Meredith still seems to really enjoy Fiona, though for this past week or so she’s been quite clingy to me. I feel like she’s going through a bit of a mourning period for the relationship we had (where she basically had me all to herself), and it makes me sad sometimes to think that we never will have quite that same relationship again. The last day or two though she seems to be back to more normal and she hasn’t ever seemed to hold any resentment towards Fiona at all, thankfully. She loves to tandem nurse, still likes to hold her, and will come and stroke Fiona’s head or hold her hand while Fiona is nursing or just lying and looking around. She likes to hold her hand in the car seat too. Luckily Fiona seems to be a pretty relaxed baby for the most part, and I’ve been trying to give Meredith lots of time with me to herself. We cuddle and nurse and play games while Fiona sleeps on Kris, and when Fiona wakes up she is quite happy to sit on the potty for a few minutes and then just relax and look around before she starts rooting. So we can give Meredith lots of warning that Fiona will need to nurse soon, and except for once or twice she’s been quite happy to stop whatever she’s doing with me when Fiona needs me. She often will stop and tell me “baby’s turn now, Mama” or “Mimi wait for baby to nurse”.

EC is going amazingly well. I don’t know if it’s because we started earlier (we started with Meredith at 3 weeks old), because Fiona has more clear signals, or because we’ve done it once before (or likely, a combination of all of the above), but we definitely have more “catches” than misses. She’s often in the same diaper all night long and there have been quite a few days where we’ve had her diaperless/coverless most of the day or she’s in the same diaper all day. Actually, the only thing really keeping us from having her diaperless more often are the little tiny squirts that babies do. We put a little piece of terry in her diapers so we don’t have to change the whole diaper each time, but that doesn’t work so well when diaperless. Those are getting less and less already though. She definitely seems to have some control already, and will often go as soon as we hold her over her little potty or the sink and signal.

She is still a great nurser, and was able to nurse side-lying from day one. Kris’ mom, who was out visiting for four days, told me she has one of the strongest sucks of any baby she’s ever known. (And she’s a foster parent, so she’s had a lot of babies in and out of her house.) I have to say though, that I love having a toddler around to nurse. It’s made things so much easier, since I have an overactive let down and oversupply. Meredith was constantly spitting up as a newborn (literally after every nurse in the beginning) and would choke and gag frequently while nursing. Now if I’m overly engorged or feel like my let down is too much, I can have Meredith nurse and take some pressure off. For an idea of how strong my letdown can be though, there have been times that Meredith has had to stop nursing or the letdown has caused her to choke a bit. Most of the time I am still really enjoying nursing Meredith too, though I have to be honest that there are times I wish I could sit down and relax for a minute without having someone attached to my breasts lol.

One unexpected thing is that Meredith seems to have night weaned, literally over night. The night I went into labour she didn’t wake up wanting to nurse even once. Not entirely unheard of, but definitely unusual. Since then, she’s been quite happy to fall asleep in Kris’ bed and normally if she wakes up in the night Kris will cuddle her into him and she’ll fall right back to sleep. Some nights she has asked to nurse, though so far if Fiona is nursing at the time she hasn’t had any problem waiting for Fiona to be done before having a turn herself. We haven’t ever told her she has to sleep on Kris’ side, or that she can’t nurse at night, or anything like that. I’m very careful that I don’t want her to feel like she’s been replaced by Fiona. I have been nursing her to sleep on Kris’ side, or if she falls asleep downstairs I’ll put her to bed on his side, but if she asked to come on my side I would certainly not tell her no. She is pretty flaily in her sleep so I wouldn’t want her next to Fiona, but prior to Fiona her and I often slept back to back anyway since I was so big and pregnant, so I would have no problem doing that. She’s only come into my side with me once since Fiona was born though. Maybe she likes having someone to really cuddle with, rather than being back to back? When I nurse her to sleep at night, if she comes off awake and wants to cuddle to sleep I have been lying with her longer than I did prior to Fiona being born and really trying to get lots of snuggling in before I sneak away.

