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Kids/Parenting: It’s fine, everything is fine.
Jebus314
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So I thought it would be fun to have a parenting thread in a similar vein to the car and home owner threads. More of a general discussion of experiences and thoughts rather than a focused discussion.
This OP is going to be light on details, because honestly I have no idea what I am doing. I probably should have done more research in the 9 months leading up to having a kid.
This is a thread for thoughts on all ages/types of parenting. Have a 22 year old making terrible life choices? Post your agonizing thoughts here! Is it 2 am and your newborn is screaming in your face? Post here for some sympathy awesomes.
Pictures are fun if someone wants to post, but let’s not ask for them, as parents don’t need additional stress.
If anyone has some awesome books/websites/whatever that the think everyone should know about, let me know and I’ll add them.
This OP is going to be light on details, because honestly I have no idea what I am doing. I probably should have done more research in the 9 months leading up to having a kid.
This is a thread for thoughts on all ages/types of parenting. Have a 22 year old making terrible life choices? Post your agonizing thoughts here! Is it 2 am and your newborn is screaming in your face? Post here for some sympathy awesomes.
Pictures are fun if someone wants to post, but let’s not ask for them, as parents don’t need additional stress.
If anyone has some awesome books/websites/whatever that the think everyone should know about, let me know and I’ll add them.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
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And I’m not even talking about the internet. Just midwifes, doctors, lactation consultants, nurses, etc. Everyone seemingly had a different opinion.
I mean come on. You all work at the same hospital. Get your shit together and settle on one recommendation.
Your kid has one way to communicate, crying. That's it. If the kid is crying it's because they are hungry, tired, cold, or dirty and needs a diaper changed.
So offer food then address everything else, if they are still crying it's because they want a snuggle or maybe have gas so bounce away.
They will feed when hungry just don't force anything on them.
That’s what I thought before we had the kid. But a lot of the hospital staff stressed that for the first several weeks (months?) that they need to be woken up every 1-6 hrs (depending on who you talk to). The idea being that if they are not getting enough food they can become lethargic. So it seems like they just sleep for long stretches, but really they are starving. But maybe that’s just CYA on the hospitals part.
Edit - we are two weeks in though and pretty close to pulling the plug in waking up. One night we slept through alarms and she slept for 5 hrs. So maybe you’re right and we should just let things happen.
Although, to be fair, the first few months can vary wildly on your newborns personality. I got lucky because I am naturally a day person while Mr. Muzz is a night owl, so we had clear cut 'shifts'.
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Dear Satan.....
I've got a 10 month old
If yours is feeding well during waking hours then let them sleep, for their sake and yours :biggrin:
@SummaryJudgment, I’m curious if you guys are using/following any kind of developmental programs or guidelines for education/mental growth.
I never really considered it before, but I read somewhere that like the pre-K time period is fairly important in terms of developing good learning habits. Like kids who go to pre-school tend to have better education outcomes than kids who start at kindergarten.
But what about 0-2 years? Any good guides on important activities? Or is it basically just make sure they don’t die.
We have a five week old who is breastfed. We weren't given any specific advice regarding waking him up, he seems to do a pretty good job of that by himself!
We've found he'll eat until he's full without us prompting him. If his nappy is clean and he's still crying he's most likely hungry!
Be forewarned though, you're fast approaching a growth spurt which mean your kid will probably feed (if breastfed) more or less continuously for hours.
When ours was about 5 weeks old he became really irritable and wouldn't settle. He'd also feed on and off for hours in a row. This is normal as he's encouraging his mum to produce more milk so that he'll get fed properly as he gets bigger! This lasted two days or so. He's now had a few more normal nights where he's slept for three hours or so before wanting a feed.
I've made quite a few exasperated posts in the SE kid thread but if you have any questions tag me in this they and I'll get back to you! From experience I can tell you it's really helpful to have someone to talk to who's been through the same, the SE thread has been invaluable!
