More top tips before having a baby including great things to buy

This is not me interviewing my mates.

OK, further to yesterday’s top tips from my mates, here is the second part of my scientific research project…

What did you wish you had done in the early days?

• Travelled more when he was small!  We didn’t take any weekend breaks which are so much easier before the wee one starts to want to move around.
• Taken more holidays – they are much easier to travel with when they are small.
• Written down the dates of her key milestones (crawling, sitting, walking) etc.  I’ve already forgotten a lot of them.
• Printed off photos and started an album straight away, kept a record of milestones and videoed the first seven months as only got the camera out at 8 months.
• Had baby Panadol in the house after the first immunisation. Big mistake!
• Not wished the time away. I look back and wonder where the various stages have gone.
• Relaxed and gone with the flow! They are only tiny for such a short time so I wish I had felt that I didn’t have to be doing something all the time.
• Got more stuff in the freezer for post-baby.
• Been slightly more organised prior and finished all that personal admin that I never did (still haven’t!) like wedding pictures, recipe files and cleaning out those drawers!
• Cooked more meals and frozen them in advance – would have saved us eating so much crap in the first few months!
• Prepared for a c-section as well as the natural birth I wanted. Then I would have known what to expect when all went wrong and I had to have one.
• Given the baby plenty of bottles myself. Although I expressed every day and had hubby give bottle at night which was great, I didn’t give bubs any bottles personally, so he wouldn’t take bottle from me, only others! Made weaning very difficult.
• Started giving her a bottle of expressed milk at one of her feeds every day from early on.  I didn’t do this and getting her off the boob was a complete nightmare for us both – at about 4 and a half months even putting a bottle near her mouth sent her into a frenzy!  Weaning her at 7 months was the worst experience I’ve had so far.
• Got a nanny rather than child care when I went back to work at 6 months.

What was the best thing you bought or were given?

• Best thing we bought was a wooden baby gym – kept him occupied for hours and hours.
• A baby gym – hours of entertainment for the baby, and the opportunity to blow dry my hair.
• A play blanket from the Little White Company – this was a really useful present.
• A sheepskin!  From the day she came home from hospital, we put her on it and she loved it. It was great as I could take it everywhere and just plonk her on the floor and she would be happy. Until she started moving…
• Bouncer chair thing – he loved it and was a big distraction and allowed me to actually do things in the first few months!
• I bought a car that he stands up in as he started to get frustrated with always being on the ground. He loved being able to look around and it meant I could actually do stuff around the house. I put it in the kitchen and he watched me cook, empty the dishwasher, etc.
• Baby Einstein Mozart DVD – gave me some time out!
• Baby Bjorn was fabulous
• BabyLove by Robin Baker—a great book!
• My Bugaboo pram – loved it, particularly the bassinet setting.
• A baby back pack (one with a steel frame). She loves being carried in it – good when she gets sick of the pram.
• Our Stokke change table saved my back big time and is the perfect height
• A set of black and white books and mobile – they are pretty basic but they love black and white things in the first few months.
• A dummy!! An absolute godsend.

I have devised a baby buying guide – will post it on the site in weeks to come for anyone who is interested. Although I warn, it involves many many lines and has been known to terrify people.

photo credit: liz_com1981

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