Learn how to successfully welcome a new baby into your family with practical tips on adjusting your schedule, setting boundaries, and creating your new normal. Tips to successfully add a new baby to the family. Structure your days to fit baby into your schedule and make the family schedule work for baby.
Did you know that adding a baby to your family will turn it upside down and inside out?
If you’ve had a baby, you already know this firsthand.
Babies are amazing, wonderful, angelic creatures (see my post Every Time a Child is Born, the World is Renewed in Innocence). They also depend on you for every bit of their care, which means they take a lot of time.
No matter whether you’re welcoming your first baby, your third, or your seventh, there is a real adjustment ahead — a learning curve as your whole family figures out how baby changes life and what “new normal” looks like this time around. Here’s how to navigate adding a new baby to the family while keeping your family strong, sane, and connected.
Baby Joins a Family — Not the Other Way Around
A facet of Babywise that most people who use it love is that baby becomes a part of the family rather than the center of it. You welcome baby into the family, but the family doesn’t put life on hold entirely just because there’s now a baby.
Why This Approach Benefits Everyone
There are real, lasting benefits to raising a baby as part of the family instead of the center of it:
- Your child has less risk of growing up self-centered.
- You still get to be a sister, a daughter, a friend — not just a parent.
- You can still participate in the activities you love, whether that’s choir, service projects, or exercise.
- Most importantly, you and your spouse can maintain a strong, connected relationship and still make time for each other.
Looking ahead, it’s easy to see the trouble that comes from making one child the center of the universe if you plan on having more children down the road. It’s hard to have more than one center of the universe. You want each of your children to feel like they’re part of a family, not competing centers of gravity.
Welcoming Baby to the Family Still Requires Sacrifice
Here’s an important word of caution about this “baby joins a family” idea: welcoming baby to the family doesn’t mean nobody has to sacrifice anything. It simply means the world shouldn’t revolve around the baby alone.
If this is your first child, you’re welcoming your baby into the family — not just adjusting life as a couple around baby.
When I had Brayden, I was the first among my siblings to have a baby, the second in my husband’s family, and the first among my closest friends. Everyone was thrilled, and everyone wanted to see us. The love and support were wonderful, but it was also exhausting — we were hauling our little baby all over town trying to appease “our public.” Some babies handle that kind of pace just fine. Brayden did not.
We were doing our best to keep life as close to “normal” (our old normal) as we could manage with a baby in tow. But baby joins the family, right? We were missing that word entirely.
Joins.
The baby joins the family. The baby is added.
Trying to add a baby to your family while keeping everything exactly the same is like saying 2+1=2. That math doesn’t work. 2+1=3. It’s like stirring a tablespoon of salt into your cookie dough and then being surprised the cookies taste salty — anytime you add something new, it changes what was already there.
When a baby joins your family, your family changes. Forever. The dynamics will never look quite like they did before, even once baby is four years old. You need to prepare for, adjust to, and accept a new normal.
Finding the Balance Between Baby’s Needs and the Family’s Needs
The whole point behind “baby joins a family” is to keep anyone from becoming baby-centered — where every single decision is made around what’s absolutely best for baby, with everyone else’s needs ignored. Sometimes baby can give a little. Sometimes “good enough” is fine for baby so that “best” can go to someone else in the family for a while.
A family runs on give and take. It shouldn’t revolve around the baby — that isn’t healthy for anyone, including baby. But “baby joins a family” also doesn’t mean life continues on exactly as it did pre-baby.
Baby changes things. Baby is a new factor in the equation, a new ingredient in the family recipe, and can’t be expected to simply tag along while the family carries on as usual. The family needs to add the baby. 2+1=3. Not 2.
In practice, that might mean:
- Missing a family gathering here and there for baby’s sake — or at least arriving late or leaving early.
- Not being able to be everywhere you used to be able to go.
- Cutting back on outside activities for a few months to protect some continuity and sanity at home (no winter basketball this year for Johnny). See Managing Baby Plus Older Kids’ Activities for more on juggling this.
There will be plenty of sacrifices along the way. Some days you might not get out of your pajamas. You might reach lunch — or even dinner — and realize you still haven’t brushed your teeth (yes, that has happened to me!). These are the small sacrifices that come with learning to juggle your time. Just as the world doesn’t revolve around baby, it doesn’t revolve around you, either — or around any other child in the house, your spouse, your in-laws, your parents, or any other single person or group. This is something you, your older kids, and your extended family and friends will all need to understand together.
>>>Read: How To Teach a Child to Be Gentle With a Baby
Setting Boundaries With Extended Family and Friends
Many of the same tips that help with Juggling Extended Family During Holidays apply just as well here:
- Give people fair warning about your limits.
- Let them know it won’t last forever.
- Be prepared to handle a few “adult tantrums” along the way.
- Set your boundaries, and stick to them.
You’ll still be able to host friends and get out of the house — you might just need to cut the evening short to get home for your baby.
Life can’t continue on exactly as it did before baby arrived. Things have to shift, and that’s true whether you’re welcoming your first baby or your fourth.
Everyone sacrifices during this season. Everyone gives a little, and some family members will need to give more than others at different times. A newborn benefits enormously from consistency while you’re getting things established, and during those early weeks, other family members may need to sacrifice more than usual.
Once baby settles into a consistent routine, the family needs less sacrifice overall, and baby becomes more flexible in return.
Babies are hard work — full stop. Even a mother of eight children doesn’t love feeling house-bound and tied down the way a new baby can make you feel. The more babies you have, the better you get at juggling it all and knowing what to expect, but that doesn’t mean every part of it feels easy every time. What experience really gives you is perspective: the certainty that this season really will pass. The family adjusts, baby grows more flexible, and eventually you land on a new normal you can’t imagine living without.
The Bottom Line
As you welcome your new baby home, aim to build a family life where things revolve around the family as a whole — not around any one individual member. Life changes with a baby just as it changed the day you got married; adding a person to the mix always changes the equation. Leaning on the principles of Babywise can make those changes easier to navigate as a family unit.
As you add your baby to your family, look for that balance — the fit that works for your family and your baby. And remember: 2+1=3.
Related Posts
- Overcoming the Challenges of Adding Baby to the Family
- Adding Baby To The Family: A Balanced Approach
- Balancing Baby’s Needs with Family’s Needs
- Prepping Siblings for Baby Tip: Establish Consistency
Reader Comments
Stephanie said…
So true! I especially love the part about being prepared for the adult tantrums. I kind of sense you’ve been there! But I find that most people do have the mentality that the baby should just have to adjust and be on the go and have no schedule or set bedtime. So, when you are one who is going to get home for that nap, or be home by bedtime, people act like you are too uptight or something. I go to the grocery store on Friday nights after I put my baby girl to bed and all I hear are young children and babies crying and whining because they are out at 9-10pm! I just shake my head. Most of the time the parents are embarrassed and frustrated with them. The poor things are just tired! But I totally have to deal with people thinking I am crazy for insisting that I be home for nap/bedtime. When my son was a baby, he was more flexible and would sleep in his pack-n-play anywhere. My baby girl is NOT flexible at all. She has the hardest time sleeping anywhere but at home. I have adjusted to that, but people think I’m crazy and uptight! Oh well.
This post originally appeared on this blog in March 2009
