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Comment by lordmatty | Hacker News Reader

* Seriously consider having the baby sleep in your bed with you, especially if you/your spouse are breastfeeding.

In my experience this leads to drastically less sleep. You disturb your baby and your baby disturbs you. We put the baby in another room and invested in a baby alarm.

* Seriously consider breastfeeding.

Yes, but don't pressure yourself too much...the most important thing is that the baby eats properly. Bottle feeding gives you the critical advantage of being able to measure how much the baby eats.

* Don't waste your money on a change table.

I would say invest! After a week or so of leaning over to change our baby it really affected me sitting at the computer to code. Bad back means bad news for your startup.

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Why is it a "critical advantage" to measure how much the baby eats? Babies need to eat when they're hungry and they stop when their stomach is full.

For the vast majority of parents, it doesn't matter. If you're worried about it, invest in a baby scale and weigh regularly (keep in mind that babies lose weight immediately after birth, though.) Doctors can give you a chart for normal weight gain.

For a minority of parents, the child will be "failure to thrive" and for that you will need to measure intake, but the child will also be on special high calorie formula anyway. So at this point the advantage is irrelevant.

"Measuring" is a really stupid reason to deny your kid the other benefits of breast feeding. However, there are many viable reasons not to breastfeed, such as it's just not working, or the mother needs to work/have a life, or it's painful, etc.

I was going to ask the same question. Not once have a thought "my daughter is eating too much."

Politics, nutrition and parenting are all conversations I attempt to avoid, and this combines 2 of 3 topics. :/

With breast-feeding my wife wasn't worried about "too much", rather "not enough": it wasn't clear to her exactly how much our daughter was getting.

That said, it was pretty obvious that she was getting enough, it was just mildly uncomfortable not knowing how much.

Agree here. Bending over to change does your back in. And when the poop has gone up their back or down their leg, you want a surface you can bleach.

Also agree on sleeping separate - we put ours in the nursery after three nights. He sleeps 7pm - 8am now (at 8 months) and is very happy. Bizarely, tired babies don't sleep well (ie don't keep them up in the hope they'll sleep longer). Put them to bed before they get overtired. If you share a room you will wake each other and you'll all be tired and cranky.

Sleep separate. We are on baby #2 and #1 slept in our bed for almost 12 mos. It was terrible as the baby got bigger an would move around. No one got sleep. Sleep deprivation is bad for parenting and marriages. If you knew your child's school bus driver was operating on 3-4 hours sleep you'd pitch a fit, why should parents do the same?

#2 is sleeping in her room in crib and we have a twin bed in that room and we take turns sleeping in that room with her. She starting to stay asleep at night for longer periods and is almost 6 mos old. She also has terrible reflux since she was born and would vomit up even breastmilk so she is on a special formula.

My experience is that sleeping together makes things easier at the beginning when it does calm them but it's harder to break it the later you leave it so you're just trading off early pain for later pain. We took the pain early and it's worked out well enough that we'll likely do the same the next time round.

Our experience was great. She slept with us for a month or so (breastfeeding). Then we felt we'd sleep a little better if we put her in her own bed right next to us, so we did that (in the same room) for a few months. Being in the same room makes it easier because you don't have to go check on her in another room. Then at 6 months or so we put her in her own room. It all went totally smooth.

Don't be afraid to sleep with the baby if you feel like it, and don't be afraid to put them in their own bed if you feel like it. It's ok. Also, putting them in their own bed in the same room for a little while gives you a lot of advantages (easy to check on them without getting out of bed etc.)

Basically, just do what you feel like and if it isn't working try something else.

We didn't have early or late pain. Our older son was an epic sleeper, our younger son not so much; but each of them decided in turn that they wanted to move into their own room, which we happily obliged.

Yes. If there is one universal truth in the land of parents with newborns, it's that you'll get a sore back. Especially when you have to spend hours leaning over as they hold your fingers learning to walk. I'm now friends with my physio!

Yeah I would highly suggest investing in a video monitor. because you're so paranoid as a new parent, you'll be tempted to run in and check on the little one for every little noise. Don't wake a sleeping baby ;) the video monitor will really help that.

We actually have two changing tables in the house. One upstairs and one downstairs. Last thing you want is trying to change a kid on the floor who's starting to twist and turn and has a really poopy diaper.

> Last thing you want is trying to change a kid on the floor who's starting to twist and turn and has a really poopy diaper.

...or if there was a catastrophic containment failure.

"Code Brown", in our family's vernacular.

formula is a death machine. http://www.breastfeeding.com/reading_room/what_should_know_f...

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