Survive Parenting

This is crossposted a little so I'll cut it: ( Read more... )

The bulb syringe: a handy tool that changes a baby who is too congested to nurse into a baby who is too pissed off to nurse.

What do you do for a baby with a cold?

Yesterday, I was THAT mother, you know, the one who has a firm grip on a struggling child as she marches them along, clearly at the end of her temper. The one people tsk at because what sort of abusive parent is so rough with their child?

In my case, it was because K decided it was funny to run away from me. I had let her run around on the grass with some kids at school pickup, and when I said it was time to go, she decided it was time to run instead. That's the sort of behavior that just can't slide. So I grabbed her around her upper arm and marched her to the car, because she was inclined to go boneless.

Anyway, I eventually got us back to the car, although it involved at least a few feet of walking while holding each child around the middle. And K lost her promised trip to Burger King because if I couldn't trust her to stay with me in public, we needed to stay home.

Today, I was one of THOSE mothers, you know, the ones who futilely try to reprimand misbehaving children while not actually backing it up. The ones who are creating the next generation of delinquents with their permissive parenting? We were having lunch before going to buy her Halloween costume and I had let her sit in one of the comfy chairs at Panera, which she took as license to use it as a jungle gym. Meanwhile, I really desperately needed to eat at least a bit before leaving and the baby was drinking with his eyes closed, giving every impression that if I fed him just a little while longer, he would fall asleep. I should have left immediately when I saw what her mood was and knew it at the time, but I was desperately hungry, so instead I threatened and threatened until she moved into outright defiance and deliberate provocation, at which point the Halloween costume got cancelled and we headed home, because if I couldn't trust her to listen to me in public, we had to stay home.

Only first I had to stop to mop up when I discovered I had managed squeeze juice from the juice box I was carrying all over the carseat, and then had to deal with the boneless puddle of child on the floor of the car. I feel a certain amount of pride that this is the first point in the past two days that I started yelling, which was just about as effective as it usually is, which is to say that she started laughing. I feel so much sympathy for spanking parents at times like these, but I also know that times like these are part of why I don't spank, because I don't think I want to allow myself to use violence when I'm that angry. As it is, I can't say I was terribly gentle when I pulled her up and put her in her carseat.

On the way home:

K lost tv privileges for the afternoon due to egregious seatbelt violations

My back started spasming, not doubt due to having to haul around a struggling forty pound child

I had to stop suddenly, causing my large cup of iced tea to hit the floor

K announced that she had spilled her juice

I won't even go into what it took to achieve a bath tonight. I have rarely been so happy to see bedtime come as tonight. I think four may kill me. And did I mention the three month old is teething already?

So any guesses on how many more times we have to go through this and how many more patient explanations it will take before she finally realizes that defying me in public will result in staying home?

...would you let your daughter take ballet lessons?

My 4.5-year-old wants to learn ballet. Every fiber of my being cringes at the thought. I associate ballet with gender conformity, massive body image problems, eating disorders, and injuries. But I never took ballet and I don't know, I may be selling it short.

What do you think? Anyone have experience?

I am raising monsters with massive therapy bills.

My five-year-old doesn't wipe properly after using the toilet. And when I notice the smell, we have a big fight about me wiping her.

My three-year-old scratches and pinches and is generally very very THREE in her boundary-pushing, rule-breaking, and conscious bloody rectitude, not to mention priggish, especially when she thinks it will show her older sister up.

I lose my temper or withdraw about as often as I successfully resolve a situation, I think, though I'm kind of upset so I could be wrong.

They both like to be naked, which is fine, and to point their bottoms at people and shout Poo and Bum, which is not in the least shocking but really irritating. I am less comfortable than I would like with nudity in general, but I don't think objecting to being shown someone's arse as a gesture of disrespect is unreasonable or prudish.

Argh. Yet sometimes they are great and helpful and kind and friendly and loving and socially magnificent. It's just... today. Bah.

Did anyone have had nights actually worse as result of practising Pantley Pull-Off?
I have had 19 nightwakings to count last night :(( (3 of which he fell suprisingly asleep on his own, once was knocked out by himself when I re-tucked his arms inside swaddle - without boob!)

Or is it just a luck for it to coincide with teething? Yesterday I discerned clear shapes of two bottom teeth on the surface of my son's gum. But nothing white out yet. Not to mention runny nose without actual cold. Does it sound very much like teething to you and teeth will be really out any day soon? Or is it just another early sign and can wait for months, so I need to hold my excitement? :)

ETA: He's 6.5 months.

