There is a short list of standard child care Bibles, each with their own parenting theory.
The Baby Book, by the Sears, is attachment parenting: respond to the baby’s needs promptly, wear the baby, breastfeed the baby, sleep with or near the baby, and so forth. If you envision turning most of the childcare over to paid professionals, probably not the book for you, although it could be made to work.
Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age 5 is the book endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five by Penelope Leach, a child development psychologist, takes a middle ground between those two.
These books (and others) have in common an encyclopedic, reference approach to taking care of a baby. They are all very well-respected. Get one that you enjoy reading bits from, and that feels right to you. You can supplement this book or these books with any celebrity memoirs and other less encyclopedic works that seem useful to you.
I am not even going to mention Babywise, other than to note that scheduled feedings are associated with failure to thrive. Don’t read it. Don’t do it. At the very least, don't do that to a fresh baby. Read this if you have any doubts.
What does a baby need from you? First and foremost, a baby needs a lot of attention and touch. A baby needs movement; her brain will not develop correctly without it. A baby needs to be fed. A baby will inevitably eliminate what she doesn't need from what she is fed, and so pee and poop. Something will need to be done about that. She will need some protection from the climate, and so will probably be clothed. Especially if she is wearing diapers, she may need to be cleaned (but that does not imply immersion in water). You can take classes that will teach you how to do all of these in some fairly standard Western fashion. There are choices to be made in all these areas. There are also some things you will need the baby to do for or with you. You'll likely want to be able to take the baby from place to place, at home, around the neighborhood and so forth. Because we in the U.S. live in a consumer paradise, there's a lot of stuff you can buy for the baby in support of whatever decisions you make. Having a baby will require you to adjust your lifestyle. How you decide to take care of that baby will determine to some degree what those adjustments will involve.
In the land of attachment parenting, the question is not whether you pick the baby up when the baby cries. The question is why did you put that baby down in the first place? Attachment parenting advocates argue from a combination of ethnographic data and what feels right to them as parents that little babies shouldn't be put down, certainly not alone. Not in a crib to sleep. Not in a playpen to play. Not in an infant seat (unless necessary for safety). Not in a stroller to get from place to place. When arms won't do, use a sling or other device to attach the baby to yourself. Really, unless you're a member of a particularly obscure tribe that lives in a forest in South America and your baby sleeps in your lap for the first year of life, you're going to put that baby down, even if you sleep with the baby. And you'll probably put it down more often than that. But those practicing attachment parenting are attempting to move more in the direction of physical contact with the baby most of the day and night, away from the standard Western practice of maybe three hours of contact. The rationale is that this is the way humans have always done it, this is the way babies are happiest and healthiest.
The data, and the anecdotal experience of myself and my friends suggest this is basically true. If you do this, however, you'll probably wind up with a kid that objects to car seats, because he isn't being held by someone who loves him when he's strapped in the bucket. There is a tradeoff.
If your baby is ever dry, not needing to pee or poop, full and well rested, you might see him quiet and alert, taking in his surroundings and looking to you (or anyone else holding him or nearby) for attention. While babies do not need to be spoken to directly to learn language (it just needs to be happening around them), you certainly can talk to a baby, and if you are alone with a baby, talking to the baby guarantees there is language happening in that baby's environment when he's most likely to absorb it and learn from it.
Books make a big deal about how baby talk with its altered rhythm, cadence and so forth is an instinctive adaptation to what babies hear best. If you do that, fine, but again, it isn't necessary. Expecting a response other than a fascinated gaze is probably too ambitious in the early months. If you can't think of anything in particular to say, describing the environment or what you are doing is a great place to start. "We're watching TV" is better than nothing. Narrating the activities of the baby's day as they happen is also good, and as they grow older will help them transition more smoothly from one activity to the next. "Now we're going to give you a bath. We're running the water. Next we'll take off your clothes." Supplying detail is also good. "First we'll take off your yellow cap. Then we'll unzip your blue and green sleeper with the dinosaur." This doesn't take up any more time or intellectual energy than you were already expending. Most babies enjoy it and when they can they'll babble back at you and smile. Of course, they'll also come to expect it. Again, it's a tradeoff.
