Three Baby Care Tips New Parents are NOT being told

By Heidi Skudder – Infant Sleep Coach & Maternity Coach 

Being a new parent in 2025 

Being a new parent has never been more overwhelming than it is right now. When the baby arrives, advice is bombarded towards parents left, right and centre. Whether it’s from well meaning in-laws, family, friends, social media accounts, or the hospital leaflets… it is everywhere! Even your healthcare professionals, like midwives, will all have different ways of doing things as well as differing opinions.

This can make for a really confusing and daunting entry into parenthood. With a substantial amount of noise out there (we understand that this is adding to it!), we wanted to give you some real, genuine advice that we believe parents are not always being told. Not just the generic advice that comes in leaflets or Instagram posts, but advice that makes a massive difference to those early months, but that’s (sadly) not readily shared by either healthcare professionals or other experts.

As a baby care expert with more than 20 years of hands-on experience under my belt, I wanted to share advice that actually makes a huge difference as proven by parents’ experiences of the fourth trimester and beyond.

Tip No.1

First of all, we need to bust a myth. Most parents come out of hospital believing that you don’t need to wind your breastfed baby. When I say this out loud at The Baby Show in my talks, you can immediately see the grandparents turn to their children and smile or joke, because it used to be something that was believed many moons ago.

Rather than not winding a breastfed baby, the most solid advice I can give you that will impact not only your baby’s feeding experience, but also ultimately their sleep too; is to wind your baby. Wind them, wind them again and wind them one more time too. One burp coming up does not mean that your baby no longer has any trapped gas. 

If your baby is fed and going to be awake for a little longer, practice organic winding. Organic winding involves just going about your normal everyday life, but putting your baby in positions that we know will naturally bring up wind. For example, putting them over your shoulder, or laying them flat on their back and then picking them up again. When we use these positions, your baby becomes happier and less windy, meaning sleep becomes easier too.

Tummy time is also incredibly important not only for your baby’s body to help them stretch out, but also for dislodging any stuck burps too. One of my favourite tips for new parents is to use tummy time as an exercise for your baby ten minutes before they go down for a nap. This can help bring up the last of the wind and become a really handy way of helping your baby become more comfortable.

Tip no.2

When your baby is born into this world, they will have arrived in various different ways (c-section, vaginal birth), long labour/short labour, interventions, antibiotics…you name it, there are a whole range of variables and factors that can impact how a baby gets here. Whilst all births differ, what new parents aren’t told is that both your pregnancy journey and the way in which your baby is born can then go on to influence how healthy and strong their gut microbiome is. For example, babies born via c-section have been shown to have a less diverse microbiome. 

In order to digest well and have a happy tummy, babies need as much diversity as possible. Their diet can also be impacted by the maternal diet in pregnancy, stress, and being either formula fed or breastfed from the start. What if new parents were told that they can actually positively influence their babies microbiome by the use of probiotics and breastfeeding from early on? Whilst we know that this is not always a choice for some parents, hospitals send parents home without really explaining the real benefits of boosting and building their baby’s digestive health from early on. 

Having worked with thousands of babies over the last decade, I am confident that gut health and how happy their tummies are has a significant impact on how comfortable they go on to be. Reflux, colic and allergies can all be tracked back to the gut microbiome, which is why giving a probiotic strain (from birth!) such as BioGaia’s baby drops which contain L. reuteri DSM 17938 can be super helpful in settling their gut and can contribute to the health and happiness of both parents and babies in those early months.

Tip No.3

And finally, we end with a third and final piece of advice that for me is the most crucial when it comes to new parenthood. Your gut feeling. Not your actual gut, (although you should look after that too) but your maternal or paternal instinct. The feeling inside that is so easy to avoid listening to, but the one that knows so many of the answers to lots of the big questions that you have; How to feed your baby? Where are they going to sleep? Do you want visitors in those early weeks? You KNOW the answer, but society, family pressures, social media and information overload can push you right off track.

Gut instinct comes into its own during the more difficult times too; When your baby is crying and everyone keeps telling you a different way of dealing with it. When your baby is sicking up and you are being told that it is just normal baby behaviour. 

As a baby care “expert”, let me tell you this…you know your baby better than anyone else. It does take time to learn their cries and get used to what they want but when it really matters, you hold the answer. I find that sitting quietly with your thoughts and tuning into the different options available can be really helpful. Notice where you feel the sensation in your body when you go through each option and ask yourself “what would I do if no one was watching?”. In fact, maternal instinct is so powerful that it is now starting to be used in clinical diagnoses (perhaps not enough, but slowly). There is now more understanding than ever on how strong a mothers instinct is in being able to tell what might be wrong with her baby.

Remember that the world is a wash with information overload and we take on more pieces of information and advice daily now more than we ever have done. Find your people, tune into what feels good for you but most importantly, listen to yourself. As your parenting grows, your confidence will grow too. Second and third time mothers will often say that they wish they knew then, what they know now. Having the confidence to believe in yourself and advocate for your baby is one of the best things you can ever do as a parent.