How to organize life in the family in the postpartum period

It's time to go down to earth, where life awaits you with a newborn baby. In prenatal consultations, we try to prepare the couples waiting for the child to see how physically and emotionally exhausting the first weeks with the child can be. But before their mind's eye there are pictures of a beautiful childhood, and all our warnings about what life is like with a newborn seem to be in one ear and fly into another one.

The first weeks of the house are the time when the family needs to adjust to a new life. Although life with a newborn may not be so pink, here are some tips on how to feel with your newborn baby at home.

Take a childcare leave( this applies to daddies).

Most mothers find themselves unable not only because of the endless demands of the newborn, but also because they try to do too many other things too early. Try to understand what it really means to leave for caring for a child - leave everything else to someone else and concentrate on your newborn. Your baby will be newborn only one month. Practically anything, can wait four weeks.

Dress appropriately. "Do not

take off your robe for two weeks in a row;do not get out of your rocking chair, and let them take care of you, "- that's how our course begins on organizing family life in the post-natal period. A busy mother of eight children, Marta learned to dress according to the occasion. If she is in a dressing gown, the rest of the family receives a signal that you can not molest your mother. Develop a language and installation - "Go Ask the Pope", which will direct the

flow of older children in a different direction, away from the already tired mother. The phrase, which Martha successfully uses, looks like this: "This violates my peace."Teach older children to respect the peace and quiet of the family nest.

Start a housekeeper. There has never been a precedent in history when a new-born mother was expected to do so much for so many, with so little help. Cultures around the world have always recognized the importance of rest for the mother and newborn. A mother who has just given birth is given a muzzle( from the Greek word meaning "she who helps, attends"), a servant whose duties include taking care of the mother of ( not the child), freeing her from worries about housework and interventions that draw her energy, leaving nothing for the baby. Tired moms, grab for this straw! Dulas came to North America. Agencies of postpartum services are growing, as in leaps and bounds, across the continent. Look for one in your area. These treasures are worth the money spent. If you are not able to hire a housekeeper, a husband, relatives and friends - they all can become "servants for the day."If a friend asks: "Do you need anything?", Answer: "Vacuum and wash" or "Bring dinner".

The appearance of a newborn in the family bears changes for everyone - not only the mother, but also the father and the older children. This is what you should prepare for, and some practical advice on how to cope with difficulties.

Only for fathers

Fathers can have even more difficulties with getting used to life with a newborn than mothers. As defenders of the hearth, they have two jobs at home: they take care of a child and take care of their mother. Many fathers feel very insecure when they need to take in the hands of a tiny baby, and not more confident when it is necessary to take care of a mother who has just given birth, whose natural hormonal changes may for some time make her not the sweetest living creature.

Understanding what is happening in the mother-child relationship in the first weeks makes the father's role more important. During the first few weeks, the maternal attachment feeling oscillates between a feeling of total unity and alienation( causing either confidence and euphoria, or doubts and depression).Sometimes she feels that she gets along well with her child, sometimes that they live at a distance. As the mother and

The

child rehearses his response scene to the signal tens of times a day, their relationship develops into unity, mutual sensitivity, when the mother knows the child, and the child knows the mother. You will see that this unity has arisen. When your wife starts to exclaim: "Finally I know what she needs" or "I can understand her."This is an extremely important time for the mother and child. The father creates an environment that allows the unity of the mother and child to mature. It is important for the father to understand this unity of the mother and child in the first weeks of life together( and not be frightened of it) and to support him. Here are some practical tips for protecting the nest.

Keep the house clean. If the houses are all upside down, you will get a nervous mom - and a nervous child. In the postpartum period, Martha explodes from one seen a dirty dish, while at the usual time it and the full shell do not make you angry. Be engaged in an economy or hire someone. Go around your house every day and watch what you need to do - and do it."Cleanliness" is your motto for today. Look at your house every day - yourself.

Work on your submission. Stan, a professional tennis player, once asked me how he can help in caring for the newborn. I answered in his professional language: "Work on your pitch."As often as possible during the day, bring your wife a snack. Nursing mothers need increased nutrition and additional fluid. Serve breakfast in bed. Your wife's dream, no doubt, was broken, whereas you probably never managed to wake up. Go with your child for a walk, while your wife, at your insistence, will pamper yourself with a warm bath. Feel like a servant and a waiter? You are.

Be sensitive. Many mothers are very reluctant to ask for help, probably out of fear to dispel the myth of superwoman. Fathers, keep abreast of the needs of your wife. As one mother confessed: "I would have to give my husband on the head, before he would understand that my strength is running out."

