Lots of pregnant women tend to focus on the birth when what you should really be informing yourself on is breastfeeding and how to cope the first month.

Here are a few things I wish I had known and some tips:

1. Breastfeeding does not come naturally to everyone, it is actually quite technical and can be really hard. It is really worth paying for a lactation consultant to come over in the first few days if you are having any issues. If the feeding is a mess then everything else is chaos. Read the “womanly art of breastfeeding” from cover to cover before the baby arrives
2. Tongue tie is a nightmare and ruins everything (see https://myaalife.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/tongue-tie-blo…with-your-baby/)
3. Don’t worry about getting your baby “addicted” to anything the first 6 weeks, do what you need to do to get it to sleep. After that, it’s different but really don’t worry at the beginning, it’s more important they sleep and don’t get overtired rather than how they get to sleep
4. Try not to survive on sugar and caffeine as you will never nap in the day when the baby is asleep (this is something I never managed to do but wish I had as a nap can make you feel human again). I starting eating a lot of sugar and I think this contributed to nipple thrush, which is not good!
5. Do one thing a day to make you feel normal, I had a shower no matter what (baby screaming etc…) it made a massive difference, if you can also manage a walk with the buggy outside then you will really feel A LOT better
6. Buggies are magic, I repeat: buggies are magic! Babies fall asleep in buggies and sleep for hours in the fresh air. Whoever invents a buggy treadmill you can put on a balcony or in a garden will be an overnight billionaire.
7. NCT and the friends I made through NCT is invaluable and one of the best things we spent “baby” money on
8. Buy a Cocoonababy, she slept in it for 3 months, I even perfected the technique of feeding her into the Cocoonababy by leaning over (only works with big floppy boobs I’m afraid), she would fall asleep eating and I didn’t have to move her at night, saved HOURS of rocking, shushing etc..
9. If you think you will just feed the baby then put it back in its bed at night and it will fall asleep then YOU ARE WRONG. This is why before the cocoonababy feeding technique I co-slept with A, she would fall asleep and I would just roll over to the other side of the bed, i.e. NO DRAMA and MORE SLEEP
10. At the beginning when people ask you “are you enjoying it?”, you will wonder what the hell they are talking about and what there is to enjoy, don’t feel guilty, 3 months later, you will know what they mean.

That’s all folks