It’s now been almost 3 months since Madi came into our lives. As first time parents, I’m so grateful and blessed to say that all three of us have been coping extremely well. I may be extremely biased, but I Madi has been an amazingly easy baby to look after once I started properly picking up her cues. While our lives have drastically changed over the last few months, I can happily report that both Matt and I are emotionally stable and genuinely not sleep deprived. I don’t really have any secrets to this, but I do hope that maybe some of the things I did could be helpful to other new parents who come across my blog.

Establish a routine as soon as possible
This is my biggest tip! In the beginning, there’s a lot of trial-and-error as you all get to know each other. I struggled to pick up Madi’s cues initially, but once I started applying the routines from Save Our Sleep by Tizzie Hall (also see my previous post: Surviving A Newborn’s First Month – Part 1), it taught me what to look out for and allowed my baby to have a regular cycle of sleeping and feeding. That said, babies can be unpredictable as they transition through various growth cycles in their new and unknown world, so keeping flexible is key. Routines don’t have to be timed on the dot!

Compare that with the situation now where Madi sleeps and wakes on cue (I’m jealous of the accuracy of her body clock!). She also displays a good 30-60mins stretch of happy, calm alertness post-feeding. When I’m not playing with her, I can put her down in the bassinet and she’ll entertain herself by looking around while I get some housework done. Not only that, I think I’ve also unlocked the ultimate parenting achievement: at barely 2 months old, she was able to resettle herself and go back to sleep if she happened to wake earlier than her expected get-up time. She has a success rate of about 70-80% to resettle, and while I do not let her ‘cry it out’, if she’s ‘protest crying’, then I will just check up on her through the baby monitor without intervening. If I time it right, she can also fall asleep herself once placed on the bed, without me having to pat her to sleep (by the way, I’ve never held her to rock asleep!). If that’s not the holy grail of baby wins, I don’t know what is!

Aim to raise your baby yourself
Admittedly, this isn’t feasible for everyone as it largely depends on lifestyle and family arrangements. However, I feel that having the opportunity to get to know your baby without well-meaning (but often outdated) guidance from grandparents and maternity matrons worked really well for us. As we live seperately from our extended family, it was definitely a lot harder to look after a newborn completely on our own, but I felt the process allowed better bonding and helped provide her more security as I was consistently the familiar face and scent around her. Plus, she gets extra cuddles and excitement when we visit the grandparents each week.

It can be absolutely overwhelming for a new mother to be barraged with parenting advice from elders (and everyone has an opinion!), but this can even lead to more stress or feelings of inadequacy. Remember, you know your baby best and you should follow your parental gut instincts to do what feels right for yourself and your baby. I also highly recommend mothers to do their own research to naturally derive their own parenting style.

Confinement within modern reasoning
Coming from an Asian background, I am well aware a lot of new mothers are told to undergo ‘confinement’. In the traditional sense, it is a month of restrictions where a woman is meant to either stay in bed (or not to leave the house) and recover from childbirth (lots of eating and replenishment of nutrients through rich soups and specific dishes aimed to boost milk supply). Attached to this are a lot of old-fashioned superstitions and misguided advice (for example, no showering or hair washing for days/weeks. This stemmed from those times where hot water was limited and water hygiene was questionable). While I was not specifically told to do confinement, my inlaws lovingly made me all the medicinal drinks, soups, and yummy meals to bolster my recovery.

With Covid still raging in Sydney, I avoided going out at all and was also very careful with Madi during this time as her immunity would not be fully developed. I took extra care to ensure she was comfortably dressed and took her out on the balcony every morning for some sun to help with her jaundice. We did not take her out of the house for a good 2-3 weeks (not even for pram walks), and then only just to the cafe downstairs for breakfast during her naptime (although she woke up crying and we had to rush back home to feed and resettle her. Oh well…)