NEWBORN BABY HACKS! Tips & Tricks for moms

hi everyone married here welcome back to my channel today I have a newborn hacks video for you guys I am the mother of two little boys a two and a half year old and a newborn it was actually very shortly growing out of the newborn stage he's almost three months two and a half so I figured that would be a perfect time to film this video because we are right in the midst of it and soon growing out of it and if you hear his little cues he's right over there so he'll probably be in this video it's just a minute I hope you guys like it if you do please make sure to give it a big thumbs up and I would love it if you subscribe to my channel I make videos about being a Jewish mom and I upload on Mondays and Thursdays okay so let's jump into the Hatokay so let's jump into the Hat so the first tips I want to talk about are sleep because newborns are not wired to sleep through the night and is a very hard Justin when you come home to baby waking up every few hours but that's totally normal so what I'm talking about some tips that help with newborn sleep the first tip I have is a white noise machine this one is sleep sheep and that's what we call them yes that is hisname and it's just a white noise machine it has a few different noises whale sounds bird rainbow etc so I really recommend one of these products you'll notice that babies sleep really well when you're out and about like at a restaurant at a party like where there's tons of loud noise or just ambient noise going on and it really helps to have one of these at home really just muffles those like minor sounds that comes upwhen babies sleep and it teaches them to not have to be in a 100% totally quietspace to sleep the next if I have is when you're feeding at night to swaddle before you feed so this is my favorite swaddle blanket I will talk more about it in a little bit it's from even in an eye but basically when you're feeding at night you just want that baby to go right back to bed when you're done so what I recommend is when they wake up change their diaper settle them down and then fill in their swaddle and then feed them and hopefully you can put them right back down in their crib afterwardswithout having to swaddle that much wakes them up a lot by the way this right here is the snoo I have a whole separate review on it I 100% recommend it for sleep we have a two month old Corey who is now sleeping through the night with is truly a miracle and the swaddling for this new is super easy because we're on the topic of sleep I'll just mention it if you are struggling with newborns sleep you might want to think about buying one of these or even just renting one but it comes with its own swaddle so you just zip the baby and it's called the five-second swaddle it's really nice but if you don't have this new using this and just following the baby before you start to feed them at night I think really helps the transition speaking of helping your sanity for sleep I also want to show you guys where they keep right over there and next to the bed so at night next to my bed every night I just put a handful of diapers some wipes and again one of these cloths even though we don't swallow our baby in it I use this to change his diaper all that I do is I do not take him over to the changing table in the middle of the night I just put this on my lap on top of the sheets and change his diaper right in front of me I've got the wipes the diapers right there I literally don't move from the bed as you can see if he's got a poop explosion orsomething of course that's a different case but generally at night it's just pee it's just an easy diaper change so I do it right on my lap sitting in bed I put the dirty diaper in a little trash can over there and that's it I'm done it makes nighttime changes so much easier and I think it's much less disturbing for the baby which helps them get back to sleep right afterwards my next few tips are for crying babies cry it's just one of the things they do but I want to show you guys how I like to convey bees down so this is my baby Cory and we're gonna demonstrate some baby holds for you the first one is the colic hold it looks like this you put your arm in front of the baby's chest and your hand right under their bottom and you just hold them like this in a slightlydownwards position and it really helps soothe them you can also pat their stomach this can be great position for burping as well I found this is the best one for just walking around the house and calming them down the next position that works great you might have seen this one online it's famously touted as the position that makes every baby stop crying you want to be a little bit careful before they can hold their head up but you want to place your hand right there on their chest and then put your other hand under their bottom lean them for it a little bit and you shake their tush like this it's super strange right boy it's super strange but it really does work to just calm them down yeah but again you just want to have your hand here and be careful before they can support their neck the next if I have for crying and calming baby isthis a giant exercise ball not only is this a great investment when you're pregnant because it really helps to sit while you're pregnant on this and to get labor started and during labor but it also is great to calm a baby sometimes they really need that bouncing motion to calm them down now he's like you started double with me don't put you down again another great tip for helping a baby calm down is to go outside if your baby is just screaming and in one of those like can't take it anymore moodssometimes the best thing you can do for them is just step outside of your house even if it's cold outside or really hot outside that sudden change in the ambient air and temperature and just feel sometimes is enough to just startle them and get them to calm down for a minute and it's just very soothing for a baby to be outside I find babies ought to be a lot calmer when they're outdoors than indoors and the last recommendation I have for a crying baby is to wear the baby if you've watched any of my youtube videos in the past few months you've probably seen Corey and his sling I wear him all the time and it is really really nice Corey is a super calm baby watch she's gonna start crying now but I think a lot of that is because I spend a lot of time wearing him which is very comforting for him also if you're going out to a restaurant or something like that it really helps to have to wear the baby I find cor if I want to make sure you go straight to sleep when we're out in outdoor when we're out in public if I put him in the sling he just drops off and it's so nice okay my next tip is for bath time you might not know this but babies especially newborns are not good at retaining their body temperature so a bath can be a really tough transitionexperience for them so one of the things that helps is to place a cloth of warm water right over their chest which is generally the exposed part of their body on a bath and to just keep warming that cloth up with warm water you can just splash warm water on top of it and it really helps to keep them warm and maintain their warm body temperature while you're doing the bath which you should keep pretty short especially for a newborn also right to the bath the best thing for them is skin-to-skin contact just take off