Rookie Parent.

You can forget yourself very quickly in the first weeks. Someone very small is now needing everything from you at once, and it feels wrong to think about your own sleep, your own dinner, your own five minutes walking around the block.

It is not wrong. It is the trade the whole thing runs on. Every hour you spend on yourself in the early months buys three hours of being present with the baby later. There is no other rate that good in your life right now.

We tried, for the first fortnight, to be heroes. This will not be a book about how well that went. What worked, in the end, was napping when the baby napped, eating dinner off a real plate at least once a day, and closing the bathroom door for two minutes when we needed to cry. Both of us, at different times, without any warning. None of these were novel ideas. All of them worked.

The rest of this book is about the baby. This first chapter is about you. If you skip it, none of the rest holds up.

Take help. All of it. Especially with cleaning, which is probably the single most important line item to hand off.

Food is next. Order deliveries weeks in advance. Get real, nourishing meals, not just takeaway sushi (although sushi is fine sometimes; do not overthink this). If a friend asks what they can bring, tell them lasagne, tell them soup, tell them anything freezable in a container you do not have to return.

The reframe worth memorising: you are not obligated to cook. You are not obligated to clean. You are not obligated to do anything that can be outsourced. Yes, it costs money. You will earn the money back later. Your energy in the first weeks is more expensive than any hourly wage you will pay someone to fold your laundry.

If someone offers help, the answer is yes. If they do not offer, ask. Both of us grew up in cultures where you politely declined the first offer. Do not politely decline the first offer. Politely accept. Then accept the second one too.

Babies do not develop the shivering reflex until several months in. They cannot warm themselves the way you can. This does not mean the room should be tropical. It should be comfortable, in the Danish sense of comfortable: 19 to 21 °C. That is roughly 66 to 70 °F for anyone converting.

Humidity: 45 to 60 percent. The easiest home test is whether the baby can breathe through their nose without effort. Nose-breathing matters for a lot of things, most importantly breastfeeding, where it is the only option during a feed.

If the baby is stuffy, saline drops clear the nose beautifully. Bulb aspirators exist and work, but we prefer to minimise interventions until they are actually needed. The baby is a smart, self-regulating system. Your job is to keep the environment right so the system can do its work.

Buy a hygrometer if you do not have one. Cheap. Often bundled with a thermometer. If your climate is dry, buy a humidifier too. They all have hygrometers built in (otherwise they would not know when to run), so you get one free.

This was the biggest environmental change we made. If a baby cannot breathe comfortably at night, the baby wakes. Which means the parents wake. Which means, at some point, someone cries who is not the baby.

After sunset, no bright light. If you live north of the Arctic Circle in June, treat this rule as advisory. For everyone else, it is one of the most useful things we changed.

A newborn does not understand where day ends and night begins. You give them that. If you would rather not spend long stretches of your nights awake, it pays to establish a rhythm early. Small children thrive on routine. When things happen at predictable times, everyone has an easier time: you manage, they adapt.

No overhead light after sunset. Overhead light wakes both you and the baby. This is not folklore; it is how the pineal gland processes bright directional light. Use lamps, not ceilings.

We use smart bulbs from IKEA, set to a warm red for the last two hours before bed. We were already using them for ourselves (Danish winters, cortisol, general grumpiness), and they turned out to be one of the more helpful things in the nursery. Kids seem to regulate to the fact that a red sky after sunset feels, physiologically, like a signal. Good for the nervous system, ours as much as theirs.

If you want the fancier version, look up melanopic lux. If you want the practical version, just get some warm red bulbs and turn off the ceiling light after seven.

Kids love routine. Consistent bedtime rituals help enormously. The baby learns quickly: “I am in the room where I usually get bathed, so it must be nearly time for the long sleep.” A separate chapter on bathing is coming. Of course, they will also fall asleep straight off the breast. That is the easiest path.

Rocking versus tapping

People rock. Rocking is fine. Do not underestimate the beauty of tapping, though. It is slightly simpler, less physically demanding, and in our experience it works for a very long time. Even at nearly two years old, it was still working. We are proud parents of a child who can be tapped to sleep.

The baby settles when you recreate the familiar environment: dark, warm, and the sound of the mother’s heartbeat. A pregnant woman’s resting heart rate (from our own measurements and from the research) is around 60 beats per minute. Imitate that by gently tapping the baby’s back at about two soft pats per second. Very gently. You are recreating a 60-BPM heartbeat, not drumming. The baby drifts off remarkably easily.

About the “must-buy” list

You will be told to buy a great many things, and you will believe you need all of them, because you are easy prey for the marketing of tools that “make life easier.” They do not always work. They work differently on different babies. Nothing here can be promised.

