Its nearly 40 years ago since I was in that position, - we had a GSD at that time and received lots of unwelcome advice (mainly from people that didn‘t have dogs!).
Don‘t think its done these days, but my OH bought a nappy home from the hospital beforehand so that the dog could have a sniff. We stuck to his routine as much as possible, - walks, feeding etc and tried to keep things as normal for him as we could. I allowed him to get as close as he wanted to while I was nursing, changing nappies etc (I only drew the line at licking, which I still don‘t like to see) and basically made sure he was included into all the things he‘d been included in before so that he never felt pushed out. The only restriction was that I never left him alone in a room with the baby, - he was a wonderful placid dog but dogs are dogs and one can never be 100% sure.....
We were rewarded with an extra helper, - I‘d get a wet nose pushed into my face at night to alarm me that my son was awake and he‘d get very unsettled if Grandma took the baby for a walk but he helped me bring up two sons and was incredibly tolerant and caring, we had no jealousy issues whatsoever.
My parents had a cocker when I was born but he did become possesive apparantly, lay under my pram when I was „put out to air“ (as was the practice in those days!
) and wouldn‘t let anyone onto the front path.
All dogs have their little quirks but you know yours best, as long as he doesn‘t feel any negative impacts, he‘ll be fine. All the best!
