Babies come with hats.

This thread reminds me when my own little girl was born I meant to start work on a porch, get a shotgun licence, and a chrome shotgun to polish. She's 10 now, so I best get started.

Also, get a spitoon

My wife is, it's early and we just got married. O snap, got me a kid coming

Id also like a vulture, nut apparently you arent allowed to have them as pets. Damn wishywashy nambypamby lefty bleeding heart pinkos.

Some advice on what to buy, what not to buy.

No need for a basinet. Get some blankets/towels to change them on and any flat surface will do. You'll quickly realize you'll need basinets in every room if that's what you plan on doing. Not doable.

The rocking swing things are great.

Baby wipes and diapers go shockingly fast. We've used 3 diapers within 15 minutes multiple times.

Get a diaper genie for the upstairs at least. They are only about 30-40 dollars with a refill of bags. The diaper genie is really nice, I highly recommend it.

2 changing "stations" in the house. One upstairs, one downstairs. You need : diapers/baby wipes/lotion/changing towel at each station. Changing diapers is easy and fast once you get some practice (the first day, lol). Put down mat, take off bottom/unzip bottom, pull front if diaper down and fold over the messy part, wipe up, put wipes on top of diaper, roll the entire mess up, throw away into diaper genie or trash can, put on new diaper, put bottom back on. Bam. I can do it in under a minute or so now.

If they don't sleep for more than 2 hours at a time, it might be because they are hungry again. Make sure they are getting enough milk/formula. Once we started supplementing with formula and she was getting enough food/calories, she'd sleep 3-4 hours at a time instead of 1-3 hours at a time.

We're a bit paranoid about fragrances so we use non-fragrant everything when it comes to lotion/baby soap, etc. The first few weeks our baby had really dry skin on her hands, forearms and feet. Doctors told us it was normal and within 1-3 weeks it should go away (it looks like incredibly chapped lips almost). We used a bit of lotion on her hands/feet, but sure enough, she's fine now. I guess the skin has to come off itself. It's the only thing that "worried" me, but it was fine.

The baby outfits with the zippers that go from the left foot right up their chin are the best ones. Avoid outfits with the buttons all the way up. Trust me on this one.

So far, that's all I got. Heh.

Forgot something :Get a boppy. Or even two. They are great for feeding/nursing/propping up the baby in an almost sitting position.

The diaper genie is incredible. A must own. It's simple to replace the bag and there is very little chance you ever catch a whiff of that stuff during any transaction with the genie. I always feel like one of the Ghostbusters when I'm carrying the bag out to the garbage, it's like "I got one!" lol.

Agree on the zipper clothing. The buttons are fun under normal circumstances and look cute but when the baby is crabbing and thrashing his arms and legs when you are trying to clothe him it's nice to just set him there and zip him up and everything kinda falls into place.

Somebody bought us this really nice $100+ swing and but he just doesn't love it like we thought he would. It plays music or nature sounds and had a 30/45/60 minute rock setting and the swing can even rotate 90degrees but he just doesn't really love it. He likes his little vibrating bed thing that came with the pack-n-play and he has this other little seat that he likes when we pop in a Baby Einstein video. He also seems to like the bouncer though his feet barely touch the ground yet and he's not really strong enough to sit up straight. He loves tummy time and if he's crying this is usually a great way to get about 15 quiet minutes out of him.

His favorite thing, by far, is having his hair blow-dried after bath time. It calms him down like nothing else and he throws his head back in this goofy fashion and bubbles start coming out of his mouth. lol.

Did anybody's newborn have trouble turning their head one way or another? My boy is over 2 months and he still loves his neck resting to the left instead of the right. I noticed this pattern within the first week and pointed it out to my wife.

At his 2 month check-up, his pediatrician said he's starting to get some mis-shaping in the back of his head and reccomended we do physical therapy to loosen up his neck muscles. Seems a might rash at this point. I'm hoping we can loosen him up on our own. Part of me is worried that he's maybe got structural damage since I have minor scoliosis and I've got an aunt with scoliosis. He said no though but when we turn his head to the side it sounds like it hurts him which makes me think it's structural rather than a muscular issue.

Yes. My son had this and went through a decent amount of physical therapy along with us working with him at home on it (decent amount may be overstating it - he went 2-3x a week for an hour, IIRC and he did it for a couple months). It's called torticollis. It is something you want to address as I think left alone, it can impact or delay future gross motor stuff like crawling). Just did a quick search and found the following link. It is muscular, rather than skeletal (assuming this is what he has).

http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical...rticollis.html

You can probably find some stretching stuff online that you can do at home, but you may want a doctor referral to physical therapy for insurance purposes (I don't know how that all works so ymmv). I'd press him or her on it (your doctor).

Edit: I think there are a few different kinds depending on which neck muscles, but the two main stretches I remember:

1) Basically, you gently move his head towards the opposite way that he looks. This is lateral movement so his chin would be roughly on top of the off shoulder. Hold for a bit, then rinse/repeat a few times. Do it as much as often as you have time for.

