50 Vocabulary Phrases: Taking Care of Baby

Vanessa: Hi,  

I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.  Just kidding. For this video about how to take  

care of a baby in English, I'm going to  look and dress like I usually do because  

I'm a mom. I have three kids. One of them is  a baby. You're going to see her today. I want  

to help you be able to talk about raising  a baby or talk to your baby in English.

So to do that, I put on my usual  mom clothes. Number one thing I  

need to do is pull back my hair because  babies are perfect at grabbing things,  

especially my baby right now. She is  really good at grabbing everything,  

including my hair. So I would never wear  my hair down with my baby. She would just  

grab it. So we're going to have a slightly  different look today, but that's all right.

I want to encourage you to download the free  PDF worksheet with all of today's expressions,  

definitions, and sample sentences about  taking care of a baby in English. Whether  

or not you have a baby, you are around  babies, or you want to just understand  

more English vocabulary in movies and TV  shows, this is the video for you. So you  

can click on the link in the description  to download that free PDF worksheet today.

All right, to get started, I see my baby. This  is my baby monitor screen. I see my baby is  

starting to wiggle a little bit. She's  waking up from her nap. So let's go in,  

get her from her nap, and take care of  her together in English. Let's do it.

All right, let's go into the room and get her  from her nap. Let's go. I'm going to turn off  

the sound machine that helps her to sleep.  I'm going to open the curtains. Good morning,  

baby. Let some light in here. And we can go  over to her little bassinet where she sleeps.

I see a sweet baby. You see that sweet baby in  there? Good morning, sweet baby. How was your nap?

You can see that she's wrapped in this swaddle,  and that's because she's not extremely mobile yet.  

When she gets to be more mobile, when she can  stand up, when she can roll over consistently,  

I'll take those straps off of her arms so that  she doesn't get hurt. But in general, for now,  

she sleeps in this swaddle and it keeps her nice  and safe because one of the important things that  

you need to do with your baby is keep your baby  safe. And to do that, at least in the US, the  

idea is that you're not supposed to let your baby  sleep with blankets. But your baby might get cold  

at night, so we use these zippable sleep sacks.  It's very much in fashion in the US to use this  

because it won't get over their face and suffocate  them, but they can still stay nice and warm.

All right, you ready to get  up, sweetie? Let's do it.

When I get my baby from her nap, I usually  check her diaper and I see if she needs to  

change her clothes at all. Sometimes  her clothes are a little bit wet. I  

don't know why. So I might need to change  her clothes. But right now she seems okay  

and just ready to wake up. So we're going  to go over to the changing station and  

I'll show you where that is and we'll talk  about changing a baby's diaper. Let's go.

So in my room I have this little changing station  area and it's really just the top of my drawers.  

But this is a changing pad and it's just a  nice little thing to put your baby on when  

you change their diaper. She's very excited about  reaching things right now. Don't roll off yet.

Here I have diapers. These are disposable  diapers, but some people choose to use cloth  

diapers. I also have some wipes, and these  are what I use if her diaper is really messy  

and it's useful to be able to use those types  of things. Up here are just some little cute  

knickknacks that people have given her as little  gifts. Because I don't have a nursery; instead,  

all of my three children, when they were babies,  they slept in my bedroom. It started because we  

didn't have a spare room to put our baby in.  But now that we have more rooms in our house,  

it's just because it feels good to  sleep in the same room as your baby,  

I would say for the first year. That's something  that we choose to do. I don't know if there is a  

right or wrong answer for this, but this  is just something that we choose to do.

You got a diaper? Success.

All right, I'm going to change her diaper,  

and then I'll show you next  what I do to take care of her.

Before I leave the bedroom, I want to  show you two different spots that are  

essential for taking care of a baby. One  of those you can see here is a chair. This  

is the chair that I use to nurse Matilda;  that's my baby. I use this chair because,  

look at something great that it does when I sit  in the chair. You know what this chair is? Yeah,  

you do. This chair, it's called a glider. It's not  a rocking chair because it doesn't rock. Instead,  

it just glides back and forth. There's no pinching  parts for children to get their fingers stuck in.

Vanessa: Oh yeah, you just want to grab that phone, huh?

