I asked for advice before we had our first baby, and you just get the usual doom and gloom answers such as

“Don’t expect any sleep”
“When you’re sick, that’s the start of your night”

Cheers, nothing useful at all.

When you get a girlfriend, everyone mythers you to get married,

Then when you’re married, everyone mythers you about having kids,

And then when you do have one on the way, everyone harps on about how terrible child birth is and how you’ll never have a lie in again or a full night’s sleep and how awful and hard life will be from now on.

It’s not all bad; in fact, it’s life changing and amazing – you just have to be pretty selfless to enjoy it. And sleep, you do need to make sure you get some sleep whenever possible.

A Few Parenting Tips

• Get tops with buttons around the neck. Babies go mental when you try and pull their tops over their heads
• If you’ve no idea what to do – Peek a Boo (or Pi Po in Wales) is always a winner with children 5-12 months old
• You’ll fall out with at least 1 family member over parenting style or childcare
• Phenibut is immense for sleep deprivation, once a week only though
• Picking up your child side on makes it harder for them to back-heel you in the balls
• White noise tends to help babies and parents to sleep (especially if you live in a nosey semi-detached)
• Every woman, and man and his dog will give you advice. Just smile and nod
• The happiest people tend to be the most flexible with plans etc. This seems especially true with parents – your plans to go to the gym may been constantly scuppered for example.
• Not that I’d know, but breastfeeding appears to get significantly easier after the first month, then it seems relatively painless after 2 months, until the baby starts to get teeth…then it hurts again
• Grandparents don’t agree with Attachment Parenting
• Keep your hands free when walking around the house. You’ll defo fall over a toy at some point and it helps to have hands to break your fall
• Baby gates are pretty lethal, as are the stands on those vibrating chairs

2 other things of note, the NHS staff in the maternity ward were amazing, I was pleasantly surprised at their enthusiasm;

And the 2 healthcare visitors I know personally were extremely helpful – it was one of my friends that suggested our baby might have a tongue tie (this was missed by our designated healthcare visitor – easily done).

Fitness For Busy Parents

I’ll go into this at a later date, but you don’t need a gym or loads of time to have an effective workout.

Tabata intervals and bodyweight exercises are all you need and you can do them at home.

For example

1 Tabata Interval of squats
Followed by 1 set of maximum press ups

is enough to maintain fitness and muscle mass, and even improve markers of fitness and health depending on baseline levels.

Tabata Intervals involve 8 intervals of exercise, for 20 seconds.
Each 20 second interval is separated by 10 seconds rest.

Doing just 8 minutes a week of this type of exercise is proven to be beneficial in terms of blood lipid and glucose levels.

Fitness may not be a priority in the next year or two, but make sure you try and maintain a level of physical activity, or your health and wellbeing can deteriorate fast