FEEDINGS AND DIAPER CHANGES
In
addition to tracking your own medications, you may be trying to keep
track of your baby’s feedings and diaper changes. You can use Excel to
keep tabs on this information, but working on a laptop while juggling a
floppy newborn is not always so easy. If your smart phone has a
spreadsheet program, now may be the time to try it. Or a notebook by
your bedside will work just as well: Remember, you aren’t creating a
permanent record but a temporary document to help you manage this first
week or so.
Your pediatrician or lactation
consultant may have asked you to keep track of the baby’s feeding times
and the number of wet and poopy diapers to be sure she’s getting enough
to eat. Your doctor or lactation consultant may even have asked you to
keep a record of the color and consistency of your baby’s poop. Even if
it wasn’t requested of you, many moms and dads are comforted by keeping
a close eye on this information. If you want or need to track feedings
and diapers, in Excel or in your baby journal, create a table with
three columns, like so:
| Time | Event | Details |
|---|
| 10:11 AM | Ate | At breast for 20 min. |
| 10:45 | Wet diaper |
|
| 11:54 | Ate | At breast for 15 min., fell asleep |
| 12:45 | Poopy diaper | Yellow, soft |
| 1:40 | Ate | At breast for 20 min., switched side, nursed an additional 5 min. |
I’ve
kept both the diaper and the feeding information on the same document
for two reasons: to make life easier for you and also because in this
format, the information makes logical sense. Your baby’s care provider
or your lactation consultant can look at the data here and see cause
and effect right away because everything is listed in chronological
order.
This is also a nice way to track your
baby’s reaction to different kinds of feeding practices. For instance,
if you are giving bottles for some feedings and notice that Baby is
fussy soon after his bottle, you and his doctor will be able to deduce
that he needs a different type of formula or nipple. This document can
also accommodate other types of information your doctor may request,
like sleeping habits or weight. Keep it simple and accurate.
You
probably won’t need to track this information for long. Unless your
baby has a low birth weight, issue with feedings, or some other health
problem, you’ll find that tracking every feeding and diaper change
becomes annoying and unnecessary pretty quickly. But some parents like
to stick the document in their baby’s scrapbook to help them remember
those first days of his life.
NO JERKS ALLOWED
Caring for yourself
emotionally after giving birth is just as important as caring for
yourself physically! You may be disappointed about how your birth
experience went. You may find that motherhood is a lot harder than you
expected or feel insecure about your parenting skills. And you may feel
sad, angry, or down for no specific reason at all. This is all normal
and an expected part of the first week postpartum.
In
addition to talking over your feelings with a sympathetic friend; your
doula, obstetrician, or midwife; or a therapist, be sure to carefully
guard your psyche during this time by keeping emotional vampires away!
You may be able to tolerate your bossy Aunt Edna just fine when
everything is normal, but hearing her opinion on your baby’s
“outlandish” name or her comments about how you’re spoiling her by
picking her up too much may be more than you can bear when you’re
already feeling insecure and shaky.
Now is
the time to ask your spouse or a close friend to run interference
between you and the difficult people in your life. Limit their access
to you. If they do visit, keep it short. Let your husband show off the
baby, explaining that you’re taking a nap . . . even if you’re just in
the other room reading a magazine. Ask him to keep visits short—nobody
should get to monopolize your baby right now except for you and Dad!
You can always use Baby’s feeding or nap time as an excuse.
GETTING TO KNOW YOUR BABY
You’ll
never have this precious time with your child again. So instead of
worrying about whether the dishes are done, trust that whoever is on
your “helper” list is doing what needs to be done and get as wrapped up
in your baby as you want! It may seem hard to believe, but those
delicate fingers and scrunched-up face will fill out all too soon, and
even that head of soft newborn hair may soon be a thing of the past (it
often falls out). Document all those things you’ll want to remember
now. Use your baby journal liberally and take more pictures than seems
reasonable. You will never look back at this time and think “I wish I
hadn’t taken so many photos!” or, “I wish I hadn’t written down so many
details about my baby’s first week!”
This is
a good time to document your birth story, as well. The details fade
fast. Write it yourself, or dictate to a good friend or your doula and
ask them to write it up for you. Have your husband do the same thing
and then compare notes. It’s amazing sometimes how different Mom’s and
Dad’s versions of the big event are, and the different details that
stand out as important to one or the other.
BABY, LOOK AT YOU NOW!
Every week, take one photo of Baby against a plain background or in the same chair.
I’ve seen some really cute photos done this
way—against the backdrop of a chair or other object, it’s easier to see
how much Baby’s growing from month to month. At the end of the year
you’ll have a digital collage that can easily function as your
(digital) holiday greeting card. You can make family and friends
scattered across the globe feel connected to your experience. And all
it will cost is a few computer keystrokes.
I’ve given you a lot of information to
handle for somebody who’s just had a baby. But it’s all meant to make
your life easier, not more difficult, this week. Feel free to use
whatever seems helpful and discard the rest. Or hand this section to
your friend or spouse and ask them to create the charts for you. Keep
it simple so you can focus your brainpower on your baby!
