Pregnancy and Babies!

[Sand]

So, many of you (men and women) have tread this ground before.

Give me the benefit of your experience. What thing during the pregnancy or first couple of months of life do you wish you had known BEFORE it happened? There must be things you wish you had known about before they happened or said "Damn wish someone had warned me about that!"


Advice on choosing an OB/GYN or hospital.
Warnings about things to expect or prep for on the day of delivery.
Drugs? No drugs? Dolphin delivery in a pool? Under a tree with a druid?
Amazing things the wife did.
Things the husband should do or avoid doing as not to upset said wife.
Mistakes in decorating the nursery or in choosing furniture.
Did you use furniture or go the no furniture Montessori route?
Whats this whole Montessori thing?


I am your apprentice. You are my zen master of all things pregnancy. Teach me! For God's sake help me! 

[Soln]

Congrats!

I might say first of all to have people PM you the answers to some of those questions, because there are some topics (e.g. drugs,  sleep training, breast feeding) which new and expecting parents just go jihadi about.  You have been warned  

My two cents as a new Dad:
1. buy/rent a good breast pump early (ie. before baby arrives)
2. don't waste money on gourmet shit.  Ikea is your friend.
3. do invest in good BPA-free bottles
4. do SAVE MONEY BECAUSE IN THE US THERE IS NO TIME OFF FOR PARENTS (queue /Politics)
5. do bother to go to some new parent classes.  You will probably enjoy them.  And you will feel better being around other expecting parents.  And you can learn important things, honestly. And it will be something you and your partner can do together.
6. do learn about swaddling
7. do learn about sleep training, no matter what you end up doing
8. do get a Diaper Genie if you don't go the cloth and wash route (personal opinion, but they work -- no stink)
9. do not let your family, friends or strangers on the InterWeb scare you or make you feel unprepared or unworthy.  There is a whole crop of hyper-parents out there who buy too many books and over prepare.  You're not in competition.  Safety is first and after that you can decide what is possible.

On that last note, here are some highly recommended reads:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Expect-When-Youre-Expecting/dp/0761148574/
http://www.amazon.com/Your-Pregnancy-Week-6th/dp/0738211095/
http://www.amazon.com/Happiest-Baby-Block-Harvey-Karp/dp/0553381466/
http://www.amazon.com/Ina-Mays-Guide-Childbirth-Gaskin/dp/0553381156/
http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Baby-Raise-Smart/dp/0979777755/

EDIT:
10. get friendly help/relief.  You may feel you both do not need any intrusions the first week or month, but a few weeks after you bring baby home it's very helpful and healthy to have family/friends bring over some meals, watch baby, clean, get groceries... The first year/months are a marathon and the occassional break will help you and your partner.  The first year can be very hard on the mother (post-partum) and the couple, so take the occassional help if it's offered.  You can judge when it's too much.

[JWIV]

Relax.  

If your area has mommy groups or local listservs, they're a great source of information  - http://www.themommiesnetwork.org/index.shtml is a good starting point if you're looking around.    

Once you figure out the Pediatrician you're going to use (and what hospitals they have rights to), I suggest you take the new parent class.  It covers a lot of whatever information, but does teach a few important things 1)What to do the day of delivery 2)gives you practice on driving to the hospital so you know where it is and 3)swaddling.  Swaddling is magic.  

Asking about birth methods and the like is inviting pain - people get their shit twisted about it like nothing else.  Do what works for you - your end goal is a healthy wife and a healthy baby - everything else is secondary.  Don't get so caught up on a birth plan that you forgot what you're trying to accomplish here.    Take this statement and double it when it comes to if you're planning on breastfeeding or formula.  

Every pregnancy is different every time.  With our first, it was easy outside of a few crazy mood swings.  The second, my wife was horribly sick/in pain for a lot of it, so I had to assume a lot of household functions.  Play it by ear.  Cravings, mood swings, hysterical crying are all normal.  Try not to laugh when your wife breaks out in a full body sob while watching a sappy commercial.  

I bought most of our nursery furniture off craigslist or local listserv's.  You could easily drop several grand for furniture that you'll be turning around and ditching in under 2 years.  Keep that in mind.  

no furniture montessori?  I know Montessori schools, but not entire sure what you're getting at otherwise, and you've got a bit of time for that.  Montessori schools are all about exploration and letting the child learn by doing - it's nice, but   expensive.

