Hellobee

Please see Part I of the series here.

Now that I’ve set the expectation that I may have some techniques that lead to good sleep in infants and young children, I thought I’d start with some of our errors with Little Jacks that have made her sleep such a challenge for us.  Make no mistake, part of her sleep issue is certainly temperament.  She needs significantly less sleep than other children her age and she has a very high need for mama.  But beyond those unchangeable variables, there is a lot that we could have done as parents to make sleep better for her.

I searched for an evidence base regarding first born children and sleep but didn’t find any. I am certain there must be a link with more disrupted sleep in the oldest child. In our family’s experience, the first born has far more sleep troubles than the second.  I have to wonder if some of Little Jacks’ issues are due to the things we did to foster bad sleep habits. I remember when we first brought Little Jacks home, staring lovingly at her for hours, holding her for entire naps (and if I’m being completely honest, for entire days!), and picking her up at the slightest stirring or noise.  It all seemed so reasonable at the time!  I mean I was home with her 24 hours a day.  I had never done this before and she was so cute and sweet.  Her noises and movements must mean she NEEDED something.  Who wouldn’t want to make sure that those needs were addressed?!

First off, let me say that for the first four months of LJ’s life, she was a dream sleeper.  She seemed to have pretty good sleep patterns and several times slept a 7-10 hour stretch.  We thought we had hit the sleep lottery.  Little did we know that we were undermining that every step of the way!

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In this edition of the Swarm, the Bees share their pumping schedules whether they were SAHM, WAHM, or WOHM.

WAHM (with daycare outside the home)

during maternity leave:
I started pumping on day one at the hospital after at least one of Little M’s feedings. That turned into regularly pumping after his morning nursing every day. He would have his tummy time while I pumped.

3  -  7  M O N T H S:
Little M would nurse on one side when he woke in the morning and I would then pump on the other side while he had his tummy time, and later while he played in his jumper in my office while I started work. Before he was 6 months old, he’d take a nap before going to daycare, so I’d nurse him before and after his nap and then drop him off. I pumped once at 1pm and then picked him up in time to nurse again at 4:30. He was nursing or I was pumping ~ every 3 hours.

7  -  9  M O N T H S:
Our daycare situation changed for the summer and Little M was with a babysitter at home with me all day. I pumped after his morning feeding (on whichever side he didn’t nurse on, which I alternated daily) and nursed on demand during the day ~5 or 6 times a day.

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Chocolate Baby is full term and now it’s just a waiting game. Before this milestone I wanted to pass my last day of work, Drake’s 3rd birthday party/our housewarming, and then Drake’s actual birthday. Now that I’ve crossed all of those dates there is no reason why Chocolate Baby can’t arrive any day now, but part of me hopes I still have a few more days, dare I say even a week or more before that happens.

The three of us for now

If you have read some of my previous posts, I’ve admitted I have a little bit of reservation and trepidation about moving from a mom of one to a mom of two.  There are a lot of reasons for this; I hate change as a whole, I had a terrible newborn experience with Drake that pretty much traumatized me for a long period of time, but mostly it’s because I just want to spend a little more time with Drake as my only baby (at 3 I still call him my baby though I am trying to be better about it and say little boy instead).

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Last time I shared with you what we were looking for in a dog and how we went about finding one that would fit our family with young children.  This time I wanted to share some of my tips for introducing kids to new dogs for the first time and for bringing the new dog home.  We wanted to make sure that we could provide a forever home for our new dog, so we took a lot of precautions to make sure we could add to our family successfully.

The new Train family: two parents, four kids, two dogs and lots of love!

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When I was 30-something weeks pregnant, I sat in a classroom at the hospital where I would soon make my grand entrance into motherhood.  I was there for a class called “Breastfeeding: The Best Beginning.”  I had already read all sorts of articles online, followed blogs of attachment parenting enthusiasts, and was excited to learn more about the mystery that was breastfeeding.

