How To Bring Baby Home With No Anxiety

Let’s chat about how to bring baby home with no anxiety. After that long 9 months of discomfort, excitement, anxiety and your little bun baking in the oven. Did I mention discomfort? Anyway, he/she’s finally here!! Stuff just got real. There’s no turning back the baby is here. 

Guess what? I’m here to help you out with some tips on what to do after having that little bundle of joy. These tips are things that I personally did and some I should have tried out. Also, I’m including tips on what to do when one parent is a vet and the other is a newbie. So take a deep breath and relax help is on the way. 

While you’re still in the hospital 

1. Ask for privacy. You will want to do this because the staff will be in and out of your room THE ENTIRE TIME. So if you don’t tell your nurse to put a Do Not Disturb sign on your door everyone will be intrusive. This will limit the traffic to just nurses and doctors to come into your room. They may even knock before entering. 
2. Do plenty of skin to skin. This is for both mom and dad. Skin to skin not only helps with creating the connection between you and baby but helps them get acclimated with the world around them. The baby loves this and so will you. Honestly, I wish I could still do skin to skin with my son. 
3. Send your baby to the nursery. I know I just said do as much skin to skin as possible but you will want to send the baby to the nursery.  Why? So you can get your rest. Rest as much as possible while you’re in the hospital because there won’t be much of that when you get home. 
4. Utilize the hospital resources. You’re in the best place to do some hands-on training. For instance, I didn’t get a chance to go to birthing classes. Besides looking at YouTube videos, I was able to ask questions about topics I was a little unsure about. The nurses and other staff are more than happy to help you with whatever you need. My nurses were awesome they helped me with breastfeeding and showed us how to care for my son’s penis after his circumcision. 
5. Make your visitors wash their hands. This could be just me, I’m a little OCD. But it was extremely important to me when someone came to visit us at the hospital that they stopped and washed their hands before touching my son. Even those of us that were in the hospital the whole time I made sure our hands were clean. I wanted to lessen the chance of my son picking something up in his first days of life. 

Now it’s time to go home. 

1. Get a sign for your front door. What sign? You need a sign stating that there is a newborn in the house. This will hopefully discourage people who come to your door from knocking hard or ringing the bell. The last thing you want is someone disturbing your baby’s much-needed sleep. 
2. Sleep when the baby is sleep. My aunt told me this when I was pregnant and I am so glad she did. So when you put your baby down after they eat or whenever they fall asleep, go to sleep. You and the baby will be up at all times of night due to feedings. In the day time when the baby sleeps you go to sleep. You are going to be exhausted out of your mind. In order to recharge your batteries, you need to go to sleep. I keep emphasizing that you need to sleep because I really mean it. Trust me on this one, you’ll thank me later. 
3. Get your baby into a routine. Ok, so I know that these are tips for your newborn but it is never too early to start some sort of routine. With my son I set a routine for feedings, reading to him, watching tv and eventually bedtime. The bedtime I know was pointless but it was more for me. I needed to already have a routine established before it was really time to get him into one. Which leads me to my next tip. 
4. Set a schedule. You will start this probably around one month. The routine is another way to get your baby acclimated with his environment. Routines will be great as they get older. Starting now will help you in the long run. It won’t be as much of a fight when he gets older. You don’t want those problems, believe me. 
5. Get out of the house. This is another biggie. You have to get some me-time point, blank, period. You don’t realize how much going outside by yourself will refresh you. I remember when my mom forced me out of the house. I was kicking and screaming saying I didn’t need to get out of the house. Once I got out it’s like there was a whole new world that was just got discovered. I almost didn’t want to come back to the house. I am telling you to get out of the house. Don’t just get out of the house but make a daily or weekly event. I truly enjoy the days where I have my time. I adore my little guy but when I get to go to the salon every bit of it is for me. After I walk back in the door I’m a rejuvenated wife, mom, and daughter. 
6. Get organized. You want to be organized before the baby comes home. Being organized will make a huge difference while you are busy with the baby. Have diapers and wipes where ever the two of you will be in your home. Have bottles ready, if you aren’t breastfeeding, and pump when you have some downtime. While you’re feeding the baby have your snacks at arm’s length away. Make sure anything that you and baby need is readily available. 
7. Stay nourished and hydrated. This tip is especially for my breastfeeding mamas. You need to eat your vegetables and fruit. Drink smoothies and 100% fruit juices as well as plenty of water. You may want to stay away from junk food, keep in mind that what you eat your baby is ingesting. Take it easy with the dairy too. I had to stop breastfeeding my baby after 2 weeks because he was becoming colicky from my breast milk. The conclusion his pediatrician and I came up with is, this was due to dairy. Now if you have the willpower to check every little thing that you eat for dairy and get it out of your diet then go for it. I wasn’t that strong. Even though I was devastated, we did the next best thing and put him on Nutrimagen it’s made by Enfamil. It’s expensive but well worth it.
8. Exercise. If you weren’t exercising when you were pregnant do it now. Unless you had a c-section wait until you are healed. You can Google the best exercises to do after having a baby. The goal is going to be to strengthen your pelvic floor, abdomen and to get your balance back. You may not notice it but these are the main things that go when you’re pregnant. Your abdomen actually splits while you’re pregnant so you have to get it to fuse back together. 
9. Be careful of who visits. You will more than likely be tied up with the baby. This means that your partner needs to be the one to check on the visitors. If anyone has a sniffle, cough or sneeze they can’t come to see the baby. If they are VIP visitors have masks ready. No one should be sick and coming to see your baby. We had masks and huge bottles of hand sanitizer, lucky for us we didn’t have many visitors coming to the house. 
10. Go on a date night. The final tip I have is for you and your partner to both get out of the house and have a date. This was something that my mom made us do when my son was a month old. It felt good to be out together. But this tip is important because with the lack of sleep and becoming adjusted to your new normal it is possible that the two of you will get out of sync. You have to stay in sync with each other. The two of you will be relying on each other a lot, in order for the relationship to stay close, go on a date. 

Bonus Tip:

I had this problem when my son was born. My husband had a child 15 years before we had our son. We both had our own ideas on how to raise our son. Those differences made us bump heads CONSTANTLY.  I was getting frustrated because I didn’t feel heard and he was frustrated because he felt like I was disregarding his knowledge. If you are in this situation, make sure the two of you talk it over. Come to the table sit down and talk about the vision you have for raising your child.

If you disagree on certain points that’s ok talk it out. Do not fight. When I say talk about every idea that’s exactly what I mean. Don’t leave anything out, even discuss the small things. Eventually, come to an agreement on the way you want to raise the baby. This is so important and you should do this before the baby is born. 

This next bonus tip may seem obvious but it has to be said. Moms have the hard part from the very beginning of pregnancy. The first month the baby is home can be very stressful and a major adjustment. Dads, please make sure you chip in and help out. Be hands-on with your baby. Be ready to jump in when needed. Don’t wait for her to tell you she needs help. Every day at whatever time you two agree on, take the baby so mom can have a break.

I hope these tips were helpful to you. Let me know what you think and how they have helped. You can find me on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram @itsashleyjw!

Psalms 127:3 Children are a gift from the Lord, babies are a reward. 

Thanks for chatting!

Ashley J.