[Pennilenko]

As far as pregnancy. Just be a man and listen to your women and meet her needs. Help out more. Keep your mouth shut and sympothise with her if she gets emotional. Every woman is different, the above are just guide lines. The listening part will save your ass though.

Because every woman is different every delivery is different except for one thing, it hurts. Here is another situation where listening to her and meeting her needs works wonders.

The best advice is literaly to listen to her and meet her needs.

When the baby comes if you havel istened to your wife and met her needs life is

[Selby]

Play it by ear.  Cravings, mood swings, hysterical crying are all normal.  Try not to laugh when your wife breaks out in a full body sob while watching a sappy commercial.

Definitely.  Hormonal mood fluctuations can be an utter bitch, and don't even try to blow it off as no big deal or her being unreasonable.

Other than that, be very supportive.  Listen to what she wants and help her out.

[Sand]

no furniture montessori?  I know Montessori schools, but not entire sure what you're getting at otherwise, and you've got a bit of time for that.  

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4882255_decorating-montessori-nursery-home.html

We had a friend who went a bit overboard? Literally the baby had a mattress on the floor. Although I guess its great for safety.

[JWIV]

no furniture montessori?  I know Montessori schools, but not entire sure what you're getting at otherwise, and you've got a bit of time for that.  

http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4882255_decorating-montessori-nursery-home.html

We had a friend who went a bit overboard? Literally the baby had a mattress on the floor. Although I guess its great for safety.

We did the mattress on the floor bit, but that was when she was 1 1/2-2 and was threatening to climb out of her crib. 

As to the montessori nursey . . .  well, welcome to the insanity.  It's completely ridiculous, since your baby is going to spend most of its time eating or sleeping for the first 2-3 months, then it's eating, sleeping, attached to you for awhile after that.   But, the craziness hits us all -  you're responsible for a small proto-person and OH MY GOD WHAT IF YOU DO THE WRONG THING?!
 
Hence the birth of an entire overpriced industry dedicated to feeding into your worst fears and paranoia.

[Viin]

If she feels nauseous, have her try some Unisom.

Other than that, just take things as they come - no need to freak about things in advance that probably will never happen.

If interested, start looking at baby devices (highchairs, cribs, etc) and the current "best thing" for baby. Once you have the basic "best things" figured out (sleeping on back only, no pillows or sleeping with baby in the bed, etc) the rest is all opinion and conjecture. Go crazy or not. Personally, I find 'not' to be a lot less stressful.

Best advice I can give is: you get what you put into it.
If you want a low stress easy baby, be a low stress easy parent. If you want a high maintenance high stress baby, be a high maintenance high stress parent.

[Salamok]

A few points when considering drugs:

• During the delivery there is a point of no return on getting an epidural, once you are past this it is no longer an option.
• The older you are the more I would recommend drugs.
• You really can't know for certain beforehand if a c-section is going to be needed.  If it is you are probably way better off if you have already opted for drugs.
  

As far as having a newborne goes, the first week is all omfg what did we get ourselves into? For us that feeling didn't go away until about the 6 week mark.  Once you hit the point where they wake up in the morning looking happier than you ever remember being in your entire life it becomes the singular most amazing journey/experience you can imagine.

[Cheddar]

A few points when considering drugs:

• During the delivery there is a point of no return on getting an epidural, once you are past this it is no longer an option.

Don't be a hero.  I got a few kids... every wife regrets not starting off with one.[/list]

[Prospero]

Buy something called a Miracle Blanket. It's like easy mode for swaddling and saved out asses in a big way. Go out and eat and watch movies and all that shit as much as possible now because it all goes away once the baby comes. Your new life will be more awesome than your current one, but you won't be seeing a first run movie/concert for awhile so live it up.

I think my only real piece of advice is parenting is hard, tiring, and super awesome. It may not seem like it, but everyone else has a hard time too. You'll both be awesome.

[Trippy]

Your new life will be more awesome than your current one

People say that but they are lying

[Prospero]

Shhhhhhh! We have to give him hope.

[apocrypha]

There is one important word of advice that covers all of this.

Relax.

