Preparing for the Newborn: The Home
Preparing for the newborn is a small series of blog post. The Adult and the Sibling is part 1 and The Home is part 2 in the series.
Why prepare the home for the newborn?
An organized environment at home makes a lot of things easier when you bring in the newborn from the hospital : helps you settle and bond with your newborn at ease. The environment also reflects on our mood – especially with all that tiredness, sleeplessness : a well prepared environment helps maintain our sanity.
Here is a list of things you can do :
- Space for baby essentials: Make room in the wardrobe to accommodate the baby’s essentials – sort the clothes and organize them. Or if you have to buy a storage for baby essentials get it done.
- Re-organize your wardrobe: sort out your clothes – clothing that can be used postpartum. Comfortable clothes that support breastfeeding/nursing. Pack away anything you aren’t likely to fit into during the first few months of being a new mom.
- Rethink spaces: start visualising the everyday challenges you will face once you have a new baby and then plan accordingly. For example: reorganising the bedroom. Decide and set that space, the mattress, the light – create a calm and pleasant environment. We made small changes, as we had to make extra space for the changing area.
- Deep clean the house: at least the room where the baby is going to move in. Coming back home from the hospital and then cleaning up will be a huge challenge. You can either clean up few weeks before your due. My parents made sure we did without fail. We deep cleaned the bedroom and the playroom where the baby is like to spend his time.
- Household work: Don’t leave behind pending household work like laundry, it’s not easy to come back and take care of it. Dad took care of this while we were at the hospital.
- Do you need to service your air conditioner / water purifier ? Is it on due ? if yes, get it done before your due.
- Clean your refrigerator : don’t leave behind food, sometimes we may not be sure of how long the stay in the hospital is going to be. We gave it to our cousins who live the next door. Dad, my brother and M2 had all their meal at our cousin’s place while we were away.
- Stock up some basic groceries – at least for first 2 to 3 weeks : before we were back home groceries were sorted. This is not a must do when you have extra help at home, but we did it so all of us get to stay indoors considering the current pandemic situation.
If you are going to have someone to help : for example: your mother, your mother-in-law, your sister — then you don’t have worry about your kitchen (refrigerator/groceries), or the laundry. If it’s going to be just you , your husband and older child (if any) then getting the kitchen prepared is very important. Also, some of the pointers mentioned above becomes a must do to make life better the first few weeks as new parents.
Our Story
My parents and husband were/are always there to help me around. So there were fewer things that I had to work on before the baby arrived.
Things we was prepared with : The bedroom and wardrobe – deep cleaned the room, re-organized the wardrobe to make room for baby’s essentials. Replaced the bright light in the room. I also planned on where we were going to have the baby’s movement area. And of course M2 : he was involved in almost everything we did. The environment was organised in a way where M2 can be independent, for him help me around with the baby. Being given some baby responsibilities gave him that happiness of being the big brother.
I also had to decide on who is going take care of M2 while I was at the hospital. Initially we planned on taking him along, but the pandemic situation was not in our favor. M2 was prepared for the whole thing, we have been talking to him about everything. I also had planned a few favourite activities for him to work if he feels like and stocked up some of his favourite food for him to enjoy when we were away. Preparation of the adult and the sibling is of high importance.
The rest I didn’t have to worry about as it was taken care by my husband and my parents. All of this helped me in staying calm and it was much needed to maintain my sanity. A well organised environment is important to me, I function better and I am happier.
Got back home : I was able to be there for the boys, had time to rest and also had my me-time. Happy mom = Happy child.