About ten minutes after going to bed, Christopher came downstairs.

He'd been thinking about death and couldn't get to sleep.

We had a cuddle, and talked about how everyone dies eventually and generally no-one likes the idea - I asked if he were worried about himself dying soon to which the answer was not really.

I said obviously I couldn't tell him that he definitely wouldn't die for a long time yet, but that it wasn't very likely.

I said that large parts of life are devoted to either learning to accept the fact of death or trying to ignore it.

I said that the actual Being Dead bit wasn't a problem, though quite a lot of deaths are pretty nasty.

I dragged religion into it, saying that we believe after we're dead we eventually go and live with God in heaven.

We had a bit more of a cuddle, then he went back upstairs.  I said if he wanted to talk to God about it, he should remember that because of Jesus, God knows what it's like, he's been through it.  So sue me.

Not sure what prompted that one.  A relatively minor sympathetic character died in Merlin yesterday, but he was by no means the first.

Any thoughts?  He's almost ten.

Okay, so, Colin is going to be eight months old next week.

We started him on some finger foods a couple of weeks ago, and I can't believe how much he loves them. Today while we ate dinner he ate almost half a peach (cut into small pieces) and two big handfuls of Cheerios. On other occasions he has eaten, for example, an entire small banana and a third of a cup of mashed potatoes. He also eats purees (usually one 4oz jar at a time, with finger foods) and oatmeal or brown rice cereal made with breastmilk. So solids are going really, really well. He usually gets them twice a day.

My issue: I just can't believe how much he also wants to nurse. For the past few nights he's fed every hour. Not just "waah, I woke up a little, I need the nipple to go back to sleep" but dedicated nursing. And for various reasons it's hard to nurse him side-lying - I wind up with horrible back pain and cramping. So I'm sitting up to feed him every hour all night.

What on earth is going on here?

I don't think my supply has dropped, because I'm able to pump as much as always and he has plenty of soaking wet diapers. I feel like he nurses plenty during the day - he's cut back on taking bottles from his nanny or his father, but he seems to nurse just as often when I'm with him during the day. Are solids much less filling than I think they are? Is it possible that he's not really digesting them properly? He seems awfully young to eat so much table food.

Or does it just sound like the mother of all growth spurts?

My almost 6 months old quit sleeping through the night at 3 months old and started waking up every 1-2 hrs since then. Still no improvement at all as of now. Good nights starts after nice 3-4 hrs stretch, then every 1-2 hrs and with every waking it's taking more effort to settle him back to sleep.

Aside from theories how it's wonderful for babies to do so *mutter mutter* ...Tanking him up for the night won't help. Sleep won't beget sleep. Wearing him out and over-stimulating him during daytime might give extra chance of the first 4 hour stretch, but not afterwards...I am starting to feel it's my fault I've used least resistance method of just nursing him back to sleep. Some nights I don't mind the whole thing, some nights I get annoyed by how hard he's to settle back to sleep. It's rough on my husband sleep though.

And I don't know anyone whose sleep has been actually helped by Pantley book, other than 'Hmmm, interesting! Educational!'!

Will getting my husband involved in rocking him to sleep at night time help with the sleep? My husband attempts at doing so has been met by increasingly vociferous objection and after 5 mins we give up and I nurse him back once again (Least Upset Baby Method, again). Is it his screaming and getting used to being held and rocked by my husband worth longer term? Otherwise nothing is going to change until a baby is 2-3 years old from most accounts I heard!

Hope this is ok to post here, I am looking for a couple of product recommendations.

First, I am looking for a breastfeeding doll for Christmas for my girl (then a mature 22 months old). Her little brother or sister will arrive in February and she declared my breasts to be "moo cow boobs" yesterday, so I think she knows what they are for :) I'd like her to be able to feed a baby doll with a mammy doll, rather than only have the plastic doll-with-bottle combo you can buy everywhere. Maybe something in the style of a waldorf doll? Not too expensive, money is tight as with everyone else.

Secondly, for the new baby we are considering a baby hammock for nap time in the living room (baby will sleep with us for night time and also nap in slings sometime). Something like the Amby Baby Hammock or the Arm's Reach Beautiful Dreamer. Any experience with baby hammocks, any brand particularly good?

Has anyone been on bed rest with a toddler? Can anyone make any suggestions for making this easier on a 2.5 year-old?

