I need some space for me!

You have several months to prepare yourself and get used to the idea, but somehow the arrival of a baby is always a shock. And nothing is more shocking, particularly when it’s your first child, than the realization of how much time looking after a tiny infant can take up. It takes up hours and hours and hours of every day – and, contrary to some expectations, these hours are not merely spent playing with the baby, taking him for walks in his stroller, or having coffee mornings with friends.

It’s all too much!

A lot of looking after a baby is repetitive, boring work. It’s worth remembering that it is a lot easier for us than it was for our grandparents when their offspring were young. But even with all the labor-saving machines we’ve got around our homes, there’s still plenty to be done: washing and ironing to get through, diapers to change, doctors’ appointments to keep. And that’s before you’ve started on any other household chores, which – whether you were used to doing them or not before your baby arrived – may well be coming your way now if you’re at home all day.

One of the reasons why it all gets too much ­ especially for new mums (or dads, if they’re the ones that stay at home) is because you feel you’ve got so little control over your life after a baby arrives. If this is your first child, your life may become very different. Perhaps you were used to an office life in which you could decide what was going to happen and when. Suddenly, maybe within just a week or two of leaving work, that certainty about what a day will hold vanishes. Instead of feeling in control and on top of things, you feel you’re living in disorder, mess, and chaos. There are so many things to sort out and no realistic possibility of doing so.

Making time for yourself

Don’t think that being a new parent means taking on some saintly mantle and giving up all hope of an evening out with friends, or a night at the movies, or a swim at the local pool. You do need time for yourself. Not only is it fair that you still have a bit of life for you and you alone, it’s actually best or your child and your partner.

It’s amazing how much of a lifeline a bit of independence can be in the early months of parenthood. It can help you. put your life into perspective and remind you that there are other things going on outside of your immensely absorbing new life. You’ll feel better in yourself if you have some interests that are separate from your immediate family, and you’ll find you actually enjoy the time you spend with your baby and partner more because you’ve had some time apart from them.

Don’t feel selfish about asking for time on your own when you’ve got a small baby; look on it as an investment in your sanity, in your own future, and in your relationships with those around you, too.

How to organize time for yourself

Organizing time out for yourself won’t necessarily be easy, but if you look hard enough, it will usually be possible. The most important first step is to make your own private time a priority: don’t allow it to be pushed to the back burner.

Ideally, you need to be able to hand your baby to someone for a few hours so that you can completely get away from being a caregiver for a short while. But if there is no one you are happy leaving your baby with, you can still invest in some “me time.” Try this: next time your baby goes down after feeding, run yourself a hot bath, and add your favorite bubbles. Get yourself a delicious cold drink, put on a face pack, play some music if you feel like it, and light some candles in the bathroom. Simply wallow for as long as you can.

Having massage or enjoying a reflexology session can be very relaxing and will help you switch off. Some practitioners will visit you at home to make it easier for you – a few can even bring a babysitter.

Your support network

It’s worth making sure you have a support network you can rely on. This will help you get a bit of time to yourself, because as your child gets older you’ll certainly need to rely on others from time to time, whether you’re in paid work or not.

If you look after the baby while your partner is working, your partner can enjoy caring for the baby during the evenings or weekends, and this will allow you a bit of freedom.

If you’re a mum who’s breastfeeding, ask your partner to take your baby for a walk in the sling or stroller once in a while. Your baby is less likely to cry and want milk while she’s on the move and if her mum is out of earshot.

Meanwhile, you will have some precious peace and quiet.

Try to spend more time with people who boost your confidence in your ability to be a parent, and spend less time with those who undermine you – that’s those who tell you what to do and how to do it, rather than listening to your views.

Beyond your partner, you may be able to call on family members like your mother or mother-in-law – but if not, you need to start finding other helpers for your network. They could include older neighbors, other mothers, babysitters, and au pairs. As your baby gets older, investigate whether your shopping center has a baby care service where you could leave your baby while you shop.

You don’t have to leave your baby for hour after hour with anyone else. In fact, that could be a very bad idea for such a young child. But don’t feel that to be the perfect parent you have to be hands-on 24 hours a day – you don’t.

