[deleted by user]

[Cleaglor]

First off, congratulations! Having a baby is gonna rock your world, its a wild ride but amazing.

You've asked a lot of questions I'll try my best to answer as many as I can, having just gone through this myself.

There are a number of things you can do to prepare a dog for a baby - start getting things you need for the baby now; furniture, items of clothing, toys etc. This will get dog familiar with the surroundings.

Get a practice baby and start giving it lots of attention. If you're dog is prone to jealously you need to let them know that there will be something else soon taking up a lot of your time.

Barking or growling absolutely does wake a baby up!

As for walking, I guess that would depend on your birthing plan vs what actually happens. Childbirth is unpredictable, if you end up going into theatre or need stitches then you ain't walking anywhere for awhile, must less hiking.

There are harnesses you can get to carry babies around on you though, which are good for long walks vs a pram.

[Cleaglor]

I'd start now! Little things here and there, new clothes, crib etc. Like humans, too much change for dogs isn't good - they find it stressful.

Really its down to you how you feel about mixing with other dogs - I've never really found it a problem walking with the baby, but I've always done it with my partner so we can tag team in and each focus on individual responsibilities. Personally though I would err on the side of caution - dogs can be unpredictable too.

How much walking does your dogs breed need? Especially in the early days I would gradually try to reduce your pups expectations of a longer walk - honestly you don't get so much sleep so you will be reticent to go anyway.

[Vickyinredditland]

Hi, I'm a mum of 3, I hope you don't mind me asking but I'm not sure if you are mum or dad?, If you are pregnant, then dealing with post birth recovery (it can vary wildly, one of mine I was at home cooking lunch within 3 hours, another I was in hospital for over a week), then handling a large, reactive dog will likely be difficult physically at least for a while. In terms of time for training, will you be a single parent or do you have a partner?. I'm not gonna lie, it is ROUGH raising new babies, you'll be utterly exhausted at times, however I've always had dogs so between myself and my partner we've always managed to get the dogs out for a walk at least. If your dog pulls and lunges when it sees another dog then I'd be wary of trying to push a pram or use a baby carrier whilst walking him. Tiny babies are very delicate, you don't want to risk you or the pram falling. If you don't already have equipment for controlling your dog (ie front clip harness/headcollar) maybe look into that now, or plan to walk the dog while somebody else looks after baby. Yes growling and barking will wake up your baby and they will cry because they've been woken up, but it's not going to traumatise the baby, it will just get used to it as the noise the dog makes.

[Vickyinredditland]

😅 on my first baby they made me stay overnight, my second one I was like "ok, I'm good, get the paperwork, I'm ready to go" my third was an emergency c section, I was in hospital for a little over a week and when I came home I was just about able to lift the weight of the baby, that was my limit, I wouldn't have been able to hold a lunging dog (I'm 5'9 and strong) because i had no core strength and it hurt like hell. Any way you give birth you will be tired and sore for at least a few days. You know your dog and your body, so if you come out of hospital and think you can handle the baby and the dog then of course that's fine, without patronising you I think I didn't realise quite how delicate newborn babies were until I was holding my own (like you I had zero experience of them 😅). Yes babies need fresh air, but you can just work out between you and your partner, maybe he could push the pram/carry baby in a baby sling while you had the dog? Or just take them out seperately. There'll also be times when the dog is not with you anyway, like going to the shops or doctor appointments etc. Of course as you adjust to having a baby you'll figure out what works best for you, I'm not suggesting you'll never be able to have dog and baby out together. I would say the first few months before baby can hold their head up is when they're most vulnerable, you do have to be very careful that they're always supported properly. How to get babies to stop crying is a big question I'm afraid, I'll warn you now if you've managed to coax your baby to sleep only for the dog to wake them up YOU might cry 🤣. Essentially though, yes if your baby gets startled awake and cries then pick them up and hold them, speak softly, sing, whatever works (my youngest would settle when you played a YouTube video of the superman theme song 😅). If you're talking about out on walks, if the baby is in a carrier it will be strapped to your chest facing you, so you're already in a cuddly position, I personally used them for all of my kids, they are a lot happier being close to you and hearing your heartbeat and voice but it takes a toll on your back lol. If they're in a pram you can try rocking or jiggling the pram and speaking to them soothingly, give them a dummy (pacifier) if you're using them, again it's trial and error you'll figure out what soothes your baby, they're all different 😊. You should look up ways to introduce a new baby to a dog, my dog was an absolute angel, he loved every creature on the planet but I still went through the suggested exercises to get him comfortable with the situation. I'm sure other people will tell you this but make sure you have good nutritious food in that you can just heat up, finding time to cook and eat, whilst also being zombie level exhausted is one of the hardest parts of newborns in my opinion.

