How To Take Care Of A Newborn

Hi, I'm Laura Campbell from Babyladies and I'm going to be giving you tips on how to look after your newborn and how to achieve the birth that you want. I'm going to talk about how to look after your newborn. It can be really daunting when you first get through the door and you're on your own with your baby and you've got no midwives and no support and nobody there and you just think "I'm responsible for this newborn baby.

" It does get easier, and it is simple just keep it simple. You're going to get to know your baby, you're going to get to know their different cries, they're not always hungry, so really simple check-list to go through: Is baby too hot or too cold? Is baby hungry? Does baby need a nappy change? Or, is baby just tired? And there's cues that you can see, even with a newborn where they're rubbing their eyes or they're looking tired or they're pulling their ears and they just want to go to sleep and you're trying to force them to feed or trying to do something else with them. Just go through the check-list each time, are they hot or too cold, do they need a nappy change, are they hungry or are they tired? So you just keep going through this routine and baby is going to cry, it's a newborn baby, it's their way of communicating so try to relax and not get too stressed about that.

Baby is also going to sleep a lot, on average it's about 18 hours when they first come home. And they don't know the difference between day and night and it's all new to them, just bare with them like they're going bare with you. The thing is they're not going to sleep for longer than 3 or 4 hours generally so for the first few weeks, you are going to be up in the night and you are going to be tending to your baby a lot of the time, but it gets easier by 12 weeks you're going to have it sussed and you're just going to be absolutely brilliant and fine together. .