Guard the house from the invaders.

Although it is not necessary and unreasonable from a medical point of view to remain prisoners after the birth of a child in four walls, communicate only when you want. At times, you and your wife will have the desire to receive congratulations, which fill up young parents. At other times, crowds of well-wishers will annoy you. When you need to be alone, turn off the phone and hang a sign on the door: "Do not disturb."

Take care of older children.

Other children are used to the fact that their mother belongs to them alone, and may not have a particular desire to share it with a new baby. If you can take a childcare leave for one or two weeks( or more), take on most of the worries about older children. If you go to the playground or offer children other activities outside the home, you will save the peace in the house. Instruct older children to clean up after themselves and explain to them why cleanliness in the house is so important for the mother. They are also future moms and dads. The postpartum period is the time when the people who are accustomed to receiving from( both small and large) should give it.

Keep hitting harmful tips.

Love for your newborn child and overwhelming desire to be a good mother make your wife especially vulnerable to any advice that may contain a hint that she does not do everything for her child. Protect your girlfriend from benevolent, but intrusive visitors who can break the harmony in your home. Dare those who give harmful advice: "You probably do not have enough milk" or "You spoil the child."Contradictory advice can sow doubts even in the soul of the most self-assured mother. If you feel that other people's advice leads your wife into

confusion, protect her approach to caring for the child. Tell the councils not a decisive one, even if they come from your own mother.

Respect the instinct of home comfort. Avoid serious changes shortly before or after the birth of the child. This is not the right time for moving to a new home or looking for a new job. If possible, make these decisive changes long before the birth of the baby. In the newly born woman, the instinct for preserving the home's coziness is very strong, and turning her nest upside-down, you thereby beat the mother herself out of the rut.

Enter the share. Mothers do not have an exclusive patent for the care of babies. In the post-natal period, fathers play a very important role. They form their own attachment father-child and contribute to the growth and development of their child. He is no more than the contribution of the mother, but no less - he is different. And at this difference, children just blossom.

Show yourself in the business. Fathers, as a seasoned fighter who has survived many postpartum periods, let me share with you some of the family secrets and tell you what I learned about newly-born mothers. As the mother develops a strong and healthy attachment to her child,

she feels a natural unwillingness to share care of her baby with anyone else. Hearing your child cry, you rush to him, only so that your wife does not overtake you, like a sprinter, rushing to her helpless crumb. Mothers are arranged like this. In the rare case when you manage to win the race, be prepared for the fact that your wife will shift by the side in anticipation of the chance to rescue her baby - "I will calm her, dear."As the child seems to be calming down much faster at the hands of your wife, you give up, giving up the chance to become a skilled nanny - and your wife cheats you off. This situation gives birth to two dangerous problems: the father never has the opportunity to develop his skills in dealing with the child, and the mother falls into the trap called "My child so needs me, that I can do nothing more."She refuses to herself the pleasure of taking a warm bath, going to the hairdresser's, or even simply taking a long-awaited shower, because "I can not trust my child any more".This scene is a sure sign of the approaching overwork of the mother, and postpartum depression is just around the corner. Fathers, first of all you need to prove that you are perfectly in control of the child, and only then your wife will be able to safely leave the child to you, allowing herself much needed rest from the child.

Only for mothers

If the father never participates in the care of the baby, how can he learn to handle it? Is your husband willing to help when the child is unpicked or does not want to sleep at night? Here's how to make this happen.

Show and explain. Determine in which cares about the child you most need help, and tell your husband exactly what you need. Otherwise, your husband can assume that you want to do everything yourself. Instead of taking an attentive tone, go through the basics of caring for a child together, such as bathing, lulling and changing diapers. Softly( and sometimes not very gently) indicate to him the methods that best work with your child.

Prepare your father. Starting with short walks in the neighborhood alone, periodically arrange so that the dad and the kid would be at home alone. When the father remains with the child one on one, you will be surprised how he will immediately pull himself up. Do not be dishonest and leave the baby who is breastfed, with a full belly, otherwise the daddy can completely go to a dead end.

Pull with salvation. Your baby cries, and dad took her in his arms. She continues to cry. Dad shakes her and sings her a lullaby. She continues to cry. Now you are no longer able to endure. Your milk is flowing, and you are overwhelmed by the desire to take away the crying child from this ineptitude. Instead of immediately running up and falling out: "I'll take it," pull a little. Give your father and child time to figure it out for yourself. If what is happening is clearly getting on your nerves, come to the rescue, but without casting doubt on the husband's ability to calm the child. A hungry child, after all, is required to be fed. Part of his growing skill in determining the needs of the child is to know when to say, "Lunch is served," and transfer the child into your hands. Perhaps another time the baby will calm down faster. And, to be completely honest, there are times when you or your breasts also fail to comfort a child instantly.