The other night she asked to nurse to sleep in her bed in her room. It’s the second time she’s asked that. The first time was a few months ago and she still woke frequently in the night to nurse. If she had actually fallen asleep that time, I would have moved her into our bedroom once she was asleep. This time, I’m not entirely sure what I would have done. I think, considering she asked to lie there to nurse with no coercion on our part, that I would probably have left her there, with the monitor on, and if she had woken up in the night gone to her and brought her back to our room. It’s a bit bittersweet to think about though, she’s never not slept with one of us. She didn’t end up actually falling asleep in there either time though. There are no drapes in the room right now and a street light right outside the window so it’s very light in there even when it’s dark out. Not sure if that has something to do with it or not but I do need to get drapes in there.

Anyway, this has gotten long but I wanted to post somewhat of an update. I’ll try and post some pictures sometime in the next few days. Bed time for me now, both kids are sleeping and I should take advantage.

Related posts:

1. Sleeping through the night
2. In her own time
3. Coming Back

This has been something that has been on my mind quite a bit the past couple of weeks, since I found out I am pregnant. She still nurses a lot, more than she eats. I’m okay with that. I trust that she will eat when she needs to eat, and that she is getting the nutrition she needs from my breastmilk. She’s growing well, healthy, and happy. She’s not a picky eater, she just doesn’t eat much. I’ve noticed she is starting to eat a lot more recently too. So far, nursing and being pregnant hasn’t bothered me at all. I’m hoping I’ll be one of those people who it never does. I’ve always had problems with oversupply, not undersupply, and last pregnancy I started having to wear breast pads around 22 weeks or I’d leak. (Apparently that’s really early for a first pregnancy.) So I don’t think my milk will dry up, or if it does hopefully it will only be for a short time. One of the reasons we waited to get pregnant (besides my cycles not coming back, ha!) was that I didn’t want her to be forced to wean if I am one of those women whose milk does dry up in pregnancy, especially since she still relies on it so much.

My concern (and even that is far too strong a word at this point; I’m not concerned, just thoughtful) is the night nursing. Meredith is a very light sleeper. When I’m in late pregnancy and tossing and turning, am I going to be waking her up each time? And if so, will I have to nurse her back to sleep every time, making it harder for me to get back to sleep? Trouble sleeping was one of my most annoying symptoms last time and has already started this time. What about after the baby comes? Will the baby wake Meredith up each time he or she wakes up in the night? I can’t side lie and nurse two kids, so that means I’d either have to sit up and nurse them both, or make one wait while I nurse the other. Meredith will be over two and a half, so I’m sure she would be okay waiting while I nurse the baby, but I don’t want to nurse them both every single time the baby wakes up.

Really it’s all conjecture at this point. In 8 months, it’s quite possible Meredith will be falling back to sleep on her own without nursing, or that she will be a heavier sleeper and wouldn’t wake up. But again, I don’t want to count on that, and I don’t want to night wean her. If she sticks to her current sleeping pattern of sleeping until 5 or 6 in the morning, or even waking more when she’s sick/teething, I’d be fine with that with a baby. My concern is having to nurse them both every time the baby wakes up.

Thinking about it, and talking it over with Kris, I think we may try and have her start the night on Kris’ side. We have two queen beds in our bedroom pushed up against each other. (Which is heaven by the way, I love having so much space!) Meredith and I sleep on one, and Kris sleeps in the other. But really it’s like one huge bed because obviously we can move around from one to the other at will. Occasionally Meredith does crawl over to his side for a cuddle. Our thought was that I could nurse her to sleep for the night on Kris’ mattress, and the first time she wakes up at night I’ll bring her back over to my side and she’ll stay there the rest of the night. Which means on the nights she sleeps until 5 or 6 I have space the whole night, and the nights that she is waking up more frequently I would bring her over earlier and be right there for when she needs to nurse. That gives me space to toss and turn when heavily pregnant without risk of waking her up, and when there’s a baby in the equation he or she would be less likely to wake her up too. And of course, if we try it and for some reason she is really unhappy about it, we’d drop it for now. I can’t see that happening though, she does love to snuggle with daddy.

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Sleep training from baby’s point of view

Sleep Training…

OK, here’s my situation. My Mommy has had me for almost 7 months. The first few months were great– I cried, she picked me up and fed me, anytime, day or night. Then something happened. Over the last few weeks, she has been trying to STTN (sleep through the night). At first, I thought it was just a phase, but it is only getting worse. I’ve talked to other babies, and it seems like it’s pretty common after Mommies have had us for around 6 months.

