It's hard to believe I've already been a mom for one and a half years! Time really does fly when you're having fun. :)
True to form, I have a list (a Google Document) that I routinely update with things I want to remember for a potential future parenthood round 2 - things that went well (or didn't) with our now-toddler daughter, as well as things I was needlessly concerned about (or not concerned about enough). Now obviously every kid is different, and what works with one won't necessarily work with another, but still - I feel like it can't hurt to try to be prepared (my motto for pretty much everything), which is why I started making this list anyway.
And then I thought - maybe other Type As like me would also be interested to hear my takes, just in case they experience something similar. I could make this a blog post! So here we are.
This public version of my list is only part of my list - the things I learned and pieces of advice I have to offer that I thought would be most universally applicable/adaptable for different kinds of families with different parenting styles (though I'm sure even in this curated list my parenting biases shine through).
Without further ado, the eclectic assortment of parenting experience/advice I've (so far) accumulated:
- Buy newborn size diapers. I knew I'd be having an above-average-size baby (she ended up being 8 lbs 10 oz at birth), that newborn size diapers were only recommended up to 10 lbs, and that size 1 diapers fit well starting at around 8 lbs - so I figured if we wanted to use newborn diapers at the beginning it would only be for a few days before we'd switch to size 1s anyway, and that the diapers we took home from the hospital would more than cover those few days. Alas, I was wrong - in my parenting inexperience, I severely underestimated 1) how many diapers a newborn can go through in a day, 2) how long the umbilical cord stump can stay on (our daughter's didn't come off until the pediatrician took it off at her 3-week appointment), and 3) the fact that all babies lose weight during the first 24 hours - and can take 2-3 weeks to get back up to birth weight again. The newborn size diapers have that little cutout for the umbilical stump (at least, the Huggies brand does), but size 1 diapers don't. For that reason alone (but also because our daughter hovered around the 8 lb mark for several days longer than I thought she would), we ended up using newborn size diapers for at least 3-4 weeks - which necessitated running out and buying a couple boxes past the freebies the hospital gave us.
- If you're breastfeeding, use diaper rash cream/ointment after every diaper change for the first two months. I bought diaper rash cream/ointment for each changing table (we put one upstairs and one downstairs), and another set for the diaper bag and car. One and a half years later, we haven't used it all; since our daughter started solid foods around 6 months old, we've had to use it maybe once or twice a month. BUT I do wish we'd used it more frequently when she was a newborn, especially those first few months. Breastfed babies have soft poo, and a LOT of poo (at least ours did - I swear, nearly every diaper we changed had some poo) - and when they're pooping that frequently, the bum is sure to get irritated. Just trust me on this. Better to over-cream/ointment than not do it enough, and then have to make a pediatrician appointment to get a prescription for the high-quality cream/ointment stuff.
- If you are concerned about any aspect of breastfeeding - call a lactation consultant! I thought I was doing pretty good with everything, and knew what I was doing - but when our daughter hadn't gained back to her birthweight yet by two weeks, our pediatrician recommended we either call a lactation consultant, or supplement with formula. We started with the first (and ended up also doing the second) - and let met just say, the lactation consultant we saw was so amazing and reassuring. Yes, it turned out, I did know what I was doing - but it was great to hear that from a professional... and get tips for how to do certain things even better. In those hectic early weeks, it was such a relief to get that professional reassurance. And most insurances (including ours) cover up to two sessions! Ours was an at-home consultant (it was January 2020, just before the pandemic), and she came over and watched me do a feed in our own living room. It was great! And then she was available via text when I had follow-up questions during the next couple weeks after that, too.
- It is okay to supplement with formula. I dreamed of "exclusively breastfeeding," so it was really hard for me to hear that it might be a good idea to give our daughter some formula. I worried that there was something wrong with my breastmilk (quality-wise and/or quantity-wise) that made me "unfit" to breastfeed. I worried that she would struggle with differentiating between the bottle and breast (and would prefer the bottle). And I worried that if I started supplementing with a little formula, there would be no going back to "exclusive breastfeeding" at a point in the future - like once you start formula you can never go back again. Thankfully, all those worries were completely unfounded. We gave our daughter one bottle of formula a day for a few weeks, until she was back to birthweight and her bilirubin levels were back to near-normal levels (she had a bit of "long-term" jaundice). She took to the bottle just fine, and didn't have any confusion between the two. And when she was healthy, we dropped the formula, and she was just as content to go back to exclusive breastfeeding... Of course, if it hadn't worked out that way and I hadn't been able to continue breastfeeding after all - that also would've been okay. My mother formula-fed me in the '80s, and I turned out just fine. Breastmilk, formula - it doesn't matter. Fed is best. (Looking back with several months of hindsight, it really does seem silly how much we worried over something so minor - but that's life parenting a newborn, I guess. Every decision seems so fraught, because their little lives seem so fragile.)