Adapting to life with a baby

Things do seem to change all the time in the first few months of your baby’s life, and it can be disconcerting. No sooner do you think that you’ve got everything figured out and you know when your baby will be asleep and when he’s awake, then suddenly he does something you don’t expect and the whole routine is up in the air again. It’s confusing, but it’s actually a measure of how fast your baby is developing and how quickly his life is changing.

Why things change so much

This may surprise you, but babies do not always take well to being laid in a crib, put down to sleep, or even left to play or kick their legs. What they really, really want is to be held all the time in close proximity to a breastful of warm milk from which they can sup whenever they feel like it. The structure we expect from our babies – that they will feed at roughly similar times of the day, that they will sleep or roughly 3 to 4 hour intervals, that they will sleep for longer at night and so on – is our invention, not theirs. That’s why we’re so often confounded by their behavior. Because they didn’t write the rule book, we did. And they haven’t read it yet!

Coping with an unsettled baby

One particularly difficult problem many parents have to deal with is colic. Typically, a bout of colic strikes in the evening, and it can last for 2 hours or more at a time.

It can seem like the thin end of the wedge after a long, hard day, and can make you feel inadequate at a time of day when you’re running short on energy and need to have your confidence boosted, not dented.

All my babies have had an unsettled period in the early evening, and I remember how concerned we were when it was happening with our first baby, Rosie. By Miranda, my third, I found the best way to cope was to have a glass of wine, put on a CD, and have a slow dance around the room with her. She didn’t always stop crying right away, but she seemed to like the change of pace and I felt a lot more relaxed.

This pattern of unsettled evenings can go on interminably. The only way to deal with a phase of colic is to live with it and to believe it will go away (and it will, usually at around 3 months).

Every day is different

Young children, but especially babies under 6 mont of age, don’t function as we would expect or always want them to. No two days are alike: their behavior often seems completely random and unfathomable. Occasionally, you will hear stories of a baby who arrived in the world complete with a natural routine that made life a dream for his parents. Don’t listen to these stories, because they are almost always fiction have probably lost every grain of truth in the telling.

In short, don’t expect your baby to behave in an organized fashion in the early week and you won’t be disappointed. But that doesn’t, of course, mean you can’t work around your baby, and introduce an element of order into your lives yourself.

Studies show that 80 percent of normal, healthy babies have at least one period of unexplained crying every 24 hours.

Coping with your new life

It’s easy enough to say that you should stop worrying about how your house looks, or whether you’ve got a meal in the oven, or even how you’re looking yourself. Easy to say, but not easy to do. How many of us want to stop caring about our homes, our lives, and ourselves? The truth is that some parents find it relatively easy to cope with the fact that life gets less controlled and more chaotic, and others find it very difficult indeed.

The key to coping is in knowing yourself. Think about the way you lived before your baby was born, and think about the way things are now. Are you the sort of person who can live with piles of ironing everywhere, who doesn’t mind surviving on take-out and ready-made meals, and who doesn’t mind knowing there’s a bit of dust on the top shelves? Or do you know in your heart of hearts that you’ll never be happy unless you feel on top of your domestic situation?

There’s no “right” or “wrong” sort of parent. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a control freak or whether you’re happy-go-lucky in every way. You just need to find a balance that’s right for you and your baby, and try not to set yourself unrealistic expectations to live up to.

Coping with your new life

It’s easy enough to say that you should stop worrying about how your house looks, or whether you’ve got a meal in the oven, or even how you’re looking yourself. Easy to say, but not easy to do. How many of us want to stop caring about our homes, our lives, and ourselves? The truth is that some parents find it relatively easy to cope with the fact that life gets less controlled and more chaotic, and others find it very difficult indeed.

The key to coping is in knowing yourself. Think about the way you lived before your baby was born, and think about the way things are now. Are you the sort of person who can live with piles of ironing everywhere, who doesn’t mind surviving on take-out and ready-made meals, and who doesn’t mind knowing there’s a bit of dust on the top shelves? Or do you know in your heart of hearts that you’ll never be happy unless you feel on top of your domestic situation?

There’s no “right” or “wrong” sort of parent. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a control freak or whether you’re happy-go-lucky in every way. You just need to find a balance that’s right for you and your baby, and try not to set yourself unrealistic expectations to live up to.