 

[Arthur_Parker]

Get as much sleep as you can now, you aren't going to believe how little you are going to get for the next few years.  First ten weeks is the worst, learn to change a nappy as soon as you can and don't let the kid sleep in the main bed.

[Khaldun]

Let's see.

1. Trust yourselves. This is more important after the baby is born than before. You will be surrounded by people (family, friends, medical experts, social workers, people on internet forums   ) who will have lots of advice for you based on their own experience, on their professional practice, or on their semi-psychotic beliefs about what parents and children should be like. (You'd think only people who haven't had kids would be able to sustain crazy ideas about parenting, but it's not so. My brother defiantly kept up some of his beliefs about what he could reasonably expect of a toddler until he had his second kid and had been in my view really unpleasant at times to his first, and then he sort of threw in the towel and got real.)  If there comes a day when you have a feeling about what the right thing to do is, and "What to Expect in the First Year" is giving you advice that's different, go with your gut. If it's potentially a life-or-death decision, get a second opinion by all means, but if it's something like, "Should my kid be allowed to watch Baby Einstein" or "Do I really need to put a plastic plug cover in every single outlet in my house", trust your own judgment first and foremost.

Trust yourselves even in pregnancy. When my wife thought she was in labor (about three weeks early) we went to the hospital, because we sat at home for a while first and timed the seeming contractions. When we got there, the internist who came in was being a jerk and basically not believing she was in labor--for whatever reason, the machine they hooked her up to wasn't really picking up her contractions. We were more and more sure that she was (and the pain was getting pretty significant) so we eventually called the floor nurse in and asked for the drugs. The nurse was like, "Well, let me do the physical exam, because we're not even sure the baby is actually coming" and she was like hokey smokes you are almost fully dilated. Another thirty minutes and it would have been too late for the painkiller any way.

2. Beware of experts of various kinds who have extreme views on one or another aspect of pregnancy, birth and childhood pushing those views on you unless you're independently committed to the same thing for your own reason. We had a good experience with the pregnancy class our hospital/health system provided until it got to breast feeding, when they allowed a serious La Leche League zealot to take over the class (to the evident annoyance of the tough old nurse who ran the rest of it). She essentially spent two hours screaming at us all about how formula was only slightly less evil than Hitler, how "nipple confusion" would kill your child in minutes if you ever allowed your baby to even touch a bottle for the first two months (even with expressed breast milk) and so on. Well, we're reasonable enough people and you don't have to convince me on the basics of breast-is-best, but when you're sleep-deprived, confused, emotionally wrecked and your baby is having trouble breast-feeding at 3 a.m. at four weeks old, it's hard to remember what your reasonable conclusions were. This woman's shrillness made us afraid to do reasonable things even when we'd thought at the time she was nuts--it got in our heads. So when we finally made a sensible adaptation, which was for me to take a 3 a.m. feeding with formula so my wife could get some sleep, it was amazing to us how well it solved every problem. Our daughter still was primarily breast-fed, but now we all got more sleep, everybody felt better, and there was no "nipple confusion" or anything else like that. Again, use your own best judgment about things, and keep in mind that in the first two months, you will be feeling a kind of stress you've never felt before.

A similar issue: drugs or no drugs. Every woman is different, don't listen to the friend who had an easy experience without drugs or the person who insists that you have to have them no matter what. Judge your own pain tolerance and feelings about medicine.

3. Don't buy expensive cribs, strollers, etc. Don't buy secondhand cribs, though, either. Buy a good, solid, basic model of what you'll need. I'd say: a good basic stroller, a good basic crib, a light travel stroller. You'll need a diaper bag that's comfortable. I have no guilt about disposable diapers, go with those. The so-called diaper genie (basically a thing that lets you throw away diapers in a way that supposedly conceals their odor) was a stupid device that was difficult to operate. Go with throwing them in ordinary garbage and taking out the bags frequently. If you're going to breast feed, get a good, comfortable breast pump. Get a comfortable rocking chair for breast feeding. Don't spend a lot of money on things that are supposed to soothe cranky babies until you see whether you have a cranky baby and what exactly calms your baby down. It's as likely that your baby, if cranky, will be calmed down by something that isn't a product you buy in a baby store as otherwise. (At 2-4 months, my daughter mostly got calm only if I walked around the house with her and showed her pictures on the wall and stuff. Also for some reason the song "Salvation" by the Cranberries would calm her down.)  

