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1. Start with the Walls

Paint or wallpaper is a great way to set an ambiance.  There’s no need to follow the pink-or-blue trend; try something unique. If you stick to gender-neutral, timeless colors and prints, it will last you way past the baby years. (This is also handy when you don’t know the baby’s gender!) You can also use stencils or decals to create designs on the walls. White walls are  sweet too, you have plenty of other areas for adding color and contrast.

2. Keep it simple

“Less is more” is a good rule of thumb when decorating children’s rooms. We think a baby’s room can be fun, colorful, and interesting, but should maintain a peaceful and serene vibe. You only need one or two focal pieces, so conserve your money to splurge on something that you really love, like an antique mirror or beautiful bedding.

3. Search for Treasures

It’s nice if your children’s room contains a few objects that didn’t come straight from the store. Antique finds at the second hand shop, old family photographs, dolls from when you were a child… many things can be incorporated that you might not have thought about at first. Look for heirlooms in your parent’s attic or local thrift shop. You’ll be sweetly surprised at how much meaning these type of decorative elements give your nursery.

4. Keep Crib Bedding to a Minimum

This is more for safety than style. An overabundance of stuffed pillows, fluffy blankets, and crib bumpers can pose suffocation hazards for small babies. The crib is NOT a good place to focus your creative juices; wait til your child is older to make up a dream bed full of throw pillows and flouncy covers.

5. Fancy Floors

Because your little one will spend lots of time on the floor, it’s a great place to focus attention. Bright colors, stripes, and patterned rugs are great if you have wood or tiled flooring. Soft wall-to-wall carpets are a nice touch and keep little explorers comfy. Look for materials that are easily cleaned!

6. A Corner for You

We know you’ll be spending a considerable amount of time with your baby. Even if baby sleeps with you at night, the nursery may be the place you go to change diapers, snuggle, and play during the day. Stick in a comfy arm chair or rocker, an end table to hold some books and a glass of water while you’re feeding.

7. Fill it with Love

Even if you don’t have the means to go all-out decorating, the physical trappings of your baby’s room are not what’s most important. I like the way it’s said here: “While decorating your baby’s room is personal and fun, remember that the heart of your child’s room is not what is physically held within the four walls. Rather it is the relationship of the parents and child. So if your baby is born into a room of stark white walls, with boxes crammed in a corner, so be it. It won’t change how you love him or her, nor will they grow up decoratively challenged.”

Always be prepared

Keep your camera handy at all times.  This way you’ll always be ready to capture those special spontaneous moments.  Plus, the more familiar your baby is with a camera, the less he’ll be distracted when you whip it out, and you’ll be able to take more natural looking pictures.

You don’t need an expensive camera to take a great photograph, just a good eye and a magical moment.

Getting Ready

The logical way to start out is by ensuring that your baby is well fed, happy, and comfortable. (Tired, cranky babies do not make good models!) Keep your background simple (like a white sheet or a dark colored carpet) to let your baby take “center stage.”  For a more personal point of view, get down to your baby’s eye level.

Lighting your photo

Anne loves using natural light. Soft, directional light coming from a window is always more flattering than the flash on a camera. If you are photographing outside, take advantage of the early morning or late afternoon light. The mid-day sun doesn’t bring out the best in anyone, not even your perfect baby!

Candid camera

The loveliest shots of your baby will most likely be candid ones.  You can forget the flower pots and teddy bears, and let it just be about your beautiful baby. If you can, take pictures in settings that is meaningful for you; this will give them an even deeper resonance.  On a special occasion, try for a sense of place, so you will always remember that day or the story behind the image.

Show proportion

Your newborn is tiny for such a short time. Even as they grow, each stage passes faster than you want it to. You might not believe it now, but you will forget how small your baby was in the beginning, so try to show your baby’s size in relation to the surroundings. A picture of your baby cradeled in daddy’s hands is so poignant because it captures that sense of scale.

Don’t forget to include yourself!

If you are usually the one behind the camera, don’t forget to include yourself in as many photographs with your family as possible!  Your children will want to know what you looked like “way back then” and will thank you for it later!

Save and organize

Try to download your pictures from your camera on a regular basis, saving them to files grouped by months when your baby is young. Save your images by naming them, which will make it easier to loacte them later on. Instead of “Amy Summer,” try “Amy 6mos in hat. Always back up your digital images, which are valuable and irreplaceable. Use digital photo websites where to can share albums with family, scroll through smaller “thumbnail” images to find favorites, play and share slide shows, tag and favor photos, comment on them, and much more.

Use the video

Try out the short video feature on your digital camera. Those spontaneous moments will be beloved, and your kids will enjoy seeing themselves “live” as babies.

