People who scaremonger about vaccines and dole about mommy guilt about nursing should be sentenced to listening to twins with colic for month.
The youngest is five months and over twenty pounds. Forget babywearing. I’m happy if I get to baby lifting. She’s freaking enormous.
I’ve read several studies about the benefit of skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth for calming and pain control in newborns, and they do advocate it with preemies and ceasarian births as well. It has demonstrable benefits, at least in the very beginning. After that initial newborn period, I haven’t read as much, but
I wouldn’t say the skin-to-skin stuff has anything to do with hippies, unless the WHO is hippies, lol.
This one is about father to baby skin-to-skin after a ceasarian:
Again, I wouldn’t try to make anyone feel guilty over it. But if something has evidence-based support, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to think about it.
I had to do baby-wearing for the first 8 weeks (though I’d never heard that name) because as long as she was being held, by me or anyone else, she was happy and quet, and the second you put her down she cried. It was actually pretty easy to carry her all the time so I did. After that a sling was just comfortable and easy - it helped with breastfeeding too. I did have a buggy as well though.
The reason I made her food myself was also practical: she only ate teeny tiny portions,. nowhere near a whole jar of food, so they were a complete waste of money.
Breastfeeding also saved time and money. I had mastitis, but stopping then would have mae it worse,so I carried on. Stopped at 2 years old.
I didn’t work because nursery costs would have been much higher than my salary, and then it took me ages to get a job.
No swing; they were too expensive. I actually won one from a baby magazine and they sent it to the wrong address - whoever was there kept it! No playpen. Door bouncer, baby gym, lots of toys.
We had a one-bedroom flat; she woke up when I went to bed, so I took her in with me. It meant that when she woke up for a food I just had to turn over and do it while half-asleep; I had no sleepless nights. Being woken up by her smiling face next to me, babbling away conversationally, was a wonderful way to start the day.
Disposable nappies because I didn’t have a washing machine.
The only child-rearing book I had was an old Dr Spock.
Forcing yourself to do something according to a book is pretty much always a mistake, I reckon. It’s pretty obvious what’s abuse or neglect; excluding that, whatever keeps you all happy is the right way.
This study does not make it clear what exactly direct contact with the mother’s chest is being compared to.
This study is specific about what conditions are being compared, and seems to suggest that bodily contact is the most effective means of postnatal incubation. That’s worth considering. The data tested for doesn’t tell us anything about how skin-to-skin contact affects bonding, which is what the hippy notions I object to emphasize.
This one both specifies the conditions being compared, and deals in outcomes that seem relevant to bonding. But… I’m afraid I was already prepared to concede that holding a baby is better for bonding than leaving it in the crib. But skin-to-skin vs. skin-to-shirt is not what’s being compared. It does suggest that you definitely want somebody holding the baby soon after it’s born, in any case.
Damn, I also meant to put this one up there: http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003519.html
Ooh, here’s my a la carte list:
-One hospital birth with everything, one hospital birth totally natural, one home birth.
-Breastfed for 4 months, 6 weeks, 8 weeks- the last two just never took to it and they were hungry. Bottled formula after weaning.
-Mostly home made baby food, jars when out and about for convenience.
-Family bed for the first one, crib from the start with the others.
-Honestly I let them watch all the TV they wanted, and they still did plenty of other things too.
-I was really firm about early bedtimes because I think kids need a lot more sleep than they get once they’re in school.
-Everyone required to always have a currently reading book.
-I let them stay home from school sometimes when they just needed a day off, but they had to all agree on the same day so I could stay home too.
-Became a single mom when the youngest was 9 months old and never remarried (20 years ago).
Mine’s also pretty crunchy, but we figure we wanted her to fit into our lives and these seemed to be just what worked for us:
Vag birth, no drugs
Baby wearing
No routine, tried ‘Save our Sleep’ for a day and hated it.
Slept in bassinette in our room for first 6 months
Exclusively breastfed on demand for 6 months (she wouldn’t take a bottle, and expressed milk in a sippy cup only once I returned to work), breastfed for 15 months (had to stop for IVF)
No formula
Baby led weaning from 6 months - no spoonfeeding, no purees. She ate finger foots and solids off our plates, and I rarely cooked her something special other than steamed vegies. Only delayed honey under 1, let her have anything else she wanted to eat. Made going out to cafes and travelling so much easier - no need to worry about bringing food as she’d eat pretty much anything, laksa and curries included.
No CIO, but some controlled crying after 6 months
Cloth nappies
No playpen, baby gates etc.
No kids TV (as yet, she’s not quite 2) - but some nature documentaries etc but only when I am watching with her and we can talk about what’s on, I don’t let her watch TV alone.
Returned to work part time at 11 months, with a nanny, and full time by 14 months.