4. Get as much sleep as you can in the last trimester. If both parents can get at least two months of leave after the baby's born that is really great--it is much easier to deal with when you're both available 24 hours to handle the stress. If you like your parents, totally totally welcome your mother(s) or father(s) to be around if they can some time in the first month or two. My mother and my mother-in-law actually helped a lot in all sorts of ways, to an extent that really surprised me. Brings out the best in a lot of people.

5. The dirty secret that parents don't tell you is that the first three months of parenting are really really boring and stressful. Babies are at that point just little biological machines that poop, eat, scream and sleep. They have zero human responsiveness or emotion beyond that. You feel desperately responsible for them and desperately afraid of what might go wrong and desperately needy yourself for comfort, relief, sleep, etc. but you won't get the relational connection to the little bio-machine that you might have expected until that day when your baby actually begins to recognizably respond to you as a parent. The first smile you get that isn't just a facial contortion because of gas is the best fucking thing in the world, and from that point on, you have a strong motivation for everything that follows.

6. There is no way to not say the wrong thing at some point during labor. The partner's job on some level is to be a target. You're allowed to dodge thrown objects, though. I did like how my wife went from "This is the worst thing we've ever done, fucking hell, why did we decide to do this, FUCK FUCK FUCK" just before the epidural to "Oh, wow, we should have another baby, don't you think?" after it.

[Setanta]

Lots of good stuff in the above. All I can add is

Don't listen to other parents when they tell you how easy the pregnancy is or how wonderful their kids are. It's complete and utter bullcrap that will often make your partner feel worse about herself.

If she even considers the big E then don't talk her out of it.

At a young age, don't let them get caught up in technology - sure it's the new world but as a teacher, I'm seeing kids as young as 5 destroying their lives with it. You don't need a WoW addict as a kid and it does happen :( One of my teenagers hit this stage and I think I preferred her falling out of trees and breaking arms than that shit.

Never give up a moment with your child - they grow up too fast and there is nothing more important than time with them.

I have 5 kids (2 relationships) between 20 and 3 and regardless of the highs and lows of their lives, they are the best part of my life. Make your kid the best part of your family and your life.

[Arthur_Parker]

At a young age, don't let them get caught up in technology - sure it's the new world but as a teacher, I'm seeing kids as young as 5 destroying their lives with it. You don't need a WoW addict as a kid and it does happen :( One of my teenagers hit this stage and I think I preferred her falling out of trees and breaking arms than that shit.

That's good advice imho, my 10 year old nephew plays games all the time and my parents and sister don't understand why I won't buy my daughter "educational" PC games.  She'll be be into all that when she's a teenager no matter what I think, no sense rushing it.

[Salamok]

Don't ever have a kid to save your marriage but a cool benefit is you are now about to have something in common with your spouse that you are both insanely passionate about, it pretty much becomes an endless topic of conversation that the 2 of you never get tired of.

edit: oh yeah I'll go ahead and throw in my vote on the pro-diaper genie side, we had 2 the 1st one was difficult to change out but the second one (conveniently branded as the Diaper Genie 2) was much better, the smell containment is way better than a garbage bag.  You really don't want to have to run a smelly bag out to the trash at 3am.

[Ghambit]

I'm waiting for the artificial womb to be legal before I have kids.

[Numtini]

Trust yourselves and keep it as simple as possible. There's a huge industry devoted to making pregnancy seem terrifying (What to Expect is notorious on this) and to sell you crap you don't need.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Don't ever have a kid to save your marriage but a cool benefit is you are now about to have something in common with your spouse that you are both insanely passionate about, it pretty much becomes an endless topic of conversation that the 2 of you never get tired of.

edit: oh yeah I'll go ahead and throw in my vote on the pro-diaper genie side, we had 2 the 1st one was difficult to change out but the second one (conveniently branded as the Diaper Genie 2) was much better, the smell containment is way better than a garbage bag.  You really don't want to have to run a smelly bag out to the trash at 3am.

