Baby 101 - What I wish I knew when I had my babies

Welcome back to my channel. My name is Jessica. This is Wilson. He is two months old and today's video is baby 101 how to do every basic baby thing that you probably already know how to do, but I didn't know how to do and we want to make your life easier. It's the kind of stuff that when you have your baby, if your mom or an older woman is around, who's already had kids, she will probably be the one to show you the ropes on all of this. But when I had my baby Eloise four years ago, I had my little sister with me and neither of us had had babies before and a lot of this stuff was new. I didn't even know how to change a diaper confidently. So this video is how to do everything you might need to know with a newborn baby. Okay, here we go. Wilson just woke up from his nap, so we're starting with nursing. I am going to make an entire video about nursing, but main piece of advice is you want to get as much of your boob as possible into the baby's mouth. That will help it not to hurt you. If you're in public and you're trying to nurse under some sort of covering and your baby can't latch, just embrace some Spanish living and let your baby latch, let go of whatever's covering you up. And then once your baby's attached, you can cover back up again, but there's no shame in this. So just nurse your baby. So now I'm going to burp him, put him up on my shoulder like this and then I just firmly pat his back like this and I'll go like consistently like this, but then sometimes I'll stop and sometimes I'll push a little bit on his back and then another way you can burp, which I'm actually not very good at, but it is a thing is you will put him on your leg. You can do it with newborns too. And you kind of put, I know there it's okay. And you lean him over. It's okay. And you're holding his head up. His head is getting stronger and you're burping him like this. It's not his favorite way to do it though. Sometimes if it's really stuck, it helps me to stand and go like this. Ceiling fans, they make diaper changes more fun. First, let's talk about what he's wearing right now. He's in jammies. You when it comes to picking baby clothes will love sleepers and things. My favorite kinds of PJs are the ones that zip up from the bottom so that at night I can change his diaper without going from the top and making him cold. The diaper is wet because the yellow stripe turned blue. The diapers that I use are Hello Bello brand. So I can link that below. When it comes to changing your baby's clothes, they might not love it. And that's okay. Um, he doesn't really like getting dressed, which I'll show you later. But right now I'm going to be taking off his clothes completely and changing his diaper. And then we're going to go give him a bath. So he's obviously not going to need the diaper in the bath. Oh, hi. And I use the passy if he gets fussy, but for now he's doing good. My sister-in-law sent over this. It's called a peepee teepee. So when you're changing their diapers, you put this right over top and it's supposed to catch the pee because it's pretty common to have pee accidents. Whenever I do the diaper changes, I always put one underneath it when I'm starting. So this is the fresh diaper. So then when I take this top one off, I pull it off and this one is ready to go. What you want to make sure of when you're changing a diaper is that the lining is out. One time Eloise was crying for hours and hours and we couldn't figure out why. And then we went to her next diaper change and we realized that the lining had gone all the way into the center, like the worst front wedgie you can imagine. And that's why she was crying the whole time. And we didn't know. Also with baby boys, the way their little ZZ or Willie is pointing, affects where they're going to pee out. And he pees out pretty frequently. So I always push the head of it down so that it's pointing this way. So it'll fill up the diaper. I still sometimes have pee accidents. But this is a pretty good diaper. I think. Does that make sense? I wish I could show you, but I'm not trying to show you as private. Ready for a bath everybody. Let's go. I'm not very good at the temperature. So I put a washcloth over him. I'm not very good at getting the temperature right, but this should be good. There you go. Eloise loved the bath. Wilson, not so much, but he's getting a little bit happier about it. Cleaned him off. We have this soap from Hello Bello. And then I just, I'm going to wash his hair. His hair is so cute when it's clean. It's my favorite, but I don't do it too much because I don't want his skin to get dry. You just rub them all over. Make sure you get his underarms cause they get fuzzy. Everything gets fuzzy. It's okay. It's okay. Sorry. It's cold, huh? Your fingernails are dirty. It's weird how baby's fingernails get dirty. What are they digging in? Nothing. But they look like they were playing in the yard. All right. Bath time is complete. I'm going to scoop him up. Oh, amazing. You're amazing. And now we're going to put some lotion on the baby. Do you like the lotion? It's not cold, right? Oh, is it a little bit? You did so good. So now we're going to get him dressed. Here we go. Here we go. So I just pick something comfy and easy baby clothes. They have this thing right here. It's so that you can stretch it really wide to get it off. That's something you should know because your baby might have poop explosions and that's very helpful when