1) “It’s called breast feeding, not nipple feeding”.  This is important to all those upcoming mothers out there.  If you don’t get the whole thing in the child’s mouth, you’re in for a world of pain.  From the very first feeding, try to get as much of the areola in there.  The sooner the child (and you) learn good habits, the better for everyone.

2) Swings.  Swings are awesome.  For Samantha, they work FAR better than the vibration stuff in most beds/chairs.  Swings take up a lot more room though, but it seems to be far closer to what a child would want (aka: much closer to what a child experienced in womb), than a vibrating chair/pad.  Though a vibration pad has helped her to get over the ‘sleep’ line a couple of times for us.

3) Supplement.  The phrase ‘Breast is best’ is very true when it comes to the old ‘how should I feed my baby?’ question.  But there is a time to supplement.  Our pediatrician was VERY concerned after Sam had dropped 10.8% of her birth weight as of day 5.  So we started supplementing her milk with a little formula… just trying to get the amount she’s getting per feeding up to 1oz.  And that helped out a lot, both our peace of mind, and Sam to get enough nourishment.  But the good news is Sandra’s milk came in fully by Thursday, and on Friday, Sam was back up to near birth weight.

4) Swaddling.  Oh, wow.  The key to starting calming the baby down is swaddling them tightly.  Get your nurse to show you how, get some small, square blankets to do it with, and go to town.  The soft, fuzzy baby blankets don’t work… you need felt or thermal blankets to have enough ‘grab’ to stay tight.  (after swaddling, rock/bounce them a lot, while shushing loudly, and if worse comes to worst, give them a pinky finger to suck on… fingernail down towards the tongue, and freshly washed please.)

5) Practicality and flexibility are key.  If you can’t improvise, you’re in trouble.