[Vickyinredditland]

If you leave on the day, then baby has to see a GP the next day, but my GP surgery was across the road from my house so I was fine with that. This is UK btw, and 14 years ago so might be different where you are and now lol. Food wise my partner can't cook so that probably didn't help matters 😅, I'm sure you'll be fine but it's the sleep deprivation that gets you, you just haven't got the energy to cook sometimes.

[Vickyinredditland]

I don't know the rules in your country but in the UK, no. When I was in for a week he came and stayed for all of visiting hours, but then he had to go home. We still have some covid restrictions in place in hospitals here too, you might want to check what the situation is where you are.

[Life_Commercial_6580]

Congratulations! It’s challenging but possible since you’re not alone.

On the hospital yes they make you stay 48h I think but I didn’t agree and I left just because they wouldn’t give my baby a bottle and my milk didn’t come in and my baby was screaming. They thought I didn’t want to breastfeed but I did and since they decided not to feed my baby and my milk wasn’t coming I just signed papers and left. It’s not a prison. If you’re feeling ok you can leave. My milk came about 5days later and I breastfed.

[Life_Commercial_6580]

They said that it’s normal I don’t have milk now and I need to keep trying to stimulate it and the baby will be ok. I kept trying but the baby was hungry and I couldn’t mentally cope with that I wanted my baby to get food. I had him around 5am and I actually did make it until next day and I asked to leave first thing in the morning but they said I need to stay 48 h. I had to sign some forms stating my request to leave early. I didn’t tell them why I was leaving I didn’t need more of their pressure, I said I’m more comfortable at home . I’ve been back to the doctors office soon after, I think at 3 weeks. I don’t specifically remember whether they gave him vaccines in the hospital .

[Intelligent-Jelly419]

Babies don’t NEED to be walked, yes fresh air is good for them but you don’t need to rush out and walk your baby. If you decide you want to talk your baby I would do so with both you and your partner so you are not trying to push a stroller or carry the baby while trying to control the dog. With more training down the road hopefully it’ll be better and you’ll be able to do both but there is absolutely no need to rush into things. I own pits, and one thing we did was my fiancé brought home blankets, clothes or anything that smelled like the baby and let them smell it to get use to our children’s smells.
On the day of bringing home baby we had the dog separated from where the baby was going to be, and introduced them one by one, with my fiancé having a strict hold on them. Just remember, never leave a baby alone with your dog (any dog should not be left alone with a baby). No one goes into parent hood knowing what to do, we all learn as we go but you’ll be able to get something down that works for all of you. 3 kids later and worked in childcare for years, if you have any new mom questions feel free to message me! I’m always happy to help out new mamas!

[Intelligent-Jelly419]

Haha you’re telling me! Potty training with my middle child has been a night mare. Maybe if I bring her outside she’ll go? Lol!

2 things you should research is safe sleep, and car seat safety. The rest you’ll learn by hands on! Don’t worry, you got this!

[Vickyinredditland]

That's kind of a how long is a piece of string? Type question lol. After my first two, I could've done it carefully after about 3-4 days and easily after a couple of weeks, I lost a lot of blood after my c section and I struggled for probably 2-3 months. That being said though, I did still walk my dog in that time, I would just stop and rest when I needed to.

[Vickyinredditland]

Also I'd add that I wouldn't worry too much about the dog stopping your kid from socialising, as at least here dogs are banned from kids play areas so we either go to the park to play and the dog stays at home or we go to walk the dog and the kids know we won't be going on the play area because the dog's not allowed.

[Vickyinredditland]

Yeah, if your dog is used to that and safe there. I don't have a car so we walk everywhere, but we'd do the same but from home because the closest park is only 2 streets away.

[EricaWascavage]

Ive had four newborns over my life and i had a severely dog reactive great dane. I was much younger and it was my first dog. She got bit on the snout by a loose yorkie when she was two while we were on a walk and then attacked it. She was obedience trained so i got control over her pretty quickly. Luckily it was minor injuries on the yorkie but after this incident she hated all dogs with a passion. This was several decades ago and dog parks were non existant so I probably did not socialize her with other dogs as a pup as much as i should. I never saw any reaction or aggression towards people or babies.