I'm out of the hospital (after a week in it), and home. The boy is in daycare during the week, but it's a holiday weekend, so he's not back there until Tuesday. I can sit on the floor and cuddle and read to him and do things there, but I can't pick him up, carry him, swing him around, give him foot rides, change his diaper, give him a bath... We have various friends and family helping out, so I'm never alone with him, but he wants me to do the things I would normally do, and he's upset that I can't and it's breaking my heart.

At lunch, he cried so much that he vomited. He seems to be somewhat better when I'm not in evidence. I'm considering hiding in the bedroom for the next two months.

Oh GOD.

GRANT ME PATIENCE.

Or gin.

---

I cannot swear enough for this.

The three-year old says "Mummy I need a weewee" and we pop off to the loo and on she goes and after her wee she strains a little and says, beaming, "My doing a poo!" and we wait and nothing happens and I say "Shall I get you a book while you wait?" and she says "Yes" and in a mist of proud maternal bluebirds and rainbows and kittens I wash my hands and go to get a book and there in the front room there is POO EVERYWHERE.

The five-year-old has poo dripping from her shorts-leg and it's in the hallway and on the floor. I send her to the bathroom and fetch the book and clean the older child up while the younger child stands beside the loo with her pants around her ankles so I can get the ENORMOUS VOLUME of thick gloopy poo from floors in two rooms and legs and clothes and EVERYWHERE dealt with and eventually I shower the older child off in the bathtub while the younger one sits back down and as the older child is declared clean the younger one stands up and says LOOK LOOK and there's a minuscule poo and I clean her up with one tiny wipe and dress her again and wash my hands again and go and put the things in the washing machine and wash my hands again and then the younger one comes back with poo under her foot (walking on the SIDE of her foot so it doesn't go everywhere) and I clean that up and she shows me where on the floor it came from and I make tea and sit down and she comes BACK with poo on her ANKLE and I clean her up and wash my hands and then I find a HUGE MONSTER POO n the SOFA under a blanket and a soft toy and OH MY GOD.

My hands are dessicated. The smell in the front room is so strong I can't tell whether there's more lurking somewhere like, oh, who knows, INSIDE the toyboxes or on the damn ceiling or somewhere.

---

I'm so sorry for all the hassle and fighting and STRESS we had when my eldest was being toilet trained. Really. I'm SORRY. Can the payback stop now?

*cries*

In update to this http://community.livejournal.com/plan_survive/ about my son being suddenly very fussy and hourly nightwakings.

I was to GP on that day of posting only to get most classic GP experience 'could be just colic'. I even confronted GP on using that line only to be told that there's nothing else to show and please to come back if the problem persists with a diary of symptoms, bye-bye.

That very day his body was quite hot. That was a fever of 39C.

Was bemused that a fever in a baby leads to A&E, having blood, urine, spinal fluid taken out (had to walk out of the room not to watch this), not to mention lots of screaming...and was put on IV antibiotics as precaution and overnight stay in hospital and very exhausted baby who fell asleep on his own.

Now he's back to happy old self - his nightwakings are back to every 4-2-2-2...hours until 10am. Hurrah :)

Seems like I am going to have to rush to A&E every time his fever spikes, right? Knowing that same strict screening process and precautionary antibiotics has saved someone's else baby I know who turned out to have had meningitis.

Thank God for NHS!

Does anyone know off the top of your head whether CBeebies will show a birthday card for someone outside the UK? The website stresses that they can't show every card, and I'm wondering if location might be a triage criterion. (If so, I'm sure I can borrow a UK address.)

Oisín is fairly convinced that there will be a card for him on 22 August. I'm going to have to manage that expectation, aren't I?

My three months old son fell asleep by himself to nap about grand total of 2-3 times so far without being nursed or taken outside in baby carrier. (he's still showing remarkable resistance to being rocked). It does involve a lot of effort to get him to nap indoors.
(edit: at night time *sometimes* he smiles and coos at your face to sleep...)

I have privilege of knowing nothing about babies and with foreknowledge of all babies being different, but how realistic should I be about him being able to fall asleep to nap by himself? Hope the question makes sense, although it sounds like the futile 'when will my baby sleep through the night?' Also, I have got some soft toys that could do as loveys - but is he too young to appreciate them yet?

Thank you for the suggestions on dealing with my son's "NO!" phase - we're taking many of them to heart and will be working on it in the coming weeks! The other half of the problem, which I keep hoping will just go away, is sleep...

This is the sixth? seventh? day in a row that my son's woken up between 2:30-3ish (and stayed awake for up to an hour) and then woken up for the day between 5:30 and 6. He goes to bed around 9:30. I tried putting him to bed earlier and he still woke up at 5:30. I go to bed around 9:30, so putting him to bed later is not an option.

