Tips and Tricks

• My wife had our son a full month early.  Thank Christ we went the weekend before and bought all the stuff that was left on our registry so at least we had most of it.
• You’ll probably have to register in both Buy Buy Baby and Babies R Us.  We found they carry different styles of the same thing…like BBB would carry all the boy colors and Babies R Us would have all the girl colors, or vice versa.  Very irritating.
• Take the prebirth class.  Take one that gives you a walkthrough of the hospital.  That was extremely helpful to know where to park, where to go…etc, because when it actually happens, everything is a panic.
• Keep the sidesnap shirts with mittens on him until he’s at least a month.  Kids have very sharp nails that are hard to cut and they will scratch themselves and you.  The second their hands come out of the mittens, they dig right into their own face for some reason.
• Unless your baby comes way early, buy everything in size small and not newborn.  Even being a month early, my son was only in newborn stuff for a couple of weeks.  Same goes for diapers…only get a couple of packs of newborns, cause they’ll be in size 1s very soon.
• Feed the baby on demand.  There is no schedule to when to feed or how much.  The rule I’ve learned is to never increase too much at one time (I increase a quarter of an ounce no sooner than a week apart).  If they spit up, that’s ok.  If they projectile vomit, it’s not ok…scale that back.  But there’s no guide for “they should be eating this much at this age” guide.  Trust me, I’ve looked everywhere.
• So the newborn is ready to go to sleep, you have it swaddled.  Roll up another blanket and put it under its side so the baby slightly turns its head when sleeping.  So if it spits up it comes out instead of stays in its mouth and causes a choking hazard.
• We also had alittle problem with reflux, and the doctor told us to prop the mattress with a towel so it’s tilted head to toe slightly.  This helps keep the formula down.  I also remember the nurses doing that to the little plastic cribs they were in in the hospital, so that made sense to me.
• Don’t be surprised when you get probably one quarter of the stuff you register for.  People prefer to buy you whatever they want, and we barely got any of the stuff on our registry.  But do know that wherever you register, they will send you a completion coupon about a month before you are due so you can go and make one giant purchase and get 10% or 15% off the whole thing, as long as the item was on your registry.  I was slick enough to bring my iphone and register for things that we wanted but didn’t register for while we were in the store shopping, so when we checked out, it was on the registry.  Me smart.