A pediatrician describes what not to buy before the baby is born

Pediatrician Fedor Katasonov runs a popular Telegram channel on children’s health, where he advises parents and shares his experience as a doctor and father of two children. Recently, the publishing house Individuum published Fedor’s first book, entitled Pediatrics: a non-anxious approach to the child, in free translation. In one of the chapters, the author explains why it is not necessary to buy toys, a bathtub and even a crib before the birth of a child.

With permission from the publisher, the awesome.club publishes a chapter for those who are making the baby’s shopping list.

Talking serious. Don’t buy a crib until you figure out what will be the most comfortable way to sleep for you and your baby. Prepare a place for him, but postpone the purchase itself until you are sure that mom and baby will be more comfortable sleeping separately. In general, very young children sleep well on their own, but around 6 months their sleep becomes more sensitive and they become more demanding. But even if you sleep apart, you can’t avoid breastfeeding at night. Therefore, in my opinion, the most comfortable thing is a large carrycot placed next to the bed.

The mother takes the baby out, feeds it and returns it to its place without taking a single step. Cribs with a retractable side placed next to the parent’s bed allow for a similar procedure but take up more space. Also, if the child starts to crawl very early, like my oldest daughter, who started doing it at 4 months, the baby may just end up in bed with you, while getting out of the carrycot is not so easy.

When the children get too big for the “basket”, they can sleep either in their mother’s bed or on a mattress on the floor. The floor is the safest place to sleep. It’s very possible that you’ll end up needing a crib, but I’d advise making the decision after you’ve given birth.

The table for changing diapers is a separate issue. Children fall from it. Even in my case, just when I was studying the types of childhood injuries, my eldest daughter was not saved from a beautiful flight. (I must say that falling off a changing table is almost always safe, but for some reason, parents go gray when this happens, so the absence of a changing table will allow you to keep your hair color).

The most important feature of a changer is that it is absolutely unnecessary. I recommend that my patients’ parents buy a waterproof mattress instead of a changing table and place it on top of the bed.

The most comfortable are approximately 70 X 80 cm. If you don’t have acute arthritis, the best position to change your baby is to kneel in front of the bed. First, the bed is big and the edge is hard to reach. Secondly, children are fully prepared to fall from their own height, and therefore falling out of bed will not hurt them. And all the necessary items (the diaper pack, the baby wipes, the cream, the saline solution and the cotton pad), will fit neatly on the bedside table or on a footstool.

The purpose of this item, at a time when the era of endless cloth diaper washing is being erased from the world’s memory, remains a mystery to me. It makes no sense to bathe a baby in a bathtub, because bathing is a physical exercise. The baby cannot swim in the bathtub, and it is too early for him to lie down in it with a book or a glass of champagne. You have to bathe the baby in a large bathtub, which, if your hygienic neurosis requires it, can be thoroughly washed beforehand.

It’s better not to think about what people usually spend on a stroller with a cover. Sometimes they are more expensive than the last iPhone! It’s just that it’s an article of very limited application and rather uncomfortable, which soon, in addition to everything else, you’ll have to get rid of.

For me, the main criterion for a stroller is weight. A heavy cart is not easy to handle, believe me. That’s why my youngest daughter has never been in one with a roof. She rode around in a car seat that we put on a lightweight, all-terrain chassis. The whole construction weighed about 8 kg. I ordered the US chassis, but it can be found on the ad sites. There are many options for a stroller, but even so, I will give you three tips:

consider spending money on an umbrella stroller only after you’re sure no one is going to give you one; don’t buy a new one, look at second-hand items on ad sites; it definitely makes no sense to buy it if the child is born in spring or summer, because you can walk with him in a car seat until he is old enough to use a regular stroller.

Most first year clothes are very beautiful, but they only fit for a short time. The child grows several centimeters a month and uses each thing only a few times. So it’s best to ask friends who have older children and be happy to share the little clothes or browse children’s clothing thrift stores — they’re becoming quite popular in Brazil.