Just don't become those parents who think everyone else wants to hear every little minute detail about the baby's development.  No, we really don't need to know the consistency, frequency and appearance of your child's elimination habits.  Remember you're fully functioning adults and able to talk about other topics when necessary.  

[Sand]

Okay some of this stuff I knew because of other reading habits, such as, not letting the baby sleep on their stomach or in bed with you (SIDS).

But WTF is swaddling? Ive heard this word used in connection with bible stories of Christmas and thats about it.

Good advice on saving money on the baby furniture! I would have probably gone overboard and bought the most expensive hard carved sustainably harvested wood shit money can buy.
Stroller. We probably will go overboard. My wife and I are active runners so we will probably get a running stroller and it seems those tend to be expensive.

Breast feeding versus formula. Not knowing a whole lot about either I guess from what I have read I tend toward neutral ground. I can see the health benefits of using primarily breast milk, but dont think formula is going to kill the baby if we need to use it on occasions. Although I confess Im confused by mothers/people who use ONLY formula and refuse to breast feed their kids.

Diaper Genie. Is that the plastic garbage pail thing with the roll of bags in it? You drop the diaper in, twist the top, and it seals the diaper in its on section of the plastic bag or something similar? My sister in law had one for my niece who I would care for frequently. It seemed to work okay.  Thought on fabric versus disposable? What about fabric around the house and disposable on the go?

Most importantly I haven't read to much on anyone's advice on doctors and hospitals (choosing them? things to watch out for?) and things to do DURING the pregnancy (rubbing vitamin e on the belly help? working out during pregnancy?). I would LOVE to get more of that. We dont have a doctor or hospital chosen yet and I imagine that will be the first hurdle we need to cross.

Thanks for all the advice thus far!! 

[Viin]

For a doc, find someone who really liked their OB/GYN and use them, even if it's a little bit out of the way. However, docs are usually associated to 1-2 hospitals in the area so you will have to deliver at one of those locations. If you were in Denver I'd have some recommendations, but I have none outside of this area.

As for hospitals, I think they are all pretty much the same, but you can take tours of the maternity ward if you care that much. The only thing I would insist on is private rooms. A place for you to sleep in the room would be a bonus.

We love our fabric diapers they are very easy and easy on the kid's bottom. We use Rump-a-rooz: http://rumparooz.com/
We use them even out and about, just carry an extra one or two with you and a stink/water proof bag to put the soiled ones in.
We do use disposables when on vacation or if we will be away from a washing machine for 24hrs.
I don't think we really started using fabric until she was 2 months, but that was mostly 'cause she was a preemie and a bit small to fit in the one-size-fits-all-but-snaps-smaller rump-a-rooz.

If you can find a boutique baby store, they may do what one of ours does: for $25 you take home 5 different types of fabric diapers and get to try them out. Keep the ones you want, return the others after cleaning and then buy 20+ of the ones you like.

[Khaldun]

Keep in mind with Ob/Gyn that you really want to feel somewhat comfortable with all the docs in the practice--because your preferred OB might not the person available when labor starts.

[Rasix]

Okay some of this stuff I knew because of other reading habits, such as, not letting the baby sleep on their stomach or in bed with you (SIDS).

But WTF is swaddling? Ive heard this word used in connection with bible stories of Christmas and thats about it.

Good advice on saving money on the baby furniture! I would have probably gone overboard and bought the most expensive hard carved sustainably harvested wood shit money can buy.
Stroller. We probably will go overboard. My wife and I are active runners so we will probably get a running stroller and it seems those tend to be expensive.

Breast feeding versus formula. Not knowing a whole lot about either I guess from what I have read I tend toward neutral ground. I can see the health benefits of using primarily breast milk, but dont think formula is going to kill the baby if we need to use it on occasions. Although I confess Im confused by mothers/people who use ONLY formula and refuse to breast feed their kids.

Diaper Genie. Is that the plastic garbage pail thing with the roll of bags in it? You drop the diaper in, twist the top, and it seals the diaper in its on section of the plastic bag or something similar? My sister in law had one for my niece who I would care for frequently. It seemed to work okay.  Thought on fabric versus disposable? What about fabric around the house and disposable on the go?

