As I prepare for another baby train to hit, I am finding myself forgetting much more than I thought I did. Here are my favorite “new mommy” resource links that I still refer to for questions or advice. There is so much information out there and it helps to find a few core sites you trust to rely on. They were the most helpful and I hope they will help you too!
Baby growth and development| Babycenter | WebMD
The Babycenter was the first site I found and kept going back to. I love the baby development videos – what a little miracle every time! I referenced this website often for really everything starting with my pregnancy through the newborn stage through the toddler years – and especially during growth spurts and teething stages.
WebMD I have always used for general medical advice. Pregnancy and newborn health and wellness are well covered topics here.
Baby sleeping and feeding schedules | Cloudmom | Baby Sleep Site
I am not a scheduling every moment of my life person per se. I don’t believe in forcing a baby to take a nap when he is not tired just because it’s 2:00 and that’s what I want my baby to do.
Though I never thought I would EVER need to worry about this – I am a big fan of baby led sleeping schedules.
Cloudmom changed my perspective (and so did my sleep deprivation and desperately needing answers, even the answer was “yep, you are going to be cluster feeding at all hours for the next few days.” I used the information here as a guideline, and paid attention to the personal needs of my baby. I was able to observe indicators of sleepiness and hunger before hand and developed a baby led schedule appropriate for each stage of development. My baby was generally sleeping through the night by age 1.5 (with a couple of hiccups of course), and I don’t think this would have happened if I hadn’t researched this topic.
A second website I often referred to accidentally time and time again was Baby Sleep Site. Many times when I or my husband googled a question this website would come up and I always found the articles informative and helpful. These are more detailed articles on specific topics. I didn’t sign up for any plan, just made use of the free resources.
Even if you don’t plan on creating a baby sleeping and feeding schedule, it is important to know how many hours and how much food your baby should be getting. Also, every time I think something is wrong with little one, I look up the behavior and will find that its another milestone, growth spurt, or phase 🙂
And one more just for fun…
Baby Naming | Nameberry
You can find names just through a quick search on the internet, but Nameberry is a clean, user friendly site. I like the clean look, organization, the variety upon variety of lists, and especially the “if you like this name..” feature. Nameberry I have found to be the most convenient for initial baby name searches – I sometimes research a name further for different variations of it’s meaning, history, or nicknames out of curiosity.
Sweet peas and tea 