Hello Mudduh Hello Fadduh: ILX Rolling Parenting Thread

I did for both with a diaper service and these wool covers called BioBottoms. We had a nanny at home (we lived in a trailer! I paid more for childcare than we did for housing.) until Jordan was 6 months old - at that point, they both went to daycare. Sarah was potty-trained, but Jordan had to go into disposables. More expensive, but definitely more convenient. When my brother was a baby (I was 9 or so), my mom used cloth diapers that we washed. It's a ton of work.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/Untitled-9.jpg

random thoughts --

breastfeeding: this was a casualty, kind of, of Z's prematurity. my wife dutifully used a pump for the whole 3 months he was in the hospital, refrigerated and took the milk in for the nurses to feed him. but i think it was hard to really get things working at full capacity. physically and psychologically, i think you really need a baby there. (actually, the psychological part of it was really interesting. you think it's just some automatic thing, turn it on and it works, but it's way more complicated.) when he came home, he did breastfeed for a few months, but it was never enough to fully feed him and over time just tapered off. my wife was really sad when it ended.

sleeping: we've been co-sleepers, but we're working him toward the crib finally. he goes in there at least half the night. it's funny, we didn't start out intending to do have him in the bed, but it was so much easier initially, and once everybody gets used to it then it's kind of hard to just kick him out. (also, i have a friend who wrote a book on "attachment parenting" who's very pro-co-sleeping, so that helped reassure me.) we never worried about rolling over on him, because he came home from the hospital with a repiration and heart monitor that we had to hook him up to every night (preemies being at risk for apnea, etc), so we had an alarm that would go off if anything went wrong. we had that monitor for about 5 months, and by then he was big enough that it didn't seem like a concern.

of course, now he's even bigger and he's starting to take up serious bed space, plus the rolling and kicking, so it's definitely time for him to be in his own bed. it's kind of sad in a way, tho -- we're both used to him being there, it's so sweet to wake up in the middle of hte night and find him cuddled against you. i know there are people who freak out about babies in the bed, but it seems completely natural to me. it must be how babies were raised for thousands of years, before someone invented cribs.

xpost:
my mom used cloth diapers on my little brother. he's 12 years younger than me, so my sister and i changed and washed a LOT of those things. tellingly, neither of us use them for our own kids...

my wife suffered mightily from breastfeeding for a while but stuck with it like a trooper, eventually becoming quite good. as for runover: pump, save, freeze, thaw, give in bottle, all good.

God, lots of cute photos!

Formula is revolting stuff, isn't it? I can't wait for her to move onto cow's milk.

Disposables here - Pampers to begin with then the more eco-friendly ones from Sainsbury's (the name of which I'm blanking on despite having bought hundreds of the buggers). Not so eco-friendly is the fact that we have to drive to Lower Sydenham to buy them (with the rumoured coming of Waitrose to our neighbourhood, we may no longer have to do this).

More pics at http://www.sterlingwolk.com .

He's still nursing up a storm, and is also very enthusiastic about basically every solid food we've given him. When we make something without dairy/soy/nuts, we grind some up in a food mill and give it to him; he likes to eat what we eat. Hasn't yet figured out the sippy cup. Very interested in walking, and pulls up on everything, but isn't up to cruising yet. Very VERY interested in talking, and has no words yet but a wide assortment of phonemes, which he often arrays into a lecture.

The one really big issue is sleep. He sleeps between us, and will not go to sleep until at least midnight, sometimes later--if we try to take him to bed before he's good & ready, it's Party Time!!!, and he freaks out completely if he finds himself awake and alone in his crib. (If he nurses to sleep and we put him in the crib, we have a window of maybe eight minutes tops before he opens his eyes for a second, realizes we aren't there, and screeches inconsolably. Self-soothing? Forget it.) Anecdotal suggestions are welcome.

Lisa & I both work at home, so at least one of us is with him all the time (although we are talking to some people who might watch him 5-10 hours a week). As you can imagine, this has decimated our productivity...

ah, the bedtime issue. we struggle with this too, although in our case it's mostly our (or my) fault -- i work evenings, mostly, so i don't go to bed until 2 or 3 myself, and Z's kind of gotten on my schedule. he'll stay up til 1 some nights, and the earliest we ever get him down is 11. of course, i don't want him to go to bed too early, because i prefer to sleep until 10 or so myself. it's a bit of a conundrum. but the key for us is nap management -- he needs a nap (occasionally two), but we need to try to get it done in midafternoon. if he gets to dinnertime w/out a nap, we're in trouble.

on moving him into the crib, what we do is let him fall asleep with one of us (usually my wife, since she goes to bed first), and then move him into the crib once he's completely conked out. he'll stay there for anywhere from an hour to (sometimes) all night. if he wakes up crying while i'm still up, i'll just rock him for a few minutes until he goes back to sleep and put him back in the crib. if he wakes up when both of us are already in bed, we just pull him into the bed for the rest of the night. at least he's getting used to the idea of being in the crib, even if he doesn't love it.

One of the best things we did was keep the house noise level fairly constant, music and talking at normal levels during the day regardless of whether they were sleeping or not and a white noise generator at night.

we're moving the baby out of our room next week at 9 weeks. She's sleeping from 11pm to 6 or 7 am so it's time. Sleeping with your kids is great but a very hard habit to break. I'm more of the opinion that it's MY room and OUR bed (I don't need extra excuses for not getting laid.)

I'm pretty anal about getting kids on a regular schedule...gypsy, there's just no way I could deal with my little ones if they stayed up that late at night! The white noise generators are nice...UNTIL YOU FORGET THEM WHEN YOU GO OUT OF TOWN.

(and congrats to you Teeny and all other parents!)

In a hotel no-white-noise emergency: radio set to static. Not quite the same, but sufficient in a pinch.