If you find yourself with a quiet and alert baby who doesn't need anything done to her (changing, bathing, nursing, etc.), you can also play games. Babies are never too young to be walked around, danced with, sung to or bounced up and down in a lap. There are high contrast (black and white) board (thick, thick, thick pages that tolerate some amount of chewing and sucking on as your baby starts exploring the world with her mouth) books you can hold in front of your baby. Watch as her eyes track back and forth taking in what you are showing her. You can put soft toys where she can feel texture. You can squeeze little squeaky toys and shake rattles for her. You can start with her toes and work up to her scalp, naming every body part you can think of as you touch her gently ("This is your xiphoid process." You did realize I was serious about this being the hopelessly geeky guide to reproduction, right?). You can point to objects and describe their shape and color to her. Crib mobiles, crib toys, baby gyms and other infant enrichment toys are all intended to help the baby entertain herself in similar ways. But there's no reason you can't have a little fun participating as well.
If your baby seems to crave touch and has trouble relaxing, you can give her a massage. Many baby care books supply details on how you can do this if you would like specific instructions.
If you would like to increase your sense of connection to a baby, to bond with a baby, skin to skin contact is probably the fastest, most effective way. If you strip the baby down to a diaper (or less if you put down some cloth to catch any pee or poo) and wear as little as you are comfortable with, especially from the waist up, and then hold and care for and play with the baby, all kinds of hormonal and pheromonal cues will pass back and forth between you and the baby quite rapidly. Clothes impair these cues, although they don't necessarily stop them entirely. If the room is warm enough, and you hold the baby close to help keep the baby warm, you needn't put any clothes on the baby at all. I found this a very helpful way to reconnect with my baby after a bout of mastitis made me very sick and very cranky.
Even very small babies will make gestures to communicate their needs and desires to you. A baby with an earache will often slap at her ear, for example. Our baby slapped at his crotch when he was wet or needed to be changed. He also did an infant potty dance, twitching his hips and legs quite rapidly, much as an older baby or toddler might when desperately trying not to go before he makes it to the potty. Our baby couldn't yet walk or crawl, so his potty dance was in arms, often while nursing, but it was quite clearly a potty dance once we noticed it. You can increase your bond with your baby and also your conscious awareness of how his movements are attempts to communicate with you by mirroring everything he does. You won't be able to do this for long; it's quite exhausting. But if you sit or stand where he is lying or being held by someone else, and move yourself the way he moves himself, you'll realize after a while both how well-exercised a very small baby is, and also how much he is trying to control his movements already so he can explore his world.
Babies need movement. Really. Their brains will not develop correctly without it. And they like it; it's a little bit of what their life was like before being born. They can get that movement by being carried, rocked, bounced, swung and so forth (including being held in arms by an adult spinning in an office chair). If you don't want to be always holding your baby, you can buy a number of devices that will move the baby for you. There are electric baby swings to replace the older wind up swings. There are vibrating baby seats (sometimes called bouncy chairs or babysitters). There are rocking chairs. And there are people who have arms, and can acquire slings or other baby carriers.
Baby carriers are tricky things. I never cared for a very young baby until I had my own. I was accustomed to older babies that can be slung on a hip, carred piggy back or on my shoulders. I thought nothing of wrangling a 40 pounder up on my shoulders during my second trimester. How could it be hard on the back to carry around a kid that weighs less than 15 pounds? Well, unfortunately, at that age, size and developmental stage, they can't be held on a hip, or on one's shoulders or really even one's back. It's front carry or in a sling and so far I've been unable to get one of these to work well for me. I can manage an hour walk (around 3 miles) with a front pack (worrying most of the time about what it's doing to my baby's hip development, and how compressed his crotch seems to be why I eventually take him out). Slings however I still can't seem to manage. As a result, my forearms are getting stronger by the day, and sometimes I take him out on our shorter walks in my arms because it's too discouraging to mess with the pack, which has to come off to nurse.
