Hello Mudduh Hello Fadduh: ILX Rolling Parenting Thread

I managed to let my husband sleep for eight hours straight this night. Hurrah! I'm happy for him. He definitely needed it. I do too, but hey I have breastfeeding to do.

I bought a breastpump today. They should have told me I need a machine to sterilize (?) the stuff. Also a machine to warm up the milk. I'm beginning to understand why breastfeeding is so easy; but then I needed the pump because I can't keep breastfeeding forever. :-(

http://static.flickr.com/11/96251660_01966e66a2.jpg

Did you survive the move, Michael?

(I expect an answer in six weeks or so.)

how is the diaper rash nathalie? are you using any ointment to treat it? I find that I have to use some ointment every time I change a diaper just to prevent diaper rash. I don't know the brand names in europe but there are a few kinds here, Desitin (with zinc oxide and cod fish oil) is probably most effective at getting rid of it but it is so stinky that I don't use it unless he actually has a rash. I usually use vitamin A&D ointment to put a layer of grease between his rump and the diaper (and of course I'm changing as soon as possible after the diaper gets wet). He never seemed much bothered by a bit of diaper rash but he never had a bad case.

In a month or so, maybe sooner, you'll get your first smiles from your girl and it'll be so nice!

Recent developmental leaps for my boy (two months old on thursday): Found his fist, can consistently bring it to his mouth to suck, holding his head up reasonably well if he tries, can take a rattle from my hand and shake it!

It's not that severe. We use iosine (or sth like that) which is CRAP as it leaves red stains. Grrr. On top of that we use Daktazin. Zinc cream isn't enough.

We, Ophelia and I, went to Kind&Gezin today: She's now 57 cm and well over 4 kilo 500 grams! She's in the 10 percent bracket! She's doing pretty well actually. She already follows us: watches us move from one side to the next. She also hold her head up pretty well. Sadly she also sucks her finger if she's hungry. Some days are pretty good: no crying and waking up every two hours for a good feed, but other days she howls like tomorrow (and milk) will never come. :-)

From tomorrow I'll try start pumping milk. It's quite complex: not as easy as getting yer tit out. hah! But it'll be necessary in a few weeks when the shop will (hopefully) get busier.

xpost

I could just kill my brother in law sometimes the way he is screwing up my nephew's head. He's been trying to reason with the child since he was a baby, and he's such a pushover that as soon as the boy starts crying from being caught and punished, bro-in-law is immediately picking him up and hugging and comforting him, "Aw, it's okay, you just did a bad thing, it's okay, don't cry." Does he not realize what's coming out of his mouth? YOU DID SOMETHING BAD = IT'S OKAY.

if he pinches until you yell, the time to grab his hand and calmly and coolly say "Don't you EVER pinch me again. Don't you ever pinch ANYONE again" is before it hurts. He's testing his limits, and the limit for hurting, breaking and teasing needs to be zero, not when somebody starts crying.

yes, and that's how he's treated. unfortunately, he doesn't stop. that's the $64k question, really - why?

Sad to say it, but if all the charts and steps and stuff just aren't working then maybe it's just time to put him in his room alone for five minutes and let him break his own stuff. A five-year-old will wise up real quick if he actually has to suffer the same punishments he's inflicted on others.

Here's the beginning of his current column:

Children should pay attention to parents

John Rosemond

02/16/2006 - By the time a child is 3 years old, he has come to one of two conclusions concerning his parents:

Conclusion One: It's my job to pay attention to my parents.

Conclusion Two: It's my parents' job to pay attention to me.

A 3-year-old who reaches Conclusion One can be successfully disciplined. Furthermore, his discipline will be relatively easy. A child who reaches Conclusion Two can be neither successfully nor easily disciplined. This is so because the discipline of a child rests primarily on whether or not he is paying attention to his parents, and it is a fact that a child will not pay sufficient attention to parents who are acting like it is their job to pay as much attention as they can to him.