- If you want your baby to be able to drink from a bottle, keep giving bottles once they are introduced. For a bit after we stopped the formula, we still gave a bottle (for one feed per day) of pumped breastmilk, both so my husband could help with feeding, and so that she would continue to be competent with bottle drinking if we were to need to leave her in someone else's care while we went out for a date night or something. We did that once (her aunt babysat her, and gave her a bottle) - but then the pandemic hit, and socializing/leaving-the-house-at-all were out the window, and when the only reason we were giving bottles was so my husband could do a feed, it just didn't seem worth it anymore. I still had to pump while he was giving her the bottle, to keep my milk production up, and it was more work to pump and clean all the pump parts (and bottles) than to just breastfeed instead. So for a few months, I exclusively breastfed. No more bottles... but by summer 2020, things were opening up again, and there would be occasions (rare, but still not never) when I wouldn't be around for a feed (e.g. if I had a doctor's appointment). And when my husband tried to give her a bottle - she refused it. Thankfully, she was almost 6 months by that time, and once we hit that milestone, if she was hungry when I happened to be out of the house, my husband could just feed her some food purees instead until I got home (since I was only ever gone for an hour or two at most anyway). Not using bottles had some perks (we never had to wean her off the bottle!) - but definitely some drawbacks, too. For one thing, I had to do every. single. feed. Even the ones in the middle of the night. Every night. For another, what was the point of having an "emergency supply" of frozen, pumped breastmilk if she was never going to drink it? (I creatively used it to make a bunch of frozen food purees instead.) And finally, to this day she does not like drinking milk from a cup, even now that we're trying to do cow's milk now, rather than breastmilk or formula. Even adding chocolate or strawberry flavoring to it, she will not do it. I suspect she wouldn't have that aversion if she'd had milk more frequently from sources other than me.
- Replace your breast pump parts regularly! You're supposed to get new parts and switch them out every 3 months. This includes the flanges, filters, tubing, and collection bottles. I figured it was just a "recommendation" and didn't really bother being super vigilant about it at first - the pump still worked just fine, so why change them? But then I caved and gave it a try - and it was worlds different. I thought my pump was working just fine with old parts, but I was wrong. It's like changing the toothbrush head on your electric toothbrush - you know how it feels crazy powerful that first week after you replace it, and your teeth have never felt cleaner? Suddenly I was getting like twice the amount of milk I'd been getting before. Of course, with everything else going on with parenting, it's easy to lose track of time and forget when it's been three months - so make it an alarm on your phone/calendar app! (And if you're noticing any issues, or see any cracks in the plastic, definitely feel free to change the parts out even sooner!)
- Once your baby starts eating solid foods, make sure you clean the food bibs really well. (I'm talking about the plastic bibs here, which are easy to wipe food off of. Teething bibs are another story.) We just kind of wiped the food bibs off after a meal, or washed them in the sink when we did the rest of the dishes at the end of the day. After a few months of this, we noticed black spots on the little velcro strips - mold. We tossed the bibs and bought new ones, and this time we did two things differently: 1) We still usually waited until the end of the day to thoroughly clean them, but in the meantime, we didn't just throw them in the sink with other dirty dishes to sit in water. We kept them separate (and dry), on the counter, until they were ready to be cleaned. And 2) whenever we did a load of our daughter's laundry (so once or twice a week), we threw all the bibs in the washing machine with her clothes, and then hung them to dry.
- Keep nursing pads stocked until you are completely done with breastfeeding. Once I had my supply well-established and we were past the first couple of months, I (wrongly) figured I wasn't going to have any leaking problems anymore. I even returned an unopened box to the store. But then she started solid foods (and so she nursed a little less); and then we moved her to her crib in her own room (and so she nursed a little less); and then we did some sleep training so she would sleep better through the night (and so she nursed a little less)... and every time one of those transitions happened, and my body had to readjust to a new schedule, there would be at least a day or two of leakage problems. Needless to say, I ended up buying another box to replace the one I'd returned.
- Don't be afraid to sleep train! - and to get help from a sleep consultant. Figuring out how to get your child to sleep is HARD. Especially because - it keeps changing! What your little one is capable of, and the amount of sleep they need, keeps changing as they grow up. And so many things disrupt sleep - Developmental milestones cause sleep regressions! Teething causes sleep regressions! And everything you read online is contradictory and different. Sleep training (which for the uninitiated means helping your child learn how to put themselves to sleep without relying on nursing or rocking to sleep) comes in many forms, and there is countless debate about what process is best - but the truth is, ALL of the processes involve at least SOME amount of crying. And it is SO hard to hear that crying. But just because your baby is crying doesn't mean they are in Major Distress - it just means they are acknowledging that their routine, and the process that they used to use to fall asleep, has changed; they can't speak yet, so the only way they can communicate is crying. We tried sleep training a couple different times, in a couple different ways, and kept struggling to stay consistent until we finally hired a sleep consultant to give us reassurances (and hold us accountable), throughout the process. And it was SO worth it. Our daughter is now an amazing sleeper (knock on wood), with very little effort on our part other than "suck it up and endure hearing her crying a little more than usual for a couple days".