In France, children’s clothing is sold by weight, at one euro per kilo. This is the most sensible approach. Also, if the baby has grandparents, he will not be left without new clothes. I also want to point out that gloves and hats are absolutely useless, and gloves also cover an important reception area: the palms. There is nothing terrible about a few small scratches, and to make them appear less often, cut the baby’s nails more often.

As you read this book, you’ll realize that I’m a big fan of antigen loading. No children’s items need to be sterilized, there are simply no bacteria in your house that could harm your baby. It will be enough to pass the bottles and pacifiers in boiling water or wash them well under hot running water. The microbes that remain on children’s items will be helpful in boosting the child’s immune system.

It is neurosis in its purest form. A healthy baby needs to be weighed only during the pediatrician’s routine examination. Having a scale at home and weighing your baby every day (or after each feeding) is a sure way to gain a nervous twitch. If the weight gain goes “according to plan”, you will not experience any joy; after all, that’s how it should be. But God, don’t let the weight get too high! Or download. The mother will begin to experience anxiety, which can easily lead to a decrease in milk and further weight loss for the baby. You have to understand that the child does not gain weight evenly.

Lack of appetite due to abdominal pain or mucus, or increased activity due to anxiety, can lead to a temporary delay in weight gain, but the child will regain it in a short time. Gauges (used in pediatric examinations) were not invented by chance. They are made according to certain rules that serve as guidelines. There is no win rate
daily weight.

This is useful, but if you live in a two-story house or a very large apartment. In most apartments, you will hear the baby without special devices. Still, it is possible to use as a baby monitor (even with video), the “tablet – smartphone” set.

The mobile’s variety of shapes, colors and sounds overwhelm the senses and this is by no means necessary for a young child. Babies discover the world gradually, and for starters, they will definitely have enough with something simple, like the famous Munari mobile, which is very nice to make with your own hands. In fact, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200ba mobile looks dubious: why does a child need objects moving in front of his eyes? What are the benefits
what does it provide?

The same applies to toys: their abundance does not help the child to develop and generates tolerance for them. On the contrary, a reduced number of toys will allow the baby to appreciate each one more. To stimulate him, it will be enough to have two or three spread out on the floor or on the bed.

I want to talk separately about toys that are not correct for a certain age. Entering a toy store, perhaps for the first time since childhood, parents see beautiful and interesting products that they really like. They buy some for which the child is still very young and give them away with great happiness. But they don’t know what to do with them, they end up thrown uselessly on the floor or on the shelves. And when the child reaches the correct age for this toy, he is no longer interested, because he has already seen it many times.

Therefore, if you see a beautiful and interesting toy, buy it and set it aside to give the child in a few months or years, when he has grown up enough.

Seborrheic crusts on the head are absolutely normal. Trying to get rid of them is one of the most vivid manifestations of parental neurosis. Who said a baby’s head had to be perfectly clean? Mr. Photoshop? In general, the scabs return two or three weeks after the mother, armed with oil and a brush, has performed the “clean head” operation. Sometimes such scabs remain until preschool age, but they are not visible under the hair.

With the enclosure everything is clear. It is actually a small prison. remember the movie Back to the future, when Marty goes back to the past and sees his uncle, who was trapped in the present, in a wooden cradle: “So you’re my Uncle Joey! Get used to life behind bars, little one,” Marty told the boy. The playground is only comfortable for parents and has nothing to do with the harmonious development of the child.

More or less the same function fulfills the walker in which the baby is placed. It is a form of safe isolation of the child, only it is no longer stationary, but mobile. Not only does it not help gait development, but according to some studies it interferes, probably due to a wrong movement mechanism. Children push off the ground instead of walking, and without walking, this movement leads to a forward fall. Furthermore, the use of walkers is associated with an increase in injuries, so they are banned in Canada, and the American Academy of Pediatrics calls for their ban in the United States. Instead of sitting the baby in a walker, it will be smarter to buy a tool…