Be patient. The ability to treat newborns to some fathers does not come easily, especially if they are from a family where babysitting was fully provided to women. Step by step encouraging the participation of the father in caring for the child and recognizing his success, you will eventually achieve that he is addicted to caring for the baby and will be able to help you out in case of emergency unless he becomes an equal shareholder.

How to introduce a new child to older children

Children over three years old usually experience great joy from the birth of another child. They imagine how fun it will be to play with the baby. Children under three years old may not accept a newborn with open arms, but that's how you can contribute to early friendship.

Make them even before birth.

Introduce your older child with a youngest child before birth."Johnny, put your hand on my stomach - do you feel like the kid is kicking?" It makes him feel that inside is a real baby. Talk to your unborn child and let your older child join your conversation. Soon he will get involved and begin to talk with his little brother or sister too. Take it with you to the physical exams and let him listen to your heartbeat."Hear the baby?. . Soon he will talk with you."Do not start a conversation about the imminent appearance of a baby with a child of a younger age( say, which is not yet two and a half years old) until the last trimester, or until he notices that something has changed in you. If you say too early, you will only lead him into confusion - he has no idea about the running months.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures.

Show pictures that show how the child is developing, and use the right terms. Children grow up in my mother's uterus, and not in my mother's tummy. Setting up an older child for the appearance of a newborn in the house can help if you do, page by page, a trip through his own infant album, commenting that everything you do with your newborn you did with him. There are many good books with pictures, which are called books for older brothers and sisters, to prepare a young child for the appearance of the baby.

Prepare a child for their stay in the hospital. Your two-year-old child will be more interested in what will happen to him when you leave than what will happen in the hospital. Imagine that separation is not as a sad event, but as something special ( advertising phrase, which you will often use)."Grandma will come to our house and cook cookies and buy you new toys. ..".It's better if your two-year-old child stays at home with someone he knows and loves.

Do not lose touch. During your stay in the maternity hospital as often as possible, call your older child and let him visit you more often. It is better if you bring home not a stranger.

Play "mother's little helper." Stand in the place of your older child. His first thought is how a new baby will affect his life. The sooner he realizes that sharing a mother with another child is not so bad after all, the more friendly he will accept the newborn. Play in "my mother's and father's little assistant": change diapers together, love, change clothes and bathe the baby. The role of an assistant gradually develops into the role of a teacher: "Show the baby how to hold a rattle."

Help your older child feel and own importance.

Older siblings can get presents from a newborn. That the older child does not feel deprived, when showered with gifts by a newly-made mother and baby, do so that your older child benefits from this crop. Clever friends, bringing gifts to a newborn, will surely grab another gift, for the elder. If not, keep a few toys you bought. And be sure to let him feel that he is still important to you, even though you have to spend so much time alone with the newborn.

Give your child more dad. In the , the first weeks when you are naturally taken to the eyeballs are occupied by the newborn, emptiness can be filled by the pope, doing something with the elders. In those moments when the child will feel that he gets little mom, he will have more dad.

Use your time with a double benefit. When you carry the baby in a bag, you have two hands free to do anything interesting with the older child, while simultaneously doing the younger. At the same time, when you sit and feed the newborn that is in the bag, you can read the book to the older child or play with it. Wearing a child in a bag also allows older children to feel the atmosphere of the presence of a small child in the house. If your older children do not like that the baby is always at the mom's place, use a bag and ask them to "carry" the doll or even a pet in their own home-made bags.

By attracting a two-year-old child to care for the baby, you seem to be scrolling through the record of caring for yourself. When you are breastfeeding, changing your newborn and taking care of him, talk about what you are doing, and about how you nursed your elder. Having revived for a senior a part of his own early childhood, you help him to better understand life in the family after the appearance of a new child.

It is better not to try to convince an older child that he is already a big boy or a big girl, thinking that it is possible to help him "grow up" by ridicule. One glance at how a newborn is loved, hugged, carried on and given to him so much time, enough to convince any child that being a baby is better. For older siblings, it is normal, if they throw hygiene, they are disturbed by appetite, sleep, etc. That's where a lot of dad will make up for the lack of mom. It is not superfluous to point out that babies are pretty, but they can not do much, for example, go play in a park, eat fruit ice cream or ride a bicycle.