If you have ever stood over a bassinet at 2 a.m. watching your baby startle awake for the fifth time in two hours, you know the particular desperation that comes with newborn sleep.

You have tried everything. You are exhausted. And yet there is one tool that has been calming babies for literally thousands of years, and it works just as well tonight as it did many generations of mothers before: a good swaddle.

The first 24 hours after giving birth can feel surreal. Time stretches and compresses at the same time. Your body has just done something enormous, your baby is finally here, and everything you thought you understood about sleep, hunger, and time immediately changes. Even when birth goes exactly as planned, the first day postpartum is intense in ways most people do not fully prepare you for.

The first week with a newborn is often described as magical, exhausting, emotional, overwhelming, sacred, and chaotic all at once.

This checklist focuses on the things that truly make postpartum life smoother. It prioritizes comfort, function, and emotional ease. You can move through it at your own pace and skip anything that does not serve you. The goal is to create a soft landing for both you and your baby.

As a former NICU nurse turned postpartum doula, I have calmed my fair share of babies! So I created this guide with practical, gentle ways to calm a fussy baby while also helping you feel more confident and grounded as a parent. These are not tricks meant to silence a baby. They are strategies that help babies feel safe, regulated, and understood.

This guide walks you through your baby’s first bath step by step, then moves into practical tips and hacks to make bathing calmer and easier as the weeks go on.

If you’re a new parent, you’ve probably already discovered one of the biggest surprises of the newborn stage: babies have a lot of gas. Their tiny digestive systems are still learning how to work! Even the simplest things like feeding, crying, swallowing air, or adjusting to a new formula can leave them squirmy, uncomfortable, and overtired.

Your brutally honest, expert-backed guide for desperate, sleep-deprived parents

If you’re reading this at 3 a.m. with one eye open, Googling “WHY WON’T MY BABY SLEEP ANYMORE,” welcome! You’ve officially entered the 4-month sleep regression.

One week your baby was doing solid stretches, maybe even “sleeping through the night,” and the next week?
They're waking up every 45 minutes, crying the second you put them down, refusing naps, and suddenly need to nurse/bottle every time they stir.

In the first days and weeks after giving birth, newborn feeding can feel confusing? Unpredictable? Exhausting?! As a postpartum doula and lactation consultant, I’m here to help demystify the whole newborn feeding experience so you know what is normal, what isn’t and how much you’re actually supposed to be feeding your baby.