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Home › Articles › Newborn and Infant Months › Create a Nurturing Environment for Baby

Create a Nurturing Environment for Baby

5 Activities and Behaviors to Rethink When Bringing Home a New Baby

By Melinda Copp

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Bringing home a new baby means big changes around the house. But parents, especially new moms and dads, often need to change more than dirty diapers. Newborns are sensitive, and everything they see and hear sticks with them. In an effort to raise a healthy and happy child, parents need to reconsider some of their old habits and make a few alterations in their routines.

To help keep your new baby safe and healthy in those first critical months, and throughout life, experts and seasoned parents make the following 5 recommendations:

1. Make Hand Washing a Habit

You want everything that touches your baby to be clean, including your hands. Start washing your hands frequently, especially after touching pets, public door handles and dirty diapers, as soon as your baby is born, and then keep it up. Hand washing helps prevent the spread of germs. So don't hesitate to ask your newborn's visitors to wash up before touching as well.

"My twin daughters were born at 30 weeks gestation – 10 weeks early – so we made a lot of changes in our routines their first year home," says Kelly Damron, a mom from Phoenix, Ariz., and author of Tiny Toes: A Couple's Journey Through Infertility, Prematurity and Depression (Twin Peas LLC, 2007). "For example, when they were in the NICU we had to wash our hands before we could touch them. We kept that habit and required anyone visiting to wash their hands the minute they walked in the door – this lasted for at least 12 months."

2. Avoid Close, Crowded Spaces

"Parents of newborns should rethink travelling on a plane or going to other enclosed spaces with lots of people – should you really risk all those germs?" says Dr. Jennifer Shu, an Atlanta-based pediatrician and co-author of Heading Home with Your Newborn: From Birth to Reality (AAP, 2005).

Although newborns are fairly well protected by Mom's antibodies in the first six months of life, what amounts to a mild cold for an adult can be very serious in a small infant. When Baby runs a fever or refuses to eat because he isn't feeling well, then he can get really sick. And if your little one is new in the winter, consider taking extra precautions to avoid the abundance of germs that crowd public places during the cold and flu season.


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