This, THIS! I actually did manage to breastfeed after the first rocky couple of weeks, but the pediatrician AND lactation consultant had to basically hold me down and force me to feed the baby formula the first week because she was losing weight at such a rate (and was crying and miserable because she was so hungry).
I’d ingested enough breastfeeding kool-aid that I felt horribly guilty about this. I talked to my sister, who is a pediatrician, saying something like, “But… feeding formula isn’t natural!” and my sister said, “Yeah… you know what IS natural? High infant mortality! So be grateful you have the option to feed her formula!”
This is almost completely tangential, but for the benefit of anyone reading this who doesn’t have kids or whatever, you might be interested to know that the old-school collapsible playpens that everyone used when I was a kid have now been phased out (possibly actually outlawed, but I’m not sure) in favor of these little “pack ‘n’ play” things that are similar except without the foldy bits that can trap your kid’s neck or whatever. Just a fun fact for you. They don’t make baby walkers on wheels anymore either, as far as I can tell.
I’ve had three kids, so my “laundry list” of options covers a lot of stuff. We did different things with different babies depending on what they needed. Also, I became a lot less dogmatic and rigid about certain parenting practices as I got older and more flexible and had more kids to deal with.
Anyway, with various of the kids I/we have done:
C-section delivery
Vaginal delivery with epidural
Vaginal delivery with no drugs (not entirely intentional; for your third or subsequent pregnancies I recommend not waiting until contractions are less than 4 minutes apart to leave for the hospital because “my previous labors took forever, there’s no way I’m in active labor yet”)
Breastfeeding
Cloth diapers
Disposable diapers
Jarred baby food
Homemade baby food
Baby bouncer/neglect-o-matic/exersaucer
Baby slings/baby backpacks/very occasional stroller use
co-sleeping until age 1 or so, and then they got the boot into their own rooms
Way too much McDonald’s
Lots of TV
Stories every night before bed, non-negotiable
Nobody is allowed to say “stupid” but saying “oh my God” is ok as long as it’s not in front of Grandma.
I could go on but I should probably cut it off there. I never did have to use formula but apart from that I think we’ve tried just about everything.
Forgot to add–at five months old my daughter began to refuse to be rocked to sleep for her naps. She bucked and twisted and screamed so hard that my only two choices were to let her cry it out in her crib or let her not nap. I chose to let her cry it out in her crib… though I always used the “day one” Ferber schedule of checking on her–after 5 minutes, after 10, then after 15. We never made it to 15 minutes and after about two weeks she learned to go to sleep in the crib with no fuss at all.
So I guess I’m in the “cry it out” camp.
Oh, yeah- attempted natural childbirth, emergency c-section with first. Blood pressure problems and a nearly emergency c-section with second. Probable planned or emergency c-section with the third and fourth- we’ll see.
They do make walkers, but you hear a lot about how dangerous they are. I let my kids use them, just making sure it was only when I was there to closely supervise.
The rest of my list:
–Two inductions (due to being too far past due date)
–Two epidurals
–Two vaginals (although I pushed for almost three hours w/ my daughter, and I came very very close to having a c-section)
–Really tried to breastfeed both. My daughter would.not.latch. I finally gave up after two and a half weeks of both of us crying nearly non-stop, neither of us sleeping, and baby not gaining like she should. Things got so much better when we switched to formula. My son picked up breastfeeding like a pro, but he only got about a month’s worth because I was stricken with a mother-effen case of PPD, and I had to hand him over temporarily to other caregivers for survival purposes.
–Both used bouncy chairs, doorway bouncers, and neglect-o-matics. (Awesome name, btw–wish we’d known about it then!)
–Too much TV
–Too much McDonald’s
–Traveled in a bucket-style car seat. Never got the hang of the babywearing thing, although I did try.
–Both of my kids went through a phase where they slept exclusively in their car seats. They were comfy (being strapped in seemed to help soothe them), it helped with gassy tummies, and they slept longer which meant we slept longer. Win, win, win situation.
–Both slept in their own rooms from the beginning. However, my daughter went through a sleep regression at around 18 months. At the time I was in my first trimester with baby boy, plus I had the freaking swine flu. I caved and let her into our bed just so I could get some rest. She hasn’t left yet (she’s almost four), but I don’t mind. Honestly, we kind of like having her there. I figure she’ll grow out of it pretty soon, and I want to enjoy the cuddles while I can.
We are CIO people- but only after 6 months, and not indefinitely.
Irishbaby (now 26 months, and cute as a button) is usually the happiest child going to bed- but a week or so ago she took a notion to throw the head up and have a full-on tantrum about being left in her room to sleep.
Now, the only other times in the last year she hasn’t settled within 15minutes, she has been sick or in a strange place, and I’ve dealt with it by bringing her into our bed.
