First-Time Parent: The honest guide to coping brilliantly and staying sane in your baby’s first year
Forget unrealistic childcare manuals – this is the book you really need to help you cope brilliantly with those first chaotic days and months ahead.As a health journalist and mother-of-three, Lucy Atkins is familiar with both the medical aspects of childbirth and baby development, and the reality of day-to-day life as an exhausted first-time mum or dad. In her feisty, humorous style, she begins with that first mind-blowing day and addresses the issues unique to the first-time parent who stares at their newborn and thinks “Where are the instructions?”Anticipating the questions and concerns of all new mothers–Why does my baby cry so much? Will I ever lose all this weight? Am I a bad parent because…?–the book provides practical advice and level-headed reassurance. It addresses the needs of the baby and, very importantly, those of the parent during the first year of their baby’s life.Contents include:• Starter’s orders – the equipment and kit you really need, as opposed to what the department store tells you• Hello – how to cope with the first few hours• Start – coming home, bonding, how to survive the first few days• Sleep – for everyone!• Cry – why your baby cries, what to do, why you'll want to cry, too• Eat –breastfeeding, supplemental feeding, moving to solids, nutrition• Grow – baby's physical and mental development• Play – yes, you two actually can have fun• Thrive – health considerations for baby and parent• Live – adapting to your new life, the changing mother-father relationship• Work – coping with being at home and with going back to work• Also includes information on single parenting, and on adopted, multiple and special needs babies.The First-Time Parent is on your side, and reassures that you can cope brilliantly with your new baby and your new life.
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Lucy Atkins
First-time Parent
Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This ebook edition first published by Collins in 2013, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, First-Time Parent, first published in 2006.
© Lucy Atkins 2013
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007269440
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007361069
Version: 2017-05-02
To my marvellous parents, with love and undying gratitude
Table of Contents
When I was pregnant for the first time, I found I had strong views on parenting that covered everything from what a wonderful, tolerant and inspired mother I would be, to how I would never, ever fill my house with all that depressing, tasteless baby gear. I am now a mother of three (aged six, four and one). Far from being inspired or in control, I generally feel I am living under the occupation of a force far, far greater than myself. I have, at various points in the past six years, been the owner of no less than eleven pushchairs. And my house looks like the inside of Toys ‘R’ Us. Parenthood for me–and I know I’m not alone here–is nothing like the books and magazines say it should be, and nothing like I thought it would be. It’s far harder. Significantly less ‘controllable’. And–thank God–infinitely more amazing.
My babies have had me sobbing with joy and despair. They’ve driven me to extremes of pleasure and boredom, anger and elation, pride and self-doubt. Nothing can really prepare you for all this first time around. But on a practical level, a few realistic pointers are certainly handy. And that’s where this book comes in.
I’m not covering pregnancy or birth here–you can learn about that more fully, and usefully, elsewhere. Instead, this book gives you all the basics that you need to know about your baby’s first year, starting with a shopping list (what do you really need, and what’s just pointless?), and moving swiftly on to the moment your baby takes his first breath. You’ll then learn about the feeds–How often? How much? How long? How on earth???–the crying, the sleeping, poos, burps, farts, common illnesses and developmental milestones of your baby’s first year.
Above all, though, this book is designed to keep you sane. Yes, you need to know what to do if your baby’s poo turns green; but you also need to know that feeling incompetent, confused or just plain crackers is an entirely normal and understandable part of parenthood. One, in my view, that’s largely ignored by baby books.
Once you have a baby, the world certainly does change. Indeed, the whole notion of ‘love’ takes on a new and extraordinary significance when you become a parent. But this does not mean you have turned into a completely different person. You don’t start wearing disgraceful leggings and enormous yellow T-shirts just because you’re a new parent. Nor do you lose all your other critical faculties. And this book reflects that. You may now be bonkers, but you’re not stupid. So trust yourself: though sleep-deprived and covered in baby sick, in your infant’s eyes at least, you’re the only expert that matters.
prepare
The stuff you need, and the stuff you don’t…
Clearly nothing can really prepare you for parenthood, but most of us don’t need any encouragement when let loose in the baby section of a department store. There are plenty of fabulous accessories and gizmos for you to spend your money on. But actually, babies have extremely basic requirements. They need somewhere to sleep, some sort of transport for outings, some clothes and nappies and things to wipe their bottoms with. And milk. And you.
Essential clothes
As far as clothes are concerned, keep it simple. Buy soft, stretchy, cotton clothes as you want dressing to be as quick and painless as possible. Babygros that have poppers (or a zip) from neck to crotch and down the legs are easiest. Buttons and poppers that go up the back are a pain in the neck and any ‘little adult’ type clothes–jeans, button-up shirts, jackets and the like–are just silly for little babies: they are uncomfortable (imagine if you had to sleep in them), not stretchy enough to allow free movement, and are soon outgrown.