- The ideal two-nap schedule is: naps at 9 am and 1 or 1:30 pm. Most kids do two naps from about 7-8 months until sometime between 14-18 months, when they drop down to one nap. This was one of the things we learned from our sleep consultant - there are natural time periods when a baby of that age is more likely to be tired, and thus more easily able to fall asleep for a nap. If you can line their napping schedule up with those times, napping won't be such a struggle every day. And wouldn't you know it, a few small adjustments to her napping schedule so that she woke up for the day around 7 am, took her first nap starting at 9 am, and her second nap starting at 1 or 1:30 pm (depending on how long the first nap was), and she was sleeping SO much better.
- Teething does not always follow the "schedule." On two separate occasions, we took our daughter to the pediatrician, because she was having symptoms of teething, but "according to the schedule" she shouldn't have been teething again yet. The first time was around 9-10 months, when she seemed to be teething on and off for about 6 weeks straight, as her 4 lateral incisors came in. We thought there was no way she'd STILL be teething 6 weeks later, right? So we brought her in to see if maybe all her ear-tugging and rubbing was due to an ear infection. It wasn't. The second time was just after she turned a year old, when she was swallowing so much saliva she was wheezing a little. It seemed like she was getting her first molars in, "but how could she be?" we reasoned, when she wasn't "due" for molars for at least another two months? Again, we were wrong; it was just teething... I can't tell you the number of times I searched for teething schedules online, to check when her next teeth were "supposed" to be coming in - And it seemed the more I looked at those charts, the more wrong they were for our daughter. Her teeth did not come in the "right order" or during the anticipated time range - especially the older she got. For example, her bottom canine teeth came in first, even though the top canines are "supposed to". According to the chart, the bottom canines typically come in between 17-23 months; hers both came in early, at 13.5 months. At 1.5 years old, she now has all 20 of her baby teeth.
- You don't have to listen to age recommendations for food or toys. Because many of our daughter's teeth came in early, before the "typical range," she seemed ready to try other foods sooner. When she was 10 months, I was feeding her snacks and meals marked "12+ months" and now at 18 months, I've already been feeding her some snacks marked "2+ years" for a few months now. Unless there's an ingredients-related reason to wait (like not giving anything with honey in it until after 1 year old), the age recommendations are really just that - recommendations - and you can feel free to ignore them. You know your child best, and what they're capable of. I was always around to supervise when she tried something new, and if she seemed to struggle with it too much, I'd wait a couple weeks or months before offering it again a second time. Same with toys - the age recommendations on a box are there either 1) to tell you what age range MOST kids would get the MOST out of that toy, or 2) for liability reasons (e.g. just in case a small part broke off the toy and became a choking hazard). Our daughter had a crawling tunnel at 9 months that she loved to army-crawl through - but according to the box, the recommended ages were 3+ years! Then there were other toys we got her that were certainly a little advanced to what she was able to do when we first introduced them - but she found other ways to play with them that she enjoyed, even if it wasn't what the toy manufacturer intended. We got her a little car ramp toy marked 18+ months, which we gave to her when she was a year old. She could not put the cars on the little ramp herself at that age, but she loved watching us put the cars on the ramp for her, and she liked playing with the cars on their own. There were four cars of different colors, and she liked lining the cars up with the different colored ramps that matched the cars. She played with the toy that way for a few months, until around 15-16 months old, when she was finally able to line up the cars to fit them onto the ramp, so that she could play with the toy by herself as intended.
- Be prepared to waste food. Lots of food. Advice for feeding toddlers is like: "Offer a variety of foods, so they are introduced to a variety of flavors and textures!" "You may need to offer a food upwards of 20 times before they're ready to try it - so even if they don't like something the first time, don't give up; try again!" "Every meal - AND snack - should be balanced, with protein/dairy AND fruit/veg." "Give your kid options - they'll be more likely to eat if they're choosing what to eat!" "Don't force them to eat. Offer food and then let them decide how much to eat." All of those are great advice - BUT they also necessitate food waste. Keeping the house stocked with fresh fruits so that I can offer a banana or a kiwi as a snack, means sometimes the bananas (or kiwis) won't get eaten in time before they go bad. And that's not even counting the balanced plates that are prepared, only for them to refuse any of the things on their plate (even if they're things they asked for). I knew there would be some food waste, but I gotta say - I was not prepared for just how much food would end up in the trash every day (or, to our vet's chagrin, the dog's mouth). You either have to get creative for how to store and repurpose leftovers, or you have to just give in the inevitable food waste, try not to feel guilty about it, and get used to taking the trash out more often before the trash bags start to smell.
- Children develop at their own pace - and that's perfectly okay! Our daughter was not an early walker, or an early talker. (I blame the pandemic and our limited ability to socialize and take her out places to see other kids for at least some of that - but even during non-pandemic times, there are still always kids who walk or talk earlier, and others who walk or talk later, so who knows.) There were even times when her doctors expressed some concern that she wasn't hitting certain milestones soon enough - but from our standpoint, I was much less concerned. She likes to do things on her own, and if we tried to push her to practice cruising or walking, or tried to prompt her to repeat sounds or words after us, she would have zero interest. I knew she was capable; she just didn't want to yet. I could see that she was making progress in her own way, at her own pace, and was perfect fine with that - so I tried to be fine with that too. :)
I'm sure there's a ton more lessons I've already forgotten - but at least that list is a pretty good start. :)
