ILX Parenting 5: I'm a big kid now

I don't have any magic advice (I don't think there is any magic advice) but I have lots of sympathy/empathy because this situation sounds frustrating and exhausting and I hope the little one moves beyond it soon. Really soon.

imo the only universal tools that every parent w an infant needs are patience and endurance - everything else is a case-by-case basis

congrats joygoat!!!

we are in trimester three. there's a three-year-old in the house now. I am prepared for the mayhem, which is to say, I must continue to assure myself that I am prepared for the mayhem.

Aw. 3 year olds rule, but are masters of mayhem. Last night mine was convinced that she could do a jumping flip from one bed to the other.

xpost Same deal except with a four-year-old. Weirdest thing for me is for baby one we did an intensive, months-long birth class, and while I assume we don't need to take it again, I also feel like I've forgotten everything about birth and hospitals. We are taking a one-day refresher course on Saturday, hopefully that'll be enough.

I got to hold someone's new baby recently and I felt like it wasn't that long ago when I was doing this daily, but I sure wasn't used to it.

thermo we had a really rough newborn/young infant stage. like hours and hours of crying, definitely colic. lots of other parents said their kids cried a lot too but when we told them how much J cried, they were like "yea our kid doesn't do that." J could put in 4 hours of crying. it's fucking hard. sleep in general was always hard for us, J didn't start sleeping through the night until the past few months and he'll be 2 in a few weeks. he'll still wake up here and there.

motion helped a little bit, we had this exercise ball that we bounced on (though i don't think we used it until maybe 3 or 4 months). the carriers helped a lot, the moby/ergo etc.

beyond that though, we wished that we got J checked for reflux early on. turns out that he had it but by the time we found out about it, he was about 9 months and upright a lot more and it passed.

but in general J is a high-strung kid, we see chill babies and toddlers a lot and they seem very different from J. lots of parents told us how wonderful the first few months are because you can just take them around in that portable car seat thing and go out to bars, restaurants, whatever. that was fucking impossible for us, J really didn't seem happy unless he was in motion and otherwise just cried most of the time.

the first few months are hell incarnate, everyone knows this but has to lie about it, it's one of the ten commandments iirc

Thanks everyone. It's kind of weird to not really worry day to day about a pregnancy because it's happening elsewhere. I trust the birth mom, she's really level headed and mature about it all, doctor's visits are going well, all that. She's got her birth plan figured out like a heist film, who will be where, when the baby will get handed off, and when we will rendezvous later in order to minimize her emotional trauma. She wants to see us with the baby but outside the hospital.

But I'm starting to get freaked out about actually having a baby around. How did you all figure out what to do? We've got maybe 10 weeks and are starting to look at books, think about formula, all that sort of thing. How much can you plan ahead and how much do you just have to deal with as it comes?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bocKIlZIGwE/U2F0x8looyI/AAAAAAAAAoM/gZ2aS2-fHq8/s1600/lasciate_ogne_speranza__voi_ch___intrate___by_sbi29-d59qxyw.gif

How did you all figure out what to do?

improvisation

we read a bunch of books for first baby, idk how much of it was actually useful but it made us *feel* more prepared which is perhaps just as important

i pretty much felt like there was little i could do to prepare until the baby was there. we used all those sleepless nights in the beginning for preparation. one of us held the crying baby, the other person read dr. sears "the baby book." we must have read 300 pages of that book in the first few weeks.

this is a really fun book:
http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Going-There-Brain-Develop/dp/0553378252

i can't say it's tremendously practical as far as "now do THIS" but it gets into all kinds of science about how babies and kids develop and it made be feel a bit more like i knew wtf was going on

I'd say do your reading now because it's really hard to find the time to do more than quickly look something up once the baby arrived. And be flexible in your thinking: it's fine to have ideas about the way you want to do things, but if it doesn't work, you need to know when to give up and try something else for the sake of your sanity. The best way is whatever way works for you and your baby.

I also know people who swear by Swiss balls and slings to comfort crying babies. If you're bouncing around while carrying them, your arms and legs get tired *really* quickly.

The best way is whatever way works for you and your baby.

yup. sorta feel like every baby book should just have this printed a million times on every page

and this:

if it doesn't work, you need to know when to give up and try something else for the sake of your sanity

Also we've found music super helpful for calming. A couple of weeks ago when F had his first cold and was inconsolable after choking on a load of mucus, the Guns of Brixton (which we've been playing at bed/nap time for months) stopped the crying on seconds.

On another note, WHEN WILL THIS BABY LEARN TO ROLL FRONT-T-BACK DEAR LORD.

the first few months are hell incarnate, everyone knows this but has to lie about it, it's one of the ten commandments iirc

thank you.

i've found what works best right now is just walking around with her. no idea why - but it seems to hold off the tears fairly well.

Movement is pretty key, whether it's walking or rocking or bouncing or whatever. We have been very lucky in that we have two incredibly chill babies who like to comfort each other so our hell period was very short and mostly self-inflicted.

I'm surprised I didn't wear an actual hole in the rug from walking in circles to sooth crying during the early months.

