Practical Parenting - The First Six Months

These are tips and products that I found to be helpful in my son's first six months of life, ordered as chronologically as possible.

1. Saline nasal spray! If you are having a baby in winter, I hope I can save you from the faux cold I developed at the hospital in the days after my son was born.  One of my nurses explained to me that the air in the hospital is very dry, and it dries out your sinuses which causes runny nose, congestion, and could potentially develop into an infection.  This was especially inconvenient because my son was in the NICU.  I kept expecting them to tell me I couldn't visit until my symptoms were gone, but fortunately that didn't happen.  Saline nasal spray would've kept me from feeling sick in the first place. A humidifier might help in one room, but it can't humidify your whole house. Saline nasal spray goes where you go.
2. For those who anticipate a vaginal birth, get a butt donut!  It's shocking to me that this is not standard issue.  It's painful to sit directly on hard surfaces after childbirth.  Especially with our son in the NICU, there was a lot of sitting when I would rather have been lying down.  You can search for inflatable donut pillow or cushion, but it looks like this.

   

   Butt Donut Cushion

3. Once we all got home from the hospital, I thought the sinus issues would clear up on its own (I hadn't tried saline nasal spray yet). It resolved a little and then got worse because I was cooped up in my home with the heat running. This leads to my second tip: Get out of your house every single day! You need fresh air, sunlight, and exercise. This will help your sanity and physical health.  I was miserable the first month of my son's life because I felt sick and was trying to avoid him (other than to breastfeed) in case I was actually contagious.  I know getting out of the house is hard, but it's important.
4. Fed is best!  Breastfeeding is hard, and society makes us feel like we have to do it or we're bad moms. Ignore that! Anecdote is not evidence. Economist Emily Oster from Brown University wrote a book called Cribsheet (highly recommend it) that in Chapter 4 dives into every study she could find on breastfeeding and how it affects development. In short, once you control for things like the socioeconomic status of the mother, whether the mother smokes, etc, there are essentially no differences in IQ, obesity rates, allergy or asthma rates, height, cavities, blood pressure, or SIDS rates.  So, if you want to breastfeed, go for it! If you don't, go for it! I breastfed at the beginning because I hate doing dishes, it's cheaper (not free cause mom ends up eating more), and travels easier.  We switched to formula eventually, and I loved that we could switch off in the middle of night, could feed our baby in a car seat while the car was moving, and less work for me specifically.  Breastfeeding is also very painful for the first 6-ish weeks and, if you have to be away from your baby for more than a few hours, means you have to pump. Do whichever makes your own personal pro-con list the best to you. The most important thing is that your baby eats.
5. If you choose to breastfeed and have a baby in the NICU, you may be encouraged to pump to help with supply. (The short version: Your body makes more milk if you extract more milk.). Pumping output the first days will be measured in milliliters. Watching precious milliliters get stuck in the pump pieces is so disheartening.

   

   Look at all the places colostrum/milk can get lost in a full pump

   Before your milk comes in (i.e., the volume increases),  I would hand express directly into a syringe or container instead of messing with an electric pump. You can also use a Haakaa if you have one.  Anything that shortens the distance the milk has to travel.

   

   Hand expression into the funnel means less lost milk

   
   

   

   Haakaa

   
   
6. Once your milk comes in, you may start using an electric pump to store milk for when you're not around or when you go back to work. In either of these situations, the nursing-pumping bra is a game changer!  

   

   Nursing-pumping bra has nursing clips and openings for breast pump flanges.

   I didn't have to take my shirt and bra off at work because I was already wearing a pumping bra. Didn't have to change into a nursing bra when I got home, cause I was still wearing it.  If I had received this bra while I was on maternity leave, I know I would have used it then too.  The one I have didn't come with padding, but I was wearing breast pads to absorb leakage anyway, and the bra having removable padding made pumping easier.
7. Here's a bunch more breastfeeding tips rapid-fire style.  A) Make baby slightly uncomfortable if they keep falling asleep during feeds. We would turn on all the lights and strip him down to his diaper.  B) Use Lanolin in the early weeks to help soothe your nipples.  C) Clean your nipples after every feed so the milk/saliva/lanolin mixture doesn't turn into clogs. I had to take tweezers to my nipples to get the coating off them. D) Wearing these Nipple Shells between feeds kept my bra from rubbing against them when it was especially raw.  E) In the first few weeks, my lactation consultant told me that if the initial latch hurt, count down from 10, and if it still hurt, then the latch wasn't right and to try again.  F) Your hospital should have lactation consultants, use them while you're there. It's harder to get to the breastfeeding help once you are discharged from the hospital.  G) This one is slightly controversial. If your having severe nipple pain, use one side only per feed. It gave my other nipple like 5 whole hours of rest. Also, he would stop latching when he'd gotten enough to be satisfied but would keep eating if I didn't switch sides. Once your nipples heal, go back to feeding on both sides. H) Get a Haakaa.  It allowed me to pump while feeding on the other side. It was also a great travel pump so we could have a date night over the holidays and leave the baby with his Grandparents. It saves time washing all those pump parts too.  Here are a couple videos I used to develop my own hybrid Haakaa technique:  Video on how to start let down and Video on how to attach it after milk is flowing. I would have a container/bottle with a lid next to you to empty it when it fills up or if it comes off with milk in it. Don't try to reattach a half-full Haakaa. I spilled milk, and I cried.
8. In the first few months, NO ONESIES!  Who thought up this great idea: Let's make clothing that goes over their heads before they can hold up their heads.  Parents will need a third hand, Brilliant! Ugh. Stick with clothing that opens from the front like sleepers and rompers.

