Week 1 with newborn baby

While delivering a baby can be quite a scary thought, the very first week after a baby is born can be extremely challenging. While the new mommy needs a lot of rest to recover physically, she also needs to care and provide for the tiny little baby who is so dependent on her to feel secure and get adapted to the new world outside mommy's womb.

I am lucky to have gone through this experience twice so far and below are a few things that I wish I knew to be better prepared for that first critical week with the baby.

Hospital Stay

I can only speak for the hospitals in California Bay Area but I am assuming it is similar for most hospitals across USA. Hospitals here believe in preventive care and hence run a bunch of tests with careful and frequent monitoring done for both mommy and baby throughout their stay at the hospital.

Here are the bunch of tests run at the hospital.

• Jaundice Check
• Baby is monitored for jaundice by observing any yellowish skin discoloration and with blood tests. Abnormal levels of bilirubin if detected will have to be treated with billirubin blankets while ensuring baby does not loose too much weight. It can be quite scary for a parent and heartbreaking to see the little baby with bilirubin blanket. Though I cannot completely vouch for it, the iron in formula is known to help in breaking down the bilirubin. Thus a newborn that is given formula may have lesser chance of getting jaundice.
• Physical checks
• A day after the birth, following physical tests were done. 
• Hearing Screen
• Oxygen Check
• Check for heart murmurs
• Both pediatrician and nurses check for this. A heart murmur is sometimes heard in a newborn baby which appears to disappear after a day or earlier.  
• Weight loss check
• It is natural for a newborn baby to loose weight after being delivered. 
• Baby's weight is checked every 24 hours and the loss is expected to stay within 10%. If it is closer or beyond 10%, pediatrician or lactation consultant would recommend giving formula to baby. Though they may recommend giving formula even for a weight loss of 8%.

All about the milk!

Colostrum is the initial form of milk produced right after the delivery of a newborn. Colostrum is known to be rich with nutrients and antibodies which is exactly what a newborn needs to help adapt to the new world. Some lactation consultant may also recommend hand expressing colostrum with hand and feeding it via syringe to baby if the baby is unable to feed due to latch or other issues.

A new mommy generally starts producing breastmilk around 3-5 days post delivery. Colostrum is good for the initial few days as the baby feeds very little. But soon baby starts to have an appetite and breastmilk with its high fat content helps baby to gain back the birth weight.

Baby is home! 

Things get real once you get home with the baby.

Milk and Formula
If you and the baby are struggling with latch issues or breastmilk supply issues, make sure to visit your lactation consultants as it is critical for baby to be well fed to avoid dehydration and other problems. Formula is one thing that can be very handy either as the primary food or to supplement
with breastmilk. As introducing bottle is not recommended till week 4 or 6, you may have to feed formula either through a syringe directly or with a smaller syringe while breastfeeding.

Diaper changes
Assuming you have stocked up on diapers with the right size, this should be simple enough. I would recommend having a diaper pail to make discarding diapers very easy. It is useful to have a changing sheet anytime you change diapers just because there may be times when you just want to through the sheet instead of having to clean or wash a sheet post a blow out. I would say having aquaphor or a diaper cream can be very handy as well to treat diaper rashes or cuts. It is safer to use alcohol free wipes as you can continue using it through diaper rashes etc. Other alternative will be to have dry wipes and a bowl of water on your changing table to ensure wipes are 100% alcohol free.

Feeding Cycle
If you are breastfeeding, it is recommended to feed every 2 hours as opposed to every 3 hours for formula feeding. I would highly recommend this in the initial few days as this stimulation is super helpful for milk production in a new mom.

Crying baby
There may be multiple reasons for a baby's discomfort. It is helpful to track or remember when was the last time the baby slept, ate or had a diaper change. There are multiple apps these days to help track this as I stopped relying on my memory post having a baby. Juggling multiple things in between your exhaustion does this to you and so use an app with no guilt whatsoever. I have been using Baby Tracker app and it seems good so far. Below are the few things I check if a baby is crying.

• Diaper change
• If your baby needs a change, it is easy to fix.
• Sleepy baby
• Make sure you have handy swaddle blankets or the ready swaddle cloths to help put a baby to sleep. White noise generator is another must have I highly recommend. Swing helps too though I would say it works mostly post week 1 as the baby may need a lot of holding and skin to skin the first week.
• Handling Colicky baby
• Burp burp! I cannot stress enough on how important it is to burp a baby post feeding. There are two main ways of burping a baby and try both to figure out what works best for you and baby. A newborn still needs to have their digestive system developed and has difficulty processing most of the food we normally eat. So we need to limit the type of food and slowly introduce the different types of food. Below are few things that we followed to help baby with gassy/bloated tummy in that first week.
• Food control
• It is safer for a new mommy to avoid certain type of food atlas for the initial few weeks. Drinking lots and lots of water helps in milk production as well. Food types to avoid are the following.
• Gassy vegetables like cabbage, potatoes, cauliflower, onions, garlic.
• Milk products
• Lentils and beans
• Caffeine drinks.
• Colic Massage
• Thanks to my super husband for finding this online. Colic massages are known to help baby relive the excess gas. We started doing it before every feeding and it helped a ton. Check out how to do a colic massage with this youtube video.