your shirt put them on your chest and then nurse them that's the best way for them to get their body temperature back up and to calm them after the bath even if they enjoy the bath experience that's the best my next step is a little bit of a money-saving one newborns are born with really sharp fingernails and it's really hard to keep them not sharp so it's really nice to have a pair of newborn mittens so that they don't scratch their face or anything or their eye when they're upset generally I use these for car rides when I have a newborn because that's the time where they might be crying for a few minutes and I'm not going to be able to pickthem up straight away so I always put new mittens on my baby when we're in the car or if he's upset however newborn mittens get lost they're not that expensive but they're just an extra thing you have to buy so what I tend to use instead is newborn locks it's always nice to have an extra sock pair of socks with you anyways becausethe ones on their feet tend to fall off so I love having newborn socks to put on their hands when we're in the car when I want to cover up their hands because then they have an extra pair of socks and I don't have to invest in a ton of newborn mittens my next hack for you guys is to buy onesies with zippers so this is a perfect one this is one of my favorite ones from the gap and it just has a zipper to take on and off from the baby as you saw that took me point two seconds to do versus something like thiswhich is an adorable outfit but this is buttons I seriously don't know why these snap buttons were even invented for baby's clothing you'll see they're all over the place but they are so hard to do I swear like can we time me buttoning this up and there's not even that baby in it wiggling around okay so it's probably been about five seconds I'm not even halfway there and I haven't even done the tough part which is around the diaper area if you see clothes with snaps all the way up and down do not buy them people my next tip is for nursing it is a very hard to remember when youlast ours to baby which side you nursed amant etc and there are tons of apps online that will do this for you however I find that none are exactly what I need so I just usedthe note section in my phone I'll show you guys how I do it and the reason I do it this way is because it's totally customizable to what I want and not what some app tells me I should want so this is a little screenshot from one of the first days when Corrie was born and I just have the time if he had a if I nursed him if he pooped if he peed etc and it's all just like that I can see it really clearly and it's exactly what I want to mark down how I want to mark it now these two months old I'm not recording every dirty diaper he has but I do still record the nursing times because I tend to forget so I just used this I've got my cymbals of like the mom being like I don't know or the bottle if I pumped milk etc and sometimes I'll put his nap time in there if I just want toremember like how long his naps were if I'm trying to see what his schedule like etc so again I just use the note section on my phone and different emojis because it's fun and easy to see and I don't worry about any of those apps so the last thing I want to talk about is just how to have a calm and peaceful household with a newborn so I tend to think that our home is pretty calm even with two dogs and two kids runningaround and I think that's because I try to have a calm attitude in the home and one of the ways I achieved this is just to understand that it's okay for a baby to cry babies cry that's what they do I'm in no way recommending that you let your baby just cry and be upset without you attending to them if they need them etc but for example if you're in the shower you've got your conditioner in you can see your baby and all of a sudden they start crying but they're totally safe and fine it's okay to finish washingyour hair and let the baby cry for a minute or two while you get out of the shower dry off put on your robe etc when I was a brand-new mom I would have just ran out of the shower with my wet hair and then just been totally stuck trying to like nurse a baby without any clothes on with my hair conditioner etc it's totally fine to take an extra 30 seconds and pull yourself together before you attend to the baby again this is with the caveat that they're safe they don't that they're not in any danger and saidand that you're not letting them cry for a long period of time I'm not suggesting that at all I'm just saying take a few extra seconds to let yourself be pulled together before you tend to the baby the next tip I have in terms of mindset is just to remind yourself it's a phase when my older son didn't sleep and that was a long phase I kept saying to myself at night it's just a phase when he's an 18 year old teenager you see me sleeping all day I'm sure these newborn days are really short they truly fly by whenyou're in the midst of the baby crying and trying to comfort them and swaddle them at nursing it kind of feels like this will never end and it's just so hard but the truth of the matter is in just a few short days sometimes that phase will be done so I just really keep that mindset when it's a tough day that it's just a really short phase andthings will change so soon so I mentioned this blanket this is one of my top tips I call this the does it all blanket I'll show you guys so for example of course it's a blanket it's a swaddle I like to tie the two ends together and use it as a nursing cover a tie it first and I'll slip it over my head you've got nursing cover I also use it as a car seat cover a stroller cover and then just to clean up messes and I change the baby on it if it's at night like I showed you or somewhere where I don't have a changing pad etc so again this is a does it all blanket you all need to carry this one you don't eat ahundred other things with you and yeah definitely recommend one of these so mynext tip it's for germs practice saying this with me have you washed your hands yet this is something I say whenever anybody ask to hold the baby I just say oh have you washed your hands yet like it's just a natural thing that comes out of my mouth I'll say it to family friends my husband anyone it's just good to get in that habit of reminding people to wash their hands before they pick up a newborn and to not make it a big deal and not make it awkward it's not because you don't love them or trust them it's just because they probably haven't washed their hands that recently and it's best to keep those germs away from a newborn the next thing you should feel very empowered to say is oh his pediatrician recommended X if there's anything that you want or don't want like you don't people coming up to the baby and sniffing it or touching it etc or you don't want the baby to go out at a certain time or you don't want to do something all you have to say is oh the previa Trisha recommended that we do X and nobody's gonna question you so feel fully empowered to use that line but in all honesty don't even feel the need to do that you're the mom now you're in charge do it you want what you feel is best for your baby so those are all my newborn tips for you guys I hope that you found them useful if you did please make sure to give this video a big thumbs up and subscribe my channel down below to seemore and I'll see you in the next one bye