you need to pull it off. So we're sliding it over the head. So I put both hands in the neck. You got it. So I'm holding his hand and I'm leading it through. Good job. Remember that your baby's crying is usually to tell you one of three things that he is tired, that he's hungry or he's uncomfortable. Sometimes in the evening, it's none of those. It's just that it's evening and babies are crying when he's getting dressed. He's just kind of uncomfortable. He doesn't like to have to have his hands and arms led through everything, but then he's dressed and then he's fine. And this baby really doesn't like being cold. Who does? I'll show you how to swaddle a baby. I'm not very good at that. So I'm going to have Becca show you. Ready? Here's our swaddle and we're going to start by folding over one of the corners. You want it like that? A little bit more. Okay. There you go. Good. And you lay it down flat and hand in and over the shoulder and then she's tucking it down behind him. Pretty snugly pulling it on the bottom. All nice. And she's going to pull it up and she's tucking it behind the head. There are a few ways to swaddle, but this is one that we love here. She's wrapping it over him snugly and then she can tuck it right in the front. Are you happy? Do you love to be swaddled? You look so cute. I love you. Oh, I love you. Say that it's evening time and your baby's losing his mind. You can change his diaper and swaddle him up. You can scoop them up and you're going to try and soothe them. So one way that I soothe is like this. The bouncing motion is important. Or like this and I pat the booty. They like the booty pat. I've also heard that they like it when you just like shake their bun, shake their little buns like this. Sometimes do it from the front. He really likes the front. The bouncing is important like this. Little tiny babies sometimes like it. If they have a tummy ache, you lay them on your arm like this, put some pressure on their belly. Eloise loved this. Sometimes I walk around with them. In the evenings they might just cry to cry and it's terrible and I'm so sorry. It'll end. It's not fun, but you're just, you're working on soothing and you can even hand your baby to a friend and say, just bounce that little puppy around so that you can go take some deep breaths and drink something wonderful. Uh, pacifiers work really great too. You just take the pacifier and you plug them. And uh, that'll take us to our next point. Let's talk about the pacifier string. Here is this little string thing. I don't know what its official name is, but it's super helpful. So during the day I attach it to his pacifier. And then when I know we're going to go in the car, then I put him in the car seat behind the passenger seat. So when I'm driving then I can reach back. This is a side that I will be able to find with my hand while I'm driving and plug him back in. We got this car seat on offer up for really cheap. The baby doesn't really like going inside of it, but that's the tricky part. But then once he's in it, he's okay. When he was smaller, we put socks around the, these, um, belts to, so that his neck would have a softer place. But now he doesn't really care and we just put his thing like that. Okay. You put one arm in. Okay. Ready? You're okay. You got it. You got it. This is a trick cause we're not actually going anywhere. We're not even going anywhere. This is crazy. Mom, do this and do this and you make sure it's tight enough. I know someone's going to write me and tell me I did it wrong. You know what? I might, I might do this stuff wrong, but this is what I do. Okay. And then I put a blanket on him and then, and then we have the car seat base already in the car. So then this car seat just snaps right in place. I'm just casual mom and son, out for a jaunt, going to grab some groceries or something. I want to talk to you really quickly about car seat safety. Sometimes your baby is going to fall asleep in the car seat in the car and then you bring them inside the house and it's tempting to just let them sleep in the car seat. I'm pretty sure I did that with Eloise. I now never do that with this baby and it's because a friend of a friend recently lost their baby because the way that the baby was positioned blocked the airway and the baby suffocated in his sleep without the mom realizing and that's an absolute nightmare. And so now when the baby sleeps in the car in the car seat, I don't have any fear. It's fine because it's positioned properly, but in the house I don't let them sleep like that. I take them out and I put them in a swing or something and make sure that I can see him really clearly. I know a little panicked about that stuff. If you're a mom who's tempted to carry your car seat everywhere you go, I relate. I was like you with my first child and I'd love to show you all the uncomfortable ways you can lug around this huge thing. You can do the one arm, you can do the two arm, you can do the two hand, you can do the one hand, switch frequently swinging your baby from side to side. If your baby starts to cry, you can do the bounce. This works the glutes, or you can do an easier thing entirely. So let's do that. I have two baby carriers. I have this beautiful ring sling that my sister-in-law made me and then I have this beautiful ergo 360 that my sister-in-law recommended I get. I've been using the ergo 360 because he's at a stage where he feels a little big for my ring sling, but I can't figure out how to position