Friends of mine are adopting a newborn, if all goes well, in a couple of months. This has prompted me to try to distill some pragmatic newborn and young infant tips based on my vast sample size of … one. I will try to keep these as broadly-applicable (and as non-mommy-war-ish) as possible. I’ve got loads more tips and suggestions if your baby is like mine in one dimension or another, or if we share parenting approaches, but I’ll try to avoid those as much as possible.
Here we go:
- Avoid diaper rash; lube ‘em up with plain old A&D at the merest hint of redness. If you start to see even spots of severe rashiness, switch over to something that’s got 40% zinc oxide for a little while. Related: change them often.
- If you are not worried about getting calories into your baby, do not wake a sleeping baby.
- There will be sleep deprivation. Baby sleep patterns change frequently. Be prepared for sleep regressions.
- Don’t be ashamed to use hand-me-down clothes a lot – they will grow out of them fast. Then hand them on down to someone else.
- Read to the baby every day. Early hits are Boynton’s Moo, Baa, LaLaLa and A to Z.
- Start a bedtime routine as early as possible. Some combination of bath/books/boob or bottle/bed.
- I read somewhere that peak crying is around 6 weeks. That was true for us (not counting the molars at 14, 15, now going on 16 months).
- Personal recommendation: start taking them to restaurants/coffeeshops as soon as possible and take them regularly so that they get used to HowThingsAre and HowToBehave in restaurants. (We started taking TLG to the coffeeshop at 3.5 weeks.)
- Buy diapers, wipes, infant meds, and other consumables in bulk to avoid emergency supply runs as much as possible. Sign up for Amazon Prime and use its free 2-day shipping, too.
- I have found it very helpful to do TLG’s laundry separately – I just keep a basket that fills up with dirty TLG laundry items and send it through when it’s full. I combine burp cloths, towels, receiving blankets, clothes, bibs, and whites&darks in this basket because sorting infant stuff seems a waste of time. I expect that to shift over the next few months, but not yet.
- Turn the ringer off on the phone in the room where the baby sleeps.
- It is better, albeit temporarily unpleasant, for the child to vomit all over YOU than to vomit all over the bed or carpet. You clean up much faster, trust me.
If I think of any more, I’ll do another post. But those are some tips for now. Questions? 
Hand me downs are essential, don’t forget about shoes too. We now have three boys who get hand me downs all the way to the bottom. Hell, I’m wearing a hand me down from my father in law right now.
Bedtime routine. I try to follow this rule myself, but the wife often discourages the last bit.
Laundry. Always wash separately, especially if TLG has sensitive skin. We use Dreft because we would see a skin rash after one day of Zach wearing clothes that were regularly washed. Even bedsheets.
It is better for the child to vomit all over SOMEONE ELSE, not YOU. I thought you were smarter than that.