ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

omg knocked up

Ha, no. Not currently.

the only terrifying baby moment I have had was when holding my friends one day old. older babbies are kinda whatever, p durable, nbd, but I felt like I was holding a fucking vial of nitroglycerin, just red alert full time

They are so small!! Terrifying. Seriously though everyone I'm good friends with irl is child-free which is great but I am getting old and will probably have kids sooner rather than later and would like some procreating friends with kids to practice with please and thank you.

rent-a-baby

Thanks Hurting and Shakey, I really enjoy reading what you guys post here. I have this idea that being intuitive will help out more than any parenting school of thought.

fedex'ing you a baby to hang out with. please return safely in 2-3 mos

xp

we need a babysitter next weekend, enbb, can you come to colorado.

parenting books are a total racket set up by people who want to make money off the insecurities of others

fyi

ps you will be stressed out about whether you're parenting right anyway

xp shakey, know what you mean, i wouldn't go *that* far -- some parenting books are good to have handy if you're totally stumped. but i really agree with hurting that in those first few months your job is: "make the baby feel safe and loved and fed and clean."

after those first few months are over, you can just sit back and relax.

haha yeah I was being a little over-the-top for cheap lolz. there were some specific things we couldn't figure out on our own that we of course turned to books (and doctors, and yoga teachers haha) for some ideas.

but in general I find the whole parenting "industry" exploitative and irritating in the extreme

Tyler if I was in CO I'd babysit for free! I would totally start a free babysitting service in my neighborhood if wasn't inherently totally creepy.

I'm great with kids and toddlers it's just the really young ones that I have absolutely no experience with and therefore freak me out. Hurting you should post a pic of your new daughter :)

Anyway, sorry to interrupt. I find the whole attachment parenting thing really interesting.

in 10 years detachment parenting will be the big thing

i think parenting books have utility, but their main utility is helping new parents feel like they have some kind of idea of what to do instead of being totally lost. this sounds like a criticism but i think it's actually an important benefit. you learn pretty quickly to pick and choose what seems like good advice and what seems wacko - we have one of the sears books (the sears family are the big names in attachment parenting) and there's definitely crazy stuff scattered throughout. like i'm glad we had a carrier to use in the first year but i don't know if it made our baby a better person, it was just often handy to have two hands free.

yeah carriers are very handy

I'm surprised at myself with how earthy I am with having a baby, with having a midwife and doing a water birth, but it just seems natural for us to be having our baby this way. We haven't decided on what T will use, she wants to use a sling. I have a baby backpack that she can sit in my front or back.

A tip in re baby-wearing -- we found that, at least for now, the Ring Sling is the best compromise between having a nice, lightweight, natural, comfortable, free-ish thing that makes you feel close to the baby without needing a ten-hour training course in "babywearing." We also have the Becco Gemini but she's a little small for it.

ilxor (former?) Vicky is BRILLIANT at slings and I wish she posted still/more so she could tell you about them!! I have watched her bundle her toddler up inside her coat and walk around NYC w him all day.

More power to people who want to go all the way with that sort of thing.

Oh, that's another thing, parenting unleashes latent consumerism in you that you will not believe you were capable of.

we had an ergo, slings make me nervous but plenty of people seem to do well with them

yeah we had a few parenting books & I kinda halfheartedly read them before #1 & it ended up being a total waste of time. I think you learn more from getting stoned a few times & then trying to do something important afterward, b/c you just feel that disoriented for a month or two.

the ring-sling positions the baby upright on you more the way other carriers do, or at least that's how we use it

Vicky gave us a Mei Tai - http://www.meitaibaby.com/ - when our first was born: probably the most useful piece of baby kit we've had, we're now using it with daughter no. 2.

my daughter hated the sling, was definitely not okay with it. ergo worked out much better. diff strokes for diff strokes

also lol @ Euler's stoner analogy

diff folks!

we need a babysitter next weekend, enbb, can you come to colorado.

― tylerw, Thursday, March 8, 2012 2:11 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait I can. on vacation, need to go skiing. I have several backpacks that can fit a babby, and I am p sure that being in the backcountry is good for young branes

I will accept bootlegs as payment

Vicky is some kind of abnormal genius who can just use, like, a long piece of stretchy fabric with no discernible purpose and end up with a happy baby, safely attached to her person. But she can also suggest "gateway slings" for everyone else.

babysitting payment is three bootlegs an hour, which i believe is colorado state minimum wage. sound good?

u have a deal

overtime must be paid entirely in neil youngs and/or feelies

A friend of mine makes her own Mei Tais and says they're amazing.

That Mei Tais in general are amazing not that the ones she makes are even more so or anything.

I have this!
http://www.myergobabycarrier.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/detail-2.jpg

I like when babies get worn on the front facing out and they're just sorta hanging around, watching the world. It cracks me up.

yeah, or it looks like the baby is actually controlling the adult.

yeah the Becco is somewhat similar to that ergobaby thing. Plus it looks like a flak jacket so I can be all badass and dadass at the same time.

http://filmwad.com/fw_images/2007/10/12/kuato.jpg

xp

haw, yes. not quite as gross as that, but that's the general idea.

