Tip: Immunisation

When you are visited by your maternal health nurse they give you all of the info for your local community immunisations... What they don't tell you is that you can go to your GP and have your baby immunised there... We didn't know this for Marley's first immunisation and went along to the community option, we were there for close to two hours, waiting to be served, then waiting for the oral immunisation then waiting for the injections... All the while you are around sniffly kids with your newborn, listening to all of the children cry when they get their needles, its a pretty horrible experience... On the other hand if you book in to be the first appointment of the day at your GP (to lessen exposure to randoms sickness) you are in and out in 15 minutes, without the build up and constant heartbreaking crying of other kids...

Tip: Bibs

If you have a dribbly baby, much like mine, you will find yourself with a store of bibs... I have found that the button up bibs are best as the velcro ones get stuck to other things in the washing machine, sometimes ruining other fabrics... As your baby gets older it is also easier to rip off velcro bibs, while button ups seem to stay on...

Tip: Clothes for the early days

When you bring your precious little bundle of joy home you will probably already have many many outfits , so before you get to that point keep in mind that in the very early days (sizes 0000 and 000) there is a good chance that you are going to be too tired to be changing your baby into tricky outfits... I highly recommend just buying a bunch of onesies, babygros, rompers, whatever you like to call them... They are easy to get on and off, easy to change nappies, just plain easy... I would save my cash for hot little outfits for when they are a little bit bigger and you aren't quite as tired...

Tips - Toys

A good idea is to buy toys that are machine washable...

From around 3 months babies want to put EVERYTHING in their mouths so your toys need to be clean, the best toys we have are the ones that can be thrown into the machine as soon as they are dropped on the floor with no fuss... We have a lot of toys with mechanisms in them so they cant be washed, this is a pain, making time to surface wash them us just another thing on the never ending list of things to do...