Being a new parent can be a very overwhelming and challenging time. Even if you have already had a child before, each baby can be vastly different and require you to learn or relearn parts of the newborn experience. So to help make things easier on everyone in your home during this period of time, here are three things to keep in mind as you sleepwalk through your first few weeks with a newborn.
Make Their Transition Easier
The transition from the womb to the outside world is shocking for babies. Because of this, if babies find this experience too jarring, they may be very hard to soothe.
To combat this, it’s wise to try to make this transition as easy as possible by recreating the environment that they were used to being in the womb. Usually this includes things like wrapping your baby snuggly in a swaddle, keeping their sleep area dark, and having white noise or background music going. All of these things will remind your baby of what it was like being in the womb and will help him or her to feel safe and comfortable finally being outside the womb.
Accept Help Around The House
After just having a baby, you’re not going to want to do much more than sleep and take care of your little one. So while you might think that you have to have everything else figured out as soon as you get home from the hospital, nothing could be further from the truth. And in reality, people don’t expect this from you. However, they do expect you to be able to ask for the help you need.
Even if accepting help is normally hard for you, if someone offers to give you a hand when you’re in the newborn weeks, take them up on their help with keeping things going around your house. Ask them to help with making meals, taking care of older children, cleaning up, and running errands. And if you need some extra hours of sleep, there’s nothing wrong with getting an extra hand caring for your newborn, either.
Find Sustainable Ways To Soothe
When you’re bleary-eyed from a lack of sleep and your little one seems to be struggling in this area too, you might be tempted to do anything possible to calm your little one. And while this might be necessary in some situations, you’ll want to be careful about creating soothing habits that you can’t sustain.
For example, if you have to be contorting your body in a weird position or bouncing on a yoga ball to get your baby to calm down for the first few months of life, your body isn’t going to be happy about this. Rather, try to create soothing habits that are easy to do, like singing a song, rocking in a chair, using white noise, and more.
If you’re worried about the first few weeks with your newborn or are really struggling during this time currently, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you get through these long days and nights.