Most importantly I haven't read to much on anyone's advice on doctors and hospitals (choosing them? things to watch out for?) and things to do DURING the pregnancy (rubbing vitamin e on the belly help? working out during pregnancy?). I would LOVE to get more of that. We dont have a doctor or hospital chosen yet and I imagine that will be the first hurdle we need to cross.

Thanks for all the advice thus far!!  

For swaddling, we used the "SwaddleMe". Swaddling is bundling them up in a blanket and you wrap them up tight with either their arms pinned to their side or out. The SwaddleMe make it easier to do, but you can use any blanket for this really.  It keeps them pretty calm and helped a lot with our son and sleeping initially.  He wasn't a collicky, but he was still a fairly fussy baby early on and swaddling helped a lot.

Diaper Genies are great.  It drops the diaper into a bag and then when closed it closes off the bag area.  Does a pretty decent job of eliminating the smell.  At some point you want to only be putting wet diapers and not shitty diapers in it.  I don't remember when we instituted the "poop goes directly to the can outside" policy, but that became necessary once his leavings started smelling worse.

I wouldn't use cloth diapers if you paid me.  Disposables have been doing fine for me.  I don't want anything more to do with his shit and piss than I have to. You do batches of laundry everyday even without that.  If you go disposable, get the good stuff. Don't cheap out and get Luvs or something.

edit:
As for breast feeding, do it for as long as you can.  You may have trouble with it, but it's worth it.  My wife had to stop when she had to go back on certain meds, but she wishes she could have done it for longer.

Buy lots of burp cloths.  Generic cloth diapers work great for this.  

Also, a simple sleep positioner will keep them on their backs pretty reliably.  Once they start getting out of their swaddle and move out of the sleep positioner, then it's pretty much out of your hands.

[JWIV]

Okay some of this stuff I knew because of other reading habits, such as, not letting the baby sleep on their stomach or in bed with you (SIDS).

But WTF is swaddling? Ive heard this word used in connection with bible stories of Christmas and thats about it.

Stroller. We probably will go overboard. My wife and I are active runners so we will probably get a running stroller and it seems those tend to be expensive.

Think baby burrito.   You take a blanket, fold it a few times, and you end up with a snugly wrapped baby.  It does wonders for soothing newborns.

Check your insurance for well-mom/baby programs.  Some will help subsidize or reimburse part of the cost of a variety of items (we for instance got $300 back for our stroller because it was a jogging stroller).  

As for breast feeding - breast is best.  We tried breast feeding twice, but the wife's milk production just wasn't there, so we had to switch over to formula.  

[Merusk]

Okay some of this stuff I knew because of other reading habits, such as, not letting the baby sleep on their stomach or in bed with you (SIDS).

But WTF is swaddling? Ive heard this word used in connection with bible stories of Christmas and thats about it.

I just heard recently SIDS is 90% of the time people forgetting or ignoring #1 & #2 and suffocating the child.   Even baby bumpers are a bad idea.  If you're paranoid about jr. bumping their head or shoving a hand/ foot through the bars, get a solid-sided plastic bassinet.

Swaddling is tightly-wrapped blankets.  Meant to keep an infant from moving or twisting about and simulate the tightness of the womb.

I'm a huge proponent of breast feeding.  Time and again studies have shown how beneficial it is for the child.  Even if you only maintain it for 6 months, it's better than not doing it at all.  I've seen some women try to make it a "you're just reinforcing stereotypes/ patriarchy" thing at times, but uh..  gee, I'll let Mother Nature know what a sexist she is.    

That is indeed what the Diaper Genie is.  Emptying it you get a roll of diaper sausage.  It's amusing every time you empty it.  The newer models (DG 2) are apparently easier to use and have scented liners that help a lot.

Fabrics vs Disposables is an argument you'll never hear the end of.  Decide which ones you like, they're both horrible for the environment.  Fabrics because of the laundering chemicals & water waste, disposables because of plastics in the landfill. (though supposedly disposables are better these days as they use plastics that rot.)

We went with disposables because they're easy to replace when you're out and just easier all around to work with. Get a sams/ costco card and buy there. Ditto formula if you go that route.

Most of all, listen to yourself and your wife's instincts on things.  Don't let a doctor override you just because you think he knows best.  There's been lots of pushes to streamline and institutionalize what's a natural process.  Things happen at their own pace, and so long as there's no problems you shouldn't be pushed into anything you're uncomfortable with.  Most notably C-sections and inducing.    

