How to Survive the First Year of Parenthood {Stuff for Baby’s First Year}

Welcome to the second installment of JSH Baby Time!  In the first post I talked about some tricks to make pregnancy survivable, and now we’re going to talk about how to survive the first year of parenthood, a.k.a. Stuff for Baby’s First Year.  I must tell you though, no amount of lists, planning, thinking, prepping, reading, washing, organizing, or car seat installing can honestly prepare you for becoming a parent.  There’s no checklist that can make the full gravity of leaving the hospital with seven pounds of brand new human life that is completely dependent upon you any less terrifying.  So, if you’re looking for that post, this ain’t it.  This is, however, a list of the top things that I wish I’d known much earlier in my foray into motherhood, so here ya go…  a list of sixteen things to help you Survive the First Year of Parenthood, also known as Stuff for Baby’s First Year!

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1) Use your stroller in the house.  The day that I discovered this little trick was absolutely life-changing.  This trick works best while the little nugget is still immobile.  I was a “must get up and get showered to feel like a human” new mommy.  In hindsight I kinda wish that I would have just chilled a bit more and slept “when the baby sleeps”, as everyone tells you to do (but never really happens).  However, that was not my journey.  I felt so overwhelmed by new role, that my way to keep it all under control was to keep myself clean, bottles washed, house clean, etc.  The problem was that when the baby is still small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, you can’t really be running all around leaving this tiny creature in a big giant room all by herself.  Enter the stroller.  Once I discovered that she loved to ride around in our house, it made getting all of my tasks done and showering much easier.  We used and loved this stroller and carseat.  They were so easy to use, and were a great size for us.  Love the three-wheel design over four too.

2) Don’t waste your time with “baby bottle” brushes or the grass.  If you use Doctor Brown’s bottles like we did, many of the bottle brushes are too big to fit through the top of them, so the spongey part of the brush ended up ripping off after like two uses.  For the life of me I do not know why I continued to buy them for nearly the first entire year of my daughter’s life and did not just get a regular, long handled dish brush that was dedicated only to washing bottles.  I use one like this that has lasted four times as long as any of the baby bottle brushes, and works great too.  P.s. of course you will still want to get some teeny tiny brushes from the baby section that can be used for the nipples and the small bottle parts.  And speaking of small bottle parts…  when it comes to drying all of those suckers, get yourself a lawn.  Don’t even mess around with the grass.  Despite what limited counter space you think you have, the grass will not be big enough.  You will need a full lawn to dry all of those millions of bottle parts, pacifiers, and booger suckers.

3)  Rock and Play.  LC slept in this wonderful contraption until she (almost) literally could climb out of it.  We used and LOVED this one, but you can get these less expensive versions too.  We loved this thing so much because it fit perfectly next to our bed and was super easy to disassemble so it could travel.  The version that we got had an auto-rock feature, vibration, and sounds.  Basically, if they made this thing in adult-size, I would purchase one.  We even took it with us in a suitcase to NYC one time and it was awesome.  They’re also great for moving from the bedroom to the living room during the day.  Loved this thing and couldn’t have lived without it.

4) Baby Breeza.  This may be controversial because I’ve heard some terrible reviews, but I honestly can not say enough good things about our Baby Breeza.  I tried and tried to appease the Breastfeeding Gods (Goddesses?), but it just wasn’t happening for us.  Our house and lives were a much happier place when we realized that formula is NOT, in fact, the devil.  When you’re sleep deprived and handling a screaming baby, it can be a teensy bit difficult to measure out the correct amount of formula and dump it with one hand into the top of a bottle that seemingly has the circumference of a grain of rice.  And then waiting to heat it to the perfect temperature in one of those countertop water warmer things?  Forget it.  The Baby Breeza makes a perfectly measured and warm bottle with the push of a button in less than ten seconds.  It’s a little mechanical miracle.  I think that the bad reviews came from people who didn’t use it or clean it correctly, which I could definitely see happening.  Read – and follow – the directions explicitly and you’ll be livin’ the good life.

5) Rockabye Baby! and Jammy Jamz.  A postpartum girl can only listen to so much twinkle twinkle before you’re ready to throw the sound machine out the window.  Rockabye Baby! and Jammy Jamz were my heroes.  The geniuses of Rockabye Baby! have taken our favorite Beatles, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Dave Matthews, Guns N Roses songs and turned them into baby-approved lullabies.  Similarly, Jammy Jamz takes Hip Hop classics like Big Pimpin’ and lullaby-a-fies them.  It keeps things much more interesting than Itsy Bitsy Spider on repeat, and truly you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Warren G’s “Regulate” as a lullaby.

6) Ice cubes in mesh fruit bag things.  When your baby starts teething for the first time you will not know what to do.  They won’t eat or sleep, but they will scream.  We used ice cubes in these little things, and this kind of Orajel, since the regular strength didn’t help at all.

7) Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleep Suit.  This thing is ah-mazing when it is time to transition your little bundle out of a swaddle.  It helps stifle their little sleepy-time reflex movements so that they don’t wake themselves up, and it is a total bonus that they look like adorable little Marshmallow Men.

8) Use baby nail cutting scissors.  DO NOT use baby nail clippers.  They told us this in the hospital, and I did not listen.  I also subsequently took a chunk out of Lila’s tiny finger the night before her first day at daycare and I truly wanted to run out in traffic.  Save yourself this anguish, and use baby nail cutting scissors instead.  Also, cutting their toenails while their in the highchair might be a little disgusting, but it is highly effective.

9) Get in a Mom’s Group.  I was lucky enough to take prenatal yoga with a wonderful woman who also recommended a “Post Partum Recovery” class taught by one of her colleagues.  The post partum class was good not only for getting your lady parts body back in shape, but since babies were encouraged to come to the class as well, it also helped me practice getting out of the house with an infant.  There was a private Facebook group created for all of the ladies who have taken this class and being a part of this group has been a blessing beyond words.  You can ask things like “why is [insert random body part here] dripping?”, or “now that I’m pregnant why does the smell of beer on my husband’s breath make me want to punch him in the face?”, and not only will you not be judged, you will get honest, thoughtful responses and encouragement.  I guess this is the camaraderie that is created by doing kegels in a group setting.  Either way, get in some kind of a mom’s group.  They will become a part of your village.

10)  Amazon Prime.  I was not a believer in Prime subscriptions at first.  I wish I hadn’t wasted time being a skeptic.  It is totally worth the $99/year to be able to get [insert almost anything you could possibly think of from lightbulbs to lip gloss] within two days and shipped for free.  I honestly think that it actually saves us money, because who really comes out with only diapers when you run in to Target?  #nooneever

11)  AAA.  Sweet Jesus did we learn this the hard way!  Hopefully all of you practical and smart people already have AAA.  If you do not, get it.  When Lila was six months old we ran out of gas on I-10, in the rain, in the middle of nowhere.  We were stuck and scrambling on the side of the interstate for nearly 2.5 hours.  It was an expensive disaster that could have been easily remedied had we been AAA members.  Everyone in my family got a subscription that Christmas and it has paid for itself three times over in one year.  You can never be too safe when you’ve got that precious cargo.

12)  Aiden & Anais blankets.  Lane does word associations to remember things, so these blankets are affectionately referred to as “Aden & Anus” blankets at my house.  They are super light, so they’re easy to carry and awesome for swaddling, wiping stuff up, a make-shift changing pad, and stroller canopy.

13)  Double-bag your diapers.  In order to not be smacked in the face with a brick wall o’ stench every time we crack open the diaper pail, we started double-bagging poopy diapers with these little “on the go” diaper bags.  Environmental people, please don’t get on me too bad here.  My method actually lessens the number of times that a diaper pail has to be emptied, so really it could be considered environmentally-friendly?…

14)  A good swing.  The one we used [this one] had different speeds, music, and vibration, and the whole swing part could lift off of the base or rotate in different directions.  When Lila was teeniney she slept in this the majority of the day.

15)  Bouncy seat.  When LC got to the point that she could focus her eyeballs, she became enamored with Baby Einstein.  When we got home I would pop her in her bouncy seat and turn on Baby Einstein and I would have a good 20-30 minutes to unload the car and wash some bottles.  Ours was awesome, but it was also the scene of her first diaper blowout, and I’ve never really looked at it the same way since then.

16)  A video monitor.  The one we use [this one] you can pan the room, zoom in, talk to the baby, and play music.  It also connects to a special app (Hubble) on your phone, so you can check in and see your sweet baby sleeping peacefully if you dare go out to dinner or something.  This made our first few date nights out much easier for a wife trying to overcome Momxiety.

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Again, there is nothing that can make the job of being a parent 100% comfy, cozy and foolproof.  There’s no complete list that tells you exactly how to “Survive the First Year of Parenthood”.  There will be moments when you want to (and do) cry, scream, and run away.  Post partum emotions are no joke either, and unfortunately I don’t have a link to anything that will fix that.  What I found worked the best for me was to keep moving and get outside.  At one point of my maternity leave I was in a pretty deep spiral of post partum depression after three days of sitting in a dark living room and binge watching every season of Parenthood.  Don’t do this to yourself.  Go for a walk, talk to a friend, and call on your Mom’s group.  One of the most helpful things that one of my friends told me during this time was “try to remember that it’s not real life, it’s the hormones.”  While it certainly felt like real life at the time, it wasn’t.  Eventually the fog lifts.  But in the meantime, arm yourself with tools that will make your parenting job easier (see #’s 1-16 above), pull the plug on Netflix every now and then, and appreciate the beautiful, wonderful, incredible, and indescribable joy that is being a Momma.