What you need when taking a baby or toddler on an outing

The bag:

Forget trendy and think practical. Choose a bag that’s spacious, light, durable and washable. It should have a shoulder-length padded strap, or, if you would prefer to be hands free, choose a backpack. The bag should have sensible compartments with secure pockets for your cell phone, purse and keys if you don’t want to take a handbag along. A pocket for documents is useful – especially when you go to the clinic or doctor.

Some bags come with a change mat, others open into a change mat. You need pockets for bottles (some bags have these thermal lined to keep formula or boiled water warm).

Essentials:

• Soft, plastic change mat
• Nappies – towelling or disposable – at least 6 or more depending on your outing
• Wipes – in a zip lock bag
• Wet face cloth in a zip lock bag
• Packets for used nappies and trash
• Hand sanitizer
• Extra dummies in a sealed plastic container
• Tissues
• Toys
• Change of clothing
• Beanie or sunhat depending on the season
• Bibs

Feeding:

Breast:
• Shawl
• Breast pads
• Burp cloth
• Extra top in case you leak

Bottle:
• Either prepared formula or water and powdered formula
• Bib
• Burp cloth

If you also have a toddler you will need:

• Diluted fresh fruit juice in a Sippy cup
• Toys
• Extra clothes
• Extra underwear if potty-training
• Snacks
• Hat or beanie – depending on the weather.

First aid:

It’s always useful to keep these in a separate bag:

• Plasters

• Round-tipped scissors

• Tea-tree oil (it’s good for everything!)

• Teething gels

• Medicines your baby may be taking

• Nappy rash cream

• Sunblock stick for babies and children.

Top tips:

• Keep the nappy bag packed and ready all the time 

• Repack and clean it out as soon as you come home

• Keep a smaller bag for short outings with just a few essentials

• Attach a baggage label with your name and contact details (if you’re like me, there’s a chance you will leave it behind one day!)

• Don’t forget your own needs – a bottle of water and a snack. Breastfeeding moms especially get very thirsty and moms use a lot of calories for energy

• Keep a few pegs or a bulldog clip

• One contestant in the Amazing Race brought duct tape on his wife’s insistence. It came in very handy. Keep some in your car …..

Mothers and daughters

Paige is not alone. Communication between mothers and daughters has always been difficult. Is it that there is no time, or finding the right moment to have a serious talk with our daughters? Teens always ask questions when you’re multi-tasking, so you’re likely to give them 'half-hearted' answers. I know. I’ve done it myself. 

Firstly, you have to understand this changing relationship with your daughter. Unless you were a once-upon-a-time Miss South Africa, don’t be surprised if your daughter disowns you when she is with her friends. This hurts I know, but you’re not her friend and she is not your ‘mini-me’. I’ve heard mothers say that they were not going to have a mother-daughter relationship problem because ‘we’re best friends’. Now that she’s a teenager, you’re her mother, and a monster mother at that – that’s what she tells her friends!

There are a few things that can rip your relationship apart:

First, she starts getting periods and her hormonal yo-yo, in disharmony with yours, can cause major emotional head-on collisions. She’s also becoming Daddy’s girl and knows just how to wrap your man around her little finger. Finally, she’s watching and you have to earn her trust and respect.

How to avoid conflict:

• Your daughter is learning about relationships with her 'besties'. Trust, respect and honesty are the three legs of a stable marriage. When she was a baby, she learned this from you. Now she’s learning from her girlfriends. Acquiring these qualities through friendship, out of the family comfort-zone, will help her build a sound relationship with the opposite sex one day.

• Don’t be jealous of the new daughter-dad relationship. Your daughter is learning about love, and a father’s love is the only non-sexual love-relationship she will ever have with the man in her life that she loves.

• Tell her about periods and how to cope with them. Give her tips you had to learn the hard way.

• Teach her how to look after herself – skin, nails, legs, hair. When a woman looks good, she feels good.

• Listen – don’t preach

• Tell her about boys: that they like to do the chasing, warn her against his charms, remind her that they are friends i.e. boyfriend and that if he likes her, he will make the first move.

• When your daughter asks questions like: “how do you know when you are pregnant?” don’t snap: “why do you want to know?”

• Teach her responsibility by giving her important chores around the house; cooking a meal, bathing the baby, helping with the shopping etc.