2) Gently move his head so that his ear is down towards his shoulder a bit. This works different muscles in the neck.

****I am not a doctor so be sure to confirm all this with your pediatrician or physical therapist.*****

2nd Edit: Another thing you can do is position him so that the interesting thing in his field of vision is off to the side that he doesn't naturally turn his head towards. This sort of lets him do some of the movement on his own without you moving his head directly. Bonus exercise, if you will.

It's kinda silly. I mentioned this to our doc at his 1-month check-up (or maybe sooner) and he kinda brushed it off and was like "he'll loosen up". And I think he did loosen up a bit so I stopped paying much attention to it and trying to lay him so the interesting thing was to his right. Well at our 2 month he starts saying "your son's head motion to his right isn't very good" DURRRRR. Already told you this bro and you brushed me off. Anyway he already wrote us a prescription for physical therapy but threw out the number "3 grand" which like I said, seems a bit... high. He did say 2 months isn't too far advanced and that the head shape really doesn't start to solidify until around 6 months (it's a gradual curve). He said if it's not fixed by then we may have to put some helmet type thing on his head to fix the shape. He did say it's basically completely aesthetic in concern and should not affect his brain or anything. But he did say it's not just a flat part in the back of the skull, but it could protrude in the forehead (flat left back, protruding front right). Obviously we want to make sure this doesn't happen.

I've quickly decided after listening to a few different doctors that they all have their own ideas and beliefs. I'm not some kind of nut that does my own research and second-guesses expert opinions, but when I hear such differing views on something like breast-feeding from multiple doctors, it worried me. It's one thing if they were somewhat overlapping, but some were downright adamant about their views, conflicting with other doctor's views.

I like the pediatrician we have now. He offers multiple views on a subject and always recommends what is best for us as a family, instead of what he may view as something he may prefer, but if it doesn't work for us as a family will show poor results. He prefers breast-feeding, but he explained that if it doesn't work for us as far as sleeping schedule, complications from the mother, not enough calories for the baby, it'll be detrimental as a whole. I like his overall approach.

Anyway, my point is that if you notice something wrong don't be afraid to ask another doctor. You might get a differing view.

Do the PT. Every kid is different, obviously, but we didn't do the PT early enough with our son, and he had to wear a helmet for 4-5 months to fix the head shape. 23 hours a day. He didn't mind too much, but still.

Do not get rid of ANYTHING. You will be shocked at how he can turn on a dime. That music/nature swing might just be the greatest thing in the world tomorrow.

Yeah the other day we put him in the swing and he seemed to do better. He may have just needed to be a big larger to fit more comfortably in there.

We found some YT vids for torticollis and it looks pretty common and there are some stretches people show. I wonder if we can just do those on our own? The stretches look pretty straightforward and safe, though I certainly don't want to cause harm to his neck if I'm not qualified to do the stretches. Our doc did tell us that they basically show you the stretches then you do them at home.

I don't think you're obligated to sign up for x number of PT sessions. Maybe do 1-2, talk through it all with the therapist, then decide. They'll obviously push a bit to do it with them, but you'll have a better feel for the decision points.

I'd probably follow up with at least 1 session a month so they can track his progress. Talk it over with your doctor, IMO.

My wife's cousin-in-law used to be a PT and we just got off the phone with her and she's gonna try to come by tomorrow and show us the stretches but she said it sounds like the YT videos are probably all we need to do. She did say the PTs will be more aggressive than us because they will know what doesn't hurt him where we might flinch if he cries. And they do strength-building stuff so we definitely may head by once. I don't think she has the apparatuses they would use to do strength stuff.

My little girl turns 2 today!



My little boy turned 1 on the 21st of this month!

So cute! Christmas will be fun.

Stylin' with that pink on pink on pink.

Oh my goodness. Busy, busy household. They're beautiful.

I'm in the club. 14 weeks.

Funny anecdote. The night after getting the positive result (before going to doctor), my wife and I make chicken pot pie, as we do every so often. When all the ingredients are thickening in the pot, I gently remind her to let it thicken some more, but she is hungry, blah blah blah. Fast forward to taking it out of the oven and I cut into it and it's pretty runny. I say something like, "oh it's a little soupy." Insta-bursts into tears.

Much to learn.

Just wait until the cheating dream! I knew it wasn't real, but I could not help being pissed.

Cliffs: Hormones suck!

Forget poker, it takes a lifetime to master parenting.

Good luck.

I didn't get any of this. We did have a dinner "incident" though, where a few weeks into pregnancy (we didn't know she was pregnant), we laid out a full dinner and about to eat and she says "just looking at this food makes me want to throw up" and didn't eat. It was really strange because it was one of her favorite meals. I looked at her funny and said maybe she's pregnant and she laughed.

Then she found out the next day she was pregnant. lol.

This. Big fights over the most ******ed things is standard. Glad I'm done after #2 comes in March.