overwhelmed and anxious....

[emmar75]

hi
made my first trip to the big mothercare at the weekend and felt completely overwhelmed and a bit useless to be honest....

there was so much stuff and it just made me feel like i didnt know anything.

all the different types of babygros... i dont even know what they wear, do they wear a vest underneath, how many do you need, some have long arms, no arms, short arms etc..

all the blankets, how many do they need etc... do you need sterilisers if brestfeeding etc, million questoins that i cant even think of half the time

feel like crying just thinking about it. everyone seems to say that you will know what to do etc when you have the baby but at the moment i am just wishing for a step by step instruction manual as i feel like i dont know what to do, my poor baby. how will i know when to feed it, when to put to sleep etc. feel like my head is going to explode

hardly bought a thing and left feeling like a failure and unable to cope...
does anyone else feel like this?

 

[leelee]

hi
made my first trip to the big mothercare at the weekend and felt completely overwhelmed and a bit useless to be honest....

there was so much stuff and it just made me feel like i didnt know anything.

all the different types of babygros... i dont even know what they wear, do they wear a vest underneath, how many do you need, some have long arms, no arms, short arms etc..

all the blankets, how many do they need etc... do you need sterilisers if brestfeeding etc, million questoins that i cant even think of half the time

feel like crying just thinking about it. everyone seems to say that you will know what to do etc when you have the baby but at the moment i am just wishing for a step by step instruction manual as i feel like i dont know what to do, my poor baby. how will i know when to feed it, when to put to sleep etc. feel like my head is going to explode

hardly bought a thing and left feeling like a failure and unable to cope...
does anyone else feel like this?

I felt a bit clueless with baby number 1 and asked a lot of questions on here.

Re: baby gros - you are due at the same time as me so will need the long sleeved ones and some vests for underneath. I would buy about 10 of each (unisex) as you will want to buy coloured ones when baby arrives. You will also get lots of presents.

For bedding I bought a couple of swaddle blankets, 2-3 cellular blankets and 2 gro bags. Gro bags take the pressure off knowing how to dress the baby for bed, but they have to be a certain weight before they can fit into them.

I was planning to BF but bought a sterliser anyway and am glad as I needed it. I didn't have any bottles but bought some when baby was born.

I also found the angelcare monitor great as it gave me peace of mind while the baby slept and I though the duck bath thermometer was great as well as it took the guesswork out of bath time.

Anything else you are feeling unsure about don't hesitate to ask. It is daunting but the more prepared you are, and the more things you pre-buy (newborn nappies, cotton wool etc) the more in control you will feel

 

[JMC82]

It is so scary and overwhelming because it's all new! Don't worry though. The fact is that there are tons available in the stores that you don't NEED so it looks worse than it really is.

The easiest way to dress baby to start with is a vest and sleepsuit. I'd get some short sleeved and some long sleeved ones plus a couple of packs of sleepsuits that have built in scratchmits if you can. I wouldn't bother with anything that has poppers up the back as they are awkward to put on a newborn. Like the previous poster said, you'll get loads of clothes as presents so don't go overboard with what you buy and I wouldn't bother with fancy little outfits to start with (unless you really want to).

If you're planning to express milk then you'll need a steriliser. You may want to get one anyway as you'd probably use it later on when weaning etc so it wouldn't go to waste.

xx

 

[Rachel_C]

Oh gosh, I remember my first trip to Mothercare when I was pregnant with my first LO and it was awful. I came home and just cried! I didn't know what I needed or anything and I felt like a total imposter for some reason - I was showing but I didn't feel like I was a mum so felt really out of place there! Online shopping saved me. I'd recommend having a good look through the online Mothercare and similar sites and getting a really good list together of what you want, then either ordering online or going back, armed with your list.

Don't worry though, once you have your baby things do change. You don't instantly know whether baby needs long or short sleeves but you DO know that you love your baby, your baby loves you and that's all you really need. The rest will work itself out.

 

[Groovychick]

 

[emmar75]

thanks for your support, really helped x x x

 

[tweedy]

i'd reccomend the short sleeve vests and long sleeve sleepsuits with the fold over ends that act as scratch mitts, avoid anything with poppers on the back as can get in the way of winding. i had about a dozen of each and would go through about 3 a day, so it was just as well.

even if you are breastfeeding i would get sterliser as you will need to sterlise teething rings, etc, and handy to have bottles and perhaps a can or cartoon of forumla just in case, if you keep them in the sealed box and don't use them, you can bring them back, baby stuff, especially equipment never seems to get reduced to much as you will always need it and bottles hardly go out of fashion.

a few blankets will see you through the early days and the rest of the stuff can be bought after baby comes, i added £20 to a mothercare gift care each week, so when baby was here i just popped over for whatever i needed, i have one within walking distance and hubbie works in the same shopping centre, so even with big items eg bouncy chair, he came put in his car and off i went, it was also nice to have reasons to get out of the house and i enjoyed shopping for her much more when she was here.

 

[SkyBaby]

Lots of very useful advice, thank you. I just moved house and had been waiting until we moved to start shopping, now I'm about to I realise I have no idea what we actually need!