You’re the perfect parent for your baby, so don’t torture yourself thinking about whether you’d be so more successful if you could only be someone else. No one else could be a better parent for your child than you are- although that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t always try your best.

Avoiding comparisons

Whatever else you take on board from this book, I’m absolutely certain you won’t be following the advice I’m about to give you now. Why? Because although every parenting author will suggest you DON’T compare your baby with anyone else’s, we all do it – however hard we try not to.

Mothers groups

In many ways, mothers’ groups can be a lifeline: they provide other parents to chat to, share tips with, and make friends with. The downside is that, from the word go, you’re secretly comparing your baby with theirs. You discuss things in a neutral way, but inside you’re feeling insecure. How come that baby, born 2 days before yours, is already holding her head up? Why does that child sleep through the night, while yours wakes every 3 hours no matter what you do?

Have confidence in your baby

As the parenting guru Sheila Kitzinger says in her book The Year After Childbirth, the reason we compare our child with others is because we’re suffering from low self-esteem. We’re not experience yet in parenting, an it’s natural to doubt our own abilities. As time goes on, you’ll become more confident in trusting your own instincts. You will worry less about how other people’s children are doing and take your cue about how your own are doing from within yourself, not from what you see around you.

Don’t get into the habit of saying your own child is “a bit slow” or “not as advanced as yours,” because you’ll start believing it and your lack of confidence will eventually filter through to your child.

Try not to let the inevitable business of comparing your baby to others lead you to put your own child down. Remember that everyone needs someone to believe in him, and if you can’t rely on your mother and father to do this, who can you rely on? You don’t need to blind yourself to your child’s faults and failings, but don’t underestimate the importance of your support and loyalty.

The umbilical cord blood storage involves the removal of the plasma and retaining the white blood cells that are essential in the transplantation process. However, the blood cells must be tested and found safe to be used in transplantation prior to proceeding with the umbilical cord blood storage.

There are various methods of cord blood storage. However, the method that is commonly used in the clinical practice is the closed technique, which is comparable to the standard blood storage techniques. With this system, the technician pricks the vein of the cut umbilical cord, using a needle that connected to a blood bag, and cord blood moves through the needle into the bag.
Reasons for Umbilical Cord Blood Storage

There are many reasons for associated to the umbilical cord blood storage. The umbilical cord blood taken during the birthing process can save lives. Umbilical cord blood storage preserves a supply of stem cells to be used by you and other family members should there be any emergency medical complications. The following are the reasons attributable to umbilical cord blood storage.

• The stored blood can be used for the treatment of many diseases such as heart disease, cancer and strokes.
• The immune cells gathered for the purpose of blood storage are very unique for the family and can also be easily transplanted without rebuff.
• Demand for cell tissue donors is high. Patients often have to wait long periods for a match while their condition deteriorates. People who have arranged cord blood banking with a cord blood registry have a ready supply of cells that are genetically matched.
• For that already in treatment for life-threatening illnesses, stem cells from blood cord donation can restore fresh blood where chemotherapy and radiation have killed off healthy cells.
• Cord blood collection is made from the umbilical cord and not from a fetus in development. It isn’t steeped in controversies associated with other techniques of gathering stem cells.
• Cord blood transplants are considered an easier match within families than more conventional bone marrow cell resources.
• Saving your baby’s stem cells gives you and your family the biggest sense of security as well as their future health.
• The umbilical cord blood can be stored for at least 15 years and it will still retain its strength.

Finally, people choose to store cord blood with an eye to the future. At the moment, the technology only allows the stem cells from cord blood to be used for bone marrow transplants. The hope, however, is that medical know-how will continue to move forward, and that the stored cord blood will be used for other purposes in the future. Storing stem cells in the present allows a family to be included if future discoveries are made, and to be part of any future cures that may be found.

What happens in this process is that a prospective adoptive parent will not necessarily be looking for any type of specific child. The parent will instead work with an adoption involving a child that the parent knows and will be handling the adoption through the birth mother. There is no need to work with an adoption agency when this adoption process is used.

The main thing about this process is that it will involve the adoptive parent or parents knowing what they are looking to find in a child. They will know about the child or birth mother beforehand.

It will be important for adoptive parents to hire an attorney when a private adoption is taking place. An attorney that specializes in adoption services will assist the parents with the entire adoption process and will be the representative of the parents. The attorney will work to get the consent of a child’s biological parents to get an adoption to work.