This time was just pure badness- so I’m afraid we had 45 minutes of shouting (total- we checked on her every 15 minutes and she was asleep the last time we looked).
She hasn’t done it since…no doubt she will though.
We’re big fans of the CBeebies Channel (Ad free BBC pre-school channel) and Peppa Pig DVDs.
I was not, however, enthused when she told our childminder “mummy has a bump in her tummy with babies in it” after watching an episode of Peppa wherein Mummy Rabbit has twins. I had to explain that congratulations were not, actually, in order.
Who says kids TV isn’t educational?!
Oh, hey! I got Swine Flu while I was pregnant, too! But I was 19 weeks.
Boy, it sucked.
Underline mine: I have heard quite a few stories of babies beign “bottle fed” using whichever milk could be obtained and a twisted cloth as a nipple, back before Chicco graduated bottles and rubber nipples - my father was one of them. People through history have had to come up with all kinds of creative solutions to “baby won’t latch”.
Aye, my grandfather (born at 34 weeks in 1898, and thus something of a miracle he survived) was fed with an eye dropper and spent his first weeks of life in a cotton wool lined shoebox (incubators not having been invented or available).
But you know, formula is a perfectly adequate baby food, so why would you go through that type of nonsense today? Sure, breast milk is preferable, but not to the point where you have to go through crazy amounts of inconvenience to give it to the kid.
Metaphorically you’re talking about the difference between vintage champagne and a perfectly drinkable sparkling wine- not Veuve Cliquot vs rat poison.
I actually believe the opposite. I breastfed exclusively (I was lucky - we both found it easy) and one of the things that helped me was having a handful of those little pre-made-up bottles of formula in the house. We never needed them in the end, but it meant I never worried about what would happen if my supply was low.
My a-la-carte is crunchy-ish:
Emergency C-section.
Exclusive breastfeeding. She’s almost 27 months now and we’re just starting to gradually drop the last feed.
Lots of slings and carriers. Widget had all her naps in a sling till she was three months old, and I almost never used the buggy till she was headed for two years old and any length of walk with the carrier started to hurt.
No co-sleeping. Widget had a hammock by our bed till she was five months, then went into her own room.
No door bouncer, no neglect-o-matic, no bouncy chair. Not because we had any stance against any of them; we just never ended up getting them.
No netting-type playpen. She does have a widgetarium, which is two of those metal playpen things stuck together at the ends to cordon off a zone about seven feet by three. These days it mainly keeps her crap from taking over the house.
A lot of store-bought baby food. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do my work, spend time with my husband, spend time with my kid, spend time with family and friends, and prepare organic squash-and-broccoli puree from scratch with my own fair hands. If one of those has to go, I’m good with it being the homemade puree.
No TV - again, not because we have a stance about it, just because it’s not in the room where we spend most of the daytime. A certain amount of music videos and fairy-related crap on the laptop.
No crying it out, no controlled crying. After a few months we wouldn’t pick her up once she was down for the night (unless she needed medicine or boobs - we would’ve if she’d got really upset, but she never did), but we would sit beside her and pat her and sing to her for as long as she needed.
No child-raising books.
My progression with baby food went something like this, by the way:
Baby 1: Carefully introduced solid foods one at a time. I made them myself, by pureeing fresh fruits and vegetables with a bit of water or breastmilk, and freezing the extras in ice cube trays. When the time came for cereals, made my own as well, out of a variety of grains such as barley, quinoa, and oats. Jarred foods only as a convenience for outings.
Baby 2: Introduced solid foods with no real plan or scheme, basically mashing up whatever fruit or veg we were having with dinner anyway. I did buy extra avocados because she seemed to like those. Pureeing with the blender did not happen. Still did the barley and oats cereals with mashed banana. Jarred foods whenever fork-mashing something seemed like too much effort (about half the time).
Baby 3: Basically did not get baby food. I mashed some extra banana for him now and then, and if we were having soft foods I put some on his high chair tray to mess around with. I think some got in. I’m not sure. Eventually he grew teeth and started eating normally like the rest of us. His cereal was oatmeal with mashed banana, same as everyone else got for breakfast.
True story, by the way; my mom even recorded it in my baby book: When I was 6 weeks old I had terrible colic and screamed my head off all night every night. My great-grandmother recommended a shot of whiskey in my bottle. They decided to go with an eyedropper full instead of a shot. I slept “for a full day” and then the colic was cured. (That is how the family story goes and if you take issue with any of the details you will have to speak to my grandmother about that.)
One thing that happened when our baby was born that the books don’t prepare you for:
The day after the birth I came down with a cold. So the hospital wouldn’t allow me onto the maternity ward to be with my wife or baby. All the planning we did for how I was going to help was for naught.
Just for a cold? On the regular maternity ward? That’s really odd.