PARENTING TIPS
Practical Care Tips for New Mother and Child
Ready to have a baby or had one already? Here are some tips on how to take care of mother and child.
For those of you expecting a baby, you are probably grappling with a lot of unexpected feelings of anxiety, joy and anticipation. In today’s social circumstances of nuclear families, no extended family members and busy neighbors, its hard for new parents and parents –to-be, to know all that needs to be done. There are countless miniscule little things that doctors and nurses don’t really say when they meet you to prepare you for your parenthood but are vital to the health and well-being of the child. The concerns of the traditional doctors are really about the physical health of the mother and child. This article is all about helping young parents who don’t have a family close at hand to give them the wonderful “tribal knowledge” that grandparents and close knit societies offer.
If this is your first time with your bundle of joy, here is a checklist that you may find useful
Material comforts:
Depending on the time frame of your child’s birth, buy the basics to store at home since you will be needing this when you get home
• Clothes: Buy very soft, pure cotton baby clothes. Buy at least 25 sets for the first 3 months. If your baby is expected in summer, then buy thin cotton clothes that can be tied by strings or simple buttons.
• Enough cotton
• Rattles
• Mosquito net: if you live in any part of India, chances are that you will need this. A good well designed mosquito net that has the right kind of edges and allows you to tuck the net in.
• Soft pillows: 1 pillow for the head, 2 bolsters to keep the baby snug and comfortable and a very light small pillow to place on the baby’s chest or feet. The softest pillow must be feather light.
• Diapers: good quality snug diapers
• Cloth nappies: The more the merrier. Start with a conservative 30 nappies.
• Soft cloth and blankets: to lay the baby down
• A soft mattress for the baby: this is optional if you have a cot that comes with a mattress or if you plan to keep the baby on your family bed.
If your culture and religious beliefs prevent you from buying anything before hand, at least ensure that you know where everything is easily available and the choices you have. Ensure that the day your baby arrives from the hospital or care center, you have someone buying all the items and arranging them in time for your arrival.
Care for the child and mother:
Your doctors will tell you the basic care, regarding your baby:
Remember to support her neck when you hold her (The baby is unable to support her neck on her own since her bones are not strong enough).
The way to give her a bath is to hold her at all times, gently splashing the water on all the folds of her skin, cleaning all orifices gently with your hand.
- # Usually it’s best if you massage her yourself and avoid using the local maalishwali bai (local masseur who travels from house to house plying her services) unless you are completely confident she can do a better job. There are a number of massage oils that are available and marketed. Pick one that is gentle to use. A number of doctors nowadays recommend a no-oil massage. If you can manage to do this, its best to avoid an oil massage. However, if you can’t, then pick an oil that is very gentle and contains natural ingredients--going for the well-known brands like Olemessa or Dabur might be a good idea or even your standard purified coconut oil.
- # Try to get a massage yourself every week – it will help your sore body to loosen up and get healthier faster.
- # Ensure that the nappy changes are also done by the father at least several times in the day--it will help the baby bond with his father and the father to understand the needs of the baby and mother.
- # If you are living alone, plan for caretakers, maids and also relatives to support your life till your baby is at least 2.5 years old. If you live in a nuclear family, at least for the first one year, ensure that the parents do not have to do anything at all in the household. Keep household help for everything, and concentrate on taking care of the baby who is going to need your full attention. This is not the time to stint on domestic help – you can give up the additional staff later but its best to err on the side of more not less in terms of support.
- #Try to eat healthy: contrary to popular opinion, eating a lot of ghee is not necessarily the best diet. Eat food with high protein content, a reasonable amount of carbohydrates and vitamins and minerals – this would translate into a lot of fruits, vegetables, specially the green leafy variety, lentils, and some amount of fish if you are non-vegetarian. Avoid too much oil, you will gain weight that will be hard to get rid of.
- # If you have difficulty in producing milk, you may try to induce lactation through a variety of methods. It is difficult to predict the results of induced lactation. If you are unable to produce enough milk, its best to accept that you will need supplementation with formula, relax, enjoy the experience, and nurse your infant as much as possible without fear of compromising growth.
