Irishgirl,
What do they use in place of diapers/ nappies? I never considered it being American but in third world countries they could never afford diapers. I always an thought they must use cloth and wash it by hand?
norinew, you are amazing. I am going to do that.
In many countries even the tiniest infants are trained to eliminate with a vocal cue.
Google ‘elimination communication’ for the American version.
For what it’s worth, Perciful, you seem to be equating behaviors that you’ve seen go together, but don’t necessarily go together.
I emphatically don’t want to keep my children babies beyond their time. You should see me kick my 6yo out of the house when school vacation ends! I also remind myself often, that our ultimate job as parents is to make ourselves obsolete. However, I wound up nursing my daughter for a little over four years, because she was still interested, it was a useful parenting tool, and there were no major drawbacks to justify putting both of us through the stresses of forced weaning.
Similarly, that Nanny episode sounds like parents who were doormats in general, and that is why the kids were sleeping with them - the kids got to do anything they wanted. There are plenty of parents who hold authority with their children and are perfectly capable of keeping order, who also choose to co-sleep with younger kids for reasons of nurturing or convenience.
I’m sorry if I offended you or anyone else. I’m sure I was being a bit overly judgemental based on my own non existant expierience on co-sleeping. The Nanny episode was to help two doormat parents that could/ would not put their foot down. I’m failrly sure if they don’t step up to the plate the Nanny will have to go back for another stay.
As I said, We as mothers know our children better then anyone else. We have a mothers instinct.
You know what’s funny? I did too. Which is why they slept with us as infants and I nursed them until they were ready to wean (though Youngest needed a little nudge or seventeen) and they were in cloth diapers and so on.
I honestly think it is more important that the child’s parents are comfortable and secure in what they do, than what they actually do. Within bound sof course.
That’s a bad sentence but I am too tired to fix it.
I think you’re right that parents are there to parent, but at the same time, kids are so different from kid to kid. When we had our son, I was determined that I would never co-sleep. I assumed it was dangerous, weird and just plain ridiculous. Like most of my parenting choices that started out with, “I’ll never,” that was over pretty quickly. He was sick more often than not that first year and we needed to be there to administer albulterol. Every time he got a cold, his lungs would fill with fluid, usually at night because he was prone then, so to keep him breathing comfortably, we had to be there. We had a baby monitor, but after the first time he got sick, we didn’t think it was good enough.
The first time he got sick, we had put him to bed. I remember being frustrated because he wouldn’t stop screaming and I was exhausted carrying him around for hours. As a first-time parent, I had no idea he was sick - he’d been kind of collicky when he was younger, so I figured he was just having a bad night. Anyway, I heard this weird thrashing from the monitor. We went to see what was going on and found our son in bed, his mouth open and eyes bugged out, trying so hard to scream, but his lungs were so full of fluid, he couldn’t. His lips were turning blue. It was awful, awful, awful and I didn’t want him to have to go through that again. He was terrified of sleeping for a while after that, especially alone, and I don’t blame him. But when we were done with co-sleeping and his airways matured enough that we knew he wouldn’t become deprived of oxygen from a simple cold, we established some clear limits and kept to them and he was in his own bed two weeks later.
As for our daughter, both our needs get met better if she finishes off her morning in bed with us. And when I say needs, I mean her need to eat and my need to get to work on time and not lose my job. She normally wakes about an hour before I need to get in the shower. She eats for about an hour, too, so it works out perfectly for me to just bring her to bed, feed her and shower while she snoozes in bed in the crook of my husband’s arm. That way I don’t have to a) get her back to sleep or b) know that she’s upstairs screaming her head off. Then I come up, kid #1 climbs into bed with us, we all cuddle, everyone else gets ready for the day and we’re out the door on time and everyone’s in a good mood. So far it’s win-win.
When she’s older, she’ll sleep in her own bed. Heck, she already sleeps 7-10 hours in a row and she’s a breastfeeding four-month old. Already I sometimes find myself going in to wake her up to eat after I shower. If she keeps up with this trend, she probably won’t be sleeping with us at all by six or seven months anyway, but I’ll enjoy it while I can and when it ceases to be beneficial, we’ll stop.
Urgh. Not completely related, but I have a small gripe- I found out yesterday that my step-MiL and BiL thought our oldest wouldn’t sleep through the night because I was nursing him until 22 months, and he was starving. Of course, he was eating lots of solids, and it was just for comfort, but God forbid I nurse past 6 months…
They also think this may have contributed to his getting diabetes.
Grr.
I’ve heard that old wives tale, that breastfeeding starves babies.
I always wonder, for the people who think it’s true - how do they thing the human race survived?
Since getting pregnant, I’ve heard lots of things like this, and if they were all true, we’d have never survived long enough as a species to move out of caves.
It sounds very nice and you are blessed to have a great start to your day. I used to love it when the kids would come in and wake me up in bed. Enjoy it because it goes by too fast. I often wondered how I used to have the energy to get up and get breakfast on and get them dressed and myself dressed and them to daycare and to work by 8. It was insane but fun looking back. I was so organized back then! Good memories…