Bramley Mums

We thought it might be useful to offer a few hints and tips that you won't find elsewhere. Read them, use what you want, ignore the rest.

Pregnancy

Do your pelvic floor exercises.

Book an NCT class – even if you have already read the info taught in the class it’s invaluable to have a peer group of mothers during the first weeks to check out the tiny and intimate details of your recovery and the baby’s care and development. Other parents forget really quickly.

Embrace the value of second hand baby goods. Go to NCT Nearly New Sales, sign up for Freecycle, buy on Ebay or join the Bramley Mums Google group and ask if anyone has got items they are looking to sell.

Don’t get sucked in by sophisticated marketing of baby equipment designed to appeal to the aspirational. ‘Off-roading’ is for Landrovers not prams. If you are going seriously off-piste take a sling or a back-carrier. Friends tell me jogging prams aren’t that great. Travelsystems are expensive and unnecessary - are you REALLY going to lug your baby around in a car seat? We bought one second hand and the carseat has never sat in the pram, apart from when we bought it. Use a sling, most babies prefer it.

Register BOTH of you on Babycenter.com. Dads like to know what's going on with their baby too!

Don’t decide now is the time to get your armpits/eyebrows waxed – your pain threshold is lower during pregnancy and you will be mentally scarred for life. Reserve the pain for your bikini line.

Do your pelvic floor exercises. Your baby could be bouncing around on them for more than an hour during labour.

Write a birth plan – you won’t follow it and the midwife will ignore it – but it’s a great way to ensure you both understand exactly what you would like to happen during the birth and makes you think through your choices. Consider what would happen if you had to go to emergency C-section and how you would need to organise the house whilst you recover.

Buy a small heatable cushion, preferably one filled with lavender. This is brilliant in the last days for support and easing ligament pain and false labour cramps.

Books: 'What to Expect When You’re Expecting’ is good because it covers almost everything and so is very reassuring. Read Janet Balaskas' book on active birth for ideas for labour positions.

Read up on the first couple of months of baby’s life. Gina Ford’s Contented Little Baby Book is very popular at the moment. She clearly has strong anal compulsives/control freak tendencies, but it is very good for finding out basic facts – how long do babies feed? How long do they sleep? How much do they drink? And for working out weaning regimes later on. Read it, take what you want from it, laugh at the incredibly complex routines – you’re old enough to work out yourself when and what to eat. Tracey Hogg’s Secrets of the Baby Whisperer is a less anal version and more reassuring reading, although the cod-Yorkshire ‘e ba gum, it’ll all be better wi’ a good cup o’ tea’ schtick wears thin (written for an American audience and sounds like Daphne from Frasier). She does also have a more balanced run down of bottle feeding vs. breast-feeding than almost anything else you will read (which will be very pro-breastfeeding). Annabel Karmel’s (queen of baby purees) First Year Baby Planner is good for quick, accessible summaries of what you need for each stage of development: equipment, toys and what baby should be doing. What to expect the first year is OK – but is very US-centric, poorly structured and too general to be very useful. The free NHS ‘Birth to Five’ book is excellent. Armin Brott’s The New Father book is great for new fathers. It contains much that is common to the other books mentioned, but also much that is different.

Expect to be horny as hell during the day when your partner isn’t around and knackered and asleep when he is. Pelvic floor exercises can be useful here…If you are lucky enough to be awake AND horny AND have your partner available Hotmilk maternity underwear is great.

Discuss the small practicalities of baby care – will baby sleep in your bed or in a cot? How will you deal with crying? How will you divide up babycare?

Get familiar with your steriliser and breastpump before you have to use them. Are you as slick at reassembling them as an Afghani terrorist with an AK47?

Work out where bottles, steriliser, formula etc.. are going to be stored.

Do your pelvic floor exercises. They are what turns your baby round the right way for the last stage of labour.

Investigate a post-natal exercise class – your body will be very unfamiliar after the birth and you will want to get your old one back.

Check out www.whatson4littleones.co.uk and our Things We Love page, then consider what classes you would like to do with your baby.