No programs by name at home, just lots of cuddles and playing and reading and motor skills exercise (walking with a walker now)
She's in daycare and it happens to be a Montessori and apparently they have a whole little "curriculum", which is at her age a lot of sensory/motor skills play
I suspect Dr Lipschitz's big book of child dev is marginal gains from kid to kid, outside of broad strokes stuff like spending time, and routines help
Also this stuff is SUPER HARD (she coliced for about 6-8 weeks) and a lot of people are going to have opinions and talk a lot of shit
You do what's good for you, mom, and baby
And that means also prioritizing stuff for you and mom sometimes so the attrition doesn't kill you
For instance: They're having a really bad night? If co-sleeping is what it takes to settle them, do it (caveats: YMMV, and maybe after theyre able to roll, also dependent on what kind of sleeper you are)
Breast fed. We probably wouldn’t have been as worried, but at her like 5 day check in she had lost 11% of her birth weight, and they said more than 10% is when they start to worry that the breast feeding isn’t producing enough.
But yeah. Since then she has gotten almost back to her birth weight so we are definitely thinking it’s time to stop waking her up and just let her tell us when it’s time.
Already though she has gone from being awake maybe 30 minutes in a day, to being awake for hours. They grow so fast!
I don’t generally post in SE++. Threads in D&D are required to stay on topic, but that’s about it. This thread and the SE++ one will probably be similar.
Things like how often to feed your kid, or how much, or what activities they should do, that shit is all about what works for you. Don't be afraid to do your own thing, and don't let people shame you into doing things their way. If you're paying attention and trying your best and taking your kid to their scheduled doctor appointments and getting their vaccines on time and stuff, your kid is probably going to turn out fine. Kids really aren't THAT fragile.
As far as daycare, I liked having preschool for my kids, but most studies I've seen show that most developmental gains realized by early schooling fade as time goes on. Like, if your kid has preschool, they will probably be ahead of the kindergarteners who didn't, but by second or third grade, they're going to all be about the same, all things equal. Which doesn't necessarily mean there's no advantage to preschool, but it DOES mean you're not going to ruin your kid if you're not able to put them in one.
And like somebody upthread said, take care of yourself. You need breaks. If you take care of yourself, you'll be better able to take care of your kids. It's a win-win.
I'll have to try to dig up the link... I remember (on another forum, but in a similar thread) someone linked to a study that showed that purchasing baby/parenting books (regardless of having read them) correlated with improved childhood development - in other words it wasn't anything about the books in particular, just having parents that care enough to want to put in effort to try to be better parents correlates with better outcomes.
Our kids (2.5 yr old twins) are in daycare - I think the real developmental gain is having them be exposed to other kids & developing social skills as opposed to the 'they know their letters already!' kinds of marks. The other quite honest answer is that taking care of them is exhausting - there's no way that I or my wife are the right kind of people to full-time watch them. We can certainly do it (and we have a great time on weekends), but I'm realistic that a good daycare can be better at the day-to-day things of trying to get them art activities, time outside, etc than we could be (and conversely between my wife & I we can pull enough salary to afford it).
First of all congrats on the tiny human!
But seriously as a new parent you will be given literally hundreds of pieces of advice often presented as rules, natural laws, or in rare instances actually presented as advice that will range from completely inapplicable to your particular tiny human, to flat out wrong, and even sometimes actively harmful.
So the best advice I think I can give is don't feel bad or blame yourself if someone's super useful 100% trick to do X isn't working with kiddo. It's not your fault, it's just that there is no universal instruction manual when it comes to tiny humans.
I've fully committed myself to just sleeping when they do. They fall asleep randomly in the morning then I'm going to bed. Bedtime for them is 1900 I go to bed at 2000 when the sun is shining.
Yeah that’s what I do too except recently here it’s been taking thirty minutes to get her asleep, then I get back in bed and by the time I fall asleep, she’s already complaining about something so I have to get back up and rock her to sleep again. Over and over.
It was much simpler with the first kid. She got to figure it out on her own a bit more. With the second one, I can’t have her disrupting the entire house’s sleep, otherwise life would really be untenable during the day.
Look, I’ve got time right now to list this because everyone is awake and cared for, but boy howdy would I love to be asleep instead.
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Now we have a toddler who was upset that mom couldn't find "the circle moon tunnel for my truck."
We have no idea what that means. But apparently it is better than Friday, where my wife turned off the TV against the toddlers wishes. Spent Saturday morning replacing the TV that took a flying remote to the exact center.
Good times.
It's the ultimate problem, because every kid is going to be different, but they gotta find some way to break it down into a common, 'every kid needs this.' And then throw in the hard mode complications, like parents who are shit at understanding what the new baby really needs and so are inadvertantly underfeeding or something.