A good attorney will be one that works with the adoption laws that is in one’s state. Each state has its own laws with regards to adoptions. It will help to take a look at this factor because no two states are truly alike when it comes to adoptions.

There are many cases where a private adoption is used. For example, it can work if a child is orphaned or is no longer able to be taken care of. This is especially important because the original parent of the child will be looking to ensure that a new adoptive parent or parents can work to take care of a child.

A good thing about this type of adoption is that it will allow an adopted child to understand who one’s adoptive parents are. This is important because a child should not have to have one’s information hidden with regards to one’s past.

However, the problem with this kind of adoption is that it is one that can cost more for a person to work with. It can cost thousands of dollars to work with the services of an adoption attorney. Also, the court proceedings can take a little longer than that of what would work for a standard type of adoption. This is due to how there are no agencies contacted for the process.

A private adoption can be a useful type of adoption process to see. This process involves adopting a child without the use of an adoption agency and is used when the adoptive parents know who they are looking to deal with. This is something that can be advantageous and can be easily handled. Be sure to watch for the costs associated with an attorney though.

There are large numbers of games that can be used as baby shower games. These games are mentioned below:
Word scramble: This is one of the easiest games. In this game, each of the participating team is given a page of jumbled words. The team that finds all the correct words from them wins the game.

Race for the shoes: This is one of the funniest games. This game is basically meant for men. In this game men are asked to wear heavy clothes and then they are required to tie and untie their shoes. Those who do this in the minimum time win the game. This game is of great amusement for the expecting mother.

Diaper smell: This is also a funny game. Under this game, few diapers are fitted with certain household items and all of them are marked then. The team that makes the right guess about a particular item then that team is given some gift item. This game appears funny only while viewing it.

Baby charades: This game is one of the oldest games. In this game the participants are provided with the sentences that a new born baby will tell their parents in the future once they start talking. The teams have to express those sentences then to their team partners. Those who get maximum points after the end of the game are provided with the prizes.

Mother Guess: There is flexibility while playing this game. This game can be played in groups and as well as individually. In this game, people are given the description of the characters that are there in the nursery rhymes and people have to guess those characters.

Mother What: This is not an easy game at all. In this game, names of all the mothers at that place are listed on cards. These cards are then pasted on the back of the participants. The participants then have to guess the correct names.

Purse scavenger hunt: In this game, two groups are made-one who are new mothers and other with old mothers. Then all the participants are asked to make the list of items that a new born mother would have in their purse. The participant that gives most right items is considered as the winner.

Heavy purse roulette: This game is best suited for those mothers who have some experience in motherhood. In this game, purses of all the participants are weighed. The mother with the heaviest purse is considered the winner.

Names that have been passed down through a family from generation to generation were at one time the automatic choice for many parents, especially for a first-born. If the traditional name was masculine, it was sometimes feminized for a girl (Thomas, Thomasina), especially if there was no male heir. These customs have lapsed in recent times, leading to many traditional family names being dropped, although they are sometimes used as a child’s middle name.

Some families, particularly among the aristocracy in Scotland, and in the American South, used the mother’s maiden name as the first-born son’s given name. This appears to be dying out, although the maiden name is still given as a middle name. Because of this custom, surnames such as Russell, Howard, and Cameron have become normal as first names, particularly for boys. Couples who are not married or in which the woman prefers to keep her maiden name sometimes like to give the mother’s surname as the child’s middle name.

Many parents choose names for their children that work together, although few go as far as the Victorians (see column, right). Some parents like all their children’s names to start with the same initial, although this can cause confusion with letters and official documents.

NATIONALITY

Many parents choose names that reflect where they come from, even though they no longer live there. This can lead to problems of spelling and pronunciation, so the spelling may be simplified ­from Gaelic to English, for example (Sile-Sheila; Aodan-Aidan). In other cases, first names. that are perceived as being “national” may not be used in their country of origin. Colleen, for example, comes from the Celtic caitlin, meaning “girl” or “wench,” and is popular for girls of Irish origin in North America and Australia, even though it’s not used as a given name in Ireland.

