Raising an infant...

[Los Feliz Slim]

When raising an infant, I usually wait for the turn.

[I.Rowboat]

There's a lot of good advice already in this thread, so I'll just add something about developing good sleep habits, for both you and the infant.

We have two kids, 5 and 2. Based on my experience, the first 10-12 weeks were very, very physically demanding. The lack of sleep, coupled with the learning curve and the great fear of doing irreparable harm to the infant made for a lot of stress. The best suggestion we heard was to sleep while the kid sleeps, so you get at least some rest. But personally, I found the first three months very hard. Months 3-12 were a bit easier, but really, for me the whole first year was difficult.

If you don't mind reading a book, we found Dr. Harvey Karp's book, The Happiest Baby on the Block, to be a HUGE help. The book explains how to get your infant on a sleep schedule, and why that's important for everyone. There are a lot of parenting books out there that are meh, but this one is very practical, with a few good techniques that worked well for us. YMMV, but we have recommended this book to several new parents.

Anyway, congratulations on being a parent! It's a lot of work and a LOT of fun, but the rewards are definitely worth the effort.

[sublime]

wow, i was expecting you to ask if it was ok to give the kid weed or something.

[4_2_it]

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wow, i was expecting you to ask if it was ok to give the kid weed or something.

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Come on, that is beyond ridiculous. Everybody knows that you start them off with a little red wine on the pacifier.

OP --- Lots of good advice in this thread. Here's a tip I haven't noticed. When you change junior's diaper, put a towel over the little guy's area or else you will experience first hand how a runaway fire hose operates.

[Iplayragstoo]

Dude, I have 10 month old Triplets....I work full time, and so does my wife. We have very little help...its hard, very hard. It only gets harder...welcome to the club. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

[Iplayragstoo]

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After about 6 months it gets a lot easier for a couple of reasons. First off, they start to sleep through the whole night. Second, they start being able to creep and crawl, so they can get around a bit by themselves, and they aren't so frustrated about being useless human beings.

The first 6 months can be relatively to extremely difficult (depending on the colic level of the child). It's because they are useless and depend on you for everything and crying is their only way to communicate. Try and get the child on a regular schedule for eating/sleeping and sh*ting and you will be fine.

Also for the first couple of months, make sure you wrap the baby in a swaddle nice and tight.....reminds them of the old days.

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Depending on the kid, this contains some horrible advice. Babies are easiest when they can't move anywhere. You can leave the room and know they will be in the same place when you get back. Once they can move, you have to rebuild your house, as anything at their level becomes a potential death trap. You can never trust a crawler or a toddler and they can move fast. And never think they won't be able to figure something out, they are smarter than you think.

Getting a child on a regualr schedule is easier said than done. We had to feed our son on demand. Forget that schedule stuff, if he was hungry, THAT was dinner time, forget what the clock said. Sleeping does need to be on a schedule, though, even if the baby doesn't follow it. Ours woke up at the slightest hint of light in the morning, so be sure and use blackout curtains if necessary to avoid this . Diapers are definitely on demand and you change at first sign of a problem.

Some babies like swadling and some don't. Ours hated it from day one and we never tried it after we got home. Don't force them into something just because someone tells you. The same with sleeping position. Our son could only sleep on his stomach, so we recreated the carpeted floor in his bed, with a sheet on top. He could turn his head with no problem, but check with your doctor to make sure this is okay.

The hardest thing about babies and kids under two is they can't tell you what they want. But, if you listen very carefully to even a baby that can just cry, you'll learn the different cries. As they start babbling, just try to pick up hints of what they want, then remember that for next time.

Your baby is unique, so do what works for your baby, regardless of what some baby Nazi tells you. They'll be wrong next week, as the next trendy thing comes along. Just take it one problem at a time, and use your common sense. Even a crisis like a ruptured hernia wasn't that bad in retrospect, we were told it was a possibility and once we heard him yelp like we had never heard before (or since), we knew what we had to do and did it.

It gets easier at about 3 years, but it's never easy. Just about the time it does get easier, you'll start all over again with the next one. And yes, your sex life is going to go to hell. It just is. Deal with it. You'll be too tired to care.

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This is why we have made a big point to have noise, and lights around our triplets from day 1. They are 10 months old now, and sleep 10-12 hours straight through, and noise and light doesnt bother them. We are VERY lucky in this respect.

[GMan42]

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This is why we have made a big point to have noise, and lights around our triplets from day 1. They are 10 months old now, and sleep 10-12 hours straight through, and noise and light doesnt bother them. We are VERY lucky in this respect.

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Yeah, this is actually excellent advice. We had to do this out of necessity with our son, since we lived in a 1BR condo at the time, and having a child that can sleep through normal background noise really helps...when our daughter was born last year, we did the same with her, even though she has her own room. I still LOL at couples that have to tiptoe around because they got the baby too used to silence.

Anyway, to the OP, best of luck. The first year is really not that bad once you get the baby into some semblance of a sleeping schedule, but YMMV a whole lot on this...my son didn't sleep through the night consistently 'til he was almost a year old, while my daughter was sleeping 12hrs a night at about six weeks.

After a year, things change a lot since they're fully mobile and usually down to one nap a day, so as many have said above, they just become higher-maintenance in some areas while others get easier. Then those problems get exchanged for new ones, and so on. Along the way it's a lot of fun though...just try to relax and enjoy it w/o getting uptight about whether you're screwing it all up or anything like that.