Little Mistakes Parents Make with a New Baby

Your cell phone comes with an instruction manual as thick as a dictionary but the hospital lets you come home with a brand new baby to take care of with a leaflet and an enthusiastic congratulations. Seems a little strange to me, but rest assured that most new moms and dads know what they’re doing – even if it doesn’t always feel like it. However, even when you’re doing your best, there are a few rookie mistakes you will make with your new baby. Read on to find out what you – and just about everyone else – are doing wrong.

Keeping Baby Awake

You have the mentality that if you keep baby awake until you go to bed, those six hours he sleeps will be the same six hours you sleep and waking up at 4 am to feed him won’t seem so bad, right? Wrong. When you put the baby down at 7, he’s likely to sleep 11 to 12 hours. The longer you keep him up at night, the earlier he will awake in the morning. Keeping him up later won’t guarantee he’ll sleep in, in the mornings; though he might wake up later for feedings.

Baby Talk

A lot of new parents realize that they’ve suddenly developed the baby talk voice. It might seem cute and adorable and it might make your baby squeal with delight, but the truth is that your baby talk voice is not doing anything good for your baby. He needs to hear thousands of words each day, and when you’re talking like a baby you not only look like an idiot, your hurting your baby’s ability to learn his vocabulary.

Not Brushing

If you think brushing his teeth is hard, then you make the executive decision that it doesn’t matter because they’re going to fall out someday and grow new ones and those will be nice teeth, you are wrong. Brush those baby teeth – twice a day.