The child who reaches Conclusion Two has acquired, by age 3, an attention deficit. Not attention deficit disorder, mind you, because there's nothing at all wrong with him. Nonetheless, there will definitely be disorder in the house. His parents will say things like "he doesn't listen to us," "we have to yell to get his attention," and "we have to get right up in his face before he does what we're telling him to do." Yep, he has an attention deficit all right, but not one caused by a chemical imbalance or some malfunction in his brain. This attention deficit was caused by well-meaning parents who think good parents pay as much attention as they can to their kids; that the more attention one pays ones child, the better a parent one is. That is, after all, the prevailing belief, and it has prevailed since the late 1960s, when the newly emerging professional parenting class—people like me, with capital letters after their names—claimed that a child's psychological health was a function of how much positive attention he received from his parents.

It's cardboard city (195 was an underestimate; we've found two boxes labelled K35, a few unnumbered and unlisted and then there were the unlidded last-minute krazy-kram krates). The gas fire works. Previous occupants left stone figurines, framed photos of kittens, a wrapped bar of Imperial Leather on the bath and - shudder - a tupperware container of mealworms to feed the visiting robins. We love the place but need to rework every room. By the summer it will be a home.

Getting back on topic, Ava loved her tag-team kiddie-minding trip with Suzanne and Maria (and Josh and Luke and Ruby and all the other rugby-crazy babes), coming back with rosy cheeks and sleeping like a rock from 7:30. This morning I was appallingly hungover (two pints of Stella on a mostly empty stomach) and probably not best placed to judge Ava's rambunctious reaction to her new surroundings. A mushroom omelette and a pot of Earl Grey later, and I could see that she was loving it. There are mirrors everywhere (some left here, some ours, yet to be hung and so at ground-level) and Ava can't contain her joy at that. Difficult to get her to bed but she's down now with a convection heater in her room hastily rigged up to a timer. Hope she sleeps the night through.

The crappest baby-related thing about the move was defrosting the fridge on Sunday morning and hence having to chuck a whole host of ziploc-bagged food. (We left it outside on the bathroom windowsill but forecasts of -2C overnight were unfounded). For the first time in her life Ava's eating out of shop-bought jars (decent organic stuff from Planta, but still). If we'd known our vendors were going to leave a chest freezer (plugged in and operational) in the outhouse we could've saved days of home cookin'...

Pam is so fatigued she's got ill and is sleeping through a chair design docu on TV. If only we could find the VCR... Oh dear, Yentob's just got his kit off. Scratch that.

Well done Mike and Pam and Ava. I am thinking of Mirror World in The Mighty Boosh.

I am going to work on Edith realising it's her job to pay attention to me. Well, I suppose I am already working on it, as I often balance cuddly toys on my head for a laugh.

Hey, I have just checked and England didn't even qualify in 1978! All along my dad has led me to believe that he wasn't at my birth because he had to watch a tense England match! Bah.

Because they kept saying, "Peru, Peru".

SO JUST WHAT WAS YOUR DAD DOING THEN, EH?

Trust me, the first few days and even weeks will be hard, but after that it really does get a lot easier. If you can't cope, get some painkillers and/or cream. I did and it made it a lot easier. The funny thing with my breasts: the right one is still struggling a little - Ophelia attacks it baracuda style - and during the night they get massive. You can prepare your breasts before your baby's born: try drying your nipples off with a *hard* towel for example.

Don't freak out when your baby vomits a bit of bloody milk, it doesn't harm her/him at all. :-)

What made it easier for me: I tried pumping milk twice. The midwives frothed at the mouth but I wanted to try it. I just wanted to have the choice. It was as if I wasn't allowed, as though *I* was the kid.

And, of course, congratulations!

The breastpumping is not as easy as I figured. First time it went excellent, this morning no milk at all. BOO. I'll need to pump when my breasts are at its fullest,namely at night.