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Tips for New Parents

Baby wearing Christmas hat

New Parent Tips

Parenting is a minefield. Most of the time we are all making it up as we go along. There is a lot of trial & error and that is why I thought I would share some of my own experiences. Not just with my own daughter, but through all the information I absorb from my clients when they visit the studio. Over time I have built up an idea of what works and what doesn’t and I have picked up tips on products that I had never heard of. Often it is the companies with the smallest advertising budgets who are making the best products for your baby. Your midwife is not allowed to recommend particular brands but we are…. Here are a few random ones that come to mind. We normally have time during your newborn photoshoot to discuss many more and issues like tongue tie, mixed feeding….

Sleep

What did an NCT antenatal class and also the one at our local birth centre with the midwives. They both suggested this simple method of putting baby in the moses basket or crib with a blanket tucked in. It turns out this doesn’t work for most of us. The best success we had was with sleeping bags or grobags which we continued to use until she grew out of the largest size they made.

Mother kissing her newborn baby at photoshootWhite Noise

We were given a Ewan the Sheep. It didn’t have any great affect in the beginning but by around six months it became a vital part of our bedtime routine. Other parents swear by apps that provide the noise of rain falling, a hairdryer or the washing machine. In the studio we use the Baby Shusher app mostly for distraction and to avoid complete silence.

Drugs

Our daughter suffered terribly with both colic and reflux. We never found out the cause nor the solution but believe that she eventually developed enough that she grew out of it. We experimented with diet, special milks etc. 

The medicine that seemed the kindest was Infacol. It is orange flavoured so doesn’t seem too mediciney.

If you do want to try Gripe water, bare in mind that the traditional stuff smells terrible. I doubt that you would want to drink it let alone give it to your baby. Luckily Boots make an own brand one that is apple flavoured.

Your GP is unlikely to prescribe you anything more useful until you have exhausted all the over the counter options. If you are tough enough the brave the screaming then your child will eventually grow out of it once their digestive system has finished developing. We eventually were prescribed Ranitidine.

Baby girl wearing a floral headband at her baby photoshootNappy Cream

For a long time we bought the brands that we got free samples of or vouchers for. Our daughter’s nursery and many people we know use Sudocrem, but when things got really bad there was only one thing that fixed it: Metanium. Make sure you get “the yellow one” not the white barrier cream. In the end we worked out that it was her diet that was causing the issues. Apparently girls get more affected than boys and it was the punnets of blueberries that she was ploughing through that were causing the problem.

I look forward to meeting with you one day soon and hopefully be able to share some thoughts and help you with the start of the beautiful journey that you are beginning.

Baby girl smiling at her newborn photoshoot

Being a Studio Photographer during Lockdown

Baby boy in bowl with green fabrics smiling

Mum and Dad looking down on their new babyWell here we are, in the middle of lockdown number three, with the doors of the studio once again closed. We still of course have work to do. The problem with the on/off nature of these lockdowns is that we have been very stop/start. We spend the pre-lockdown time taking as many photos of babies as possible and then use the lockdown time to process them. The post production side of things is really time consuming especially for the newborn photoshoots. And then, even once a client has seen their images and chosen what to order, there is still lots more to do. Ordering the frames, designing the albums, uploading the prints, packaging the order etc.

The first lockdown was a bit of a novelty. We didn’t know how long it was going to last and everyone was excited about was they could get done: banana bread etc. In our case, and given the time of year that it happened, the garden got plenty of attention. 

Baby boy on beanbag wearing long woolly hatAfter the first lockdown however we swore that if and when we got locked down again we would make the most of it. Lockdown Two was all about potty training. No distractions of photoshoots, no nursery. Just potty training. 

Lockdown Three is different again. This time our daughter is at nursery still three days a week. She can’t go to her friends or grandparents so the rest of the time she is with one of us. So with the precious time that she is at nursery we are editing, ordering, posting on social media, writing blogs….. doing the accounts, making new props for the babies and so on.

Mummy lying next to her baby boyWe have a long list of people to rebook when we are allowed to start work again. On top of that babies keep being born, people keep getting pregnant. So hopefully we will not have to wait for too long. Hopefully the numbers will start to go down and more people will get the vaccine. Many of our past clients work for the NHS and we have seen them receiving their jabs on social media which is good news.

Baby boy in bowl with green fabrics smiling