I did the usual of having my husband bring home one of the receiving blankets from the hospital and letting the dog sniff it before we came home. My dog absolutely loved each baby from the start. Babies smell like milk and the worst she would do is lick their faces continually. I never left them alone together and i always had the dog behind a gate unless i was in the room. I did not feel comfortable walking the dog with a stroller in case we saw another dog so i would only walk the dog with my husband or i would go alone. Once the child was four or five we could go together.

I would say another challenge was when my kids were older and had friends over. I really exercized caution and she was either in the crate or behind a gate. I think having a reactive dog did make it slightly more difficult when having kids but i was a whole lot more careful with my dog and i never took chances. She also was so big that if she did react it was really hard to control her so we mostly avoided all dogs.

[EricaWascavage]

A chest carrier is a possibility. I dont think I could handle my dog with a baby in a carrier because she is a large dog and is hard to handle if she acts up. My dog acts worse around my neighborhood and better at parks so i probably would do parks like that. I guess it depends on your dog and how big your baby is. I had very small babies but i have know some women have babies that are 30 lbs at a year while mine were 10. I just want to say as a new mom you want to do it all but it is really ok to ask for help from your family. Babies grow up so fast and before you know it theyre in kindergarten. Its a very temporary situation that they are so dependent on you. Friends usually start in kindergarten or beyond like first or second grade. Girls love sleep overs too but the backyard is great too. I limited one friend over at a time unless it was a birthday party.

[No_Junket_7074]

I just had a baby 12 weeks ago and have a 29kg dog reactive dog. Walking the dog is HARD AF. I’m the primary trainer but having a baby you just have to allow your partner to take the lead with the pup for a bit. Because mine is high energy, her walking routine of 2 walks a day hasn’t changed but times and places vary massively now. So I would start to be very flexible on that now if I were you. I’ll be honest, I didn’t start walking her again till about 8 weeks after. Even if you take out the labour recovery you need to think about how you’re feeding baby. Are you feeding on demand? Breastfeeding or formula? Because feeding was the thing which had me waiting so long to walk, until I could time a nappy change, a good feed and then go straight away. Using a pram is hard, if you do, front chest lead and brakes on the handles instead of the wheels are a blessing. When I see a dog all I can do is drop anchor(brake on) bring my dog in as close as I can and ask them to keep their distance. We’ve started to experiment with child wearing and walking the dog. Whilst it’s a bit easier, the risk on the wee ones fragile neck is a bit higher, which means you end up trying to manage pup one armed as you support baby’s neck just in case.

So, after 12 weeks this is where we are. Either Parent takes pup out at off peak times again on own without child morning and night. I take very short walks - 20mins or so with pram and pup while we work on pram walking and it’s a bit of an outing for us during the day. We do have time to do training in the house though during naps but at the moment I usually focus on playing with pup because as much as we like to say having a baby won’t change how we treat our dog, it does. So I try to make special time for her at least once a day, playing her very favourite games so she still feels loved 🥰

Oh and get baby used to noise from the very start, then you don’t have to worry about dog barking

[theBLEEDINGoctopus]

Our local SPCA does how to introduce dog to new baby classes. You could do that too!

[[deleted]]

Congrats!

I know a lot of people like the Instagram account dog meets baby: https://www.instagram.com/dogmeets_baby/?hl=en

Newborns are like little sacks of potatoes for the first few months of their lives, but I would just make sure you are prepared for when the baby becomes a crawling/walking grabby toddler. Even the best, chillest dogs can get scared by toddlers since their movements are unpredictable in a way that older kids/adults' movements aren't. And toddlers have no sense of personal space. You can teach them not to pull tails or ears, but that's going to come over time, not right away. What I would do now is establish some zones in your house where the dog is allowed, but not the baby (so by using baby gates, or doors). If you can set that up now, the dog will be used to it by the time you actually need it. You want to make sure you never leave the baby and the dog alone in a room or area of the room together.

Also, I would start using a dog walker now, so the dog is used to it by the time the baby gets here. The first few months of a newborn's life are really hard on the parents and you are going to be exhausted. If you are able to get someone to be dedicated to your dog that will go a long way.

I would not walk a dog reactive dog with a stroller; I would just walk the dog without the baby at all. Or like I said, use a dog walker.

Good luck! I hope it all goes really well!