Don't Panic.  Remember, people are built to do this.  They've done it for 10,000 years, most of it without specialists to help things along.  The specialists are there to make sure the baby and your wife don't die or suffer ill effects from complications, that's about it.

[Arthur_Parker]

Okay some of this stuff I knew because of other reading habits, such as, not letting the baby sleep on their stomach or in bed with you (SIDS).

The reason I said not to let the baby into the main bed isn't because of SIDS, though that's something you worry about for a while, it's because you are establishing a pattern of behaviour that's a pain in the arse to break.  My Mrs endlessly complained about about lack of sleep but didn't have the will to break the cycle for nearly 4 years.

[Merusk]

At least she finally broke it.   I had a co-worker who had continued to let his 7-year-old twins enter the room to sleep with he and his wife every night.

[apocrypha]

Just don't become those parents who think everyone else wants to hear every little minute detail about the baby's development.  No, we really don't need to know the consistency, frequency and appearance of your child's elimination habits.  Remember you're fully functioning adults and able to talk about other topics when necessary.  

Oh GOD this a thousand times over. I love my friends, I love my family, I think their kids are great and am very happy for them. But for ~10 years now the single dominant topic of conversation amongst 90% of them has been their kids and I am bored to fucking tears with it.

Thank fuck for the remaining 10% who either, like me, have decided they don't want kids or who (and this is rare) have managed to do what Rhyssa advises.

[Numtini]

Swaddling is wrapping a newborn very tightly into a little bundle so they can't move their arms and legs. It is guaranteed 100% to make them calm and go to sleep or so said the nurses. Nora couldn't stand being swaddled and would wriggle loose and wail. She still hates being constricted in any way. Swaddling is one of those things that has gone in and out of fashion. If it works, it's great. If your baby doesn't like it, in the current maternal-political climate, it is very very much in fashion and you will be told your baby does like it despite all evidence to the contrary. They make some weird little blanket things that fold up into a swaddle and make the whole thing easier. Or you can just do a tuck with a baby blanket.

We never considered cloth here because they're bad for our local environment--we have water issues with phosphorous and nitrogen so incinerating disposables off Cape is way better than washing cloth on cape.

On spending a lot on furniture. My coworker was pregnant the same time my partner was and she and her husband went insane decorating the nursery. They painted the entire room lavender and pink, had a flowery runner around the top, had matching linens and even repainted furniture to match the pink motif and even hand painted their daughter's name on everything. Unfortunately their OB missed something on the ultrasound, namely their son's penis. God help them repainting with a newborn.

Good call on spending on the stroller though. This is something that is a big deal and makes your life a lot easier as it opens up options.

For hospitals, they'll let you tour their facilities. We only had two options and one was very plain jane hospital rooms while the other had hotel like birthing suites. Machines that go bing hidden behind panels when not in use, separate beds for partners, dvd players, wi-fi, etc. and an on-floor mini-kitchen with snacks including a 24 hour espresso machine. That was a no brainer and it made the experience a lot more pleasant.

[Trippy]

As for breast feeding, do it for as long as you can.  You may have trouble with it, but it's worth it.

Yes I expect he will have trouble breast feeding the baby.

[JWIV]

As for breast feeding, do it for as long as you can.  You may have trouble with it, but it's worth it.

Yes I expect he will have trouble breast feeding the baby.

[Khaldun]

Ok, sounds like the newer Diaper Genies work better, go for it. The old ones (9 years ago or so) really really sucked.

One thing we *did* spend on for our daughter's room that turned out well was a painting--kind of by accident we ran into a woman who did these great color paintings for kids, around when our daughter was 2 or so. She could say the five animals she wanted in the painting and it really turned out beautifully, kind of an heirloom painting at this point that's really given her room a consistent feeling in two houses. Don't spend for stuff kids will outgrow beyond what's safe and usable, but stuff that will be around for a while is worth a bit more.

Another area where you'll get shitloads of conflicting advice is sleep training past eight months or so. All I can say is that we tried a rigorous Ferberization and it didn't take, plus we hated the whole thing. Even Ferber thinks people overdid it following his advice now, apparently.