ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

That whole process is bananas. Not that our path with IVF was easy, but the only gatekeeping was financial. We could be axe murdering scientologists for all the fertility clinic knew.

following a couple of people i know through the adoption process really opened my eyes and made me sort of politically evangelistic about it - the hurdles are ridiculous, and the fact that one of the "loopholes" that got closed in the tax code is the deduction for adoption costs is completely fucking maddening to me.

basically if you want a great "system is broken" talking point, economically discouraging people from adopting unwanted children in need is a pretty good flashing neon sign imo

We opted out of IVF mostly cause of the money, we weren't comfortable essentially gambling when we could go for a sure thing. Though honestly after years of random doctor visits I don't know if we could have subjected ourselves to the necessary routine for that to work even with unlimited funds.

We know a couple people who've used this agency, and the women who run it have been doing so for 30+ years and are pretty badass - they've seen some shit and have a really grounded take on the realities of what kind of women are in the position where they need to give up their child and really emphasize that to the adoptive parents.

It was actually really touching to hear a lot of the rather sheltered, upper-middle-class adoptive parents sharing their experiences and how it opened their eyes to and changed their opinions about this vast, invisible underclass that they never encountered in their daily lives and now are essentially part of their extended family. Bitching about how the nurses treated their dyed-haired / tattooed / dentally-challenged birth moms like garbage, having a new sympathy for street kids, understanding the need for a social safety net, that sort of thing.

Sorry to get all logorrhetic here but it's been a long-ass time since I've felt like I'd ever actually get to be a parent and now sometime in the next 12 months or it's probably going to happen and I'm pretty ecstatic about it.

omg I just got so excited for you I got butterflies.

being a parent is the best, even when it's horrible

haha so true

That is so awesome, Joygoat, very exciting!

I have always been interested in adoption but found, what I understood of the process, overwhelming. It is not easy. I spoke to two women who adopted in the early 70's and either they forgot a lot of what actually happened or it was just terrifically easy. I watched a Cary Grant film in my early 20's called Room for One More and it got me interested in fostering and adoption.

Carl, that article will stay with me a long time.

I spent the first year of breastfeeding being as healthy as possible, hard to do in food deserts and we were in a big one. After a year I focused more on trying to get August to more solids. Finally, she is finally there and eats what we eat. She still nurses at nap time and bedtime and all night long it seems, an hour or so upon waking.

This is maybe TMI or not very exciting but Ivy had a standard complement of preemie/NICU baby latch problems and I had some oversupply/forceful letdown/endless engorgement situations so we've been using nipple shields with great success. Some people are really anti-nipple shields, but I think they are great (beats the hell out of exclusive pumping for damn sure), although I often envied people who could just pop their baby on their boob without accoutrement and also have one less thing to wash. Plus it increases the difficulty of nursing outside of the home. Anywayyyyyyyy I've been gently trying to wean her off of them, mostly just offering the breast without them to see how that goes but not like insisting she nurse without them if she wasn't into it. I figured she'd probably grow out of them since her latch issues were more about learning eating competency (plus the relative size of her mouth and my nipples, and also not choking). We'd gotten to the point where I mostly just used them in the morning (because otherwise it is like drinking from a firehose, poor thing) and this morning she straight up refused to nurse with the shield*! I'm sure we'll backslide before we're done with them for good, but I'm pretty psyched that she's steering the ship towards shield-free nursing.

*Also sometimes I call her Vic Mackey because she's on the shield and mostly bald, and I don't really want to think about Michael Chiklis while breastfeeding, so that's another good thing about this development.

lol

whoo boy, K's sleep habits are OUT THE WINDOW. Some kind of 2-year-old regression/separation anxiety thing. We tried to referberize her a couple times but it's not working somehow, so we're doing the stay in the room until she falls asleep. But she has a cold and keeps waking up, and last night she finally just wound up in bed with us. I got kicked a lot.

Aww Carl, your post didn't get me all TMI, got me more thinking Go-Ivy, Go-Carl!!! WOOHOO Sweet!

Thanks! I'm definitely not used to talking about my boobs on the internet. Except in the bra thread.

Hurting-I keep hearing about this phase. August has never (EVER) slept for very long without me near her so...uh, wondering how this can get more complicated once she reaches that stage. Slipping out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night has to be quick or she'll wake up. As an infant, getting her from arms to mattress was a feat. Slipping away while she sleeps...ninja...sometimes I still leave my shirt behind with the hopes she'll keep smelling mommy and stay asleep.

Feel the whole world has seen mine or is well aware of them online.

:o

hahaha

Oh man Ivy is such a good sleeper. Bedtime at 8 and reliably sleeps through the night in her crib, slept through upstairs neighbors' party, sleeps through us doing normal stuff in the apartment... I feel like when she hits toddlerhood there's going to be hell to pay.

Fox is the opposite: he slept a grand total of 6.5 hours yesterday. Argh. How single parents do this is beyond me.