And it's perfect for nursing. It's really  useful to rock your baby to sleep. I also  

have all of our baby books set up here so  that we can grab a baby book. We haven't  

really read her many baby books at  this age. She is eight months old  

now. We've read her a couple baby books.  But she's more interested in just all the  

other things in our house at the moment. More  interested in chewing the books at this time.

The other station that I want to show you  before we leave the bedroom is this spot.  

I'm going to put her over here. Let's see. Do  you want to play with a little toy? Yeah. I'm  

going to give her a little toy to play with.  You want to play with that little toy? Okay,  

we'll let her play with that toy while I show you.

This is where we keep our baby's clothes.  There's these, which now that it's winter  

time, she wears all the time. Maybe some  people would say it's a little bit lazy,  

but when you're a mom you know you sometimes  have to take shortcuts to make your life  

easier. This is what she's wearing now and  it has feet. So we call this footed pajamas,  

footed pajamas. Sometimes for children, we call  these PJs or jammies or nighties. There's a lot  

of different terms for these, but in the winter  it's so convenient. Her feet are warm, her whole  

body is covered. I keep those in a little box.  And when it gets warm someday soon, hopefully,  

she has some special little adorable outfits  that people have given her that are up here.

And there are a lot of onesies. So this is called  a onesie. And even though there's an S, it sounds  

like a Z. Onesie. At the bottom it snaps. This is  really convenient because you can just unsnap it,  

their belly stays covered and warm, but it's great  for the summertime, which it's not right now.

Down here I have some extra items like little sun  hats. I have two boys. This is my only girl. So  

there are some items, some clothing items that we  got from other people that I had never used before  

because I had boys. But when you have a girl,  people give you things like this. This is called a  

diaper cover. You could put them in a cute little  dress, but you don't want to see their diaper or  

maybe you don't want their diaper to get dirty, so  you can put them in a diaper cover. There are so  

many different types that people gave me. I think  they're adorable, so we're going to go with it.

I think that's all that I wanted to show you here,  

so let's go on into the other room where we'll  get to the next section, which is feeding your  

baby food. In the US around six months old,  you start to feed your baby food. So let's go  

into the other room and we'll talk about the  different ways that you can feed your baby.

All right, while we talk about food,  I'm going to put my daughter in her  

high chair. We have a little high chair with a  detachable tray. It's very handy. I'm going to  

put on her bib. Now you might have a bib  that just is around the neck, but for us,  

we have always used these full cover bibs because  babies get food everywhere. It's not just on their  

front. They get it on their sleeves, on their lap.  So this covers everything and you're ready to go.

I have prepared here for her a few finger  foods. And for us, we have always chosen to  

just give. Would you like some tangerine?  There you go. Give our kids the food that  

we eat instead of purchasing little jars of  pre-made food. So I just cut up tangerines.  

I have some toast with some cheese on it.  Very exciting. This is what I eat for lunch,  

so I want her to get used to the same taste  that I have. You want some bread? This specific  

type of method is called baby-led weaning.  But some people prefer to give their kids,  

I'll give you a couple, here you go, prefer  to give their kids purees. So that's what  

it's called when it's in a little can or a little  jar, or maybe you make the pure yourself at home.

But let's talk about what happens before  that. Because Matilda is now eight months  

old and she didn't start eating solid  food, which is what we call this,  

you start eating solid food around six months  old. She didn't start eating solid food right  

away when she was born. She exclusively  drank milk. And that's how all babies  

are. And there's a couple different ways that  you can drink milk, so let's talk about that  

vocabulary. You could exclusively breastfeed.  You could exclusively bottle feed. And when  

you give your baby a bottle exclusively,  we're assuming that it's with formula,  

the powder that you mix up. Or you could do  a mix. So usually we call that supplementing  

with formula. So if you are breastfeeding and  you're giving your baby formula, you would say,  

"I'm breastfeeding, but I supplement with  formula." I think there is no perfect way  

to feed a hungry baby. If your baby's hungry and  a way is not working, you try another way until  

your baby is fed. For my babies, I have been  able to exclusively breastfeed them and I feel  

really lucky that it has worked for me. And that's  not the case for everyone. So in this situation,  

we would say, you do you and take care of your  baby. But right now, I am breastfeeding her and  

I'm giving her solid food so that she can try out  different tastes and practice her chewing skills.

You want that whole plate?

Peekaboo, peekaboo, peekaboo.  You're a little sweetie.