   

   Snap-up sleeper with the 4-snap crotch

   
   

   

   Zippered Sleeper

   Rompers are great for warm months, sleepers for night and cold months.

   

   Snap-up Romper

   My son essentially only wore a sleepers and rompers until he could hold his head up on his own.
9. Get sleepers with fold-over mittens instead of getting separate mittens.  Mittens was always a weird baby item to me.  Now I understand why they exist  Even if you trim their nails everyday, they still manage to scratch up their faces.  Small items get lost though, so avoid buying individual mittens.  Not every brand of sleeper has the fold-over mittens, but the common ones that do are Target's Cloud Island, Carter's Sleep N Play, Old Navy,  Kickee Pants' Footies, and Burt's Bees Baby. In a pinch, baby socks work just as well.

   

   Sleeper sleeve unfolded mitten

   
   

   

   Sleeper sleeve fold-over mitten

   
   
10. Speaking of scratching themselves, baby nail clippers are impossible to use. Everything's so small and baby's move unexpectedly.  I cut his skin once and avoided trimming his nails for weeks afterwards; we kept his hands in socks for most of that time.  Eventually, my husband bought us a rotating sander baby nail file.

    

    Electric Nail Trimmer

    It has a light so you can see what you're doing, multiple grits for different ages, and spins clockwise or counterclockwise at two different speeds. It made nail maintenance tolerable.
11. If you are planning to get a portable crib or playard, make sure it is comfortable for your baby to sleep in.  Our son never would sleep well in the bassinet or pack n play as a newborn, and even now that he sleeps 11+ hours a night, he looks visibly uncomfortable in the 2 hotel pack n plays we've tried. Get a playard that is directly on the ground or that has significant structure (look at the supports underneath) with a padded fitted sheet to keep the base warm and provide more padding.  He sleeps so much better when we travel with the padded fitted sheet and the higher quality playard. If you can physically touch the assembled pack n play, push down on the mattress from corner to corner to check for stability, strange bumps, and cushion. If you are shopping online for one with the mattress suspended off the ground, look for pictures of underside; the shape of the supports will tell you most of what you want to know. They all pretty much have an X, but it's the extra support that seems to make the difference. The supports of the one we have look like a tall infinity sign with additional long-edge supports. It's a Baby Trend Playard from 2003.

    

    Baby Trend Playard underside supports

    The other one we've used that worked pretty well was shaped like an asterisk with 8 ground contacts. It's a Graco Pack N Play TotBloc Playard.

    

    Graco Pack N Play TotBloc Playard underside supports

    The ones with only an added short-dimension-middle support are terrible. The one shown below is a Graco Pack N Play.

    

    Graco Pack N Play underside supports

    The absolute worst one we've ever tried was the Foundations Sleep N Store Portable Playard. It had a raised hard section down the middle, a cardboard-thin mattress, and flimsy supports (you can tell because it's like half the size of our good Baby Trend one when folded up). He woke up an extra 5 times the night we used it. I don't have a picture of the supports, but its shape looks a lot like the Graco Pack N Play's just with thinner bars.
12. One of the more frequent, frustrating interactions I had with my newborn son was always in the middle of the night.  My husband's asleep, and it's my turn to get up with the crying baby.  Change his diaper, no improvement.  Try to feed him, not interested.  Ok, he's probably gassy.  I don't think the gas drops ever worked.  Try the Windi.  According to their website, the Windi is "a hollow tube that safely, naturally and instantly relieves gas and calms colic."  It really does relieve gas instantly. 

    

    Windi

    

    Inside of a Windi

    You lube up the tube, insert it into their butt hole, and out comes gas (and likely poop too).  There are some caveats: A) It doesn't work for all types of gas, only gas that is far enough into their intestinal tract; B) the baby can become dependent on the external aid, so use it sparingly.  Our rule of thumb was that Windi's were a last resort after you've tried everything else first and only if it is also the middle of the night.
13. Sleep training works. Sleep is important for all of you. See Chapter 11 of Cribsheet for evidence that it works and how to do it better than I could explain it.  Don't try too early though, your baby won't be physically capable of sleeping 6+ hours until sometime around month 4.