Baby Tipping Part One

Everyone has their own tips and tricks and suggestions for you when you have, or are about to have, a baby, and they're more than happy to share them. Here's a few things I've learned since becoming a father.

Nothing anyone tells you will be exactly what you need for your baby, my own tips included. What you need to do is take all those things and find what you can use from them. Adapt them to your baby, because they may be just a few days old, but they'll have their own personality and desires, and they'll make them known to you somehow!

Feeding time can be a restful, peaceful time with mummy and baby, a moment of intimate bonding. Unfortunately, it also involves a lot of moments of vomitting. As most parents know, babies spit up. A lot. What we certainly did not know is that it is totally normal for babies to have one big spit-up every day. And in my experience, I mean big! For the first few months, Ada had instances when she has spit-up far more than I could believe a tiny tummy can hold. When it happens, don't panic. It's frightening, but it's normal. Remember, as long as your baby is peeing and pooping, they're doing fine when it comes to feeding.

And even if your baby isn't pooping, they're probably still okay! Ada could go five or six days without a single bowel movement, and I got so worried I askedd our GP during one of our visits. She assured me it was okay and told me that I should start worrying around the ten or eleven day mark. That's strange to me, because in my experience working in infant daycare programs, babies poop a lot.

 

Oh, one more thing about baby poop (If you're not a parent, or soon-to-be parent, you're already horrified, so why stop now?). If your baby is breast fed, it doesn't smell when they're young. Beast milk only has what baby bodies need, so very little waste is created, so nothing to make it smell bad! As you start adding solids into their diet from around 6 months, it can start to smell, but even then, until they're mostly eating solids, it's not as bad as you expect it to be.

Babies are amazing, and there's so much I've learned from Ada already, even after studying this stuff for three years, and working with them for much longer. Part Two coming soon.

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Baby Tipping Part Two (Soon)