Best Parenting Advice for New Parents
Once you get home with your newborn baby, it’s easy to feel like you have no idea how to care for your little one. Unfortunately, without an instructional manual, new parents have to learn most of the things by themselves.
Your baby will cry for hours, but they might tell you what they want when they start talking. Here is parenting advice for new parents to help you feel confident if you’re nervous about your newborn.
Find assistance after the birth
It can be overwhelming and hectic during the first few days after the birth of your child. Therefore, consider finding someone to help you take care of your little one. You can also talk to the experts while you’re in the hospital to learn how to care for your newborn. The good news is that most hospitals have lactation or feeding specialists who can guide you on the best way to nurse or bottle-feed your child.
If you intend to have in-home help, then your best option is to find a responsible neighborhood individual or a baby nurse who can help you after the birth. Also, the hospital or your doctor can assist you to find the right information on how to get in-home help. Thankfully, many friends and relatives usually might want to offer their help too.
It’s in your best interest to get someone who has the proper experience in taking care of the newborn.
Bonding with your child
One of the important elements of infant care is perhaps bonding with your little one. This usually happens during the first couple of hours and days after birth. You need to use this time correctly by making a deep connection with your baby. Mind you that physical closeness with the infant is bound to create an emotional connection.
Bonding helps the infants to grow emotionally and also helps them to develop in most areas like physical growth. Simply put, bonding can be considered as falling in love with your baby, which helps them thrive as they are growing. Therefore, you can do the bonding by cradling and stroking gently your baby. Take this opportunity to hold your infant skin-to-skin while cradling or feeding them.
All babies including those with medical issues or premature babies might do well with infant massage. These massages can help your baby bond with you and assists them to grow and develop. However, you should massage your baby gently to avoid hurting them. Besides, most babies like to hear you singing, talking, and babbling. You can also use musical mobiles and baby rattles to stimulate their hearing.
Diapering
It’s important to decide quickly if you want to use disposable diapers or cloth. Regardless of what you want to use, make sure that you have all the necessities in place and within reach. After all, you don’t want to leave your baby unattended for long on the changing table.
Therefore, you should have a clean diaper, fasteners, diaper ointment, and diaper wipes.
Here is how you can change a wet diaper. You should lay your infant on their back and remove the wet diaper. Utilize cotton balls, water, and wipes or washcloth to wipe gently your baby’s genital area.
You should always remove your boy’s diaper carefully because exposure to air might make him urinate. On the other hand, wipe a girl’s bottom from front to back to prevent a urinary tract infection.