• Learn to ‘let go’. Don’t manage her time, decisions, projects and responsibilities. We all learn by making mistakes. This will teach her how to avoid making big mistakes when she is older.

• Make time for your daughter. Go for walks, cook (let her do the nice stuff – not just the washing-up) watch TV. This helps to open discussion.

If you’re despairing, don’t. Teenager-hood is six brief ( if not traumatising) years. Bear in mind that when your daughter has her own baby one day, you will be among the first people to know. Then she will come to you for advice. She will also thank you for what you did for her and she will understand what you sacrificed for her.

Carpet stains

Women get most of the attention after giving birth, but we forget that new dads are often just as stressed. In trying to understand why more parents are stopping at one child, German and Canadian researchers are speculating that this may be because some couples become unhappy after the birth of their first baby.

Cape Town based clinical psychologist Mireille Landman explains that ‘becoming a parent is a life crises in which basic, irreversible decisive changes occur. This transition means making major adjustments which take time and work to accept. Most parents, across the spectrum, find the adjustments to parenthood in the early months often unrewarding and emotionally and physically draining’.

Some of the adjustments Landman lists are:

• Accepting responsibility for the life of another human being

• Learning to tolerate difficult, negative emotions provoked by the baby e.g. non-stop crying

• Learning to tolerate the frustrations, doubts, failures and disappointments that go hand-in-hand with parenting

• New demands and expectations from their partner, family and others

• A change in relationships with one’s parents 

• Dealing with exhaustion, loss of independence, loss of affirmation and recognition that may have come from job satisfaction

• The added stress of multi-tasking

• Accepting a new identity – from couple to mom, dad, family. 

Coping with these challenges:

Bonding with the baby: When there are no after-birth complications, baby should be left with the mother, skin-to-skin for the first ‘magic hour’, with dad to help. 

Un-intrusive support from family and friends, is essential.

Couples need to be open and honest with one another and to talk about how they are feeling and what their needs and expectations are. 

Take one day at a time during the first six weeks of adjustment to parenthood. 

My survival technique when my children were growing up was ‘It doesn’t matter.’ It wasn’t always easy to stick to especially on occasions like the time mercurochrome spilled over the new carpet spread like fresh blood from a wound! I had to remind myself that the world was not going to stop spinning when things went wrong. When we learn to deal with little problems when our children are small, we cope with much bigger problems when they are grown up. 

Men's Health

And now for something different – let’s talk about men’s health. Women are reminded to check their breasts for lumps, but men should also check their testicles for lumps advises Dr Lance Coetzee, head of the Urology Hospital, Pretoria, South Africa. Coetzee treats an average of two cases of testicular cancer every month. 

Testicular cancer mostly affects younger men (aged 17 – 35) when sperm production is optimal. The tumour can be removed through the groin, but if the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, chemotherapy and sometimes surgical removal is unavoidable.

Symptoms to look out for:

•  Painless swelling or lump in one or both testicles

•  Pain or heaviness in a testicle

•  Lower abdomen, back or groin pain.

•  Need to know about testicles:

Testicles maketh a man! These walnut shaped and sized glands produce between three to five hundred million sperm per ejaculation! They also make testosterone that is responsible for important physical changes during puberty. During adulthood, this important male hormone helps to maintain libido, muscle strength and bone mass. 

The testicles hang outside the body in the scrotal sac that has an ingenious temperature control mechanism (sperm can’t survive if they get too hot or too cold). Too hot and the testicles hang to cool down. Too cold and the scrotal sac contracts, bringing the testicles close to the body where they can be warmed up. 

Injury to the testicles causes immobilising abdominal pain. This is because while baby boys are developing in the womb, the testicles begin their life journey from just below the kidneys (as do the ovaries) which is in the abdomen. They gradually descend into the pelvis and finally into the scrotal sac in the last month of pregnancy. The nerve source remains in the abdomen. 

When baby boys are born prematurely, the testicles may be undescended. It’s important to make sure that undescended testicles are surgically corrected before his first birthday. Undescended testicles can lead to infertility or become cancerous. 

Men are usually hesitant to talk about health issues – especially when it comes to sexual matters. It’s important for couples to be honest and open with one another because, as Dr Lance Coetzee emphasises, early detection yields better results. 

For more information, email urology@urology.co.za or www.urology.co.za and follow The Urology Hospital, Pretoria on facebook.