While it's easy to say buy another carrier, I know people who bought dozens of carriers and had bad luck with all of them until their baby got a little older. So for right now, I'm just going to wait until I can pop that baby on my hip. I hope you do better than I have.
A startling number of products are sold to help you clean your baby. Especially since in some ways, you don't ever actually need to bathe your baby. If you diaper your baby (likely, but not a given, since elimination communication/diaper free/infant potty training has gotten some momentum in this country again), you'll probably need to clean your baby's butt occasionally, and possibly most of your baby if the poo is unusually explosive. If you don't diaper your baby, but hold your baby over a diaper or appropriate potty place (say, a sink, or the bathtub, a dirt floor or a drain), you'll just have to wipe the baby, more or less as you would wipe yourself. If your baby is spitty, you'll also have to clean that up off the baby. Bibs can only do so much, and skin cleans quite easily anyway. The more water a baby's skin is contact with, and the more soap, shampoo or cleaning product is used on the baby, the more irritated and dry the baby's skin will get, so bathing a baby frequently is not a good idea. While you would definitely want to be cautious about putting a baby under running water that might abruptly change temperature, in general a baby can be bathed wherever an adult might be bathed, as long as the baby can be held securely throughout. My friends shower with their babies. A lot of us take baths with our baby. The kitchen sink, while traditional, is notorious for harboring very dangerous bacteria. You'd certainly want to make sure it was cleaned to the best of your ability before putting your baby in it, because no matter how careful you are, some of that water will likely get into your baby instead of just onto your baby. You can put a towel down to make the surface softer and less slippery. A friend passed along a shaped sponge that fits a kitchen sink for a baby's bath. Babies have trouble maintaining temperature, so it helps if the room is warm, and you have a warm, soft towel ready to wrap the baby in as soon as you take the baby out of the water. Rubbing will tend to irritate the skin, so blotting is better. Make sure you have a phone handy, unless you are comfortable just letting it ring. Running to get the phone with a wet baby in your arms is not a good idea, and leaving the baby in the water is a worse one.
Because we were told not to let the cord area get wet until the scab came off, we just didn't bathe the baby for the first several weeks. We still don't bathe the baby very often, only when we want the fun, or think it will help our baby calm down a little. My husband will run the tap over our baby's butt if he's gotten stinky after a few days. I usually just dampen a washcloth or cloth wipe with warm water and give him a sponge bath, sniffing to identify which bits need to be cleaned. I'm not sure why his toes collect so many stinky bits of lint, but I'll go after between his toes every day or so with a q-tip. He doesn't like it much, but it does keep the smell down a lot. I was using a shampoo bar (Burt's Bees) on his hair (he still has a lot he was born with) but eventually gave it up in favor of the same wet washcloth when I concluded the shampoo was contributing to baby dandruff.
Assuming your baby is wearing clothes (I haven't met anyone who didn't clothe their baby, but I'm trying to keep an open mind here), they'll probably have to be laundered. If you are cloth diapering and not using a service, you will also be laundering diapers. I haven't made any particular changes to my laundry routine, but that's because mine was pretty weird to begin with. Because I have a lot of problems with allergies, I use fragrance and scent free detergent, far less of it than is usual, no fabric softener, no dryer sheets, no bleach, etc. Apparently baby skin is, in general, quite sensitive, so many parents wind up doing what I have to do for myself. Some fabric softeners and/or dryer sheets and laundry soaps may also make cloth diapers less absorbent, and may negatively affect any fire retardent treatment your baby's clothes have. Bleach, while it would remove stains from a diaper, will tend to break down the fibers and shorten their life.