What works reliably in everyone we have seen (and is backed by the research) is skin-to-skin contact with both parents. Mother and father. The father’s part especially matters. Without it, the hormonal changes in a father’s body do not fully kick in. Which is another way of saying: skin-to-skin is not just for the baby. So hold the baby skin-to-skin, both of you, often.

The wrap sling

If you can, buy a good wrap sling. A soft stretchy fabric baby wrap you can carry the child in against your chest. Always follow the instructions and check that airways are unobstructed. Babies sleep beautifully in them, and you finally have both hands free. If the baby wakes in the wrap, tapping plus movement almost always brings them back.

One song

Pick one melody you like. It does not have to be a children’s song. Any song you can sing in your natural voice. It becomes another cue for sleep. Ours was “Nothing Compares 2 U”, sung slightly out of tune, at all hours. Our son has since developed excellent taste in music.

Give the baby the chance to burp after every feed. Breast or bottle, it does not matter. This one habit will make the difference between a serene afternoon and one entirely spent changing muslin cloths.

The pose that works best is your shoulder. Rest the baby’s chest against the top of your shoulder so the pressure sits gently against their upper belly. If you are right-handed, hold their bottom with your left hand and support their head and neck with your right. Pat softly between the shoulder blades. Wait. The burp will come.

Do this after every feed and the amount of milk coming back up drops to almost nothing. It sounds trivial written down. It is not trivial when the alternative is your third change of clothes before lunch.

Not obligatory. Recommended.

Newborns arrive with almost no bacteria in the gut. Seeding it early with the right ones means better digestion of milk, better stool quality, and better quality of life for everyone in the house. We will add specific brand recommendations here once we finish comparing the ones we have used.

Some bloating is still likely. A newborn does not yet know how to pass gas, so a few gentle physical exercises help move things along. We will make a separate chapter for those. Meanwhile: hold your baby upright after feeds and pat the lower back gently.

Worth noting: gut microbiome research keeps pointing at brain development as well as digestion. Two separate observational studies came across our screen while we were writing this. So this is not only about softer nappies. It is also just good.

The first weeks are hard. After that, most women become quite good at this quite quickly. If everything is going to plan (and often it is not, and that is also normal), milk usually comes in on day two, three, or four. When it comes in, it comes in enthusiastically.

What nobody talks about is this: in those first weeks, breastfeeding can be very painful. Painful enough that a woman may look at her own body and decide something is wrong with it. Flat nipple, inverted nipple, “I am doing this wrong.” Most of the time, none of that is true. It is just genuinely painful at the start for many people. For others, it is easy from day one. Both are normal.

When milk floods in

From what we have seen: if too much comes in during the first few days, let the baby eat as much as they want. If there is still an oversupply and the breast feels overfull and starts to hurt, express a little to relieve pressure. There are twenty tutorials for that on the internet. Any of them will do.

The bigger picture: a lot of milk comes in initially, and then things regulate themselves. Do not panic over some pain here and there.

The lactation consultant is worth it

A lactation consultant is one of the best hours of money we spent. Mainly to check one very specific thing: whether the woman is using different feeding positions, actually different, so the baby latches from different angles. This matters because it means all (or most) of the milk lobes get worked. When they do, milk flows well and does not get stuck. When they do not, it hurts and stays stuck. Ask about angles.

They will want to feed more than you think

Nobody tells you this. In the first weeks and months, and possibly later, the baby may want the breast far more often than you expected. In our case: 25 times a day. Not counting nights. Reader, I had done the reading. I was not expecting 25.

So treat “enjoy your life on the sofa” as one of the main jobs. Keep a series, your phone, a book. Feed, feed, feed. It ends. It just does not end on day 12.

Sunflower or soy lecithin

Widely available. Makes the milk softer, makes the whole process easier. We are not chemists and we are not going to pretend we know the mechanism. It worked.

Contrary to popular belief, a pacifier is not obligatory. Our son never had one, and it was fine. It is still fine.

Prolonged pacifier use has real effects on jaw development, breathing habits, and dental alignment, regardless of the marketing around “orthodontic” designs. The best pacifier is no pacifier. If you want to read a whole book about this, look up any developmental orthodontist. If you do not want to read a whole book about this, take the summary.

Three reasons:

Babies eventually develop their own self-soothing mechanisms if you do not hand them a substitute for the first six months.

If they need to suck, they can use the breast. Which is what it is for.

The extended sucking pattern that a pacifier creates is not what a baby does in nature. Nothing in the wild sucks that long. This is exactly why kids who use pacifiers can end up with misaligned front teeth and slightly changed facial structures. It is not the end of the world. But if you can avoid it, avoid it.

If you cannot avoid it, do not spiral over it. Millions of people were raised on pacifiers and turned out fine. You are trying to do a good job, and worrying is not part of the good job.