Monday 11 April 2016

Preparing for Peach

Preparing for a babies arrival is always an exciting time, it can also be fraught with indecision or doubt as you start to approach the wonderful parenting journey!

Having done it once before I had hoped that this time I will doubt less and know more. Three months in and I am not so sure. I have my essentials list, we have lots already on the essentials list, we have until October so there is no real rush, but, I am a planner and I like a list. And already I am thinking I have lots to do.



Baby Essentials

I think I will focus, as I did with L, on the first three months of babies life. These are the tough first weeks and time is precious, you need to really have all to hand for these first few weeks to make the new additions arrival as smooth as possible. (Had a chuckle about that, even the most prepared parents find the arrival less than smooth but I can't think of a different way to explain how it makes life easier to have all the babies things ready.)

So the list includes,

Pushchair carry cot *
Mattress for carry cot
Carry cot stand *
Sheets for carry cot *
Crib for bedroom
Mattress for the crib
Sheets for crib *
Blankets for pushchair or crib *
Bouncy chair *
Breast pump *
Bottles
Dummies
Emergency formula in ready made cartons
Muslins *
Swaddling blankets *
Super large Muslins *
Breast feeding cover *
Clothes 0-3 months in gender neutral colours *
Disposable nappies

Disposable wipes
Pre washed cloth nappies *

We have much of this already, I've marked that which we will not need to buy for Peach.

I am going to get a new mattress for our carry cot as we will use it again for overnight sleeping. We borrowed a crib from a friend last time and they have since sold it, I will be looking on a fabulous local selling sight for a crib for Peach and then buy a new mattress. New mattresses are suggested as a way to prevent cot death.

I breast fed L for 13 months in total, she was exclusively breast fed for the first two weeks, we then introduced an expressed dream feed given by Daddy Morkus. At three months this expressed bottle was replaced with formula as I could no longer express enough to satisfy L's 10pm appetite so it was bringing her night feeds earlier and adding one! I plan on breast feeding again but do feel reassured by some bottles of formula should we encounter any problems. I am pro feeding babies.

I am going to come back to the wonders of swaddling and our love of large Muslins in another post.

You can read about my initial doubts about dummy use here. I will say that at 12 months we went cold turkey with dummies and had two or three nights of upset but then L was fine settling. We only ever used them for sleep in cot or pushchair so they never interfered with speech. So I would have them in the house again just in case.

I always say that we had no issues with L's latch with breast feeding, she took to it like a duck to water, so I had no worries about introducing a bottle or a dummy so early, I don't believe in nipple teat confusion and have only seen babies which have had a delayed introduction to bottles reject them, which is extra pressure on the breast feeding mum. This is based on my experience with L and I am open to Peach being a completely different kettle of baby!

So there we go. Our Baby no.2 list.

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