5 Fantastic Finds For Newborns

 You get more care & feeding tips for your weekend at home with the pre-school guinea pig than you get when bundled out of the hospital with your new baby. Following are some of my friend Jamie’s tips. I seem to have blanked out this phase in my memory… which means that even if you think you’re doing poorly, you’re doing better than me and my fella did. And we did it twice. 

-       Summer video monitor. Spring for the one that is audio & video (Available at walmart.com for around $130). That way you’ll be able to see if there really is an emergency in the nursery that you need to vault up the stairs to cover or if your baby is just playing with you.

-       Mylicon Gas Relief Drops. Truly effective or placebo effect? Who knows? Who cares? They seem to help. Buy lots. Administer regularly.

-       Bob. A full size body pillow typically purchased during pregnancy. I named mine Bob. I slept with him for years after the children were infants. He made those rare moments of shut-eye positively blissful.

-       Kirkland brand baby wipes from Costco. How impressive is the first diaper blow out? It inevitably happens on Day 4 when you’ve spent 40 minutes getting your baby ready to go somewhere. You finally load her up in the car seat. There’s a rumbling, and it’s like a geyser at Yellowstone Park. How is it possible for, ahem, matter to shoot all the way up a baby’s back?!  You can get these wipes by the caseload at Costco. That’s good because you’re going to need them.

-       Bag balm. As La Mer moisturizer is to celebrities, this stuff is to babies, toddlers and everyone else in your family. A mega moisturizer for a mini price.

Do you have other product recommends? Write them in under the “comments” section, and I’ll share them in future posts. Stay tuned next week for Jamie’s toddler recommends.

The sole piece of advice I actually remember from the infancy phase came from my friend Lisa who has a Rule Of Three: It gets easier after the first 3 days, a lot easier after the first 3 weeks and a ton easier after the first 3 months. This is good stuff you’re doing here. You know, raising a human being and all. Good stuff is hard at first. It gets easier. In a way that caring for that damn classroom guinea pig never does.