Tanya Altman,

In the hospital you have lots of help—nurses, lactation consultants and doctors—all at your beck and call. Then comes the time to take your little one home. You’ve read the “must-have” books, subscribed to on-line baby websites and parenting blogs and spent many evenings on the phone with your own mom. Think you’re prepared? Think again. Here are a few important tips parents tell me they wish they had been told about the first few weeks at home with their newborn.

Sleep

Everyone tells you that you won’t get much sleep, but it’s worse than you imagine. Realistically, you won’t get any in the first few weeks. In addition to needing to feed every few hours, babies don’t know the difference between day and night. So no matter what time he rests, you need to take advantage and nap too. You can also try to help him get on track by keeping nighttime feeds and changing as calm as possible and wake him after 3 hours of daytime sleep to feed. But as soon as your doctor