Hurting-I keep hearing about this phase. August has never (EVER) slept for very long without me near her so...uh, wondering how this can get more complicated once she reaches that stage. Slipping out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night has to be quick or she'll wake up. As an infant, getting her from arms to mattress was a feat. Slipping away while she sleeps...ninja...sometimes I still leave my shirt behind with the hopes she'll keep smelling mommy and stay asleep.

― *tera, Thursday, March 20, 2014 8:01 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I forget how old August is, and it's different to an extent for different children, but K's relatively good sleep phase probably lasted from like 9 months old to about two weeks ago. Last night I was on the floor next to her crib from 8:30-9pm, again from 9:30-10pm, then I just fell asleep on her floor from 11pm to about 1:30 am, at which point H realized where I was and came in and got me. She did sleep from then until about 8am, mercifully.

That is a long run, Hurting. August is 23 months old...in five days.

She might be more independent about getting herself back to sleep once she's in her own room?

Although that of course comes with its own issues.

She's been in her own room for over three months.

We did the ferber thing back when and it was tough but seemed to "work" I guess. Somehow right now I don't feel like it will though, she's kind of too smart to give up, but also not old enough that we can fully explain things to her.

Sorry - unclear - I was talking about August

Another great article on over-protective parenting. Any UK folks have anything like "The Land" near them? I'd love one of those places here, but I'm picturing a ridiculous waiver that I'd have to sign in order to let my kids play there...

Hurting, are you the parent who was trying to put K in her own room and shut the door and be super quiet to try to get her to sleep and it turned out what was bothering was your absence and it helped to have the door open and be able to hear you? That's always seemed like kind of a profound moment to me. Pre-verbal humans are a mystery.

I was kind of biased from the outset because it was written by Hannah Rosin, but I didn't think that article was so great. The Etan Patz thing is a total strawman -- there are lots of things short of ABDUCTION BY STRANGER that you might want to protect your child from in a large city.

Re that article: tl; sounds like growing up in the country.

schwantz, no (we used to have a 'dump' we played in, with a rusted old car), but google Playing Out to see something vaguely similar (you could start one yourself!). Admittedly nowhere near as cool as 'the land' sounds...

L, I think that was me. But it is the nature of human development that children continually confound you as they grow, such that every time you think you have "solved" them, something new arises. It's no longer acceptable for her to just hear us, we have to actually be there. In fact, even if I stay until she falls asleep and then leave, she gets EXTREMELY mad that I'm not there if she wakes up again.

I'm all for letting kids do all sorts of crazy shit by themselves, but I certainly do not trust drivers in this city not to hit them. I almost get hit on a daily basis, I wouldn't want to put a smaller, less aware human up against them.

Tracer...She seems independent enough in many ways but when it comes to sleeping and napping she becomes a baby-baby again and cries until nursing commences then drifts off. We have watched her wake up in the hopes that she will just put herself back to sleep. Instead she just becomes more and more awake if she doesn't see me then cries, nurses, back to sleep in seconds. I escape, it happens again and again until I just stay in bed. I have many projects I'd love to get too at night but I pretty much sleep when she does.

I'm remembering my childhood, where I just rode my bike all over town with my friends and no parental supervision, and wishing my kids could have some of that. I plan on letting them walk over to the park near my house by themselves pretty soon, I think.

Yeah I have projects I want to get to too. Like eating dinner. It's 9:20 and I'm still on the floor of k's room, haven't eaten yet.

Tera that sounds rough. At what age do you plan to stop feeding at night? August is waking up because he's used to waking up to feed, but he's also old enough that he can go the whole night without feeding. The problem is that you have to make the painful transition at some point.

sorry I feel like both those posts came off wrong, probably because I was hungry and lying on a floor in a dark room

(August is a she)

I just spent a stupid amount of time on a marketing survey, seduced by the promise of free diapers. Stupid free diaper promise.

anya yall use cloth diapers? cool thing: once they're bought, theyre bought. not cool thing: WASHING THEM PISSY DIAPERS

Xp oh ok I thought August was a she to begin with but then I had this weird vague memory where I thought I saw a pic with a boy. I think it must have been another ilper

Btw back on the floor again, although tonight she fell back asleep much faster. I think her cold made things much worse.

No cloth diapers. I thought about it. Wanted to want to do it really badly. Ultimately decided it would just be too much extra work. Sorry environment. :(

I'm 10000% OK with disposables.

i am too, but it has saved us some money tbh. esp if/when we have child #2

I wish I could go back and do cloth diapers. I've definitely spent a couple thousand on the disposable ones. Can't wait to get her potty trained.

we do cloth diapers. we've never looked back, they are awesome, and will save us shit loads of money.

washing them isn't a huge deal imo. it helps though that we have our own washer and dryer in the basement, we live in a two-family home but we don't have to share the machines. i don't think we'd do cloth diapers if we had to go to a laundrymat, or even if we had to use a coin-operated machine in an apartment building. we'd either use disposables or a cloth diaper laundry service.

i love thinking too that for any additional kids we might have, we already have all the diapers we'll need