Baby and Recovery Favorites

Favorite Mom Recovery and Baby Items

Coming home from the hospital is HARD.  I mean HARD.  At the hospital, everything is all in one room.  You don’t need much stuff, but it is all there, no problem.  All you do is lay in bed, feed every two hours and change diapers.  People bring you food and you try and sleep.  Oh and you go to the bathroom, which is a process/ ordeal in an of itself for a while after birth.  

At home, I thought I had had everything set up nicely before we left but I was WRONG.  We totally ended up shuffling everything around in order to have easier access to it though it makes the house look cluttered and crappy..  

Recovery Notes: I opt’d to walk myself to the car rather than take a wheelchair out of the hospital. By the time we got to the entrance, I had to sit down.  I was surprised how weak and weird feeling everything was post delivery.  Once you get home, you should really only attempt the stairs like once day for the first week if possible.  You will feel it.  Yeah, I had no idea recovery would be so dramatic, but it really is.  The more help you can ask for and receive during the first week the better.  Hopefully you are good at giving directions and foreseeing the things you need, like meals.  In terms of getting sleep, I found it hard to sleep with the baby in the house as I would jump up for every little noise she made, so putting her in the stroller and asking visitors to take her on a long walk, I found to be really helpful.

Recovery Products:

Earth Mama Natural Nipple Butter: This stuff is amazing and works in no time at all.  I prefer it over the lanolin, which does not seem thick enough to be helpful.

Non Laxative Stool Softener - a must while recovering, especially if you tear

Removeable shower head + Sits Bath: They gave me the sits bath at the hospital. It feels amazing and really aids in recovery.  Same for the removable shower head. Lay down in the bath or stand in the shower and spray the under carriage until you get bored or the hot water runs out.  Warm water helps ALOT in the healing process, not just if you have a tear.

Tucks Witch Hazel Pads: I don’t have hemorrhoids, but this feel good and helps with the healing of the tear.

Antiseptic numbing spray “Americaine”: Helps with the tear and the pain..

Overnight pads: Georgie is three weeks old and I am still using them.  I haphazardly chose some off of prime, which are the equivalent of diapers and too large.  I would suggest doing some exploration to find a kind you like first before committing.  They should be bulky though.  You do not want them wedgying up in anything as this would be extremely uncomfortable.  Also you are bleeding… alot, so they need to be able to handle it.

Nipple Covers- At first, nursing with the colostrum, my nipples were cracking and SO SORE and a little bit cracked and a little bit bloody at times.  These things fit over your nipples so that nothing brushes up against them.  These are different from nipple shields, which prime your nipple for suckling.  They are like little domes.  I used them for the first week.  Put them on after applying the nipple butter and it is magic, or was for me anyway.

Perineal Squirt bottle- The hospital had one and I forgot to take it with us.  I have to use a sinus nasal spray now which is not as good but amazon didn’t have one on prime.  You need this to clean yourself off everytime you go to the bathroom b/c they don’t want any blood lingering as this could lead to infection.

Breastfeeding Notes: For me, breast feeding has been hard, exhausting and painful.  It really made me question the shapes of my boobs and if this was really going to work.  Maybe other women have perfect breast feeding breasts and Voila! Initially, there is nothing natural about it and it is incredibly frustrating so be patient with yourself.  It is really stressful and upsetting to have a newborn at your breast but not latching on despite your contortions and she is just screaming and screaming. You both need practice and to learn so stick with it for a bit and try to remain calm.  It does get easier but it is definitely still WORK in week 3.  She cannot support her head at all and you need to present your nipple to her, like grabbing on to your boob and turning it into a torpedo.

My Brest Friend: I have both the My Brest Friend and the Boppy.  The Boppy doesn’t sit right or provide enough support for a newborn.  Looking forward to using it more once she is a bit older though.  May be better for more petite women though?  The My Brest Friend is awesome.  There are little bumps to support the head and the solid platform just makes things a lot easier.

Gerber Velcro Swaddles - These are great now.  At night time, they are really a time saver.  Georgie gets pissed when her arms are swaddled now and this easily swaddles arms free.  I don’t know what we ever got the hang of using these to swaddle arms in, but we did not end up trying very much.

Arm & Hammer disposable changing pad covers: b/c there will be many times when you are changing her and she just pees and poops everywhere!

Towels and Burp Cloths- My milk gets everywhere, it is abundant and annoying.  Keep these things in bed with you or right beside it.  Also good for spit up obvi.  Honestly, you cannot have enough burp cloths.

Diaper Genie: This is a must.  We have one upstairs and downstairs.  Totally protects you from the smell.

Diapers:  There are about a million options out there right?  Well so far (at 3 weeks), we used two boxes of pampers newborn diapers.  One of which had the green line indicator to show if  the diaper was wet and was suuuuuper helpful.  The other did not.  We are on our third box of diapers, which are the eco-friendly kind I bought, Bambo.  They are also newborn sized but are larger than the pampers and fit her better at this point.  I am guessing she is around 9 pounds now.  So this has worked out.  Not sure if we need another box of those or we can move up a size after we run out at this point.

Baby Aquaphor: We just started using this for her irritated butt and it works great and right away!

Wipes: We are using burt’s bees wipes b/c I don’t know why except that they are the first ones we bought and they don’t appear to give her a rash and they work fine.

Co-Sleeper: Man, I don’t know how people do it without.  Georgie basically eats every two hours so this is our routine at night.  Georgie cries, I get set up, sitting up with my breast friend and feed her for 5- 15 minutes depending.  I unswaddle her, wake up Rob and pass her over once Rob gets up.  Rob changes her diaper.  That is another 5-15 minutes gone.  Rob gives her back to me and we swaddle her and I calm her to sleep, another 5- 15 minutes if we are lucky.  We then basically get one hour of sleep before we have to do it again.  Imagine having to do this and get up and go to another room.  No thanks.

Snuggle bunny vibrating chair thingy:  We are waiting on the snuggle bunny swing but in the meantime we have this bouncer.  It is great, she loves it, we can rock it with our feet and move it from room to room as needed. I wish there were some cheaper ones without all the bells a whistles as we don’t really use the features like vibrating or music.  The music is SUPER annoying.

Bathtub with infant insert:  She loves baths but not getting out of them b/c she gets real cold real quick. The infant insert is perfect.  I use a meat thermometer to make sure the water temperature is right.

Swiss Ball:  I liked this to sit on and stretch on when I was super preggo and now it is great to bounce on holding Georgie to calm her down.

Sleepers:  These are great for easy access to changing diapers.  If you can find one like it with buttons down the front, go for it. We have some but I am not sure where they came from.  Also, in general, I prefer clothing with buttons as opposed to ties or especially zippers.  Zippers kinda suck.