Taking Care Of Your Baby: Learn What Equipment You Will Need
The advantage of getting and arranging the equipment and supplies you need to take care of you baby ahead of time is that it lightens the burden later. A certain number of mothers feel tired and easily discouraged at the time they begin taking care of the baby themselves. Then a little job like buying half-a-dozen nipples looms is a real ordeal.
What do you really have to have, in the way of equipment, to take care of a new baby (let's say it's a girl)? There are no exact rules, but here are some suggestions:
A place to sleep: You may want to get a beautiful bassinet, lined with silk. But the baby doesn't care. All she needs is sides to keep her from rolling out, and something soft but firm in the bottom for a mattress. Sometimes there's a cradle that's been in the family for many years, or the parents want to make a cradle, especially for their first child.
Most parents start with a crib with a bumper pad to go all around the inside. Cribs should have a snug-fitting mattress, childproof side locking mechanisms, no sharp edges or lead paint, and at least 26 inches from the top of the rail to the mattress set at its lowest level.
Most mattresses are now constructed of foam-wrapped, coiled innerspring with a waterproof covering or high-density foam with a moisture-repellent covering. Mattresses filled with animal hair can still occasionally be found and have been known to cause allergies in a susceptible child in an allergic family. (This risk can be avoided by enclosing the mattress in an airtight casing made for this purpose.)
You can make a mattress by folding up an old blanket and tufting it, or by obtaining the proper size foam and covering it with a waterproof enclosure. The sides of a small bassinet will probably have to be lined to protect your baby from injury. She doesn't need a pillow for her head, and it's better not to use one.
Something to bathe her in and dress her on: The baby can be bathed in the kitchen sink, a plastic tub (get one with a wide edge to rest your arm on), a dishpan, or a washstand. Molded plastic bathing tubs and contoured tubs of sponge material to fit the baby's body are available and generally inexpensive.
You can bathe and dress the baby on a low table, at which you sit (a card table with steady legs is a good size), or on the top of a fairly high bureau, at which you stand. You can sit on a high stool at the sink. Convenient is a dressing or changing table with a waterproof pad, safety straps, and storage shelves. Some types fold.
Other equipment:
1. Diaper pins; Rustproof, stainless steel with a lock head for safety.
2. Vitamin drops, usually containing vitamins A, C, and D. Ask your doctor which preparation to get.
3. Diaper pail. This should hold 3 gallons. Polyethylene is the usual material. If you are going to wash your own diapers, you may want two, one for wet and another, containing soapy water, for soiled diapers. If you are going to use a diaper service, they will provide a container.
4. An inclined plastic seat in which the baby can be strapped, carried short distances, set down almost anywhere, and from which she can watch the world go by, is a most useful accessory. (Some infant carriers can be used as seats.) The base should be larger than the seat; otherwise it will tip over when the baby gets active.
The seat tends, however, to be overused in the sense that the baby is apt to be always in it and so is deprived of bodily contact with people. A baby should be held for feedings, comforting, and at other times.
Carriers to carry a baby on the parent's chest, back, or side are useful for shopping, walks, visits, housework, and fretful periods. They provide physical and emotional closeness. The chest carrier may look awkward but it is favored by more parents because it is easy to get the baby in and out, you can see and check on her, and the physical and emotional contact is the closest.
Chest carriers need to be used early and regularly or neither the parent nor infant may be able to tolerate them. People who do use them regularly soon find them indispensable. The side carrier has almost the same advantages.
Framed backpacks are satisfactory, and are easy to carry on long walks, for older babies who can sit straight. The top rim needs to be padded for when a sleeping baby's face rests on it. You cannot sit comfortably - on a bus, for example. Some types can be propped up as infant seats.
Government-approved, dynamically tested automobile restraints - a carrier for a baby, a seat for a child - are essential pieces of equipment for all children who ever ride in a car - and what child doesn't!
A baby should be able to ride reclining strapped into a carrier. A child between 20 and 45 pounds should be strapped into a special seat that protects from side crashes as well as head-on crashes.
In buying a car carrier or seat, don't take one unless it conforms to a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard and has been dynamically (crash) tested. It's a good idea to take your car seat along when you are going to visit friends or relatives by plane or bus, so that you'll have it with you when you go on automobile trips after you have reached your destination.
The best way to teach children good safety habits in the car is to have a rule that the car doesn't get started up until the children are in their car seats and the older children and grown-ups have their seat belts on. If you absolutely have to take a child in a car without a car seat, the best place for the child is in the back seat, not in the arms of a passenger in the front seat or loose on the rear deck of a station wagon or truck bed.