What do I do?! I have lovely insomniac panic attacks that frequently keep ME awake for an hour or more in the night, especially when a toddler shouting "MUMMY! MUMMY! DADDY! MUMMYDADDY!" over the monitor, or padding in, startles me awake. I NEED nine hours of sleep every night to be at my best, so I'm already running at about three hours less sleep per night than I need. What this means is that I'm utterly and completely exhausted and so is my husband.

He WAS getting up around 6:15 and sleeping through otherwise.

Things we've done:

- His room is as dark as we can make it, including two blankets pinned over the windows
- We started using a fan for white noise a couple of nights ago. He loves the fan but the white noise, to date, is not helping.
- If he wakes us and my husband or I go in to check on him (which I refused to let either of us do last night - I just let him shout, as he wasn't in obvious distress), turning on his music helps him sleep...but then I'm still awake for an hour.

What is going on?! How do I make him stop?! I physically cannot keep getting this little sleep without turning into a raging beast. I do NOT deal with sleep deprivation well. The fact that he did not sleep more than 2 hours at a stretch until he was nearly 15 months old is, in essence, the reason we are not having another child.

I thought we'd gotten over that really, really bad sleep period about six months ago, when he started sleeping through again after a six-month waking regression. He just turned three. This is doing us in!

ETA: Oh, also, he takes naps that are about an hour long during the week at daycare. On the weekend we try to keep his naps around two hours but he would sleep longer than that if he could. There is no difference between his nighttime sleep during the week and on the weekend.

We had a relatively pleasant Age Two. He had his moments and we went through a couple of tantrumy phases but overall he was a pleasant toddler.

Although we've only had a three-year-old for a matter of weeks, things have taken a distinctly unpleasant tone. For the last six weeks or so, "NO!!!!" is the word du jour. Even something GOOD will be met with a "NO!" a la, "Do you want rice pudding?" "NOOO!" "Okay, you don't have to have any." "I WANT RICE PUDDING!!!!!!"

This is starting to drive me nuts. I thought that after a couple of weeks, he'd at least listen to the suggestion before rejecting it but he doesn't show any sign at all of doing that. What do I do? Is it time to start enforcing the consequences - i.e., don't give him the rice pudding? Or, do I respect his fundamental personhood (or something) and keep giving him chances? To date, I will give him the rice pudding if he changes his mind rapidly - but I'm wondering if that really is just feeding the behavior (no pun intended).

Are time-outs cruel and unusual?! How does one get a child to actually SIT in the time-out chair/stand in the time-out corner for the allotted three minutes?!

I want to be understanding of this stage and all crunchy mama-ish but honestly, after three and a half hours of unmitigated toddler yesterday (I live with my parents and husband, but all three were out doing other things, leaving me at home with my son), I was ready to kill him. I used to miss when I could spend two days at home with him but not at the moment!

How do/have you all deal(t) with the super-contrary phase?

Anyone got a tip on how to keep the small one (just about to turn 2 years old) in bed until a civilised hour? She's been waking at 5am for the last 3 mornings!

There are already blackout linings on her curtains AND a blackout blind behind them, but it's so hot at the moment that we have to either prop her door open or her window. The former means that light from the hallway comes in (hard to reduce that) while the latter gives us the birdsong of the dawn chorus. Beautiful sound, except when accompnied by a toddler soprano yelling "MUUUUUUUUUMMEEEEEEEEEEE!."

Us going to bed earlier is only partially good, as keeping this toddler indoors when she can clearly see that the garden is sunny.. well it's fun, but then waking up the neighbours by letting her play outside would be worse *lol* And we have tried putting her to bed a little later, to no effect.

So, tips? Please??

*yawn*

I thought I'd post this here, as we're all parents:

www.nationalfamilyweek.co.uk

I saw it in the Martin Lewis e-mail this morning, just pop your postcode in to see what free activities you & your family can go along to next week.

Cool :)

Hello -

It's been a while since I've posted. Just wanted to ask if any parents/caregivers out went through the procedure (hassle) of ear surgery (ear tubes) with their son/daughter? How did you get through it? How did you take the anethesia part? That part is  freaking me out a bit. I know children are resilient much more than we are.

How did you manage to control your fears on your own and with the little one? Do you have any last minute tips? We're going through this  on Tuesday, and as much as I know, I am still a little scared and need a bit of support and a virtual shoulder.

Thanks for your help!