Thursday, January 10, 2013

The 6 week rule...

Before I blog about my 2nd month being a new mum, I feel I need to talk about this subject, it is important to me. When you bring home your baby for the first time it is very daunting and scary. Your discharged from hospital and return home with a new little person for you to feed, clean and nurture till their 18...or in my mum's case till I was 25! Don't get me wrong, midwives do come out for home visits & then a health visitor takes over. So they do check in on how your coping & don't just wave you off at the hospital exit with a baby manual...& say have a nice life. However they also bombard you with so much information all at once its so over whelming, hard to remember & to be honest scared me to death. All the dos & don'ts. It is really confusing and in the end I felt like not doing anything in case I put Eddie's health at risk. After wards I just went by the 6 week rule because pretty much by then every things is safe.

  • No sex till 6 weeks - This is due to you still healing downstairs. No need to rush it & to be honest I doubt even at 6 weeks you will want to get back in the sack! I definitely didn't much to Steve's dismay
  • Express breast milk into a bottle for feeds from 6 weeks - This is because it is hard enough to establish the baby is even latched on properly & once this is done, their still getting use to your nipples. You then don't want to confuse them by letting them drink through a bottle teat. By 6 weeks breastfeeding is well established & the baby will be more comfortable picking up on the difference. I sadly made this mistake with Eddie & had to end breastfeeding all together at 5 weeks but I'll touch on that subject when I blog about my 2nd month with Eddie.
  • Use baby wipes & lotions from 6 weeks - I was told to only use luke warm water & cotton wool to clean Eddie with. I thought that was lame because it wouldn't clean his pooey bum with out some proper rubbing on his poor little bottom. Plus it would still leave that pooey smell behind. I was so tempted to use wipes. Also creaming him in baby lotion because it smells so yummy on babies. I'm going to be honest here...I started introducing them into the old cleaning routine when Eddie was only 3 weeks old. I'll probably get a slap on the wrist by the midwife. The thing is in the womb their skin is covered in vernix caseosa and protected in a sack full of fluid. Their skin is so sensitive & delicate, you don't want to be stripping it of that softness. Even the most sensitive of wipes like Johnson's, that claim you can use straight from birth, I wouldn't use on Eddie. But by 6 weeks their skin would have toughened & built up a barrier. So then wipe awayyy because they are definitely a godsend.
  • Bath baby from 6 weeks - Well I put Eddie in the bath a lot sooner than that. He was born into water & lived in it for 9 months, so I don't think it did him any harm. Top & tail washes, I found were really time consuming & boring! Eddie loves his bath time but I think the whole point in the 6 week thing is because again of the chemicals in baby wash products. I know Johnson's say its all kind enough on new born skins but as I said before it is very delicate so I was only putting in small amounts at a time. 
  • Exercise from 6 weeks - Well I have only just started exercising & its been 4 months. But again it is just to let your body rest & recover slowly before you start getting back into shape not to mention the whole pelvic floor situation. As soon as Eddie was 6 weeks old, I couldn't wait to get back into shape & shift my baby belly...so I went to a metafit class with a good friend of mine & peed myself whilst jogging on the spot & that was only the warm up! I made the fatal error of not wearing a pad thinking by 6 weeks everything in my body has gone back to normal...its been 4 months & I still pee when I sneeze! 

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