We were recently lucky enough to have some good friends of ours move in just a few doors down from us. Even better was the fact that they were expecting their first baby a month later. And a day before her due date, they had the most beautiful baby girl.
Of course, this was a perfect opportunity for me to go shopping for cute baby clothes and toys. Having bought the cutest little dress and a Lamaze Freddie Firefly (every baby has to have a Freddie, right?), I started to think back a year to those amazing, terrifying, exhausting, overwhelming, fabulous first few weeks with Lottie. And decided I wanted to get something for my friend too. She had just been made a mum for the first time and had gone through every emotion under the sun, as well as a fair old physical endurance test.
And I wanted to share my gift ideas with you in case there are any new mamas in your life who need to be shown a bit of love.
Food
When the baby won’t sleep and you and your partner are both desperately trying to work out what is wrong and to settle him or her down, it’s not uncommon to finally get the baby to sleep at 11pm and realise you haven’t had dinner. If you have a homecooked meal in the fridge that you can just heat up, it will make. Your. Day.
If you can’t cook, take cake.
Smellies
On the rare occasion that you get chance for some relaxation with a newborn, once you’ve run a bath, and spent maximum ten minutes in it, the baby will start crying, or a poonami will happen or any number of other things that will require you to get straight back out again.
So while she does have a precious few minutes, why not get her some lovely bubble bath or moisturiser so that the time she does get is that little bit more special?
Cleaning
Despite the amount of time a newborn sleeps for, you still seem to get nothing done. The state of my house really started to get me down a few weeks after Lottie was born, but I still couldn’t really find any time to sort it out. Even when she did sleep, we just gazed at her.
A cleaner coming in for a few hours at that stage would have been an absolute godsend. Or if she would be comfortable with it, you could offer to do it yourself.
A no-longer-forbidden food and drink hamper
Mr M went to the supermarket a few days after we got home and bought me all the things I hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink during pregnancy. I had been looking forward to lots of things once pregnancy was over but Prosecco, brie, salami, pate, gin, good quality coffee, etc etc, were near the top of my list. Best present ever.
An essentials box
Before you have your first baby, there are lots of tips and tricks that you don’t know. Quite often, we would hit a bump in the road late at night and someone would suggest a product that could help, but we couldn’t go out and get it until the next day. My sister had given us a basket of essentials of things we didn’t even know we needed, which often solved out late night problems.
Fill a box with things like Calpol, gripe water, a thermometer, Infacol, teething granules, muslins, snufflebabe, saline spray, vaseline, cradle cap shampoo and loads more. OK, it’s not directly for mum, but it may just save her sanity