So while we're here, let's talk about some  different words that you can use to describe  

your baby. It's possible on one end of the  spectrum, you might have a really fussy baby.  

That means that your baby just cries all the  time, no matter what you do. You're feeding  

your baby, your baby's trying to sleep, you're  carrying your baby, you're loving your baby,  

and your baby is still crying. Why? This is  sometimes your baby's temperament. It's not  

going to be their long-term personality.  It's just how your baby is as a baby. I'm  

not a psychologist, but we could say that  your baby is really fussy. It's so hard.

Now every baby is fussy sometimes because  that's how babies communicate, right? They  

communicate by crying when they don't know how  to talk yet. On the other end of the spectrum,  

we have a really easy baby. Can you guess which  one Matilda is? She has not made a peep yet. She  

is a really easy baby. Are you a really easy  baby? Absolutely. Now she is my third baby and  

I've heard a lot of people say that third,  fourth, fifth, children are really easy.  

It's partly her temperament and it's partly  probably my skill. When I had my first child,  

had no idea what I was doing, so I was just  winging it. We could say I was winging it,  

meaning I was just trying anything that I could.  I had no idea what I was doing. But now with our  

third child, both me and my husband are much  more experienced and we know what we're doing  

now. So she's a very easy baby. Or we could  say she's easygoing, extremely easygoing.

Sometimes she's fussy. So if she has a hard  day, maybe she's developing in some way,  

something is changing in her. You trying  to reach for some more food? Here you go.  

Then we might say she's having a fussy day  or she is fussy this morning. It doesn't  

mean that her entire temperament is always  fussy; it just means right now she's fussy.

Before we go, I want to show you a couple  other items that are really useful for  

taking care of a baby and keeping a baby  safe and close and loved. So down here in  

every single one of the outlets in my house,  we have this kind of protector. Can you tell  

it was Valentine's Day recently? We have this  kind of protector. This is an outlet protector,  

and it is for baby-proofing the house. So  this is a term that we use, especially when  

your baby starts to become mobile. And right  now, probably by the time you watch this video,  

Matilda will be crawling and moving around a lot.  She's so close right now, so we have covered all  

of our outlets so that she doesn't accidentally  pick up something metal and put it in there. That  

would be terrible. Oh, there goes her plate.  This is a really simple way to baby-proof.

Another thing that we do to baby-proof is that we  try to keep all sharp objects away from the edge  

of the counter. So all of our knives, scissors,  forks, everything in the kitchen or around our  

house, we take it and push it back away from the  edge of the counter. In fact, if you're a mom,  

maybe you do this, but sometimes when I go to  other people's houses and they've been chopping  

something and there's a knife close by, I just  automatically push it back away from the edge.  

It's true, my children might grab it. Even my  older children, they might not know or be thinking  

about it. But it's kind of an instinct. After you  have been taking care of children for a while,  

you're always thinking about how you can make the  area safer for kids. You can see here we have our  

children's plates and bowls accessible so that the  older children can take them whenever they want.

All right, let's go take a look at the doorway  because there's a couple items in the doorway I  

want to show you. Here is my baby carrier. I think  I have a picture of me with her in this. I'll  

put that picture right here. This is extremely  useful. I use this four times every day. I put  

Matilda in this on the front. I put her in this  on my back. And whenever I go out in the yard,  

or if I'm going for a walk, or if we're  going for a hike, or my arms are just  

tired and I want to carry her but my arms  are too tired, I put her in the carrier.

If you're looking to purchase something like  this, I highly recommend it. This one is,  

I think, LÍLLÉbaby. This is a great  brand. You can wear them on the front  

or the back. This is called a baby carrier.  And the verb that we use is baby wearing.  

I am wearing my baby. Just like I'm wearing  this sweater right now, I'm wearing my baby.

There's something else I'd like to show you that's  outside. I don't always wear my baby. My arms and  

my shoulders need a break. So I also have a  stroller. This stroller is great for walking,  

for running, and for just easily putting  my baby in here to get her around and go  

places. It's possible that you might have a  stroller. Some people, I think a long time ago,  

called this a baby carriage. I'm not sure if other  English-speaking countries call this a carriage,  

but in the US we call it a stroller. This is  a stroller because I stroll my baby around  

in it. It's the verb to stroll. I stroll  my baby in the stroller. Sometimes I say,  

"I'm going to take her for a walk in the  stroller. A walk in the stroller." That's  

what I would say. All right, before we go, let's  go back in and check on her and say goodbye.

