Having a child is one of the most incredible experiences in most people’s lives, but it introduces many changes. Parenting doesn’t come with an instruction manual, but there are lots of steps you can take to prepare your home for the newest addition to your family. Discover our top three tips for having your home as ready as possible for you and your new baby once you come home from the hospital.
Meal Prep
Image via Flickr by taz + belly
The first few weeks after your baby comes home for the first time can be absolutely exhausting, and there’s a lot of household tasks that may slip through the cracks. Before you bring home your baby for the first time, it’s a great idea to get a few meals ready for reheating in the microwave. Individually packed, frozen healthy meals are a huge boon once your child arrives and you find yourself without time to make home-cooked meals.
If you don’t want to purchase prepackaged meals, there are a lot of recipes online for easy home-cooked meals you can freeze ahead of time, then just pop in the oven or in a pot when you’re ready to eat. This can keep you from relying on unhealthy take-out or delivery food that can wreck your health and keep you from getting the nutrients you need to keep your energy levels up.
Air Quality Check
Infants have incredibly delicate immune systems, and making sure your home is a clean, safe place for your new child to come home to is important for every new parent. Whether you have a new or an older HVAC system, having a mechanic with an indoor air quality certification come out to check over your system.
An indoor air quality certification means that your local mechanic has more technical knowledge than most when it comes to testing and improving the air quality of your home. They can help you find ways to reduce allergens and other hazards in your air so that you can rest easy.
Traffic Flow Plans
A new baby is exciting for the entire family — not just new parents — and you may end up with relatives you haven’t seen in years wanting to drop by to see the newest addition, which can not only stress you out, but potentially jeopardize your child’s health. Setting up a plan before for how to handle visitors can help you avoid some of this stress.
Letting your family know your plan ahead of the birth can help them manage their expectations, especially if you set clear guidelines and let them know that these first few months are about you and your baby, not how badly they want to visit with the new child. It can also help reduce the stress on family pets and other siblings who are already adjusting to the new changes — a multitude of extra people in the home can make the stress level rise.
A new baby is an exciting and stressful addition to any family, but preparing ahead of time can help you keep sane and keep your child as healthy as possible. One site that I have grown to love as it is a wealth of knowledge and information for any new or existing parent. parentsneed.com has information on anything from baby to teens to moms to parenting because Parents Need To Know~
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