ENBB- Raising six one day old baby chicks is probably the closest I ever got to caring for a newborn. I didn't want them to die on me. They ate pretty frequently and a lot so I was constantly filling their feeder, checking on them through the night, and they did have certain peeps for hunger and for being too cold, too hot. Regulating their temperature was scary, didn't want to cook them, didn't want them to die from being too cold.

One got very ill. I was up all night on a work night trying to keep her from dying on me. I nursed her back to health, no one else got ill either.

There was this satisfaction the first time I was able to take them outside. That night I kept looking out the window to make sure they wouldn't attract raccoons. Didn't want to come this far and wake up to a murder scene. The whole experience, I feel, did something for me. Maybe I am too sensitive or just nuts but it really did. I feel more prepared for a human baby than if I never cared for anything so tiny and fragile before.

A few years later I had to free a chick from it's shell and that was scary. One wrong move and they can bleed to death. Having a tiny, wet, newborn baby chick was a whole other 24 hour experience. She imprinted on me and that was attachment parenting-extreme. Could not leave her alone for even a second or she would screech her head off. The older chickens wanted nothing to with her and she didn't seem to know what the hell they were. Once Monday came around I took off a day from work and got her a sister from the feed store, problem solved.

ergo 4 lyfe

so comfortable

I don't look on here for a few weeks and look what happens! Congrats on the birth of Keren Hurting,and congrats Tera and JS, and BLAM!

So yes, slings! I love em, whatever your parenting 'philosophy. Handy to get around on public transport, wander in the countryside, give cuddles when you want to be getting on with something else, and really come into their own when you're on child #2 and child #1 needs some attention.

www.slingguide.co.uk is a really good guide to all the available types of sling out there, how to choose, how to use, where to buy (in the UK) etc. I don't believe that there is a 'best' sling, just the one that suits the parent and the baby at that particular time. I love wraps but I've used mei tais, ring sling, and soft structured carrier (e.g. an ergo, basically a buckle carrier)

People often get scared of the prices, but hey, you're carrying your child in there, and they hold their value REALLY well. If you buy second hand you can usually get back what you paid for it. They come up on Craiglist, ebay etc. and there's a large forum based in the US www.thebabywearer.com though it is a bit intimidatingly big and anachronistic for newbies.

Wraps are the most scary, but the best birth - pre-schooler carrier, imo. They have a steep learning curve but once you've got it you're away.

From newborn snuggles, through babyhood, toddlerhood into pre-schooler years, wherever you go.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6040/5902013655_af341de465.jpg
agave 3 by vickyp, on Flickr

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6199/6085930686_de0a847902.jpg
IMG_2063 by vickyp, on Flickr

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4132/4843484727_1c4ab6345f.jpg
Untitled by vickyp, on Flickr

If I had to be labelled then I'm sure I'd be labelled an attached parent. We're definitely going more that way than with Aidan, though some people might think we were pretty 'hippy' with him. We just did what we felt was best for him and us. There's no right or wrong way, you do the amount of reading that you think you need to do and you go with what you think makes sense, and you adjust if you feel you need to. The things we're doing differently second time around were/are homebirth, co-sleeping, totally babywearing not using a pram/buggy (that's more because it's easier for me, Molly and Aidan, rather than because a book told me it was what I should be doing). Things that we've done the same, BF on demand, self weaning, baby led weaning with solids, no smacking.

The changes we've made have their plus points and negative points. I have started to feel touched out at times (Molly's almost 9 months) and I want to get my evenings back so we're going to use the No Sleep Solution to start getting her to sleep on her own in the evenings, rather than being on my lap/boob downstairs until our bedtime. But as I said no way is perfect, you can't live your life how it was before children, it will never be the same and compromises have to be made whichever way you decide to parent.

No smacking?

But yes I am remiss in congratulating the Big Loud Mountain Ape! And *tera (still impending, right?)

Yeah the only downside of the Ergo is that it can't really be used for the first 3-4 months. They sell an "infant insert" that didn't really work well in our experience. But god every other carrier we tried was either massively uncomfortable or just sort of a pain to get on and off. Agreed completely about how useful they are with baby #2, when you need to be mobile and have both hands free for dealing with whatever nonsense #1 is getting up to. If you get a good one it'll last through both kids (or more?) so you're talking years of use. (Add all that time up, and think about what that time is doing to your back, and it's worth getting one that's comfortable/doesn't dig into your neck/etc). That said vickyp and I both live in one of the walkin'-est cities there is; maybe if you lived in Chattanooga a sling wouldn't be such an essential thing.

my kindergartner took huge exception to being SBd to her room last night. after about 20 minutes of howling protest (it was her big brother's fault) she asked for paper, which we allowed. 5 minutes later, she wordlessly delivered this note to the dinner table and returned to her room:

http://i486.photobucket.com/albums/rr222/Chass3ur/IMG_2268.jpg