I had this, too. Baby #1 was born at 6:47pm, which meant I could make loads of phone calls and chit chat with people and entertain my visitors to my heart’s content. Baby #2 didn’t come until almost midnight, and there weren’t many people who were keen on getting calls at that hour. Plus by the time I finally came down, I had been up most of the night.
I also found it very difficult to regulate my body temperature after giving birth. I was shaking and cold immediately after, then spent quite a while being unbearably hot. They gave me latex gloves full of ice for my hoohah, and I ended up making several of those and basically packing myself in ice to cool down.
Let it also be known… Those little bugs that you find under rocks… You know… “doodle bugs”! The ones with about a dozen legs, that roll up into a little gray ball when you touch them? (also known as “pill bugs”)
Are completely harmless, when ingested! :eek:
Both of those were the opposite for Bro and SiL (sort of, it’s not like he’d say “just let him yell”, but he’d say “honey, he doesn’t seem to be hurting, I think he’s just having fun yelling”), but then, he’s a multitasker and she’s a singletasker… there’s a lot of things in which they flip the male/female topics.
What “might”, the baby you get will not be the baby you expect. The more detailed the baby-mental-image, the more things there will be in which your baby is just the opposite. Or, as SiL’s best friend put it “even if this boy that’s coming had happened to be a girl, remember she would have been not just your daughter, but your husband’s daughter and Nava’s niece - she would not have been this paper doll in your mind.”
It’s possible that a kid who’s been sleeping just fine will suddenly stop, for no good reason. It won’t last, but it will be hell for a while. Children can go abruptly from one stage to another. My almost eighteen-month-old decided a few days ago that he would only sleep if I was in the room. He’s been fine until now. If I leave him alone he can scream for at least two hours without calming down.
Well, my first was pretty much exactly the baby I imagined. Right down to blonde, blue-eyed, beautiful. Easy, slept well, never sick, not fussy, all that stuff. Of course, eventually he hit 2 1/2 - 3. And eventually along came his sisters, and I got the baby education many people get with number 1.
A toddler that has coated herself from head to toe in Vaseline will be almost impossible to catch and very difficult to wash up. Hide your petroleum jelly!
My daughter is everything I wanted in a kid. She was quiet, sweet, healthy as an ox, slept almost a full night starting before she was 3 months old (the doctor was horrified that I let her sleep more than 5 hours without food, I reasoned that hunger is stronger than sleep, if she needed food she would wake up). She still is that same kid today, she is everything I could put in my wishlist, which is why I am not having a second one. I am not going to ruin my record.
And keep the Desitin out of their reach as well. Just so you know, a brand new tube of diaper cream will completely coat the average-size 18-month-old. And their crib. And the sheets. And the wall by the crib.
Oh, and that reminds me of another thing…there will come a point, like when your husband is chasing around a Vaseline covered toddler, or your 4 year old starts saying, “What the – ?!” with perfect Jerry Springer guest inflection, where you *will *just about suffocate yourself trying not to laugh while maintaining proper Mommy Poise and Disapproval.
When my daughter was 3, we still kept the pad from her changing table on the floor, even though she was (mostly) potty trained. She also had a giant stuffed bear in there, about the same size as her. I walked into her room one afternoon to find her with the stuffed bear on the pad, both of its heels in one hand, while she was cracking open the tub of Vaseline with the other hand. :eek:
She didn’t get to have the Vaseline in her room any more.
Oh, yes. When the youngest was about 2 she found a large jar of Vaseline and proceeded to cover herself and many available surfaces. It takes forever to wash Vaseline out of a kid’s hair. Luckily, this is the child who had very little hair until she was 5. If it had been my oldest, we would still be washing her hair…
You just reminded me - I had to cut a chunk off my 20-month-old daughter’s hair this morning. She’s got tons and tons of curly hair, so it’s only noticeable if you try to put it up. The issue? She has terrible allergies. So bad that she often wakes up with boogers in her hair. This morning, she had a huge clump of hardened snot in her hair, holding many strands together in a thick, snarled knot. I tried to gently tug the strands out individually, but you can imagine how well that went. And I couldn’t, just couldn’t, force myself to moisten it and comb it out. So I handed her some cheese to distract her and quickly snipped out the clump. It was HUGE. And disgusting. And…snot. Ew.
I think the “handing her some cheese to distract her” is the funniest part.
The “fluids” posts reminds me of my story. Indian women often put oil in their hair, to make it thick and luxurious. My mom did not, so I wasn’t exactly up on how they did it. One Easter I got this beautiful stuffed bunny, and a few days later, decided Bunny needed to have his hair oiled. But mom didn’t do it, so I couldn’t find any hair oil.
I did find a tiny vial of sewing oil, though. Just as good, right? I used the entire bottle on Bunny, and he got all greasy and disgusting.
What’s funny is I still remember the look on my mom’s face. My mom was very strict and normally never had a problem with the Disapproving Mom look but this time she was just totally confused. “You decided your bunny needed oil…so you used my sewing oil?” I actually didn’t even get punished for that one (except losing the Bunny, that was unsalvageable.)
ETA: I guess the “I wish someone had warned me about that moment” would be - no matter what you forbid or tell them they will think of something else to do. I remember the book “Please don’t eat the daisies” in which one of the kids had glued together a bunch of magazine pages…because he had never been told not to. Mom had never even thought of it.
I’d also recommend keeping your spare typewriter ribbon in a locked drawer, but few people use them any more. He had completely enstarled both himself and the dog. The ink takes days to wear off of skin. It comes off of fur quicker. If he hadn’t taken his jammies off first, it would have been mostly a laundry problem.
Somewhere along the line, somebody (and it will, let’s face it, be Grandma…) will give you some clothing that you think is ‘too good’ for everyday wear, and you be tempted to put it away in the closet for some as yet unspecified ‘occasion’. Resist this temptation - whether your child wears it or not, there will come a day when it is too small and it goes into the hand-me-down bag, or the goodwill collection. You might as well have some warm, fuzzy memories of that outfit before it goes.
That unspeakably cute infant sized outfit with the bunnies for pockets? Put it on her and take pictures of how adorable she looks as soon as it fits - who cares if it gets covered in strained carrots? The white tie and tails in a 3 months size? Put it on him and take pictures, even if he rolls in the compost pile five minutes later.
Yes, and it hurts Grandma’s feelings or Auntie’s feelings when they buy special little clothes for your baby and you never even put them in it. Decide ahead of time whose feelings you cannot afford/do not want to hurt, and make an effort. Put them in it, take a picture, and show it to them. It will make them happy and like said above, who cares if it gets dirty five minutes later?