I had some friends who seemed to have everything under control, but had to go to the ER because daughter had a bad infection from improper butt cleaning. And then on kid 2, totally screwed up medication instructions and were giving him undiluted doses of antibiotic that was supposed to be mixed before dosing.
I started combo feeding my kids because of supply issues. First one took whatever Similac was available. Second one was.. pickier.. and we got the fancy brand from England that seemed to work better.
- If your kid cries like all the damned time, consider that they may have allergies or something else going on. We had six weeks of screaming hell with our daughter because it turns out she was lactose intolerant, and also everything-else intolerant. There was literally one brand of a specific kind of formula that was not dairy or soy or anything-normal based that she could eat. It was, of course, the most expensive formula on the market. But once we discovered that, she started sleeping and stopped screaming in pain constantly, so it was worth a few extra bucks.
- We couldn't breastfeed or daughter because my wife was on meds that precluded that. We couldn't breastfeed our son because my wife just couldn't produce much milk. So both our kids were formula fed. I'm not saying breastfeeding doesn't have advantages, but I AM saying that if it doesn't work for you, you're not a broken garbage human for using formula.
- My wife and I discovered that alternating feedings every night just meant that neither of us got any sleep. So we swapped nights - one night, she would handle all feedings and I slept, the next night we switched. Getting one good night's sleep every other night worked well for us, and we were both more rested overall.
My kids are 7 and 4 now; those baby days are very hazy, and I’m lucky social media ‘on this day’ memories exist. Not sure I ever got more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night until my youngest turned two.
For the first time in nearly 6 years, we had a sleep in until 7:30 last Sunday - both the kids were up, but were happily playing in the lounge room. At least, until Master 2 smacked his sister in the head with a TV remote, because why not.
At least he's grown out of the 'I'm going to grab a fistful of hair and pull it while grinning like a lunatic' phase. That one wasn't fun for Mum or his sister. His sister would sit there and sort of yell-cry until someone came and sorted it out, rather than actually do anything proactive. She didn't want to hurt him, bless her, while he seemed completely indifferent to her escalating screeching. Little sociopath.
That weight came down because the cesarian was on a Friday, she had latching problems due to a tongue tie and the oral surgeon didn't come in till Monday. My wife's milk was delayed in coming in as a result.
This led us to having to feed every three hours, bottle or boob, around the clock for three months.
After that we were told to let her sleep and she was an amazing sleeper, especially after sleep training at six months.
At the end of the day if you can't trust your pediatrician and listen to what they proscribe in most situations you either need a new pediatrician or to check your own ego.
They're the ones who are going to be laying hands on your kid most often and you need a working relationship with whomever holds that distinction.
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My wife and I are about 3 months behind you guys.
Not panicking yet, but definitely thinking I should be reading more about how to parent. With the understanding that there is no such thing as ready.
That's nothing. Wait til they are 2 and you love them more than life itself and realize that literally everything is dangerous and ready to take them from you. You think those first hundred days are hard? Wait until they have the capability to slip your grip for a split second and dart into the street. This shit keeps me up at night. It's terrifying.
It's also every bit worth it.
Remember also that bottle fed babies regain weight faster than breast fed babies, effectively creating a bimodal distribution of weight paths. Meaning you can expect your pediatrician to be a little bit hysterical at your first appointment for a beast fed baby where it has lost 10 % of birth weight (5th percentile weight path for bottle fed, 75th percentile for breast fed)
Also remember that babies come with only one communication mode properly installed. And that is crying. So they use it for everything till they have finished setting up all the other modes. You have to look beyond the crying to judge whether baby is saying "time to eat!" Or "I'm actually starving!". If the baby looks like a healthy baby, and starts flapping about contentedly after feeding, then that means they were probably just hungry.
Beyond that too, remember that on growth spurt days/weeks some babies will want to breast feed for like 18 hours a day, and will continually unlatch and fuss. This is actually them exploiting mum's brain and hormones to make her increase milk production. If the milk is coming, and the baby is going back to eat it, it just means the baby is being a bastard to try and get food faster, not that something is wrong.
