What the Sister didn’t ask for

Although I don’t go around with a rope and a pen knife, I have always tried to live by the Girl Guide Motto ” Be Prepared”. In fact one of the best things about doing anything is getting prepared and I love getting things organised. However, I’ve always found that one can never really be prepared.

When Anna Shetty was getting ready for her confinement, we went about getting the layette organised and thought we’d had it all packed and ready with  super absorbent cotton nappy squares, diaper pants , gossamer soft baby gowns and half a dozen wrappers to swaddle the baby, all neatly arranged in a bag ready to go. However, we soon discovered that despite being well prepared, we actually weren’t.

For our first ever nappy change we were asked for a langot – something that was missing from our list! So off we went to the shop with a skip and a hop to find out that the shop assistant didn’t know what we wanted. After much pointing we managed to get something which obviously was not what the sister wanted but which she could grudgingly make do with.

But  baby ran through langots faster than we could dry them so we had to make another trip to buy some more! So a word of advice for new born mothers – be prepared to be unprepared for what they didn’t tell you.

Now,as a three day old granny I can share some new born  nappy tips –

• keep a stack of nappy liners – they’re great to collect and dispose off baby poo
• keep a stack of soft hosiery langots ready – they’re easy to tie on a wiggly, squealy new born.
• keep a stack of swaddle cloths 

What you never expected