We put our boy in the crib with a bottle of water (my wife did not breastfeed though). And the sucking on liquid (was never interested in the pacifier) puts him to sleep in minutes. Otherwise, he'd be screaming. I don't know if this move is suggested by the experts though. Also, at one point my son would wake up every morning around 3:30 or 4am wanting a bottle, though the dr. told us he didn't really need a bottle considering what he was getting during the day. When my wife went on a business trip, I did the ol' tough love for three nights and he really hasn't woken up early for a bottle since. So regrettably, at some point, maybe you'll just need to let him cry. Though if he's genuinely not tired, that's something I'm not too familiar with.

not much can exceed the joy of when you pick them up from someplace and they come running, so excited to see you.

So true!

OTM, U&K!!!

Congrats Don on your new bebeh and to ILXor spawning in general. This thread is saving my sanity and heart after a really suck-ass week.

yeah, for me it's how excited he gets whenever i or my wife come home. he also gets excited for his nanny and his occupational therapist (a side benefit for preemies, in new york state at least -- they tend to qualify for a lot of developmental coaching). lately he's been applauding enthusiastically when people walk in the door. it's nice to get an ovation just for coming home.

One day old, already world-weary:

Showing off her favorite new playground bruises and her new kitten, Zippy (who is old and crotchety, but with us still):

The giddy joy on her face when I get home in the evenings does happily obliterate any amount of accumulated work/public transport stress.

Oh, and the other great thing about Saturdays - lying in bed listening to her on the baby monitor go through her whole babbling/singing repetoire at 7-8am before she starts to get a bit more urgent in her vocalisation and it's time to mash up some banana and muesli. Every day there's a new phrase or vocal trick - "What is that?! I've never heard her do that before."

Right now she's been down for about 45mins (it was a "low" fuss tonight) and she's doing the occasional long sigh in her half-sleep state. I wish I could embed a little MP3 or something...

Briefly: son, Adrian, roughly 1.5 years. Latest development: has suddenly become confident enough in his walking skills to no longer look where he's going, and naturally there has been a sudden upsurge in collisions with most things pain-causing. First ten months almost exactly like Sterling's. Amazingly hasn't had anything worse than a runny nose.

Taken on Halloween:

http://www.jodeeandy.com/ajk/051013.JPG

xpost

our kid loves books, sometimes to pieces. we're currently on our second copy of "8 silly monkeys" (jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head, etc...). but he'll sometimes sit for 15 minutes at a stretch, flipping his way through a book, turning it upside down and flipping back, etc. when he wants to be actually read to, he'll bring one to us. apart from "8 Silly Monkeys" he likes "goodnight moon" (of course), "the fox went out on a chilly night" (because i sing it to him, to the burl ives tune), and really anything with bright colors and moving parts (we have a couple of pop-up type things).

xpost: Z can do the sippy cup, but he's not too into it. he's more interested in just regular cups, but the problem of course is after one or two gulps (half of which careen down his shirt), he just dumps the whole thing out. so i only really let him do that in the bath.

This is last summer when he was learning to swim - at one point he had a mask, flippers, arm floaties and a ring around his middle. My sister says it's because he's a Virgo and didn't want to take any chances, but I think secretly, he thought he looked cool. Like AquaBatMan. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/lunacee/boointhepool.jpg

This is him last September on the first day of school. The role of sidekick is being played by my mom. He's 8 now, in 3rd grade and has just been accepted to the gifted program which apparently doesn't really mean all that much in his school - except that he takes an extra art class after school on Wednesdays. He's going through kind of an asshole stage - which I suspect is the product of his growing up and trying to test new limits, and also of his having been slightly spoiled from the moment he was born, and so we're trying to talk things out, include him in making new rules and just generally be a little more grown up about things than we have been in the past. This is not easy, and tests both my patience and his as well. He is, without reservation or doubt, the very best thing that has ever happened to me, the very best thing I have ever done or been a part of, and will be, for the rest of the days I have on this earth, the true love of my life. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v240/lunacee/firstdayofschool.jpg

My wife and I have a 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Juna Ann. Here she is from Halloween:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v131/renart/kitty3.jpg

She's a joy and a constant challenge, like all worthwhile things. Her recent loves are animals, her grandparents, the works of Eric Carle, Babar books, building with those oversized Legos, painting and drawing, and dancing to almost any music I put on. I have an mpeg somewhere of her dancing to Gary Numan's "Cars."

She's been going through a bit of the terrible twos recently, but her contrariness occasionally produces some amusing results. Her step-grandfather told her the other day that she had a frog in her throat because her voice was low due to a cold. She told him indignantly, "No. I have a cricket in my mouth!"

By the way, for the parents of infants, I highly recommend Tana Hoban's "Black on White" and "White on Black" for reading books with them. They are just silhouettes of simple objects, but infants can focus most easily on high contrast pictures. When Juna was very little she loved to look at and point and recognize (I'm pretty sure) the simple pictures of bananas, teddy bears, etc.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v335/gypsyfrocksbedlam/July-August2005bw049.jpg

(his big round head made charlie brown seem like an obvious choice)

It really is interesting how quickly children grasp the power of "no!"

:-) :-) Please to tell yer lovely lady wife N. hi from me, and that Julian is a treat.

Oh definitely. Especially when our daughter poops and pees just after putting off the dirty diaper. She's done this twice now. I'm used to the peeing - she does it at least once a day when I change diapers - but simultaneously squirting a bit of poopoo made me laugh. I couldn't help it, I just found it so extremely funny.

Recovery from my delivery has been relatively good but I do have some minor problems: pain in my pelvic bone is the worst. It really hinders me in carrying her. It's not impossible, just a bit harder to carry her around. :-( I am starting kine on monday. Hopefully it'll pass.