Let's talk about baby language because I think  this is something that a lot of you have reached  

out to me about and said, "Vanessa, I'm a new  mom and I want to speak in English with my baby,  

but I don't know how." The first thing is  to just choose a couple phrases that you  

use in your native language often with your  baby and use them in English. So if you say,  

"Good morning, baby," or, "How are you  doing this morning?" And using that  

cute little voice. Hi baby, are you  hungry? Do you want some more food?

Those sweet little phrases that you use  in your native language do not have to  

be complicated. These are just extremely simple  expressions. When you say, "It's time to wake up,  

it's time to go, it's time to take a bath,  it's time to have breakfast," you can use  

those same phrases again and again, and it's  just slowly introducing language to your baby.

But there's something that I read that will  help your baby to improve their language  

skills more than anything else, and I  want to share that with you. But first,  

I'm going to get my baby some more food because  she dropped her whole plate on the floor.

So I read that the latest studies about  how babies can become more verbal,  

and that's what we use when we say that a  child is verbal. It means they are really  

good at just using language. They don't  just use simple language. They're able  

to make sentences. They're able to use somewhat  complex words. A child is verbal. We might say,  

"He was verbal before other children." Or, "I  really hope that my child is extremely verbal,  

because I love having conversations, and  that's a really important part of our family."

So this is what the study said. It said the  key to helping your child have more vocabulary,  

to knowing more, and to being more  verbal in general is not to use big  

words with them. It's not that you need to  constantly speak to them. The key is this,  

you need to respond when they make any kind of  vocalizations. So just a minute ago she went,  

"Ah." When you turn towards your child and pretend  like they're telling you something important,  

when they make those vocalizations and you say,  "Oh really? Oh." You make any kind of verbal  

connection, "Yes, I'm listening to you. Yes."  That verbalization is important. Then they'll keep  

doing it. When you affirm those types of actions  when they're speaking, yeah? Just like that, then  

they're getting the signal speaking and making  noise with my mouth is important. And families  

that responded to their babies by affirming what  they said, those children had double the amount of  

vocabulary as children who didn't have any kind  of caretaker responding to their vocalizations.

So first of all, this is a pretty easy  thing to do, but also it's kind of not  

if you're really busy. I have three kids.  My two older kids are very verbal. They're  

always making noise. They're always doing  something that's demanding my attention.  

But when she's making noise and she's talking,  she's trying to vocalize, and I can spend time  

with her and pay attention to her. I always try  to respond in some way. It seems so simple when  

she just makes a sound and I say, "Oh, really?"  That is making a difference. It's helping her  

to learn that language matters. Language is  important, and I should keep making sounds.

So if you want to do this in English, you  can. You're just encouraging your child that  

making sounds with their mouth is important,  especially if they're a small baby. And as  

they get older and they're introduced to other  languages, that will just be part of their life.

I'm going to go now and continue  taking care of my baby in real life,  

not just talking about it. But  I want to know in the comments,  

do you have a baby? Do you take care of any  babies? Are there any babies in your life?  

Let me know in the comments. And even if you  don't, I hope that today's lesson was useful  

for you because you'll definitely hear these  words and ideas used in movies and TV shows.

Yeah? She's getting really into rhythm and  making sounds with her feet and her body.

So let me know in the comments if you have a  baby, and don't forget to download the free PDF  

worksheet with all of today's important  vocabulary, baby ideas. I'll also put a  

couple links in there for baby books, any kind of  baby products like the LÍLLÉbaby carrier that I  

think is extremely useful. These types of things  that if you're a new mom or you know a new mom,  

you can get them those types of things.  Because what they really want is your love,  

but it is nice to have a couple items  that are really useful too, right?

Don't forget to download that free PDF  worksheet. You can click on the link in  

the description to download that today. All right,  

thanks so much. I'll see you again next Friday  for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye.

But wait, do you want more? I recommend  watching this video next where you'll join  

me at the grocery store with my second son  when he was a small child. You're going to  

learn daily vocabulary for purchasing food and  going to the grocery store. I'll see you there.