I initially did not have a diaper pail, because we started with disposables, shifted slowly to cloth, breastfed exclusively, have a baby that didn't poop very often (about once every couple of weeks) until we really got the hang of elimination communication (and then pooped every other day or so, but usually we caught it in the potty). So I just put the pee cloth diapers in the regular wash for a while. When we shifted to all cloth, I got a pail, and started washing them separately. There are a number of interesting products (e.g. diaper duck) intended to save you the trouble of holding onto the poopy diaper as you wash the worst of it off in the sink or toilet. Since we're not into solids yet, the yuck factor is still quite low; we're hoping that the early potty use means we won't have to deal with serious yuck ever, other than emptying the potty into the toilet. I'll let you know how that turns out.
Our baby is quite spitty, however, sometimes more than others. But on days when I might make it from when we get up to quite late in the evening in the same diaper (no misses), I sometimes still have to change his outfit once, twice or even three times (usually after the third time I just don't put clothes back on him for a while) because he upchucked a tablespoon or more onto his outfit.
I'm a book person. I bet you aren't surprised. I bought books for my baby, first high contrast books. The best we found was Look, Look!, by Peter Linenthal. Three of us interacting separately with Teddy found he liked this one the best, no question. I also bought texture books for Teddy which he is just beginning to take an interest in at four months. He has liked music from the beginning. My husband, who is much more discerning when it comes to music, and one of our child care providers, who has taken care of a lot of babies, can relate in some detail which music Teddy likes. Relatives gave us CDs of lullabies. Teddy seemed to like those as well.
A friend gave Teddy a Baby Faces book at Christmas.
We don't like plastic, so I bought some wooden teething toys that rattle. Teddy has been only moderately interested in these, although he really liked the small cloth doll holding a wooden teething ring. He particularly liked a rattle with a bunch of rubberized wires (colorful) that looped around the central square. It was easy to grip and chew on. He also really likes the shiny metal rattle with the ball on one end (shiny enough to see his reflection in) and the ring on the other (good for chewing on) and the rod connecting them (easy to hold onto).
I did not mention, in my earlier discussions, the importance of helping a baby transition from being in the womb to being in arms. Harvey Karp supplies an excellent series of suggestions to help babies during the first three months after term (the fourth trimester) in his book The Happiest Baby on the Block. Breastfeeding mamas should be very cautious about using a pacifier, but the suggestions on rocking, shushing (white noise), sideways positioning (ideal for breastfeeding, anyway) and swaddling are all useful for breastfeeding mamas.
Before Teddy was born, I quizzed the mamas I knew extensively about whether they swaddled, how long, and how, and how effective it was. The majority (but not all) found swaddling very useful for at least a few months. Most used small blankets, although some had special swaddling blankets with fasteners and places to put little hands and feet to make the process easier. Roland was much better at swaddling Teddy than I was; I had a hard time making it tight enough to keep him from wiggling out. Swaddling worked better arms out almost from the beginning, which we realize is very unusual.
Shushing was the only way we could calm Teddy when the heel sticks needed to be redone at an early checkup. I eventually bought a white noise machine, which I found very helpful, and child care and I thought helped Teddy sleep for the first seven or so months. After that, it made less of a difference.
Karp's book is the only one we found particularly useful in describing techniques for calming unhappy newborns. We loan it to everyone we know who has a fresh baby, as well as the video that covers some of the same material (and shows clearly how to swaddle, which is helpful, and includes some white noise, which we never used).
Some people think swaddling is bad, and often have no particular reason for thinking this. Apparently, a couple hundred years ago, parenting theorists said swaddling would raise people who weren't democratic, rugged individualists -- who were inherently unfree. A number of people (including the otherwise admirable Baumslag) think swaddling is just another barbaric parenting practice that should be stamped out (like breastfeeding?). I've seen nothing to support these objections, any more than I've seen anything to support the notion that later potty training is inherently better than earlier potty training (gentle is clearly better than cruel).
Copyright 2005 by Rebecca Allen
Created May 20, 2005 Updated May 26, 2006