Use your gym ball – your core muscle strength is important during the labour and postnatally.

Do a yoga or Pilates class.

Do your pelvic floor exercises. They are what will keep you continent after the birth.

Practice visualization and relaxation techniques - the Natal birth hypnotherapy CDs are good. Glenn Harrold's general relaxation CD is excellent despite his initially annoying Michael Cainealike accent.

Get familiar with your TENS machine. Partners – DON'T turn it up to max when you try it on – it DOES hurt.

Learn how to swaddle.

Don’t buy a V cushion – they are only good for propping you up in bed. If you plan to breastfeed buy a firm foam cushion. John Lewis have a good one that you can use later to support baby in sitting position.

Buy breast pads. If you plan to breast feed buy lots of them.

Buy Lansinoh nipple cream if you plan to breastfeed.

Drink raspberry leaf tea (or take capsules) as soon as it is recommended. Several friends swore it helped.

Get a chest freezer. Fill it with ready-cooked meals.

Work out how to reduce your housework/ironing/DIY/house maintenance.

Consider employing cleaners.

Stock up on easy-viewing DVDs. This is NOT the time to try and catch up on existentialist French movies.

Labour

Expect the unexpected.

Keep all your options open. Be prepared to be very flexible as the labour develops.

Dad – whatever Mum wants is right – even if it’s not what you discussed and agreed.

Take lots of water.

Take lots of music. The twentieth time round that 'relaxation' CD will NOT be relaxing.

Please, believe us – it WILL hurt, it WILL be the hardest work you have ever done in your life, you WILL poo in front of the midwife….it WILL be the best thing you have ever done in your life.

Welcome the pain, don’t fight it. She/he will be worth it.

Be proud of your labour.

Stay in the hospital for 24 hours after the birth if you can. You will get invaluable advice on breastfeeding and can offload the baby to the staff to get some sleep.

Plan your parking. Remember your parking money.

Remember your camera.

After baby’s arrival

Expect to feel vulnerable and scared.

Expect to bleed for up to two weeks. You may bleed for up to six weeks - although you might want to check this out with a doctor.

Expect to lose some continence for a while (see pelvic floors above).

Drink loads of water after the birth – expect to be constipated.

People who used them tell me valley cushions are rubbish.

Put off visitors for several days.

Don’t let anyone visit unless they bring food or do housework, preferably both.

Plan to anchor yourself to the sofa for two weeks. If you are breastfeeding your sole priority is to feed the baby for those two weeks.

Let your partner plan to run the household for the first two weeks – including all cooking, cleaning and organisation. Alternatively organise family in advance to help or get in a doula.

Expect to feel totally drained for two weeks, to be exhausted for six weeks and uncertain that you can survive parenting for three months (or sixteen years).

Make sure you eat.

The biggest secret of parenting is that the first three months are a bit shit and many Mums take a while to love their babies. Don’t feel bad if you are one of them – it will come.

We have often felt we made the wrong decision/ are too old to be parents/will never sleep properly again. All our honest friends tell us they have felt the same, even those who had their children in their late twenties (as opposed to their forties).

Don’t be surprised if you go through a grieving process for your previous, childfree life.

Plan one baby-free evening a week from as soon after the birth as possible. Catch up with your posse, go to the gym/cinema, whatever while Dad looks after baby. It will ensure he is as familiar with baby’s care as possible and enable you retain some sense of yourself.

Parents lie about how much their baby sleeps. ‘Sleeping through the night’ can mean from midnight ‘til four am for some people. Parents of older babies forget how little their baby slept and how knackered they felt.

Dads

Find a way of doing something small but special for Mum every day for the first two weeks. Massage is a good choice.

If you are willing to bring Mum some basic breakfast in bed then you know that whatever happens she has eaten one meal that day.

Breastfeeding

Expect breastfeeding to be painful. Even if the latch is right the mechanical pressure the baby exerts will cause some pain. Your breasts will hurt when your milk comes in and it is likely that your let down will be painful for the first couple of weeks. Many mums have pain for about six weeks in some form or another. If you are lucky - you may not!

