ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

ugh, I'm sorry dude. I don't know the answers to your insurance questions, but many have been the times when, as a parent, some aspect of the US healthcare system has pissed me the hell off.

I'm not sure if it's a problem of insurance. We signed up for Medicaid in case we had to go to the hospital to help cover the cost. My insurance only covers so much, and somehow Medicaid was assigned as our primary coverage, and that combined with attempting a home birth and Tera being hispanic, the people at the hospital have treated us poorly. We decided to see the same doctor who cared for August in the hospital because we thought consistency would be nice, but a lot of the problems we had followed us. We were assigned to go to a minority clinic because in order to see the same doctor we had to be a Medicaid patient.

sounds like this guy was bein a dick basically

Which guy? I thought it was the manager that was saying this awful stuff. Agree they sound like a terrible person. I can't stand people who spend their time trying to terrify new parents.

Yeah, I have semi checked it out, spoke to someone in health and human services, who had not heard of this. Going to make a call on Monday to get more details. But the woman who made these claims regarding Medicaid and travel did insert her own disclaimer when she said twice,"Now these are just tips and advice I am giving you." When I heard that I became suspicious and annoyed.

oh for some reason i thought it was a guy. anyway ugh.

finally at that point where you find something to do on the night you have a babysitter instead of getting a babysitter for that night you had something you wanted to do

So we're stuck with sleep again. Basically we had continued to have a situation where K was basically calm and happy most of the day, rarely cried, and was alright about naps, but would not fall asleep and got extremely, extremely upset and fussy at night. We tried soothing to sleep, rocking to sleep, we had a bedtime routine, we swaddled, white noise, pretty much every tip. We tried a pacifier but it would just fall out after ten minutes and she'd wake up and cry again.

Eventually it got to the point where she wouldn't even fall asleep on H some nights (which, even when she did, was not such a good thing as H was so tired that K almost fell off her one night). We despaired, and we finally decided to try sleep training at about 11 weeks -- it felt early, but K is a very big and developed baby and literally nothing was working, and K was only falling asleep very late from exhaustion after hours of sleep/wake/cry battles, and not getting enough sleep.

So we did a Ferber-type method, intervals of crying followed by coming in to console. This may have been a mistake as she may be too young to respond the way Ferber intends or too young to understand the coming and going. But for several nights it seemed like it was working really well -- she'd cry for maybe a total of 20 minutes (which feels awful, believe me, but is much less than I've heard from other parents), fall asleep, wake up once more maybe 40 minutes later, and then fall asleep after a shorter time. The crying gradually lessened, and she started sleeping longer stretches -- she'd wake up once or maybe twice to feed during the night and we'd feed her, but she started getting 10-11 hours a night of sleep, which is what she needs.

But then we hit a wall. After more than a week, she'd still cry every time we put her down and that wasn't lessening. We started to be unable to take having to not respond to her crying for such a long stretch, even 10-15 minutes. Last night was maybe night 10 or 11 and we panicked and started soothing her again, which only seemed to make things worse. No idea what to do now. We may have started this thing too early, but it seemed like none of the other tips we had gotten were working and no one could give us an answer.

It may be that there's nothing that will help but it'd be worth taking a look here http://www.isisonline.org.uk/ info on how infants sleep, and on studies on sleep training etc.

Sounds pretty horrid for the three of you. Have you tried/looked at the 'no cry sleep solution'?

Yeah, we have the No Cry book. It doesn't strike me as a method so much as a bunch of tips, many of which seem to fail. The good news is that in spite of the crying bouts, K continues to seem quite happy, engaged and warm throughout the day. I'm hoping that maybe this is just something that will work itself out as long as we continue to generally encourage good sleep habits, have a bedtime routine, regular naps, etc.

Maybe we expected too much too soon. Overall, she sleeps decent stretches, eats well and seems happy. We were concerned from watching friends who never sleep trained and (as a result?) had kids who continued to share the bed into toddlerdom and had very late bedtimes and seemed tired during the day.

The one thing we agreed we will not do, though, is go full-blown Cry-It-Out (basically letting them cry at naps, cry at night, cry when they wake up, etc. until they just stop). I don't understand that method -- how do you know if something is ever actually wrong if you always let them cry?

Doesn't it kind of seem like she just doesn't want to be alone? Does there have to be a scheduled age/phase for "getting over it"?