And be flexible in your thinking

The other big part of this for me is to know when to give up something entirely. They change so quickly, that the trick that worked for the past three weeks can just stop working and never work again and you have to clock that and move on.

xp definitely on the movement. F has had this terrible skill from just about birth of knowing the difference between being cuddled when you're standing up (happy, settled) and when you're faking it and actually sitting on the bed/couch (unhappy, grizzly)

our grand-baby is eating like a champ and sleeping through the night, at one month

all the mom's other child-having friends hate her right now (her pregnancy was a breeze as well although the birth was tough)

I expect the hell to arrive at any moment

my niece was a permanent-state-of-crying baby...my sister in law found a small amount of amusement in ppl who would say ohhhh I bet she just needs to be held and they would think they were these great baby whisperers and they'd last maybe 20 minutes and hand her back with these shellshocked faces like 'boy she really has got a set of lungs on her'

"I bet she just needs to be held"

The implication being that your sister was just closing her up in a drawer all day? Sheesh.

yeah i know right. it was kind of lol mostly sad with my mother in law, who prided herself on being "great with babbies", the way she told it they would all fall asleep in her arms no matter what. she would hold my niece for hours on end, waiting for her magic to kick in and this willful little babby would just cry at the top of her lungs regardless. my MiL took that pretty hard :(

A lot of the time with newborns it just seems like, if they're upset, you check the nappy, you check if they're hungry, you check if they're hurt, and then you just hug and jiggle and wait it out. There's not a whole lot else you can do.

http://metro.co.uk/2014/09/04/if-you-are-a-parent-youll-understand-the-humour-of-this-newborn-baby-photograph-4856299/

(Dan will get it, certainly)

oh man, the flashbacks

haha. The smile on that kid's face! he has awesome toes though.

http://www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com/2014/09/the-walk.html?spref=fb&m=1
Different times.

Reminds me: The other day I saw a group of teens walking near the freeway and thought it's been a long time since I thought of or saw runaways. Kids still do runaway, right? Duh.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/09/08/college_sexual_assault_how_to_talk_to_your_kids_about_consent.html

Slate: I imagine that the idea of “the talk,” where parents sit their kids down and tell them how sex works, is pretty obsolete at this point. So when should parents start having conversations with their kids about consent and sexual assault?

Heather Corinna: I suggest parents talk to their kids about consent—and permission to touch and be touched—in infancy or toddlerhood, and certainly not as late as their teens. Even before your child can talk, you can model consent. Have you watched parents change diapers? Some of them will just grab their kid, throw them on the table and start doing all sorts of things to their body without any gesture of consent-seeking. Even with an infant without language yet, you can express what you want to do: “I’m going to touch you right now, in order to get you a fresh diaper so you can feel better, okay?” Starting early, in ways that you can, normalizes consent—rather than non-consent—right from the start. You’re not going to talk to a two-year-old about sexual assault explicitly, but you can both demonstrate and express that people need permission to touch each other's bodies. By the time you do get to the point where it's more stage-appropriate to talk about sexual assault explicitly, they are already going to know about consent and that it really matters.

I've always told my children what I'm going to do before/while I'm doing it (now let's change your diaper, now let's get dressed) but this recommendation strikes me as coming from someone who has never actually tried to change diapers or clothing of an infant of toddler. Like when they're hysterically throwing a tantrum because they don't want to get dressed, or get changed, it's not always appropriate for a parent to wait until they get 'consent,' whatever that means for an infant anyway.

“I’m going to touch you right now, in order to get you a fresh diaper so you can feel better, okay?” feels very Antioch rules distillation of the way people actually talk.

But for the most part, I think that talking to your kids about what's going on while you're doing it is just part of normal interpersonal communication. Like, do people just sit there and change diapers/clothes in silence?

I feel like I try to layer consent-messaging into my parenting. Asking if I can have a kiss or a hug. Not getting sad or pretending to be sad if she doesn't want to give me one. Doing my best to really empower my littlest kid on this front. I've been (quietly) frustrated by her older brother though. He often tries to kiss and hug her without asking and then gets all sullen when she reacts negatively. I try to gently talk him through it and some basic reasons why we ask people's permissions, but I can tell he's still upset about it. Probably because for most of his early life, he just had his mommy as a source of physical affection and they were always very cuddly. I can't imagine her not reciprocating. Not sure exactly what I need to do with him, but there's obviously work ahead.

The NSPCC's Pants page is spot on imo. http://www.nspcc.org.uk/help-and-advice/for-parents/keeping-your-child-safe/the-underwear-rule/the-underwear-rule_wda97016.html

I just love that there is a "Pants" page

we had the "where do babies come from" talk with Veronica last night, prompted entirely by questions about hereditary diseases (specifically celiac disease). things didn't get TOO graphic, but it was the first time the whole "a man has sperm and a penis and a woman has a vagina and eggs/ovaries; put them together and the magic of reproduction happens" thing. time to get some books I suppose.

I'm already thinking about that talk, since putting a penis and a vagina together did not result in the magic of reproduction for us. "When two people love each other very much, and one of them has decrepit eggs, they spend a lot of time on the phone with their insurance company and go to a place called a fertility clinic..."

"When two people love each other very much, they give their entire life savings to a placement agency and a pack of lawyers"

we talked about that stuff too since we have plenty of handy examples among our friends (lesbian couples w kids, couples that had to go through fertility treatments etc.) We were just emphasizing the science of it, egg + sperm = baby; most people have sex to get the egg and the sperm together, other people need the help of a doctor etc.

Fed our daughter her first bite of fish last night. She had been highly resistant to the idea ever since we stayed adding fish back into our diet earlier this year. We had tried all kinds of persuasion "Pingu eats fish, you'll be just like Pingu!" No luck. I guess she was out walking around with her mom a few days ago and remarked about how much she wanted to eat a squirrel. So we told her that I had caught and killed and cooked a squirrel. And she ate it.

Farmed Atlantic Squirrel

OMG

i think i need to introduce a level of bald-faced lying into my parental routine

*takes notes*

You need to give them something they can post on the thread of 'childhood myths you believed into adulthood' in 20 years' time. It's a public service!

True fact: I ate actual squirrel as a child. It's terrible.

It's not very good. Too much squirrel stew as a kid.

Squirrel brains, however, are fucking delicious

Our son spoke his first word today: BUM.

YAY