Read more: 20 tips from Anne Geddes for taking great photos

View Ann Geddes most amazing baby pictures of the year

View 50 Amazing newborn photos by real moms

It’s a long list, so I picked my fifteen favorites:

1. @NightNannies – Take each day at a time and enjoy your baby as it goes very quickly.
2. @jules23 – Do your own thing. EVERYONE will have an opinion on what you should do.
3. @wellbalancedpup – Get a good babysitter and have time doing things with your partner and dont feel guilty about it.
4. @sarabanut – Take ANYONE up on their offer to help after you have the baby.
5. @Elouise82 – Best advice? Don’t listen to other mothers’ advice! They will all drive you insane if you let them.
6. @jerseybites – Relax. We make our first borns so neurotic by being so neurotic. Don’t make everything have to be a lesson. Just enjoy.
7. @WayMoreHomemade – From a control freak… realize that it’s not all under your control.
8. @sueannesjewelry – Trust your own instincts when it comes to the mental and physical health of your child. Nobody knows them like mom.
9. @tygerbaby – My sister had antibacterial everything…I’m pretty sure there were no living microbes anywhere in the house but…my nephew gets sicker more often than his younger sister, and the illnesses hit hard.
10. @MomPath – Best advice 4 1st time mom? Laugh more & let the unimportant stuff slide. It’s an amazing adventure.
11. @cheeriokeeper – Always pack 2-3 outfits in the diaper bag. There’s always bound to be a blow-out when you’re least expecting it.
12. @latarahamying – Sleep when the baby sleeps and don’t try to be superwoman – it is impossible
13. @birthinbinsi – Listen to advice, but trust your instincts. You know what is right for you and your baby.
14. @SideKickBoy – If only my wife believed me when I told her how cute she is all pregnant.

…and I’ll add my own:

15. Use the internet… it’s a great resource (and comfort) for all your pregnancy and baby related questions!

Visit His Boys Can Swim! to see the complete list!

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Pregnancy: helpful advice for fathers-to-be

(from The Times Online)

As I was saying, ginger is not the universal panacea

Is it the internet’s fault? Or is it hardwired into the human genome? For some reason, the one thing everyone knows about pregnancy is that the cure for morning sickness is ginger biscuits. And ginger tea. And crystallised stem ginger. And ginger-flavoured boiled sweets. And ginger pills from health-food shops. And it turns out to be rubbish. I filled an entire room of my house with ginger and ginger-related products. They are still there.

But ginger biscuits do have their uses

Principally, to make pregnant people very, very exasperated. As in, the 4,000th well-meaning person intervenes sagely when pregnant person complains of feeling wretched. Asks: “Have you tried eating ginger biscuits?” Pregnant person ripostes: “Have you tried putting your ginger biscuits in your ass?”

Everyone who has already had a baby knows everything

And, boy, do they want to tell you about it. Have a water birth. Have a home birth. Have an epidural. Don’t have an epidural. Make sure you have it in hospital. The pain is FANTASTIC: it hurts so good. Only wimps take drugs. Or, from men: Don’t, whatever you do, look down the business end.

You will never look at your sieve the same way again

Squeamish people, look away now. It’s to do with water births. While you’re weighing up all the options, one of your friends, who is a couple of months farther along and planning to have a water birth will pipe up proudly: “I’ve been entrusted with a special job. I get to use the sieve to fish the poo out of the birthing pool!”

Sobriety is contagious

This horrible condition, a secondary symptom of infection by foetus, can easily cross the barrier from pregnant person to pregnant-by-proxy. Apparently, sharing a bed with someone who crawls in stinking of whisky and mumbling about dwarves, before snoring in a series of unstoppable crescendos, is not nice if you’re sober.

Pregnant people need to eat right now. Not in five minutes. NOW

This one can take you by surprise. Be prepared. A greatcoat pocket full to the brim with ginger biscuits is what I’d advise.

But they don’t, disappointingly, want to eat jam roly-poly with kippers

You are trying for a child, clearly, because you want a little version of yourself to boss about and teach to do tricks. But you are also sneakingly looking forward to a good laugh as your beloved turns into the amazing coal-eating monster. Watching her stuff the old pie-hole with white carbs leaves you feeling, well, short-changed.

Being pregnant by proxy hurts

As in, “OW! What did you do that for? All I said was that perhaps you’d feel a bit better if you had a wee nibble on one of these here ginger biscuits. Jeez. Get a sense of humour.” Then it hurts again. Then you sleep on the sofa.

Which is a shame, because she’s looking spectacular

Glowing, in fact. A gentle bulge in the tum. Hair shiny. Bosom inflated. Skin all lovely. Did I mention the bosom? It’s also extremely sore. And itchy. And hurts like the very devil in the cold. Jocular offers to rub some soothing liniment in are greeted with a loving, but hard, stare.

