Newborn care at home
The first weeks at home are mostly made of small practical things nobody demonstrated properly: how to hold a slippery baby in a bath, what a hungry cry sounds like against a tired one, how long a stretch of wakefulness should really be.
None of it is complicated. All of it is much easier shown than read, which is why so much of Sue's work happens standing in someone's own bathroom rather than in a class.
This is the everyday ground — the ordinary care that makes the difference between a fortnight of guessing and a fortnight of getting on with it.
2 articles in this topic
What this covers
- Reading your baby's cues
- Early cues, tired cues, and the difference between 'I need something' and 'I have had enough'. Reading the run-up is the skill that quietly solves half of everything else.
- Bathing and handling
- Confidence with a newborn's body — supporting the head, the bath itself, the cord, the first nails — comes from doing it once with someone experienced beside you.
- What is normal
- Nappies, hiccups, sneezes, the noises at night, the mottled skin. Most of the things that frighten new parents at 3am are ordinary, and knowing which are not is the whole point.
- Surviving the first fortnight
- Visitors, meals, who does what, and how to protect enough sleep to keep functioning. The logistics matter as much as the baby care, and they are easier to set up before you need them.
Read on this topic
Newborn Cues: How to Read Your Baby’s Signals
Learn newborn cues before the crying starts. Spot early signals, settle your baby sooner, and feel more confident in those first weeks.
29 May 2026
How Do I Tell If My Newborn Is Hungry or Just Held?
A newborn who is hungry and a newborn who wants contact can look almost identical at 2 a.m. Both can root, fuss, suck their hands, and settle for a minute in…
17 July 2026
Free guide
The Newborn Cue Chart
Your baby tells you what they need long before they cry. Eight pages from Sue — the cue chart itself (print it for the fridge), the settling ladder, how to tell hungry from tired, what's normal in the first six weeks, and the short list of things worth a phone call.
Hands-on help with this
Infant Settling
Hands-on help in your own home — settling done with you rather than at you, until it is genuinely yours.