So you just conquered the fear, pain and physical strength it required to meet your precious little baby! Now the fun part begins, your mom clock will never stop ticking. There’s no such things as a “break”, you can’t “clock out” and you most definitely can’t just not show up to “work”.

Welcome to motherhood where your 24/7 job has started for the rest of your life. Don’t worry if you don’t feel prepared enough to take home a newborn. Your parenting instincts will happen when you least expect them too. sadly there’s no rule book, not instruction Manuel and even though you bed and pleaded the nurses still can’t come home with you. But I will give you a few heads up the newborn stage.

1. Newborns spit up

This part of the stage can be a little more frightening because newborns can tend to choke on their own vomit. That’s why the nurses send you home with a bulb syringe. This little simple using tool is a life saver! As soon as your newborn spits up you just insert the syringe gently in the newborns mouth on the side of their cheek and your press in and release to suction up the fluids.

2. Newborns first poop looks like tar.

A newborns poop isn’t brown and solid form when it first happens. It won’t get solid till your baby starts to eat food, besides breast milk or formula. The first poop is a black sticky substance that clings to everything that it touches. This substance resembles tar because it truly looks like that. Get your wipes ready parents because this diaper can take more than a few seconds to clean up.

2. You can’t spoil a newborn (my opinion).

Before we get into this topic, once again this is my opinion, okay now that we have that cleared you may proceed.

Newborns don’t just cry to cry. They cry because they are either hungry, have a upset stomach, a dirty diaper, too hot or too cold. Sometimes newborns cry simply because they want to be held! Mamas! Hold your baby and don’t let anyone tell you different. They are only newborns for so long, and only little for a short period of time. Once they are able to crawl, walk and run they most likely won’t want to sit still long enough to snuggle with you.

3. Check for chafing!

For anyone chafing can be agonizing, but what if you had it and couldn’t tell anyone to help you out? Newborns can get chafing very easily and new parents tend to not even think of this. The most common places for babies to get chaffed is under their necks. Milk, sweat, and spit up all get stuck in the rolls of a newborns neck and can cause a serious irritation. For me with my kids I found out that Aquaphor has worked best for us and any skin irritation that the girls might have!

5. Newborns can choke on milk.

You wouldn’t think about it but when newborns start to eat really fast, they can tend to start to choke on their milk. Simple lift the baby up, many times it’s due to the mothers “let down” flow becoming too fast for the baby to eat. There isn’t really anything you can do about this situation for breastfeeding mamas. It’s not like we can regulate the flow of milk. However with bottle fed babies you would want to give your newborn a “slow” flowing nipple.

6. Cradle Cap

Cradle cap is not harming to your baby and typically will resolve by itself. Cradle cap is referred to crusty patches of dead skin stuck on your babies scalp. It does absolutely no harm to your baby but yet it’s noticeable. Both of my girls have gotten it and it usually last for a month or two. Washing their heads and brushing their hair with a soft brush helps loosen up the dried up scalp and eventually fall off! Do not pick, or scrape these pieces of skin as it could result to a open Wound on your babies precious little head.

7. Flat heads

It is very easy for a baby to get a “flat head”, this is when the baby spends most of its time laying on its back which causes the skull to form an impression of being flat on the back of the head. Once the child is at the recommenced age for tummy time you want to encourage that to give you baby a break from laying flat on their backs.

8. Newborns sleep a lot.

I know what your probably thinking, we already know this and can skip right over this section! But please read this as well, you may learn something new!

Newborns love sleep, just like we all do! However sometimes they can sleep through feedings if you allow them too. At times it’s best to wake up your baby to feed them after two to four hours during the day.

9. Colic

Newborns are very prone to colic! Colic is a bad gas pain in your baby’s stomach. It can be due to the babies stomach being sensitive to the formula it’s eating or something in the mothers diet if the baby is breastfed. Or it even may happen just because. Probiotics and gas relief drops are 100 percent a go too!

10. Newborns use a lot of diapers!

I found myself changing diapers probably every 10 minutes when Emmalynn is awake! which is a good thing because it meant she was eating well and her body is working like it’s suppose to! My newborns went through any where from 10-20 diapers a day. So stock up parents because babies use a lot of diapers!!!

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