A baby is the most precious gift for the family. Hold your baby in your arms and look at his/her face, you will get a divine feeling and you get a natural desire to give your best to this little being; it includes your energies and quality time. Bringing up a baby is a hard job but involvement of family and experience and patience of senior members make it easy and pleasant. Remember that the developing baby will show a new activity every other day, the enjoyment family gets out of it will make you forget the stress of bringing up the baby.
Remember that God has given you a strong being, but with vulnerabilities. Baby doesn’t need very special care, but constant care. Basic is love, tenderness, feeding on demand, shelter with a temperature around 27-degree centigrade, cuddling, and a quite friendly atmosphere. This is what the baby was getting in the mother’s womb, add to it cleaning, prevention of infection and helping baby to very gradually adjust to this not so friendly world.
Believe in nature and god. They have given you everything which is required for the care of your baby. Take advise from qualified professionals and seniors, don’t get confused by commercial advertising and the biggest marketing company of the world- GOOGLE and ill-informed friends and forwards.
Feeding – It’s simple – breastfeed your baby. It doesn’t need any preparation and hard work neither any special training. Simply bring baby mouth near the nipple and you will find baby gropes at nipple and start sucking. It is a God given rooting and sucking reflex. It doesn’t need any training. Your mother or any senior woman who has fed a baby is the best lactation consultant in case of a doubt.
The biggest concern of a mother is when to feed, how long the interval, how long to feed and if milk is enough to fulfill a baby’s need ?????
The simplest funda is to always feed on demand: let child ask for it when hungry. In long run, he will be eating and drinking appropriately and will not be overweight. Breast milk is easily digestible and till 30 to 45 days of life, a breastfed baby may ask for feed every 45 to 60 minutes. There will be long sleeping periods of 4 to 5 hours, don’t wake the baby from sleep, he is assimilating the feeds taken. Sleep should never be disturbed.
Feed baby from one side at a time and another side next time. If baby sleeps while feeding try to tickle to encourage a little more feed, if the baby is still sleeping it means he has filled his desire. Take baby on your shoulders for a while so that baby may burp, then make baby sleep on a side. Count number of times baby passes urine, if the baby passes urine as many times he is feeding it means he is taking sufficient feeds. Another indicator of sufficient feeding is the growth of baby- if it is appropriate feeding is also appropriate.
An expecting mother should be mentally prepared by her doctor for breastfeeding. Breast examination should be an important part of an antenatal checkup. If there is any malformation of nipple or breast it should be handled during antenatal visits with your obstetrician.
Bathing and cleaning – We have to clean the body of the baby regularly to remove debris of dead skin and to give baby a fresh look. Simple tepid sponging or just pouring a small mug of water over body of the baby and drying with a sterile towel is enough for the baby. Weekly gentle soap in a very thin concentration can be applied and washed away quickly is more than sufficient. Remember the baby is not dirty, he has not gone out to play in mud. Daily use of soap and other commercial skin products should not be used. They will not change the natural GOD gifted complexion of the baby rather may cause allergies.