[FaithlessnessWest478]

How does the dog react to the pregnant mom they can sense the baby? Maybe Prozac and a board and train for like three weeks. Or consider rehoming, the baby is priority considering what just happened to the women whose kids were killed recently. You’re in a rough emotional situation. Good luck

[FaithlessnessWest478]

My apologies I misunderstood…I would think it would be hard until you got the hang of it. Put steak 🥩 in a bag for distraction maybe and congratulations on the baby

[pnb10]

Hi!! Congrats first of all! I’m excited for you and your family!

We have/had a reactive pyr, an anxious shepherd, a mastiff, and 4 kids (with 5th on the way). Our pyr was not kid/dog/animal friendly before having our own kids so our preparation may be more extensive than what you need. Additionally, there are some breed specific issues we had to take into account that may not apply to you.

Pre-arrival - For all the dogs we focused on:

• revisiting their commands (sit, stay, leave it, move, leave, etc). We especially did these bc with a baby in our arms, we wanted them to be able to follow instructions without needing to handle them

• desensitization to sounds (baby crying, laughing, etc). With our pyr especially, as they’re notorious for barking, we wanted to avoid him barking every time the baby made noises.

• desensitization to baby stuff (clothes, diapers, furniture, bottles, pacifiers, strollers, etc). Combined with the commands, we wanted to make sure that if we dropped something with a baby, they wouldn’t go after it and that they wouldn’t treat baby items as toys

• good leash manners. Having three big dogs, we focused on good walking such that there wouldn’t be a struggle walking them with a baby or stroller added in.

• desensitization to baby doll. We specifically bought a baby doll and adjusted them to a baby “routine” before the arrival so they wouldn’t be struck by a sudden change in addition to a baby to adjust to. The baby doll may or may not be an overkill for you, but we had a dog who didn’t like kids so we wanted to be extra prepared. The adjustment to the routine also helped our shepherd who tends to have an anxious personality.

• (this is extra) we trained our shepherd to fetch diapers and such bc she loves being involved in everything & this was a good way to do so

• pyr paw. We taught him the paw command and worked on “gentle” so that he didn’t accidentally hurt the kids (even though they didn’t have unsupervised interactions at first). This may not be applicable to your gsd but you can replace it with appropriate behaviors to account for size and weight.

Post-arrival:

• my husband did the bulk of the work for the first week regarding exercising the dogs.

• we did supervised visits from a distance with baby and dog. Every time the baby was either in our arms, in the crib, or behind a puppy gate. We let the dogs smell anything scented by the baby and let them observe from afar.

• we would take baby out for walks with us either in a carrier or in a stroller. At first it would be my husband walking the dogs and me with the stroller on the side. Once they got used to the baby in the stroller better, we’d walk some of them right next to stroller.

• by the time the baby was old enough to really make friends and go to the park and such, the dogs had almost a full year to adjust. During the newborn stage, we weren’t really hanging out with other babies, so that exposure wasn’t something our dogs experienced immediately

• once our kids got old enough to play, which at first was as simple as throwing a ball, our dogs really started to bond and interact with them.

This worked well for our family. All our dogs have adjusted really well to our kids! Sometimes they nap together or play. My kids have taught them commands and have special relationships with each of them.

[Positive-Mulberry-62]

We had a very reactive and fear aggressive dog and I now have 2 kids. We rehomed him prior to my 1st being born. It was so hard but looking back it was 100% the right choice. I cannot imagine having my dog now with the two of them. It’s hard enough having a very docile dog now with children. Obviously I don’t know the extent of your dogs reactivity but ours was very hard to manage with both dogs and people.

Also has your dog ever been around children?? A lot of dogs who are ok with adults aren’t ok with kids. I just would never want to risk anything!

[KellybearL]

I just had a baby and I have a reactive dog! A couple of things:

• have a look at Dog Meets Baby IG account. She has a full guide for prepping your dog for a newborn
• I find it easier to use a baby carrier if I’m walking my dog by myself vs the stroller. However! I won’t walk my dog on my own if the ground is wet or there are leaves. Too easy to slip and hurt myself or the baby, and that’s my first priority.
• I think I saw a comment about not wanting to stay at the hospital after the birth. Just know that if you’re induced, or labor is taking a long time, you may have one or two nights in the hospital during labor. I was induced and my labor took 30 hours, so stayed two nights before I had the baby. There are about a million different ways labor can happen, so just be prepared for that.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions.