ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

Did a blog on first 3 months. http://sickmouthy.com/2015/02/18/thats-ok/

great blog. mine is a similar age and Em has been lovely on the only other forum i go on (small world!)
I definitely had that overwhelming feeling of how stupid i was to think i could possibly do this, convinced i'd made a terrible mistake. things are far better now but my god if he could stop screaming between 7pm-12pm and actually get some sleep...

Yours is 3 days older than mine and it feels very similar, though adopting means formula which means feeding is totally egalitarian and our flexible jobs means we split care pretty equally.

That said it's been a pretty rough couple of days for me as he seems to suddenly prefer his mother over me and I spent my whole day yesterday with him screaming and crying for very long stretches. When she got home he'd do the same for me and immediately stop when I'd hand him off which is an incredibly disheartening thing to have happened repeatedly.

Especially when I've been feeling really stressed about the parenting thing lately - realizing how much free time I used to have and feeling super depressed that I wasted my so much of my life by not taking advantage of it, feeling like I will never get to things I enjoy ever again because I spend so much of my life trying to quiet down a screaming, writhing 14 pound mass of angry human, and so on.

It's gets better. Or at least, it gets different and IME that's usually enough.

my o/h reminds me of how far we've come already. When I look back on the newborn days of agonising feeding, 2-hour max chunks of sleep, screaming nights (as bad as screaming evenings are it's far better than the wee hours) constant pooing, and worst of all, none of his heart-melting smiles/giggles... as SM says it's by no means smooth upwards progress but it is better already. Hard to realise sometimes as the days/nights/week blur into one. I honestly think I cried every day for the first 4 weeks. At least now I'm mainly crying at soppy adverts or frustration rather than I CAN'T DO THIS

Joygoat i wouldn't take it personally (I mean, I do, when it happens to me: HE HATES ME!) but babies are weird and mysterious things. Mine literally goes from cooing/smiling to screaming blue murder and trying to work out why beyond the basics is a pointless exercise.

I was talking to a work colleague yesterday who was telling me he came home from work around 2 am Tuesday (LOLsob big law) to his wife, who was at the end of her tether because their youngest (about eight months, I think?) would not stop crying. He took over and the baby would not stop crying and he couldn't figure out why. He has a three-year-old so I figured he'd be the zen knowledgeable parent but I found myself remind him that babies cry for no discernible reason sometimes and as long as you've ruled out the obvious - hunger, filth, attention, something actively causing the kid pain - there's not much to do about it no matter how badly you want to.

Poor guy. He had the nerve to take paternity leave and I think he's being penalized for that pretty hard. This fucking country, man.

Also sleep deprivation makes temporary situations feel like they are your new reality for ever and ever and ever amen, which is a hard mindset to escape.

kind, I'm so glad you're feeling better!

kindER, I mean. Which isn't to say you are not kind as well.

I think the stupidest thing is babies crying because they're overtired. You're in a nice warm dark room and you're crying because you want to sleep? GO TO SLEEP!!!!

I KNOW RIGHT

Or when they get tired and you don't get them to bed right away and they move past tired into COMPLETELY BUGSHIT WACKADOO mode in the space of like five minutes.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. Sleep is nice, just do it. But they're babies! They don't know how! We have to help them.

Kinder: Em's mentioned that she's been talking to you in 'the other place' (SH?); it is indeed a small world!

My fave is when they are completely asleep in your arms and you gently lower them into the crib and the instant their head touches the mattress, eyes fly wide open and eye-rubbing and insistent whining starts until you pick them back up.

Hilariously, for my kids if I tip them on their side it's like a secret off switch; they instantly shut up and fall asleep within seconds.

I keep telling Ivy that there will not be another time in her life when she is encouraged to fall asleep while cuddled in the arms of a loved one and also eating*, so she should take advantage of that now while she can. She just sticks her fingers up my nose and laughs.

*although I think we're done with this now. She still nurses in the morning, but I've had to do a lot of work at night at home so Jeff's been putting her to bed. It's probably for the best that she breaks the habit of nursing to sleep but it still makes me sad. Now if we can just get her to go to sleep on her own...

My fave is when they are completely asleep in your arms and you gently lower them into the crib and the instant their head touches the mattress, eyes fly wide open and eye-rubbing and insistent whining starts until you pick them back up.

THIS KILLS ME.

joygoat the really bad shit should only last 3 months or so, then you get 6-9 months of feeling like a boss until the next insane phase begins (walking, talking, ~~~~thinking~~~~) but by then you're so relieved that it's not like the first 3 months that you achieve that legendary parenting zen

I just had a good hour and a half of hanging out, feeding him, cooking breakfast while he was in his bouncy chair, listening to tunes, sitting on my lap while I eat with no freakouts and it's kind of amazing how quickly that can undo all the negativity I was feeling.

And the sleep thing is the worst, especially when I'm exhausted. I get so jealous of the baby and think how happy I'd be at this moment if I had someone 15x my size gently rocking me in their arms trying to get me to take a nap.

Did I mention that D is crawling now? And he's super fast and appears to be making it his life mission to stick the entire world in his mouth?

J is on the verge of crawling but mostly seems content to make adorably pathetic attempts and then turn his puppy eyes on you so that you'll go "aw" and pick him up.

"Yeah, that's ridiculous. Sleep is nice, just do it. But they're babies! They don't know how! We have to help them."

This is v v cute.

This is cute primarily because right now it is 12:54 PM and not 12:54 AM

I know, I know. But the way he phrased it!

we flew back from florida to boston yesterday and on the airplane i was tickling J with a jetblue "terra blues" blue potato chip, gently nudging and poking him and he was laughing and giggly and loving it all up, then i started gently poking his lip with it and he immediately starts getting SUPER groggy, and he has this little smile and his eyelids start getting heavy and he falls asleep. it was so weird! some kind of crazy sensory thing going on with that blue potato chip on his lip that allowed him shut out everything else going on around him and fall asleep

nurrrsssing stimulus!

Dan's side-roll trick works for us 75% of the time, it's a good'un. Carl Agatha, have you got Ivy to sleep yourself without nursing, or have you always left it to Jeff?

We had our first trip to A&E yesterday. A very small head bump, which I pretty much ignored, was followed by a day of vomming. Fortunately F seems not to have had concussion - it might also have been a reaction to his 12-month immunisations or a just bug. But our carpet, sofa and a lot of my clothes were just disgusting.

xp yea, it must still be there! J's 2 and a half, weaned about 6 months ago but yes you are clearly right!

I can get her to take a nap without nursing, but I haven't really tried putting her to bed at night without nursing because it's basically a go to sleep cheat code at this point. I'm thinking that when I'm over this hump with work, she'll be settled into a routine of not nursing at night and I won't need to do it.

discovering that cheat code kept us...alive?

Ivy's 15 months now, and being able to get herself to sleep is becoming key.

Must try the side-turning. We had our first trip to A&E last week too. Nothing major but I did not enjoy it.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120939/maternity-leave-policies-america-hurt-working-moms

Wooooooo that is OTM

Ugh that makes me so sad :( Having to go back to work full time when your baby is barely 2 months old?? Fucking criminal. My guy is almost 5 months old and I can't imagine putting him in daycare yet. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to say yes to having a baby if Quebec didn't have good subsidies for parents, for 8 months to a year, including for self-employed parents like me. And affordable daycare by law. And still some politician or other is always austerity-threatening that, grrr.

Got her to fall asleep without me there for a week straight, then tonight she actually finally used the potty, multiple times. WOOT!

Four times today while changing diapers I turned away for a brief moment and the kid pisses. Not like I turn back and catch him in the act, it's as if he squirted out an ounce or two instantaneously and is already lying in his own urine-soaked sleeper that I now have to change.

Yes! Stealth-pissing. Mine has been doing that too.

K has discovered the existence of genitals. Boy ran out naked so we had to explain what she saw. She is totally psyched about it. "Daddy guess what! I have a gina in my butt!"

My 5 yo asked yesterday: "are skeletons usually not alive?"

haha! both great.

my 6 years old wants to play "the naked game" with a friend's older sister

she does not want to play "the naked game" and he is crestfallen

Story of my life.

omg at all of this

loling at "gina in my butt"

for a while in the early potty training stages, my kid got confused and just called it her "front butt".

Ella very earnestly leant over to my wife at dinner the other night and asked, "Mummy, do you have a fuzzy bottom?"

^ inquiring minds want to know

Weaned, potty trained, can open doors and the fridge and the pantry so.... What are the next 16 years about? Because I'm feeling pretty obsolete.

a figure of fun?

she'll need you for encouragement, self-esteem, someone to play toys with for maybe the next 2-3 years.

my girl is starting to read, a couple years ahead of where her big brother was reading. she sounded out the words "star wars" to me last night, unprovoked. and about two weeks ago she told me she wanted to floss her own teeth.

She'll need you to operate the stove and drive her places. Also snuggles.

That's right! Reading and stove :) we still play together but now, more and more, whatever play, we always play with August being Mommy and I am August.

FWIW, K is three and not potty-trained and super resistant to it, any tips appreciated. The thing is we have had several successful days where she did use the potty multiple times, but then she always wants to go back to wearing the diaper. We get told "you can't push them, they have to be ready" so we don't force her, if she insists on the diaper she wears the diaper, but now it's starting to feel late.

We didn't get our kid fully potty-trained until right before she turned 4. And my bigger kid wore pull-ups at night until he was 5, I'm pretty sure. do you have a little potty chair or do you use the kind that fits over the grown-up toilet seat?

gamification