Longton Carrie - Babies: the Answers to Everything

For Mumsnetters whose countless everyday acts of kindness and support make the gargantuan task of baby rearing just a little easier.

So youve done it youve given birth. The end of a gruelling nine-month journey, culminating with an exhausting, elating and quite possibly traumatising finale. But theres not a moment to rest on your tender behind because now is, of course, only the beginning: with no instruction manual included, you suddenly have in your possession possibly the most complicated thing ever invented.

In the old days your mum might have moved in, offering an alternative to chilly figures like the psychologist John B. Watson who admonished parents to never hug or kiss your children, never let them sit in your lap and to hake hands in the morning.

What we now know, and probably didnt need Professor Erich Seifritz, of Basel Universitys Department of Psychiatry, to tell us (though thanks anyway Erich) is that the brains of parents, mothers especially, are hard-wired to respond to the cries of babies. So the bad news is that it will be a good few weeks, possibly months, before you manage to sleep through even the slightest nocturnal whimper from the direction of the Moses basket. And even if your newborn does miraculously sleep like a baby, chances are you wont: more than one Mumsnetter recalls prodding her baby out of his slumber, so convinced was she that the newborn had stopped breathing altogether, each time he drifted off.

If this is your first baby you are almost guaranteed, it seems, to develop Precious Firstborn Syndrome: a well-documented phenomenon on the Mumsnet Talkboards involving strangely obsessive parental behaviours like rubbing shampoo into ones own eyes to test it doesnt sting, pulling prams backwards for miles to avoid direct sunlight and even sterilising the steriliser.

So while most of your memories of the actual birth will soon be selectively erased (how else would so many choose to reproduce a second and third time?), youre destined to look back on this first year with a rueful if only Id known then what I know now shake of the head.

If only, for instance, Id known that breasts really do only produce minute amounts of yellowy colostrum for the first few days but that that really is enough for a baby; or that a damp cotton-wool ball is no match for those first bitumen-like poos; or indeed that I really didnt need half of the 4,000 worth of kit the average expectant mother spends on her babe I could have saved myself an awful lot of bother.

In the days before Mumsnet, mothers like me had to make do with the mildly terrifying admonitions of experts like Gina Ford (you may have heard of her), but how much better to have access to vast archive of expertise collected the hard way by thousands of real parents? Whatever the parenting poser you are facing, chances are a Mumsnetter will have faced it already. And their advice is offered in a rather different tone of voice to the tablets of stone delivered by the parenting gurus: not so much do this because its the right way as this worked for me, maybe it could work for you.

No single piece of advice should be read as a Mumsnet way of doing things. One of the first things we learned from Mumsnetters is that different folk really do take different strokes. The aim of this book is simply to provide you with a bank of solutions many thousands of mums have found to the countless thorny dilemmas, problems and panics every parent faces in the first year of their childs life. And to have a bit of a giggle along the way.

Were confident that, whatever the subject, youll find some advice that works for you. And if you cant, or if youd like to share your own ingenious cure for colic, boast about your previously untested levels of endurance or just chew the fat about the extraordinary soft milkiness of your newborns head, were just a click away at www.mumsnet.com.

Justine Roberts (Co-founder, Mumsnet.com)

P.S. A long time ago, a friend called up to pick my brains about her pregnancy palpitations. Somewhat ruthlessly I replied that Id only answer her question if she posted it on the talkboard of the website Id started a few months earlier. But by the time I hurriedly and rather guiltily logged on, someone else had got there first. It was at that moment that I knew Mumsnet was coming to life. That friend never left Mumsnet, and even better, though it took about ten years, she eventually agreed to write this book. Sometimes even the longest gestations are worth the wait.

P.P.S. Mumsnetters go by a variety of weird and wonderful pseudonyms. Please do not be put off however just because someones goes by the moniker of IAteRosemaryConleyFor Breakfast it doesnt mean she did (far too many high-GI calories).

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Long Days Journey Into (Sleeping Through the) Night

Fever

In this chapter

If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come the readiness is all. William Shakespeare, Hamlet

By the end of pregnancy, many of you, frankly, will just be looking forward to sleeping on your stomachs again. Or sleeping at all (which it has to be said is a somewhat far-fetched expectation). And eating soft cheese. And being able to see your pubic hair. Somewhere along the way (maybe during those last few months when your feet swelled up like unpricked sausages and stopped fitting in real-person shoes?), you may understandably have lost sight of where its all heading. And the transition from lumbering baby-on-the-inside person to strangely lightened baby-on-the-outside person can seem more improbable the closer it gets, as you start to feel like you always have been and will be heavily pregnant.

But any day now, there really will be a new, small person in your home and there are some things you can do to prepare for landing.

Some women are struck in very late pregnancy by a kind of deranged nesting instinct. They rise from their chaise longues, brush aside the chocolate wrappers, turn off Jeremy Kyle and start filling dressers with muslins and stencilling murals of fluffy bunnies on changing tables. If this is you, just be careful. You wouldnt be the first woman to put her back out in late pregnancy trying to paint the nursery ceiling

You could use some of that energy to batch cook and freeze meals for the early weeks. Or just do an internet shop for lots of nourishing snacks which can be eaten one-handed while feeding a baby.

If you dont have a dishwasher, get paper plates. Marina

Many mothers think this is the time to look after yourself:

Book some beauty treatments and pamper yourself. It will be your last chance for some time. The same goes for a haircut. I went to the cinema on my own during my maternity leave. The daytime screenings were cheaper and I got a chance to watch loads of chick flicks that I couldnt drag my hubby along to. The vast consumption of sweets, ice cream and popcorn were a bonus too.

Go swimming. The feeling of weightlessness is second to none when youve been feeling like a heifer for months. Even if you only do a few laps, youll feel the Mars bar from the vending machine in the reception is more than justified.