I am a mother of two babies one year apart. The second one has been a breeze even though two are supposed to be more work. I learned quite a bit from my first child, and I wish that someone had given me a “cheat sheet” with just these ten things to help me along. Why is it that our first time around in motherhood we learn of things… a little too late?

I hope that these can be helpful to others:

1-    Your sleep depravation is a TEMPORARY situation. It does get easier after week 8 (or 12th at the latest).  This might not seem important now for you to know before the baby arrives, but believe me after the baby is born, at about week two, you will need to see light at the end of the tunnel, and you will begin to count the days to week eight., and if you are unfortunate enough to have a baby that holds up until week 12, you will count the days that he or she goes over week eight. This applies even for colicky babies. You WILL figure out what works by week six, eight, or twelve at the latest.

2-    Read about baby rearing months BEFORE the baby is born. I read a lot about pregnancy while pregnant, and did not think of reading about how to take care of the baby until the week before I went to the hospital as I was packing my bag. Let me tell you, once the baby arrives you will hardly have any time to read. You will be lucky to take a shower! So, with my first child I often was learning things TOO late for them to be useful, and I felt like “catch up” for a whole year. I recommend the “Girlfriends' Guide to surviving the First Year of Motherhood", because it is fun, easy reading and it will give you info that the others don’t. When you hit a particular topic you want to know more about, you can look it up in the index of the other more "scholarly” books.  

3-    If you think you want to breastfeed read a book about it BEFORE the baby arrives. Doctor Sears' book is the best. There is essential information about breastfeeding that will make your life sooo much easier and it is information you need at the beginning. Few weeks later it might be too late. The classes you get at the hospital (while often good) are not enough. And if you think that you can read while you breastfed… let me tell you, you might get a really calm baby, or you might be like the rest of us and have a baby that while breastfeeding plays with your hair, turns in the middle of a feeding, or becomes obsessed with your book and wants to grab it…. I would not chance it, if you can, read before the baby arrives. 

4-  When you hear or read that babies are fed every three hours, they mean from beginning of feeding to beginning of feeding. And during the first few weeks it can take up to an hour to feed. That is right – up to an hour! So she or he will feed at 10 PM and then at 1:00 AM and so on. I am not kidding you. My first day in the hospital I asked every nurse that came into the room to corroborate this piece of information. I was in total disbelieve… why had none of my girlfriends told me? “oh I did not mention this?... amazing uh…” was the general response from them.   

5-     Those who say “sleep when the baby sleeps” have the best intentions, but I don’t know anyone that was able to truly follow this advice. I felt like a failure because something always came up that I needed to do while the baby slept. So I finally set aside a few hours of the day as “sacred” and designated them as the hours that I sleep when the baby sleept. I found the late morning to work for me (after the 10AM feeding).

6-     You need to get out of the house or you will get cabin fever. And there is nothing worse than cabin-fevered sleep-depravation. You need to get out of the house at least once a day. A newborn is easier to take along than a 6-month old. Go out and bring the baby with you, because it will increasingly become more difficult to do so later on, and by the time she or he is a toddler, it will be impossible!

7-     The focus of the first thirty days should be to get the baby on a feeding and sleeping schedule. Don’t believe those that “decry structure.” Kids LIKE structure and thrive on it. By the time your baby has become a toddler you will realize that structure was inevitable and that your life would have been much easier if you had accepted your fait sooner. Here is how I think it should go: the baby gets fed every 2 ½ or three hours for as long as they want to (again at the begining it might take up to an hour). And if they want to feed sooner, you give them extra feedings. But don’t skip a feeding because they just finished one. In other words: you feed at 7:00, 10:00, 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 10:00, 1:00, 4:00, etc…  If the baby is going through a growth spur, she-he might feed at 7:00 and want to feed again at 9:00, still offer to feed him/her at 10:00. He/she might feed for only few minutes, but to do so helps to set their body clock so that when the growth-spur passes you will still be "in the rhythm." I am not advocating that you follow my schedule. You and the baby will figure out what works for you. But find a rhythm sooner than later, the baby will be happier and so will you.

8-     “Sleep through the night” means “for five hours straight.” My daughter was “sleeping through the night” right away and I did not know it. But it was “at the wrong time” – from 8 pm to 1:00 AM. A pediatrician taught us that if we waked her and fed her at 12:00 midnight she might go back to sleep and sleep for another five hours, and she did! This will not work until week eight.

9-     Although doctors often say that there is no known causes for colic, nurses think that more often than not there are one of two reasons for a baby to have “colic”:
          a- Not having been fed enough during the day. Once we figured out our daughter needed to feed more often and for longer, her colic went away.
          b- Acid reflux. My son was colicky until he was diagnosed with acid reflux. After he was prescribed Zantac, the colic went away.
The difficulty is that these two things are opposites. You don’t want to overfeed a baby with acid reflux. Ask your doctor about acid reflux, the symptoms are quite clear and if you ask about it, it is easy to diagnose.

Which takes me to the last thing it took me a while to figure out:

10- Doctors are not always the most helpful. You have to be proactive. One needs to mention to doctors every possible little thing our babies do, because things that seem irrelevant to us, when combined with others, might amount to a HUGE problem that can be easy to solve. My son spit up constantly (I thought it was normal), he grabbed his neck with his hand (never thought anything of it), tilted his head back all the time, (I thought it was strange, but I was not alarmed), and cried all the time (I thought it was colic). These are all tell - tell signs of acid reflux (very painful to newborns). The doctor did not diagnosed him because I did not bring these things up. A nurse ASKED ME about them and Zantac was prescribed. Instant relief for my son. Thank God for nurses!!!! Be informed and don’t be afraid to look like a hypochondriac. YOU KNOW YOUR KIDS BEST.

Finally, when you feel overwhelmed remind yourself: All of this will get easier, MUCH EASIER. And it all goes by so fast, that you will miss it, even feeding your baby in the middle of the night!

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