Here’s the thing: these Mommies don’t really need to sleep. It’s just a habit. Many of them have had some 30 years to sleep–they just don’t need it anymore. So I am implementing a plan. I call it the Crybaby Shuffle.

It goes like this:

Night 1–cry every 3 hours until you get fed. I know, it’s hard. It’s hard to see your Mommy upset over your crying. Just keep reminding yourself, it’s for her own good.

Night 2–cry every 2 hours until you get fed.

Night 3–every hour.

Most Mommies will start to respond more quickly after about 3 nights. Some Mommies are more alert, and may resist the change longer. These Mommies may stand in your doorway for hours, shhhh-ing. Don’t give in. I cannot stress this enough: CONSISTENCY IS KEY!! If you let her STTN (sleep through the night), just once, she will expect it every night. I KNOW IT’S HARD! But she really does not need the sleep, she is just resisting the change.

If you have an especially alert Mommy, you can stop crying for about 10 minutes, just long enough for her to go back to bed and start to fall asleep. Then cry again. It WILL eventually work. My Mommy once stayed awake for 10 hours straight, so I know she can do it.

Last night, I cried every hour. You just have to decide to stick to it and just go for it. BE CONSISTENT! I cried for any reason I could come up with. My sleep sack tickled my foot. I felt a wrinkle under the sheet. My mobile made a shadow on the wall. I burped, and it tasted like pears. I hadn’t eaten pears since lunch, what’s up with that? The cat said “meow”. I should know. My Mommy reminds me of this about 20 times a day. LOL. Once I cried just because I liked how it sounded when it echoed on the monitor in the other room. Too hot, too cold, just right–doesn’ t matter! Keep crying!!

It took awhile, but it worked. She fed me at 4am. Tomorrow night, my goal is 3:30am. You need to slowly shorten the interval between feedings in order to reset your Mommies’ internal clocks.

P.S. Don’t let those rubber things fool you, no matter how long you suck on them, no milk will come out. Trust me.

—–

The sad thing is, it seems humourous and silly, until I realize I’ve seen the exact same things said about sleep training babies. (Only, the opposite, they really don’t need to nurse at night, they don’t need your comfort, it’s just a habit, etc.)  I could never stand outside a bedroom listening to Meredith crying for comfort and not go in to her.

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When you read news articles/editorials in the paper (or more and more for me at least Digg), you often hear about Consensus.  Maybe its just a consensus of experts (another ambiguous and entirely useless term since an expert could mean anything), or a more specific consensus such as a scientific consensus.  Often these mythical beings of untold knowledge and power are used to lend weight to a specific argument, or more likely as a signal for the reader that they can turn off their brain and just soak in the obvious truths that the author has decided to share.

A specific example is also one of my biggest annoyances in the world today.  The Scientific Consensus on Man Made (anthropogenic) Global Warming.  Sounds pretty impressive I admit, over 2300+ “experts” (there’s that word again) from around the world apparently agree that humans are warming up the planet.  Not that all 2300+ of those scientists actually agree on the conclusions, they just contributed to an assessment report that nobody actually got to see.  This was then “summarized” (aka heavily edited) to create a second much much shorter document without all that silly science stuff and then released to the public as the IPCC Assessment reports summary for policy makers.  Oh yeah, I guess now they’re calling it Climate Change because the global warming thing didn’t happen like predicted…

While I could probably talk and argue for days about this subject specifically (for awhile it was close to an obsession of mine), the point of this post isn’t to debate that theory itself, but to use it as an example of how people stop thinking as soon as someone (or in this case a group of people) with a perceived expertise on a subject divulges a “truth”.  This ties in somewhat to my previous post on paint-by-number parenting.  Some dude writes a book and calls himself a child/parenting expert and for some reason the readers suspend their inherent skepticism (something I think is very important) and take it all at face value.  They may not agree with everything necessarily, but they don’t call BULLSHIT when they should.

My example would be Dr. Richard Ferber (of the famed Ferber method…aka crying it out).  If people had read this dudes research (if you could call it that) and treated him as a stupid and potentially dangerous psychopath instead of as an authority on pediatric sleep disorders (if that isn’t an oxymoron I don’t know what is) maybe we wouldn’t have parents across North America teaching their young babies that nobody is going to come no matter how long or hard they cry.  I don’t care if he has an MD, that’s nothing special.  I’m pretty sure I could have gotten one if I had tried.  So what makes this guy an expert?  As far as I can tell he gave himself that label and nobody questioned him.

