A couple of days ago, I shared my ideas for gifts for pregnant mums-to-be, and as we’re very rapidly approaching Mother’s Day (my first one!), I wanted to share some more ideas for mums – this time gifts for new mums. After you’ve given birth, you receive a lot of gifts! I’ve been so grateful and surprised by the sheer amount of people who want to welcome Emmy with a gift, and some of these have been wonderfully creative – so much so that it’s made me rethink all the gifts I’ve given new mums in the past! Here are some of my favourite ideas for gifts for new mums:
Bubble Bath
One of my friends recommended Badedas bubble bath to me before I gave birth then surprised me with a huge bottle of it in my gift bag when she came to visit. Oh my goodness, this stuff is wonderful! She’s had a couple of C sections so knew how good it was to ease the pain around her incision and stitches, and I fully agree for my episiotomy stitches. In addition to that, it smells gorgeous, like being in a spa! Ben’s even been using it too – although I’m trying to limit his use of it since I want it all for myself!
Nursing Clothes Gift Voucher
If your friend is breastfeeding or expressing, what you need to understand is just how important clothes that she can nurse in are. While I don’t necessarily need specific nursing clothes for breastfeeding, I quickly came to realise that many of my old clothes aren’t very suitable for it – they’re too fitted or have too high necklines. So far I’ve had to have two shopping trips – one to Matalan, one to Primark – to stock up on clothes that are easier for nursing, looking for low necklines and button down fronts. Some people have gifted me vouchers to buy stuff for myself, and this is perfect for buying new clothes for nursing as I can choose for myself.
Baby Nighties
Moving away from stuff for the mum herself and thinking about new baby too, clothes are always a welcome gift, plus they’re easy to buy as they’re just so cute. One thing I’d recommend though is baby nighties – as pictured above. We’ve bought some from John Lewis, and these ones from Matalan, and they’re all Emmy wears at night now. They’re so practical and make changing middle of the night nappies so SO much easier.
Nappies, Wipes & Muslins
Thinking practically again, whether your new mum friend plans to use disposable or reusable nappies and wipes, these make an excellent gift – they’re always very welcome! While we ultimately would like to use reusable cloth nappies, we’re currently still in disposables as the reusable ones are too big for Emmy – the one pictured above is on the smallest setting (technically for newborns, but Emmy’s still swimming in some newborn clothes even, despite being over 8lb now!) and I tried it on over a normal nappy – by itself would be far too big yet! Anyway, as such we’ve gone through far more nappies than we ever imagined we would in just 4 weeks – babies have a LOT of bodily functions!
Also in this vein, muslins and burp cloths – so necessary! Everyone said this before and I didn’t really get what they were all about. Now that I have milk literally spraying across the room and soaking Emmy at times, I totally understand. I’m going through 3 or 4 burp cloths in 24 hours – I have at least 2 at my side at all times and use 2 overnight too, plus the 2 I keep in our nappy bag.
These might sound like boring gifts, but we received some little hampers friends and family had put together like this and they were some of the most welcome gifts!
Baby Footprint Kit & Baby Book
Ben’s mum gifted us a baby book a few months before Emmy was born, and I was so excited to start filling it in – in fact, I started doing so within a couple of days of being home from the hospital! The midwives also recommended getting your baby’s footprints done as soon as possible and, while we didn’t get this done until the end of our first week, I’m so glad we did. Rather than get all messy with paint, we ordered this little inkless kit off Amazon which just uses a wipe and special paper – it was really easy, apart from trying to keep her hands and feet still! It’s something that we kept forgetting to order though, so getting one for your friend would be an excellent idea to save her thinking about it.
Your time
A random one, but some of the best things people did for us was to visit and offer to help out with some chores around the house. We’d got the house as clean and tidy as possible in the run up to my due date – we were on top of decluttering, we’d cleared out the fridge and stocked the freezer with preprepared frozen meals, we’d run the dishwasher cleaner and topped up the dishwasher salt, we’d planned out how we were going to work laundry in the early days with a newborn. Ben’s really got into cleaning lately (he’s been #Hinched!) so we were all stocked up on things like Zoflora and had really got a cleaning schedule going. If you’re looking for tips on keeping your kitchen appliances like your dishwasher clean for spring, check out this infographic:
Provided by Beko
But, of course, with me in hospital for a few days and Ben going back and forth between our house and the hospital, the cleaning had to fall to the wayside. Then we got home and had to get settled into life with a newborn, and while we continued to keep on top of certain things, others got forgotten. So later that week Ben’s mum came to visit and while we were out at a midwife appointment, she cleared out the fridge, cleaned it from top to bottom, and arranged it properly for us. This was wonderful! Coming home to find it all sorted for us was just the best.
Silicon Breast Pump
Spot it in the background of the photo above! If your new mum friend is breastfeeding, I can’t recommend a silicon pump enough. I use this to collect leaks from the other side to the one I’m feeding on, and I also use it to collect let down due to a forceful let down and my large supply (more on this another day!). I stopped expressing with the electric pump around a week after coming home and am solely using the silicon pump as I mentioned above, and I’ve already got nearly 30 bags full of breast milk (each are 180ml/6oz big) in the freezer, prepped for when I go back to work. It’s amazing and takes absolutely no effort – you literally just attach it and leave it to collect!
The pharmacist I work with always gives calpol and infant nurofen as new baby gifts, I kinda feel like it’s an inspired choice!