MEANINGS The meaning or origin of a name tends to be less important than its associations for most modern Western parents. Many Western first names have had a more convoluted history than those of other cultures. This is because these names, along with other traditions and customs, have been transferred from one society to another, often by invasion followed by integration, migration, or contact between different cultures. For this reason, many names have become divorced from their original meanings, but some Western parents do still choose names primarily because of what they mean.

SECOND STAGE JOBS

You’ll need to continue doing many of the jobs you did during the first stage-making your partner comfortable, supporting her in different positions, providing drinks and food, and giving moral support. But you’ll also now have to encourage her to push. All this will make the mother’s job easier and help her feel emotionally secure and relaxed.

In the unlikely event of a medical emergency, staff have to move quickly and you might be in the way, so be sensitive to any situation that arises. You probably won’t be asked to leave the delivery room, but be prepared to do so if necessary.

Helping with the delivery position Now that your partner has been through the first stage of labor, she’ll probably know which position she finds most comfortable. Your support is very important to help her through the pushing stage, but always ask the midwife’s advice if you’re not certain what to do. If your partner doesn’t want to be held, suggest other positions that she might find comfortable, and place pillows or cushions under and behind her for support. It’s a good idea to practice different ways of sitting or squatting before labor so that you’re both familiar with them; if you feel unsure or uncomfortable about what you’re doing, it can make your partner nervous.

If your partner is happy sitting on the bed or on the floor, she might like to try the knee-chest position, which many women find comfortable in the second stage. For this, she should drop her chin onto her chest while holding on to her knees. Between contractions, suggest that she relax against the pillow to conserve her energy.

Helping her with breathing and pushing To help her through these last few contractions, tap out a rhythm for the different kinds of breathing, using words like: “breathe, breathe, pant, pant, blow.” As she’s pushing, gently remind her to relax her pelvic floor.

At the peak of contractions, suggest that she take two or three deep breaths and push as hard as she can. She should push in a strong and steady way, and you can remind her that each push brings the birth of your baby a little closer.

Encouraging her to relax Between contractions, help your partner to relax-she needs to save her strength for pushing her baby through the birth canal. Massage her back if she has a backache or needs comforting and reassuring. If she is hot and flustered, mop her brow with a cool washcloth or mist her face with a water spray.

Standing by Once your baby’s head has crowned, your role may become more passive for a while as you watch the doctor or midwife guiding your partner through this pushing stage. Don’t be disappointed if your partner hardly seems to notice you during the birth and relies more on the hospital staff. She’ll be fully preoccupied and involved with what’s happening.

Showing her the baby When your baby’s head is emerging, hold a mirror nearby so that your partner can see his head crowning and then his whole body slithering out. Help her to reach down and touch your baby’s head as he is born.

Loving reception Ask the doctor or midwife if you can catch your baby in your arms as his body emerges. After you’ve greeted your baby for the first time, place him on your partner’s stomach. You can then cuddle them both to help keep them warm and to let them know that you’re there.

You and your partner will have a range of reactions-relief, tears, awed silence, exhausted collapse, whoops of joy. You may even feel squeamish at the sight of his bloodied, greasy, tiny body. Whatever your feelings, they’re all perfectly understandable, and this moment marks a new phase in your family’s history.

MAKING ROOM FOR FATHERS

Don’t worry-getting involved with parenting needn’t be a problem. With a little planning and a generous heart, both of you can enjoy sharing all the aspects of caring for your baby. After all, baby care means loving your baby, encouraging your baby, teaching your baby, watching your baby grow and develop, and establishing bonds with your baby that will probably be the strongest you ever make with anyone. Being a parent is perhaps the most important job any of us do. Who in their right mind would not want to be a part of all that?

As a father, try not to allow yourself to miss out on this unique relationship. And you’ll find that when you’re fully involved with your baby, a little miracle happens along the way: your relationship with your baby’s mother flourishes, too.

No one has trouble defining a mother’s role. Mothers care for children: they feed, comfort, dress, and bathe; they encourage, teach, carry, undress, put to bed, and maybe sing to sleep. We all know this because it’s what our mothers did for us when we were children. Defining a father’s role is more difficult, and many men are struggling to come to terms with what it means to be a modern father.

