So your baby is going to arrive soon. In all likelihood, you’ve already started nesting! This refers to the process of getting your home ready for your little one.
If you’re not sure what to do while nesting or whether or not you’ve missed something, you’re in luck. Here we’ve created a new parent checklist that should answer the question of how to prepare your home for a newborn.
Get everything your baby needs
You want to buy all of the essentials before you do anything else! Make a checklist of the items your newborn will need, which should include but may not be limited to these:
Clean the house
Once you’ve bought everything on your new parent checklist for baby products, it’s time to start getting the house ready in earnest. That means a clean-up!
Babies, especially newborns, have delicate bodies. Their immune systems have yet to develop too, which makes them particularly vulnerable to various diseases and infections.
So, try to provide for this by cleaning up your home ahead of time. This is a good opportunity to clean up any clutter too, as you don’t want that getting in the way of your other preparations.
As a side tip, if you happen to have a car and plan to bring your baby home in it, you may want to clean that car as well, for added peace of mind. Do some basic vacuuming and disinfection and you should be good!
Set up the nursery
The next thing to do is prepare the nursery. This is the room where both you and your newborn will likely spend most of your time over the coming weeks. As such, you should make sure it’s as safe and functional as it is comfortable.
To that end, check what you need to see to your baby in the room. We already mentioned some of the baby products you’ll need, like a crib or bassinet. Start from there and build an image of the room.
Will you need a mat to dampen sound and prepare for your baby’s crawling days? An armchair or nursing to make nursing and bonding sessions more comfortable? A dresser with a built-in changing table?
Go over all of your needs and what you expect to do to take care of your baby. This should help you figure out what to get for the nursery.
Make multiple baby stations around your home
Here’s something that should absolutely go into your new parent checklist! While you may have set up the nursery to be your centre of operations, so to speak, don’t expect to do everything there.
There will be times when you have to do things for your baby elsewhere. You may have to change them in the living room at some point, or even feed them in your bedroom.
So, to prepare for this, make more than one key baby station. Prepare each place so that it has the essentials for multiple baby-care functions (like diapers, spare bottles, spare towels and clothes, etc.). It should make life much easier for you in the future.
Stock your fridge and cleaning closet
Here’s the thing: babies can make a mess. They can have dirty nappies, may need a lot of wiping, spit up often, and so on. So, you absolutely want all of your cleaning essentials to be ready for when that happens.
As for the advice to stock your fridge, it’s more about convenience for you than anything else. You may be feeding the baby, but you need feeding too!
Unfortunately, most new mums and dads end up focusing so much on the little one that they can neglect themselves or miss basic chores like getting the groceries. Stocking the fridge ahead of time ensures that you have food for yourselves too!
Get more mummy and parenting advice!
That should help you get started on preparing your home for your newborn. If you want more advice like this, whether it’s about decorating your nursery or figuring out what should go in a changing or diaper bag, check out our blog. We have even more tips for mummies and new parents there!
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