Unfortunately babies just share a distribution of behaviours, to evaluate them properly you need to be around them a lot and already have had babies. So my advice is to travel back in time to an idyllic and probably imagined 12th century farming village where your wife can be surrounded by a close community of friends who will help raise the child as a group of women of mixed ages and experience levels. In addition, have an elderly relative live with you. Did you know that young babies and old people share about the same common sleep patterns, and because of changes in the brains of old people thry do far better with less sleep? So there's another handy childcare hint. Reform our society so that we retain more multigenerational living without stigma
Our oldest is starting to deal with hormones and it's *fun*! I've asked her about dinner and she's burst into tears. I literally walked out of a bedroom and was instantly told to, "Go away!"
Our youngest took a long time to not wet the bed at night so we've only just recently not had to deal with any diaper products. After a decade.
Every kid is different. Start learning how to politely tell people to fuck off with their advice and do what works for you. Know that there will be nights where you sit there and go, "JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT AND I WILL GIVE IT TO YOU OMG STOP CRYING" and that's okay.
Through everything, keep an open dialog with your SO. As long as you're both working together on the techniques you're using and helping each other with the frustrating parts, you'll be just fine.
I would actually like more. I love being a parent, and I love kids. I'm snipped, but would love to adopt/foster, but unfortunately I don't think my wife (porp) will ever come around on that, which I totally understand.
The one piece of advice I give to every new parent is that you may not love your kid right away, and that's fine. I didn't feel much of anything for #1 for the first 3-6 months or so, and I don't think I really came to love him until sometime in the 6-12 month range. I felt like a failure, and porp could tell I was raising the kid out of duty instead of love and it was a big additional stressor on top of everything else. But it did happen eventually, and things are pretty great right now.
Each phase tends to bring it's own struggles and challenges. Right now, it's social stuff, especially with #1. He has a really hard time being flexible when playing with others (i.e. letting someone else be in charge), and at school his teachers have commented often that he doesn't think or care if his words hurt someone else's feelings. He doesn't say things just to be mean, but he will be brutally honest (i.e. a friend shows him something they made, if he thinks it's bad, he tells them so). We've enrolled him in a group therapy program with other kids that are struggling a bit socially, where the kids all play together under the observation of a psychologist, and the psychologist intervenes/reinforces/corrects behavior as necessary. Hopefully it helps, who knows. Parenting is mostly a 20+ year sequence of educated guesses as far as I can tell.
She's fine, taking a bottle in a high chair, and they've combined infant 1 and infant 2 in one room (we're 4:1), and the useless relief instructor from one of the toddler classes is just kind of bumbling over paperwork at the front of the room while 4 of the kids wails and the other instructor is trying to corral everyone. Kiddo is, naturally, upset to see us and we have to leave so soon.
Ffs guys. *pinches brow*
Well that fills me with dread. Currently on 5 waiting lists for daycare.
We’ve got a decent routine at the moment, but I go back to work in a week and a half. Wife is off for another month to two months after that, but not looking forward to either transition.
Currently though I’m debating how long I can let her sit in a poopy diaper before I am a bad parent. After several hours of eating and then cuddling, she just finally calmed enough to put down, and then immediately pooped. Time to start all over I guess.
I felt the same way. Then I proceeded to do nothing before she was born. Oops.
I would change the diaper immediately; first it helps prevent diaper rash, and secondly if she's just falling asleep she should fall back asleep fairly quickly.
Once you have a LOT of practice you can change a diaper and barely wake YOURSELF up.
I was completely 100% on the side of "no" when it came to discussions about whether or not I wanted kids, and even the thought of it sent me spiralling into panic attacks, but once it happened my brain must have kicked in some contingency chemical that blocked all that because I have never felt more chill in my life.
I too haven't read up on anything about kids aside from a couple nuggets here and there (insert Seth Rogan rant in Knocked Up about What to Expect When You're Expecting) but consider enrolling in some pre-natal classes if they are available. They've been a great help on getting my wife and I prepared and can offer a little hands-on experience with things (albiet with stuffed animals in my case).
It also helps that my brother just had twins so I got to jump from the pre-natal classes directly into giving him a hand with juggling two babies at the same time and boy, what a confidence booster that is.
Lastly, for dads, the best thing to do is just learn on how to help with whatever your partner needs as their body slowly becomes taken over by a life-syphoning alien.