Baby Book (eBook)

1

Introduction

Over the years in my work as a private maternity nurse with families, my clients have said to me on numerous occasions, ‘You must put your methods of establishing a routine and looking after newborn babies down in print.’ These words have spurred me on to write this book. Before I go any further, let me describe my background and training.

My background

I am the eldest of six children and my youngest sister is ten years my junior, so I grew up in a home where it seemed that there were always babies and young children around. I think that this is where my love of babies and young children began. My parents had a private maternity nurse for their first four children. I vividly remember this very official-looking lady in a starched uniform coming when my two brothers were born. I think my father was terrified of her, and I certainly was! I always remember not being able to go into my parents’ bedroom to see my mother and the new baby, and feeling very left out. This experience has made me keenly aware of the importance of involving older brothers and sisters in family life when a new baby is born.

At the age of seventeen I attended a Doctor Barnado’s residential nursery training college in Kent to train for my National Nursery Examining Board Diploma. My course at college involved working with many newborn babies, which I loved. I began my training in the 1960s, before the Abortion Act and before the Pill was widely used, and therefore a number of babies were brought into the unit to be placed for adoption. Part of my training was spent at St Thomas’s Hospital in the maternity unit, which I also loved. I very much enjoyed teaching mothers how to bath, feed, and care for their newborn babies, and that time in my life was a happy one.

Having completed my training, I went to London to take up my first job as a maternity nurse, looking after a premature baby. The baby was my responsibility for twenty-four hours a day, and I stayed until she was six months old. I then moved on to another family, with three children under the age of three, where I worked until my marriage. I married a farmer, and we had three children of our own. During those years of bringing up the children, I would help and advise friends with their newborns. Demand feeding was becoming popular at that time, and I could see that friends’ babies weren’t settled and they were struggling with sleeping and feeding problems. This confirmed my deep feeling that babies and young children need a loving routine and structure in their lives from an early age.

After moving to Devon, I returned to work as a nanny helping local mums with newborns and young children. Not long after this, I went back to maternity work, having been encouraged to specialize with newborns, as this was where I felt my gift was. I have travelled around the UK and the world with my work over the past decade. I now have five grandchildren, and have been able to go and help and give advice with them when they were born. This has been a real joy to me; there’s nothing quite like working with your own family.

Some years ago I set up a consultancy business in Devon, but it is by no means confined to the West Country. I have a website (www.rachelsbabies.com) where many parents and grandparents can read my advice and get in touch with me. It is actually managed by a dear friend Lucy Binns, whom I gave advice to when her twins were born ten years ago. I offer advice over the telephone, which sometimes is all that a mum needs – to be encouraged and affirmed in what she is doing. Many parents call me with issues regarding sleep with their babies, but I also deal with feeding, eating, potty training, and behaviour issues with children up to the age of about five years. I also do home visits which can be daily or overnight, depending on the family’s needs. What a joy it is to be able to help and encourage parents with young children and give them confidence as well.

The aim of this book

‘Antenatal classes only take you up to day one and breastfeeding. It would be much more useful to learn about coping, washing, sleeping, and weaning, rather than just breathing classes.’

Maymie White, fourth baby

My experience in working with families is that parents with new babies, particularly first-time parents, can be very fearful, as there are all sorts of conflicting ideas and advice given today. This is the primary reason why I wrote this book.

It is a very scary thing to come home from hospital with a newborn baby, whether you’ve had no experience of babies before or whether this is your third or fourth child. Often those first few days, and maybe weeks, after coming home from hospital can be very tearful times, particularly with the lack of sleep and perhaps the feeling of not quite knowing what to do. The early days after giving birth are different for everyone. Some women feel ecstatic and all set to get on, whereas others feel exhausted and wonder how they are going to cope with this little bundle of life who seems to want continual feeding, particularly at the times when they just want to sleep.

Since the first edition of The Baby Book, the rise of the Internet has meant that mums can get advice and information on almost anything at the click of a mouse! This can be a wonderful tool, but sadly I have seen that often mums get terribly confused and worried when they read so much conflicting advice. And often their babies are actually behaving in a perfectly normal way. I do think it is important to maintain a balance in all this – that’s why it is important to find someone you trust who will give you good, sound, practical advice. My aim in writing this book is to guide parents through the first year of their child’s life. Many of my families have said to me over the years, ‘It’s time we had some good, sensible, down-to-earth, workable advice given to us to guide us in bringing up our families.’ Society today has changed so much that we seldom have our parents and wider families around to encourage and help us with our newborn baby. My hope is that this book will be a comforting and helpful friend.

My approach

I believe babies are a precious gift to be enjoyed as part of family life, and it seems sad to me that parents are often fearful of bringing any routine or structure into young babies’ lives, as both babies and the family unit thrive on a good routine.

I’m a great believer in routine with flexibility, as over the years I have seen this work well in many families. This is how I was trained as a nursery nurse, and my own mother used routine feeding for all six of us. Routine is the beginning of healthy discipline. In my personal experience, establishing a routine in the early days of a baby’s life makes for settled and secure children. My chapter on Establishing a Flexible Routine (Chapter 6) will explain the routine and give you plans for how to introduce this.

Breastfeeding

I’m a great advocate of breastfeeding, and have tried to encourage all the mothers I’ve worked for over the years to at least have a go at it. Most of my mothers have continued breastfeeding during the first year, and have always been pleased that they were encouraged to try. Sometimes mothers are not able to breastfeed, for whatever reason, and they must not be made to feel guilty. I have met mums who have had a lot of pressure put on them to continue to breastfeed when they were struggling and breastfeeding was just not working for them. If mothers want to bottle feed and not breastfeed, then I’m very happy to help with that, as in my view babies do well on the bottle. There is much more information on both bottle feeding and breastfeeding in Chapter 5.

Integrating babies into family life

One of my families’ main concerns is how to integrate babies into family life, particularly when there are brothers and sisters. The more I travel and work with families, the more fear I have seen over how children will react to a new baby in the home. If your new baby is in a flexible routine then this in itself is very helpful for siblings as it means you can plan to spend quality time with your other children around the routine. It’s important that your baby should fit into the family, and that family life shouldn’t have to be turned upside down to accommodate the new baby. Many of the families I’ve worked with have found this perspective very helpful and liberating.

Sleeping through the night

Getting babies to sleep through the night as early as possible is another high priority of mine. I have yet to come across parents who are happy to get up and feed their baby through the night for months on end. I know from experience that the more sleep people get, the more able they are to cope with life throughout the day. Some babies sleep through the night from an early age, and for some it takes longer, but it can be done. Of course, babies do still sometimes wake in the night for all sorts of reasons, but it is never too late to sleep-train a baby or toddler in my opinion.

Teaching babies to settle themselves

I find today that there’s a lot of fear when a baby cries. Parents want to know when they should pick their baby up, and when they should leave her to settle herself. Many new parents are incredibly anxious about their baby crying and one of the hardest things is teaching parents that it is ok for a baby to have a shout as she settles to sleep. Our natural reaction as parents is to pick our babies up and comfort them as soon as...