Welcome to our new blog series: 50 practical tips for new mums to do from pregnancy and during your first year with baby. We’ve collated these tips ourselves – we hope you enjoy them!
These are tips 1 – 12 of the series, we’ll be posting the subsequent tips soon!
1. Test drive pushchairs:
Before spending your well earned money, make sure you visit department stores and test drive several pushchairs first. So many new mums end up buying another buggy when baby gets here. At first, it looked great in the catalogue, but they soon find it doesn’t fit in the car/is too heavy/too wide or just isn’t practical (especially if you walk up to school via a twig covered road everyday, which can punctures your tyres on a daily basis!)
2. Enjoy your maternity leave!
The four weeks maternity leave you get before baby arrives are perfect for lie ins (if it’s your first), so enjoy them! Get your sleep now before baby comes! Take the time to catch up with friends, get your baby essentials shopping done, (interspersed with coffee and cake breaks of course), finish off the nursery …. and so on!
3. Pack your hospital bag:
Be prepared! Pack your hospital bag in advance, as you won’t have time when the day arrives! Remember to pack things like water, magazines, a pen, change for the vending machines (you will be hungry once you’ve had baby!)
4. Buy baby a gift from your other children:
Buy a gift from the other children in your family to give to baby. This is a great way encourage bonding early on. This is something I have done with all my children and they still have the gifts to this day! A big story book is a great idea, as you can look at it again and again.
Why not check out our fabulous range of unique baby gifts? We love the Steiff bears – they make a perfect “welcome to the family” gift!
5. Remember your five a day:
Keep up your fruit and veg intake after you’ve had your baby, especially if you’ve had a C-section, it really does help (trust me!) A balanced diet will help you cope with the night feeds and everything that a new baby brings.
6. Get Dad involved:
Get Dad involved as early as you can with baby’s care: he may not be able to help with feeds if you’re feeding yourself, but that doesn’t mean he can’t help to dress, change or bath baby, although dads are notoriously reluctant to bath, they’ll love it once they’ve done it once!
7. Buy baby some scratch mitts:
Scratch mitts are a good idea for the first few weeks, newborn’s nails grow in the womb so they are normally quite long and a scratched face is not nice!
8. Get some swaddling for baby:
Swaddling is really great for settling baby in the first few weeks. As baby is so used to being squashed up inside you, to lie spread eagled in a cot makes them feel totally vulnerable, there are loads of swaddle blankets out there with swaddling methods attached for you to see what works best for you, just make sure you don’t overheat baby, layer blankets so you can remove one if necessary.
9. Involve your other children:
Involve your other children with the day-to-day care of the newborn, it makes them feel part of everything, even if its just fetching a clean baby grow or nappy for you.
10. Take some gentle exercise:
Gentle exercise will help you get rid of the inevitable stresses that tiredness and new babies can bring, even if you’ve had a C-section, a walk to the shops will help you feel better and you’ll get some much-needed fresh air.
11. Baby footprints:
Why not take footprints with a non-toxic child friendly paint from birth, every month for the 1st year? It’s a great keepsake!
12. Update your baby book:
Always put aside some time to update your baby book as soon as milestones are reached. It can be difficult to think back and remember the exact date of things like ‘baby’s first crawl’ if you don’t record it at the time.
We’ll be posting the next twelve tips soon, so make sure you check back, or subscribe to our Facebook page!
>> Click here to read part two!
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