Finding a role model Much as you may love your own father, you may want your own relationship with your children to be different. Men today are encouraged to have a much more hands­ome approach to caring for their children, but few have a role model to show them what this actually means. What’s really needed is for fathers to be much more involved with the day-to­day business of child care-for them to be more like mothers.

Your baby doesn’t mind Babies and young children are happy to be cared for by their father or mother. What your baby needs is comfort, warmth, and security from her parents. Although she’ll soon learn to tell her mother and father apart, she’s not going to make value judgments based on what mothers and fathers ought to do. Apart from breastfeeding, there’s nothing a woman can do for a baby that can’t be done by a man.

The need for parenting Babies don’t need mothering and fathering, they need parenting. They need the most important adults in their lives to be models of what parents do for their children. When this happens, the next generation of fathers will not be at a loss to know what a father’s role should be. A child will only start to look to one parent rather than the other for her needs if this is what she learns she should do from her experiences. If you, as a father, never change her diaper, hold her when she cries, or play and laugh with her, of course she’ll relate more to the parent who does do all those things.

YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT HAVING A FAMILY

However much you long for a family, the decision to go ahead and have a child needs the same reasoned, clear-eyed evaluation you’d give to any other major change in your life, such as buying a house or a new car. It helps to be open with one another about your feelings and to put into words some of the thoughts and questions that may be lurking in the back of your mind. Even if you think you both really want a baby because you love each other and it seems like the natural thing to do, it’s still a good idea to talk about all the issues involved. Have you thought about how a baby will affect your way of life? Does having a child seem like the right thing for you as a couple, or are you just reacting to pressure from others, such as the potential grandparents? Do you both have the same desire for a baby?

A NEW KIND OF PARENTING

Family life has changed in recent years, and people have different expectations. A father used to be a protector, out at work all day and with little direct involvement in the care of children. Now, fathers and mothers are equal partners at home. Both may be working, full- or part-time, and sharing the financial responsibilities and the juggling of caring for home and family. Some couples may decide they don’t want to use any form of child care and so one of them takes a career break to stay at home. In an increasing number of couples, it’s the father who opts to be the caregiver while his wife earns the money, overturning traditional patterns of family life. One reason why such families are often strong and successful units is because they make their plans carefully and take account of both partners’ talents. But whatever practical arrangements you make, providing a stable, loving, and open environment in which to bring up children is what matters the most.

Do it, but don’t overdo it. Walk at a pace that feels comfortable. Don’t dawdle, but don’t become winded. Fenton recommends checking your intensity with what he calls the talk test. “You should be able to talk comfortably while walking,” he says. “If you find yourself gasping for air when you talk, you’re pushing yourself too hard.”

Warm up beforehand. Why warm up? First, it makes walking easier by increasing the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your muscles. The extra oxygen enables your muscles to produce energy when you need it. Second, it stretches the muscles, tendons, and ligaments, preparing them for the upcoming workout and reducing your risk of injury. Third, it allows you to shift emotional gears so that you’re in the right frame of mind to enjoy walking.

Pay attention to posture. The American Physical Therapy Association offers the
following pointers for good walking posture: Stand up straight and look forward, not down. Keep your head erect, your chin pulled in toward your neck, your back straight, and your stomach and buttocks tucked in. Don’t lean forward, except when walking uphill. Leaning increases the risk of back strain.

Set the right stride. Walk heel to toe, letting your feet gently roll forward through each step. This allows you to develop a comfortable, flowing, rhythmic stride.

Bend your elbows. As you walk, swing your arms, keeping your elbows bent at 90­degree angles and close to your trunk. Avoid straight-arm striding, which slows you down and makes your fingers swell uncomfortably. And don’t thrust your elbows out to your sides, like chicken wings. This disrupts your rhythm and causes upper-body discomfort.

Keep your hands free. With your arms swinging unencumbered, you can stride more comfortably for a longer period of time without feeling winded. “If you need to carry anything, use a backpack,” Fenton advises. “Carrying things in your hands is tiring and interferes with the natural rhythm of walking.”

Expect to feel good. A good walking workout will leave you with a combination of fatigue, invigoration, and mood elevation. The fatigue should pass within an hour, but the invigoration and mood elevation will last much longer. And as your physical condition improves, you’ll feel less fatigue and a greater sense of well-being after each workout.