You lose the ability to do maths

This afflicts you immediately you start trying for a child. It takes six months, on average, to conceive. You’ve been trying for two whole weeks and the pee-stick has still not turned blue. You become pregnant, and read that your child has a one in one hundred thousand chance of coming out with a foot instead of a nose. You lie awake at night, rigid with fear and self-pity.

You discover there is raw egg, soft cheese or depleted uranium in anything that is tasty to eat

These foodstuffs suddenly take over the world. Everything you are offered makes you exclaim: “Nooo, ambassador! With this canapé, you are killing my unborn son and heir.” You Google taramasalata obsessively, and have intense whispered conferences about poached eggs.

They don’t stop trying to con you just because you’re pregnant

Look! Special anti-stretch mark cream for your pregnant tum. Only – ye gods! is that forty quid? But look… these vitamins have a picture of a BAY-BEH on them …

You profoundly disagree on names

You have, let us say, a penchant for sonorous biblical names, evocative of Old Testament levels of suffering: Ruth, Rachel, Rebecca; Solomon, Jonah, Job. Be assured, your honey will have set her heart on the sort of Eighties pop-star names that would score big in Scrabble: Zack, Xavier or Quelvin.

The standard units of measurement for foetal development are forms of food

Instead of something sensible, like tennis ball, rugby ball, etc, babies are measured in increments of lentil, haricot bean, walnut and avocado. Why? It’s not like you’re going to eat it when it comes out.

Pregnant people get lots of cool free goodies

All your friends seem to start pumping out babies at the same time. The effect of this is that in the your-group-of-friends microeconomy, there will be at any given time 14 strollers, 84 babygrows and 4,001 bootees in circulation. Take them, use them, pass them on.

People find you much less interesting than you find yourself

In the three months before your first scan – ie, before it’s safe to tell people – you become convinced that everyone has guessed. You’re both drinking fizzy water and alcohol-free beer, not smoking or taking drugs, and you’re going to bed at about half past nine. Three months on it turns out none of them even noticed.

You worry about weird stuff

For example, what’s going to happen to the sexy little stud in your beloved’s bellybutton when her navel turns inside out?

When you’re having a scan, that’s her bladder you’re looking through

Did you know that already? Well, I didn’t. It acts like a little window. That’s why she has to drink plenty of water beforehand. What’s through the bladder window, children? Why: children. How cool is that?

Still photos from scans don’t really capture the magic

You wondered why people who’d had a scan of their unborn child would thrust this granular grey blur in your face and shriek, “Look! It’s its little leg, or something!” Eh? Then when you’re having a scan, this thing springs on to the screen, waving its ten-fingered hands at you, and it has a nose, and legs, and everything, and tears start in your eyes. So you duly go round thrusting a granular grey blur in people’s faces and shrieking, “Look! It’s its little leg, or something!”

You have never been so profoundly, bone-deep excited about anything in your whole life before

OK. They do tell you that. But until the 12-week scan, you don’t believe them.

Pickle picture from womb within.

Among many reasons to love her (she’s funny, she makes baby blankets, she gardens, and she admits, like most of us, that she has OFFICIALLY become her mother) is the fact that although she really does seem to have her act together, she struggles and gets that out of control feeling, like the rest of us parents:

As usual, I went back and read some of my journal from the years when I had three preschoolers. Would you like to know some of the topics? Oh, there were the usual cute antics that made for some of my fondest memories.

But in there were also headings like this: “I’m exhausted.” “Frustrated. ” “ Frustrated, again.” “I’m losing it. ” The preschool years were some of the greatest years (certainly the cutest!), but they were also some of the absolute hardest times of our marriage and parenting. You are NOT crazy for feeling this way.

One of my most out-of-control times (there have been many!) was when I was pregnant with our third child. I was on bedrest for sixteen weeks (almost four whole months!). My body was wanting to go into labor constantly. I was not able to work (I had a part-time job at the time), so we had financial strain. Thankfully, some kind friends helped me with housework, but I was so embarrassed that someone would have to fold my underwear and clean my toilets!

And some words of wisdom:

I spent much of my early years trying to do everything perfectly. Somehow I got the idea that if I did everything right – if I love my kids enough, use just the right discipline techniques, if I train them well enough in how to behave – I would never have to struggle in parenting them.

My delusion even somehow included the idea that conflict would even disappear from my home, because I was doing everything properly... It was a delusion, alright.… If only I had known it is not so much about being perfect – and the guilt and exhaustion that inevitably accompany it - as it is about not giving up.

Looking at this picture makes you want to go have a few more kids yourself, doesn’t it?? They’re just one big happy family!