PODCASTS:
What to Expect Emotionally (25 minutes): Understanding and preparing for what you may experience during those first few days, weeks and months
What Dads Can Do (27 minutes): Navigating the complexities of the changes in your relationship brought on by a new baby and helping your baby’s dad understand what you and the baby might need and want from him
printable with ideas moms can pass along to their partners and other support people goes here
Ideas for printable:
– make sure I get out of the house. I’ll say it’s too hard because the baby will need me or because I’m too tired or because I don’t look good and don’t have any clothes that fit right but force me to just go somewhere by myself for a 1/2 hour or so. Tell me to just go on a walk or to go to the store by myself.
– notice what I’ve accomplished during the day when you get home from work. profusely compliment me if the kitchen is clean or if dinner is made or if the baby is clean and happy and fed. try not to notice what I didn’t accomplish. (Advice to new mom: write down what you did that day and put it on the fridge so he can know what it is that he might want to compliment you on!)
– plan a date every week with just the two of us. it can be an at-home date where you bring home take-out and a movie or we play games and eat a favorite treat. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy and might be easier and less stressful if it’s just at home initially. But help me focus on you and enjoy myself by setting up a specific activity for just the two of us every week.
– call me during the day to see how i’m doing – especially if I’ve had a hard night with the baby.
– When I get back in bed after feeding the baby in the night, try to wake up, roll over and give me a little hug or kiss and a thanks.
– if you notice the baby seems to have woken up a few times in the night, offer to take a shift with the baby since likely the baby isn’t hungry, just needs soothing.
– write me a note from the baby telling me the grateful things the baby might say if he or she could.
– make sure I get together with my friends. if I seem down, call one of my girlfriends or sisters and let her know that i might appreciate a visit or phone call from her. encourage me to have friends over for lunch or just to hang out to give me social time without the stress of having to take the baby out.
– take time every week (Sundays are often good) to ask me these questions: How are you feeling physically this week? Mentally? Spiritually? Emotionally? Socially? What can I do this week to help with the baby? What can I do this week to support your needs physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally and socially?
- Ask me for tips about how to do things for the baby that you don’t really know how to do. In return I will try to back off and let you do things your own way.
Worksheet about what wives new/moms should do:
- Support your husbands efforts to support you. Take what is offered gratefully and graciously.
- Talk with them about specific things they’d like to make “their thing” that they do for the baby – like bathing or cutting fingernails or doing all bottle feeding or doing all diaper changes when he’s home
- Don’t criticize your husband for doing things differently from you. Let them figure out their own way to do whatever you’ve decided together will be his responsibilities. Let him bathe the baby, feed the baby, soothe the baby his own way. Offer them ideas if they ask for them but don’t step in unless it’s a matter of life or death!
- Make sure he feels like he’s still your #1. Make sure you make time for him even if you’re really tired and give him physical affection – just simple hugs or pats or whatever. You probably won’t feel like dishing out more physical affection because you’re dishing out so much to the baby – but he needs it too!
- Don’t expect his interest in the baby to be the same as yours.
Worksheet to help think through what matters most to you about your birth experience
Podcast and/or worksheet to help think through what type of newborn mom you want to be and what type of mom you want to be overall.
Ideas for further podcast topics:
– childbirth – what to expect and what to think about – the thinking woman’s guide to birth, what experience do you really want to have? you can really have some power over it, but it’s OK if it turns out totally differently
– taking care of yourself and a newborn (need to see if overlaps with first podcast)
– pregnancy
– surprises of new motherhood, lowering your expectations (make sure doesn’t overlap)
– how to re-define yourself now that you’re a mother, change/loss of identity, how do you re-define success, how to get things done in a different way.
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Articles that offer great insights for moms-t0-be and new moms:
http://poweroffamilies.com/2011/05/the-perfect-mom/
http://www.memoriesoncloverlane.com/2010/06/new-baby-anxiety-question.html
http://poweroffamilies.com/2011/01/its-going-to-be-hard-and-thats-ok/
http://poweroffamilies.com/2012/03/visions-patience-and-the-baby-phase/
Riding the Waves of Pain and Joy
Nursery Decor Ideas (it’s not what you think): http://www.memoriesoncloverlane.com/2012/08/nursery-reveal.html