I'm sorry, I've forgotten some of the details of this unhappy saga, and if I were you or H I'd be losing my mind right now--I just can't remember if you didn't want to co-sleep or it didn't work, or something.

I'm probably going to be one of those parents with a toddler in their bed (actually, as she's now walking I guess she is a toddler!), though she does go to bed at c.7pm, it's just that I feed her to sleep and go up to feed her back to sleep whenever she wakes up! A started falling asleep on his own about 12-13 months, when he started nursery and couldn't be fed to sleep there. M starts nursery in a few weeks so we'll see what happens.

for us the key to better sleep was feeding whenever the kids woke up during the night. invariably that would solve things. for the first I dunno three months or so we tried all kinds of other solutions---swaddling, rocking, singing, & so on---but the only thing that worked consistently was feeding upon wake ups. I think we did end up having each of them in our bed for decent stretches, particularly as there were disruptions, guests visiting, travel etc, which destabilize whatever setup you're trying to establish.

now things remained bad-ish until they were four years old or so, but in different ways: just waking up once or twice a night because they needed something, to be covered up, or a drink, or comfort after a nightmare. that shit wears on you too, & I'm glad my wife is only going back to work now after our kids are past that point b/c she was sleep deprived for almost a decade. (the kids still only ask for her in the middle of the night; I'd help if I were wanted! but nighttime remains mom time)

Yeah we do feed when she wakes up, and the thing is she sleeps FINE at night, once she actually goes to sleep. The only issue is getting her to go to sleep to begin with.

In re co-sleeping -- we weren't comfortable putting K between us on our full mattress because we were too concerned about harming her. We keep her in a "co-sleeper" next to the bed -- it's basically a bassinet with mesh on one side, so she sees/smells/hears us. However, we put her to bed before she goes to sleep, so she may have a thing about being alone at night. This was also another reason we weren't sure about co-sleeping, because we'd be putting her in the bed alone anyway.

yeah getting them to go to sleep is brutal. are you trying to get to go to sleep at some fixed time each night? is there a set routine for that: first a bath, then reading, then quiet snuggles, then quiet? etc?

Yes. We instituted a 7pm bedtime, and we pretty much do the same thing pre-bedtime every night (actually I should say my wife does, as I'm often not home from work yet) -- 6pm bath, massage (yes, massage), a book, feed, cuddle, bed. She often starts to get cranky before it's even time to put her down, btw, even while being cuddles.

have you played around with bedtime? Also how long does it take? Sounds like she's overtired before you're ready to put her down. Is she being fed to sleep/almost sleep then put in her co-sleeper? We didn't co-sleep with A but I still fed him to sleep.

wonder if that's too early, then? like maybe she's not tired yet?

I was pretty resistant to pushing bedtime back at first b/c that was "our time" but things often go smoother the more exhausted they are

have things ever been easier, though? like we found sleep issues worsened around growth spurts or especially cognitive spurts. maybe that's the present bad stretch?

Ah, just seen it takes an hour. Might be worth trying to cut out some of the bedtime routine to get it shorter, if you haven't already tried that

No it's been problematic all along.

Initially (but before we started sleep-training) we were doing a later bedtime -- I think we were feeding on demand but our "cutoff" was like 9pm. She would always cluster feed and cry a lot before we put her down. If we put her down fully asleep she'd usually wake up within 15-20 minutes. If not, she'd usually cry when we put her down. She did seem to have some stomach discomfort at the time, which may have since subsided.

I'm considering trying later than 7pm though, like maybe 7:30/8. I really am not overly concerned about having "our time" at this point. If I knew that rocking K for half an hour and putting her down at 9 would mean she'd stay asleep and not fuss for another hour or two I'd gladly do it.

xp hmm shorter bedtime routine is an interesting idea, may try that. Maybe there's too much buildup to bed.

When she's about 3 months old I'd try putting her in another room. With both our kids, it seemed like being able to smell/see us actually meant "hey, I have access to that sweet, sweet milk whenever I want, all I gotta do is ask!" Once we put them in another room, sleeping through the night followed quickly after. Who knows of course. But it's worth a shot. Plus when they cried it was easier to ignore them. And if you CAN ignore them for a few minutes AND they get back to sleep by themselves that's like YAHTZEE.

xpost haha we never have had much of a bedtime routine. We barely even bathe them, we're savages. I guess now L brushes his teeth and pees but that's about it. Oh and two books, usually.

fwiw we were advised to put K down sleepy but not asleep so she can "learn" to fall asleep in the crib and doesn't "wake up confused" or something. Maybe it was too early for that stuff to matter.

I think it's too early, but others don't. Depends on the baby too. Molly does wake up unhappy most of the time but I just run up and feed her and she settles in minutes.

In a few years you'll look back at all the angst sleep, or lack of it, brought and laugh. The pain doesn't last forever!

we did cry it out. it was rough at first listening to her cry for half an hour (sometimes longer) after putting her to sleep. now tho we do bedtime routine and even if she doesn't seem tired, or if it's in an unfamiliar location/new bed, or if the time is even an hour off, she goes to sleep immediately. the power of bedtime routine!

Yeah I have heard that stuff too and I can see the logic - they are actually doing the falling-to-sleep themselves, with no contact from a parent - but honestly if I can get P to sleep on my shoulder I am gonna do it. How confused can a baby really be? Their whole life is confusion. You wake up, you're in a bed instead of on a shoulder. OK I'm in a bed. Honestly i think it's got to be just as important to learn how to deal with the earth-shaking confusion of BEING IN A BED as anything else

now that I think about it in the first year of #1's life we often got her to sleep by going for a car ride in the evening, in those halcyon $1 a gallon gas days. but getting her inside was a pain so to try to split the atom we started placing her car seat in the crib & setting her to sleep in it. it worked pretty well! coupled with a tactic of having me sit with her in the bedroom whilst she sat in the car seat in the crib so that she knew we were there, but didn't interact with her, & didn't smell like mama/milk to wake up sleepy tummies. things got better! then we moved across the country & had another kid & all was different again.

Wow, you just reminded me that my mom says they had to drive me around the block to get me to sleep during my first year. I guess I'd cry and cry and cry until they started the car and then BAM, out like a light.

yes! that's how my first girl was. she still loves riding in the car, a decade later.

one thing that August seems to love and helps he to sleep is putting a warm diaper on her, like straight from the dryer, she gets this big eyes expression, smiles and little and then her eyes just slowly close and then she's out.

I've definitely heard the car thing before wrt a couple of diff babies. Something about the motion and the noise, I guess.

I heard this month or weeks Time Magazine(is it weekly or monthly I dunno) is about attachment parenting, has anyone read it?

I recommend that everyone refrain from reading Time magazine in general

lol that Time Mag cover story. i've probably had a dozen conversations with other parents about it over the last week or so. consensus is that it's ridiculous.

"Is this insanely hot 26-year-old mom going TOO FAR?"

i think ppl generally feel like live + let live. if you want to nurse your kid until he's three that's your prerogative but no one is a bad parent for not doing that.

Hay there fellow parents, here's something to not look forward to -- I got home from running errands a while ago and the local PD had pulled my daughter over in front of our house.

I wish that were true xp, but I hear a lot of people, both parents and non-parents, making pretty judgmental claims both ways (attachment parents are "preventing their children from becoming independent," non-attachment parents are "abusing" and "neglecting" their children, etc.)

people have opinions about parenting, this is why I never talk about parenting except on here

i'll give wmc another hour before I start hounding him for details.

hahaha, typing it up now.

Decided not to write it all up in detail. Short version: expired car tag. But when the cop called the license plate in, they said the tag payment was up to date, so he said "no prob, on your way with you then."

Ten minutes after we got in the house, she sheepishly comes into my office with the car tag sticker I had given her a year ago and told her to put on her license plate. I said "did you get the shit scared out of you?" "Yeah..." "Good deal."

Tera and I have discovered people have very strong opinions about parenting and even strangers aren't afraid to tell you what they think. Like in the hospital Tera had august sleeping on her chest, skin to skin(we feel it's very important esp at the stage) and almost a few nurses told her, you can do that all the time, you're going to spoil her, on nurse said you shouldn't be doing that at all. In the clinic, one nurse saw how we handled August and how we cried when she was crying and the nurse kept saying "oh you guys are first time parents" like with more children you care less?? And I don't even want to start with what my own family has told us. But we are learning to just listen to what people say and smile and go on with what we are doing. We love August so much and it's been the best few weeks of our life since she was born, we call it our babymoon.

oh my god you can't spoil a newborn wtf is wrong with ppl??

Well you don't care any less for your child if you don't cry when they cry, as long as you're taking care of whatever it is they're crying about.

Mordy and PP both otm.