy products.

Tip 4: A lot of what you read on Google (including this article!) is someone’s opinion. You’ll read a lot of outdated ‘advice’ on not holding your baby all the time because you’ll spoil them, you need to sleep train or they’ll never sleep, it’s fine to wean your baby early at 4 months as ‘you know them best’, and loads of other absolute nonsense that I could probably rant about forever! Google is not always your friend when it comes to parenting and baby advise. At best you’ll find loads of conflicting information, and at worst you’ll feel like you’ve done everything wrong. There are a lot of Instagram accounts that provide up to date, science based, biological norm information. I’ve talked about my top ten Instagram accounts here; definitely worth checking them out.

Tip 5: Trust your instincts. This tip kind of goes with the one above; I’ve learned if it feels wrong, it probably is, despite what articles on the internet might say. Leaving my baby to cry herself to sleep feels wrong; feeding her to sleep just feels right, so that’s what we do. We went through a few weeks of struggling to get her to sleep, but once she turned 7 months old, bedtime became easy and and our bedtime routine still works now.

Tip 6: Take your baby into the bathroom with you while showering. You hear a lot of new mums say that they never get time to shower, but showering is an essential for me. I can’t face the day until I’ve showered and cleaned my teeth. Since Babybel was a few weeks old, I’ve taken her into the bathroom with me so that I can get ready for the day. When she was really young, she’d just lie on her changing mat. Then as she got older she’d watch baby sensory on my phone. Once she started moving around, we baby proofed the bathroom, and now, at 18 months she sits there pretending to do her make up and hair.

Tip 7: Prep everything the night before. If you need to get out somewhere at a certain time in the morning, or even just get out of the house, get everything ready the night before. I get our clothes ready, make sure the changing bag is fully stocked, get the breakfast bowls and cutlery out, and set the washing machine timer (otherwise the washing will never go on!). I started doing this when Babybel was a few weeks old, and still do it now as I still sometimes find actually getting out of the house quite stressful.