Tag: newborn

choices, Newborn Baby, parenting, postnatal

Normal Newborn Crying

Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

What’s a normal amount of crying for my baby to do?

This is almost an impossible question to answer because all babies are so different. The important thing to remember is crying is your baby communicating with you, not to complain or upset you but just to let you know something.

It’s completely normal to not know what it is your baby is trying to say, the idea that we will automatically instinctively know how to care for our baby is a myth. Learning to parent is very often about going through the list of possible reasons your baby might be crying, hungry, tired, need nappy changing, need to burp, need a cuddle, need to pass wind, need to poop, have a small piece of thread caught round their toe, etc, etc.

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choices, Information, Newborn Baby, parenting, postnatal

Normal for a New Parent

Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

The original title of this blog was normal infant behaviour. But as I started to write it I realised that it’s not enough to just know what to expect your baby to be like.

As a team when we talked about what we would include in this post many of us reflected on how it feels to be a new parent, especially for the first time. What would we like expectant parents to know? That parenting is hard & however prepared you feel, it could still potentially hit you like a juggernaut.

You feel what you feel – There’s no such thing as a perfect parent

In modern western society, we’re often not really used to being around small babies. When you find yourself pregnant, especially for the first time, there’s so much information on what you should and shouldn’t do it can be very overwhelming and feel like you’re being expected to achieve some kind of perfect parent status without any actual practical support.

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Baby Feeding, postnatal

Normal Newborn Feeding.

Informed Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond.

We need support to feed our babies not “breastfeeding promotion”

Maybe the most common question you will have been asked in your antenatal appointments is how are you planning to feed your baby? The most common advice is likely to have been you “should” breast/chest feed.

So many parents find the flip side of this is once the baby is born if they have any experience other than a perfectly latching and growing baby with no effort the advice changes to perhaps you “should” just give them a bottle.

This situation leads to so many parents feeling they have failed and feeling guilty.

This is the difference between breastfeeding promotion and baby feeding support.

So let’s be really honest. Establishing breast/chest feeding is probably more often than not an intense experience where challenges have to be faced and worked through. It is completely normal to need support with feeding your baby.

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