You will struggle to satisfy the baby with colostrum until your milk comes in.

Your milk supply will need careful nurturing. Sleep lots, eat well, cuddle baby naked.

If the baby doesn’t latch properly stop feeding IMMEDIATELY. Even seconds feeding with a poor latch can cause pain in your nipples for days. Stuff as much breast in babies mouth as you can get in - more breast = less pain. Never nurse on the tip of the nipple.

Use the breastfeeding advice resources.

The baby will feed for a long time in the evening – when you are at your most tired and most sore. Apparently this sucking is to stimulate milk production during the night. My doula encouraged me to let my daughter feed for as long as I could stand it in the evening and I do believe it helped establish my milk supply.

Cut down on black tea – it reduces your milk supply. Mint and sage tea are lethal for milk supply – check mixed herbal teas as many of them contain mint. Fennel tea really does increase milk supply. Fenugreek and coconut milk are also supposed to be good.

Use Lansanil nipple cream from the beginning.

Get the baby used to a bottle as soon as it is feeding well (we started our daughter at c.2 weeks). It will maximise your flexibility. I think nipple confusion is a myth, but take care to use slow flow teats when bottle feeding a breast fed baby (our daughter took her first bottle in three sucks!). Bottle feeding is clearly a different skill for the baby to learn and you will need to continue bottle feeding regularly so that baby remembers how to do it (although our daughter relearnt several times).

Get used to pumping from the beginning – it isn't as horrible as you imagine and it maximises your flexibility – you can go out and Dad can give a feed, or you can have a good girls night out, pump and chuck and have milk in the freezer to feed. It can also alleviate your engorgement when your milk comes in.

Let the baby empty one breast before moving to the other one. If you move the baby to the other breast after a set time it will only get foremilk and the breast is not emptied so your supply will go down.

Breasts ‘refill’ to half former capacity after one hour.

The more you empty your breasts the more they produce – see pumping.

Ignore Gina Ford’s breastfeeding advice.

Several mums I know used a combination of breastfeeding and formula. I don’t think they experienced more problems with milk supply (for those feeds they were breastfeeding) than anyone feeding breastmilk alone. Most of them fed to four months or so.

Breastfeeding does NOT help you lose weight – you get incredibly hungry and there is evidence that you retain some weight while you are feeding. I think this is a myth propagated by pro-breastfeeding people who misunderstood the fact that it helps your uterus contract to its previous size (so you return to your former size internally). The people I know who returned to their lithe former size formula fed, but then I and others I know were keen to breastfeed so that our babies didn’t have the problems with appetite control that we had…

Weaning
Get baby used to room temperature food from the beginning – you don’t have to muck about heating things up then, particularly when you are out and about.

The six months milk only policy was developed for children who are being weaned onto a nutritionally insufficient diet (developing countries). It is very likely your baby will want to eat solids before then – don’t let the health visitor guilt you out about it.

Check out baby led weaning. Even if you don't go the whole hog it can help give baby some more interest to their early feeding.

Bear in mind that eating is an iterative process for babies. Food goes in, comes out, goes in again, etc. They love playing with their food, particularly painting with it. Go with the flow.

Babies take a while to get used to the non-continuous nature of solids. They often cry until they get used to food coming in spoonfuls.

Experiment with combinations. Baby doesn't know that pear doesn't go with cauliflower. Cheese sauce helps most things go down. See Ella's Kitchen pouches for inspiration.

Melba toasts make great finger food, come prepacked in little packages for travel and are cheap.

Second time round (under construction)

Second and subsequent pregnancies seem interminable. You aren't as fascinated by your pregnancy, you are likely to be bigger, you are more tired as you are running around with your other children...

Labour second time round is generally physically easier. That said, my friends have often had difficult second time labours.

Adjusting to the second baby is emotionally easier than adjusting to your first. You may find that you allow yourself to bathe in those maternal feelings more this time round.

You have the same amount of time available to you, but more children to care for, so someone ends up crying..

Expect additional clinginess and acting up from the first child.