I sat, I listened and I watched.  I heard mantras and buzzwords like “breast is best” and “liquid gold.”  I held a baby doll in the cradle, cross-cradle and football positions, daydreaming about Little C’s upcoming arrival and how peacefully we would bond as we learned this new skill together.

Fast forward a dozen weeks.  Little C arrived, and I was over-the-moon.  I couldn’t wait to begin my breastfeeding journey.  I watched in awe as he tried to latch at my breast while the doctor stitched me up, and I patiently spent the next two days with a rotating staff of nurses and a lactation consultant at the hospital re-position him, guide me, shift an angle here, rearrange his wiggly arms there.

In a fog with a baby who was labeled “Small for Gestational Age,” I fed him and fed him to make sure his sugar levels didn’t dip too low (which would have required a NICU visit).  Together, we just eked by, with a tiny bit of temporary help from an SNS feeding system.  Little C thrived through my struggles, but the casualty in this early marathon of fumbled feedings?  My nipples.

I came home from the hospital with raw, bloody nipples and continued determination not to give up on my goal of breastfeeding exclusively for a minimum of six months, if not a year or beyond.  I am as stubborn as stubborn gets, and I forged ahead through a painful engorgement, weeks of cracked bleeding nipples (eventually repaired with Lansinoh Soothies and Newman’s Nipple Cream), and painful plugged ducts.  Three weeks postpartum, I came down with mastitis, facing flu-like symptoms that actually turned out to be just that: rotovirus.  I sobbed as I nursed Little C perched on the toilet, unable to digest food, and for over a week, I ate nearly nothing , lost every ounce of my baby weight and continued nursing.

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We live in a very, very small city house. We have no front or backyard, no garage, and a very small living room. But because we live incredibly close to a great park within a fantastic neighborhood, the limitations of our living space usually doesn’t bother us. Kind of like when you go on vacation to a fabulous place, you don’t worry about booking a fancy hotel room because you plan on being out exploring your surroundings. But as Miss H is getting bigger and more active, we know that keeping her happy and engaged in different activites is important. And sometimes she just gets bored in the house, especially when the weather doesn’t cooporate and we can’t get outside.

Which brings me to our porch. The space is just big enough that we can keep a table and a few other things out there. But up until recently the porch was just a holding place for a whole lot of stuff that didn’t belong anywhere else. It was basically our junk room!

So a couple of weeks ago we cleaned the porch out completely. I ordered an outdoor rug to bring some bright color into the space. I opted for one that is basically a plastic mat; I wanted something that would be easy to clean off if needed and I wanted something fairly inexpensive so I wouldn’t have to stress if it got ruined. I found this one from Overstock that works perfectly for us. We set up Miss H’s water and sand play table and her table and chair set. We also planted some flowers and herbs and have them on a small table that is right at Miss H’s height – perfect for her to learn about watering plants and seeing them grow! She loves flowers and is always so nervous to touch them.

As you can see, it’s not a big porch, but just perfect for a toddler.

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Engaging my children with paper and colors has saved me numerous times. It’s a quiet activity for church or wedding service, to fill time in the waiting area of a doctor’s office or an afternoon of a rainy day. There have even been instances when I’ve handed them a post-it pad and pen just so I could finish a phone conversation. But I love the doodling activity beyond the captivation. I love the freedom that blank paper gives. And, while for the wee ones, masterpieces are probably not being made, the process of it all is wiring the brain for greater things to come. That brain stuff gets me so excited!

The issue that I run into is managing all the paper. A neat stack of paper soon becomes disordered and, it’s happened before, someone takes it upon themselves to ‘make it rain’ paper. But I have a way to keep things orderly and it’s very, very easy.

This book-built-to-fall-apart has so many good parts. Pages can easily be removed and replaced whenever it’s needed using the same elastic and stick. It’s a paper pad that has no end! It lays flat which, as a doodler myself, is ideal. It doesn’t need to be fancy or decorated and the paper stays where it should.

Here’s how to make one.

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