While any amount of mother’s milk is valuable to infants, it’s important to remember that the critical element of care is really the positive aspects of nurturing and closeness rather than on volume of milk actually produced. Don’t be disheartened if you cant breast feed your child. Keep trying for a straight 30 days before you give up. If you do it right and are able to use the breast pump effectively along with taking enough of galactic, you should be able to generate substantial milk. If not, don’t worry – I can assure you that healthy, happy babies continue to thrive on supplementary milk formula--you just need to ensure that your baby gets the supplementary vitamins, calcium and minerals that the doctor can prescribe. Instead of despairing, just ensure that your baby is drinking enough of the milk and sleeping enough.
In inducing lactation, prolactin, the milk-making hormone, and oxytocin, the milk-releasing hormone, are produced in response to nipple stimulation. While there are now several regimens which use hormone therapy to assist in bringing in milk, many women have induced lactation with only mechanical stimulation. This consists of breast massage, nipple manipulation, and sucking -- either by a baby or a hospital grade electric breast pump.
Search the Internet for some of the best shops that get such goods and also go for a silicon nipple to protect your nipple if it’s not in the right shape for suckling. You can try some of the traditional medicines that are also said to induce milk generation but I am not sure of the efficacy of these as there was little scientific evidence that I saw published (this could be really because they are not well-publicized). Some of these are: poppy seeds, sabuu danaa, ding ke ladoo.
# Talk to your baby: Although it seems as if babies can’t really figure out much except hunger and sleep, in reality a baby accepts and receives other stimuli such as talking, music, touch and this is registered in the brain. Hence despite a lack of response, treat your new-born baby as you would a slightly older infant –talk to her, engage her in discussion, play music, read to her, and sing to her. When she grows a little older, you will see some results of these attempts.
# Mental well-being of the mother:
An interesting and lesser known effect of pregnancy and delivery is depression. When you talk to your relatives, your chances are that most of them will not mention that when you have your baby, if you are the average mother, you will be hit by depression. Depression can be described as feeling sad, blue, unhappy, miserable, or down in the dumps. Most people get what is called the blues during periods for stress or pain in our lives but this feeling is short lived in most cases.
However, either during pregnancy or post delivery you may be hit by what is called clinical depression. This is a mood disorder in which your state of mind is such that you are unable to operate in your daily life, you have feelings of anxiety, grief and misery, negative thoughts of either suicide or death in extreme cases and fear of all kinds of seemingly irrational things.
You might be a healthy happy human and suddenly turn into this person who constantly needs reassurance, is irrational, and starts crying with out apparent reason. Other people around you will have to be alerted and take extra care in such circumstances. Your depression could be mild, moderate, or severe.
Depending on how severe it is, you must get help. If it seems minor (a faint feeling of blues once in a while, a disinterest in work etc.) then you can try to cure yourself by going out for walks with your friends, family or just with the caretaker if required, even in restricted areas such as the compound of your building. If you feel it is hampering your life, and your productivity, then its best that you spend time with a healer – which could be a psychiatrist or even your close family.
There are hormonal changes that happen in the body when you have a baby that are said to cause chemical changes in the brain and lead to depression. Sometimes it’s also genetic and the period of pregnancy and post –delivery aggravates such cases.
Here are some other helpful tips:
• Try to get as much rest as you can. Try to nap when the baby naps. Or hand over the baby to someone for long stretches when you can catch up on your sleep
• Do minimal housework and do as much as you want to do – this is not the time to do your duty.
• Talk to your husband, partner, family, and friends about how you are feeling. Talk therapy is one of the best ways to cure yourself.
• Do not spend a lot of time alone. Get dressed and leave the house. Run an errand or take a short walk.
• Spend time alone with your husband or partner.
• Talk with other mothers, so you can learn from their experiences. Join an online community if you don’t have the real face to face experience.
• Join a support group for women with depression. Call a local hotline or look in your telephone book for information and services.
• Keep changes in your life to the minimum – don’t shift your house, learn anything new, get a new job, change your role in your office, and this applies to both partners. Your new life as parents will take up all the ability to absorb changes that you have anyway.
Despite the advances of medical science, a lot of mothers face a great deal of pain post delivery, whether through the caesarian or natural birth. If you do face a lot of pain, please make sure you visit your gynecologist and insist on a re-examination. Sometimes there are complications that one is not aware about and it may lead to serious problems later.
Hopefully this article will give you a head start on some of the things that may be worrying you or something that will prepare you better for the time ahead. Do write back if you have comments or suggestions. All the best!
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