Infant Care Basics

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Windy St. George, and this is basic care for newborns. The first thing you should learn how to do, is to swaddle. It keeps young babies comfortable and warm. They feel a little more secure, and they sleep better,when they're tightly swaddled, although some children don't like it as much. They'll kind of kick in the blanket a little bit, but in general, newborns enjoy being swaddled, so first you lay out your blanket to be square. You should have many receiving blankets, like this. They often are given to you as a package. You put the baby on the points, like on the diamond here. The head goes in one corner, the arms are pointing to two corners, and the foot is pointing to the last corner, so first, draw up the foot portion. Some people like to put the arms in. When the baby is newborn, his arms are still curled in tightly towards his chest, so you just leave the arms on the chest, and you bring one flap over tightly and tuck it under, and then you bring the other one over, and then tuck it under. Now, you have a tightly swaddled baby. You can either let this top part go over the baby's head, or just tuck it underneath. When you're preparing for your newborn to come home to your house, it's good to have a bottle, and a pacifier in the house, even though you plan on breastfeeding, and I'll tell you why. You can always pump breast milk ,and put it into a bottle, even if your child is not going to be on formula, and this will allow the father, to give some of the feedings, to give you a break, or maybe even to catch a shower. You can also leave the baby with the grandma, or babysitter, and you're not physically attached to the baby, but it's quite nice sometimes, so to get your baby used to a bottle, you should pump a little bit of milk, or express milk, and give the bottle once a day, so that they'll accept the bottle. The pacifier can be a little controversial, but it can be very handy, when you have a fussy baby, who has just come home from the hospital, and won't sleep, and you've up for days. It's sometimes nice to have the pacifier. The problems with pacifiers, is they can cause nipple confusion, and make the baby not want to latch on too well, when you're planning to breastfeed, but there are benefits to pacifiers. You can get orthodontic ones that are like your nipple, and won't cause so much confusion, and they've been shown to help prevent SIDS."