him properly cause he's still so young that his head wobbles all around. I'm going to figure it out soon. But this one I really know how to use because Eloise liked to be in it until she was like three years old. So this is the infant seat. It has a little triangle on it and it shows you exactly how to position it. Let's put you in here. Some babies love to be held and this is a good solution. Even if you have to do stuff around the house, you can put your baby in a carrier and then you have two hands to do everything you need to do. I want you to note my awkwardness because this is real life and you're allowed to have awkward mom moments. Okay, ready? There we go. And then we're going to tuck his buns inside and he's going to sit on this little chair. There you go. Good job. Okay. He looks a little uncomfortable. That's normal. Okay, there you go. Put it right here. You're okay. Oh, baby hiccups happen all the time. They're really annoying and they keep your baby up when he's trying to sleep, but that's okay. The baby's fine. He had him in the womb. He's good. There's your little babe. And then you figure out a way to clip it. I usually just ask a stranger or a friend to clip it for me, but I know that it's possible to clip myself. Done. Mother of the year. And now I have two hands so I can go grocery shopping. I can go clubbing. I can go mail a letter. I can do all kinds of things. I can wave to friends. I can whistle. Just kidding. I can't whistle. Um, so that's what I can do with two hands and at home I can do this and make dinner and the baby can fall asleep on my chest, which is another point. Sometimes your baby just wants to lay on you. One question I get a lot is how do you get stuff done in the house and how do you get your baby to sleep in the house? So for one, he's now in the carrier and he's falling asleep just by being on my chest. So that's one way I get things done in the house if he wants to be held is like this. But primarily the way we get things done here is by putting him places he likes to be. So we have this bassinet, which is covered with my stuff right now. We have this, which is the docotah. It looks kind of funny because I put a sheet over it because he peed in it a bunch of times. But there's the docotah. We move that all around the house. We have this swing right here, which you can make swing pretty quickly. And then it has all these different sounds that play and he likes to chill in there. This thing goes around. It's all very pink because it's secondhand from his sister, which was also secondhand from a friend who had like three daughters. I think we also have this bouncer that he loves to hang out in. A lot of times he'll be awake when we put him in and he's just watching the world happen and then he'll fall asleep in there. And I'm okay with it because I'm usually right there with him so I can see if there's anything that's scary because I already talked about how I'm afraid of him dying by not breathing. If I want to take a shower, what I do is bring him into the bathroom with me and I'll either put him in the bouncer or I'll put him in the docotah. A lot of times he'll sleep because he likes the sound of the shower. So that's when I put him in the docotah. If he is wide awake, I'll put him in the bouncer with a pacifier in his mouth and then I'll just take a fast shower and he's good. Oh, and sometimes he cries when I'm in the shower and that's okay. I just shower really fast and I either can jump out in the middle and plug him back in with the paci or I just shower quickly because I need to be clean sometimes and he needs to know that that's okay. Most commonly I hear about babies who have tummy trouble, right? So they've got gas or they're kind of colicky. They've got acid reflux. Um, my babies have had that. Eloise definitely more so than him. With Eloise, I cut dairy out of my diet completely because anytime I had milk or any dairy products, she'd freak out. Um, with him it doesn't seem like it's that severe, but he does get pretty bad gas. So I use gas drops from little remedies and gripe water. Both of those things are really helpful and they show you on the bottle how to use them. Also, if your baby has cradle cap, which Eloise had pretty badly, he has kind of, uh, you can put coconut oil on their head. After you wash them, you can comb out their hair and the dry flakes will kind of fall off. But don't pick at your baby's skin. This baby had acne. It's now, I think mostly better. It's so tempting to pick at it, but don't do it because you could scar their little skin. Also sometimes your baby will get gooey eyes. Pink eye, you should go to the doctor. But if it's not, and sometimes you don't know, you can start by putting your breast milk in their eyes and it will clean it and kill germs. And that's what I did the other day for a whole day and a half. He had really gooey eyes and every time I nursed, I would put my breast milk in his eyes and then wipe his eyes with a warm cloth and they got better. Breast milk's pretty amazing. Anytime he gets a scrape or anything, I will put breast milk on it and it's supposed to help kill germs and heal him quickly. Thank you so much for watching this video. Congratulations. You're having a baby. That's so fun. Leave comments to me or to other moms. I love seeing you guys talk to each other, encourage each other, see you on Instagram. You're doing so great and we will see you soon. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Okay.