This isn’t an isolated event.  If I could jump back to my favorite subject for a minute, we can talk about one of my least favorite people, Al Gore.  Best known for being the VP and an almost president of the USA as well as his joke of a movie (I refuse to call it a documentary) “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore portrays himself as an expert on Anthropogenic Global Warming.  What are his qualifications for this role?  He had a class once in college with a professor that was passionate about the subject.  Otherwise everything is self righteousness and conviction (and a little used car salesman thrown in).  What earthshaking scientific evidence did his movie show that proved beyond a doubt that humans are the single greatest cause of global warming?  A graph that was poorly explained and WASN’T EVEN ACCURATE, as well as a cute graphic of a polar bear sitting on a melting iceberg (incidentally also inaccurate).  And what was his reward for all this self sacrificing work for the good of all mankind?  A Nobel peace prize (which happens to have a multi-million dollar financial component) and further millions in monetary rewards for his talks around the world, books deals and investment in carbon credit companies and role as an advisor to corporations internationally and in the US.  Hmm, sounds pretty selfless doesn’t it (some estimates indicate he’s made over 100 million directly related to Global Warming)?  Not only that, but the jerk doesn’t even practice what he preaches.  His energy bill is over 20 TIMES that of the average US citizen.

So what was the point of all of this?  If we want to move forward as individuals and as a society, people need to stop acting like lemmings and think for themselves.  This starts at home with their parenting, but extends to all parts of life.  Don’t follow the trends just because someone tells you to.  Don’t believe everything you read just because someone labels themselves an expert.  And for Gaia’s sake, don’t believe what you read in a newspaper because those guys are full of shit 9 times out of 10.

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My problem with this is when that formula based parenting is carried on indefinitly.  Its pretty common to find parents who do things a specific way because thats what they read or how they were parented.  They often think that thats just how you parent.  A perfect example is the “crying it out method”.  Why do parents choose to do this?  Is it because they feel good hearing their little babies screaming for hours on end?  While I’m sure there are some heartless people somewhere, most of us feel our babies crying in our bones and it isn’t fun.  These people follow this “method”, and I use that term very very very loosely, because thats what they were told you were supposed to do.  They either read it in a book, heard it from a relative, from a parenting class or whatever and not knowing better believe thats how it is.

First of all, there is no right way of doing everything.  Even in science, 9 times out of 10 you talk about theories, not facts.  Why?  Because there’s always the chance you’ll eventually be proved wrong.  Einsteins THEORY of relativity.  Newton’s THEORY of gravity.  The THEORY of global warming (a personal pet peeve but I might go into that some day when something really pisses me off).  There are very few hard facts in life.  Even something as simple as 1 + 1 = 2 is only true most of the time, not all of the time.  So why do parents think there is a single right way of parenting?  Far as I can tell, kids aren’t like computers.  Giving them the same input won’t equal the same output.

Second problem, parents aren’t trying to figure out what is right themselves, instead they want someone (or something) to tell them what to do.  Parenting books, while a good resource, aren’t the be all and end all of parenting.  Like anything else, a book is the opinion of the author, and only as good as that authors experiences and research.  They are also a business which is why you find all sorts of “methods” in parenting.  Anything that might make some money has probably been written about, both good and amazingly bad.

As the title of this post indicates, parenting requires you to go with the flow.  You can’t decide before hand how to handle situations.  You can talk about it and try and plan things out a little in advance, but life has a way of screwing up your plans (be they travel plans or parenting plans).  Each situation that comes up needs to be handled independantly from the rest.  This is where I probably differ from most parenting styles or guides.  Consistency is trumpeted as THE MOST important thing you can do.  Some examples:

• If you say no, follow through NO MATTER WHAT! (Funny how this rarely is expressed as if you say yes, follow through no matter what).
• If you don’t want them to have sugar, never let them have sugar
• If bedtime is 7pm, bedtime is always 7pm.

The list could go on forever.  But what parents don’t generally ask themselves is why.  They also never put themselves in the kids shoes.  Do you never change your mind about your own decisions?  do you never eat something that isn’t healthy?  Do you always go to bed exactly at the same time?  Of course not, so why do kids have to?

If you take each situation as an individual event, you can remain consistent overall while still allowing you to change your mind between events.  Maybe they give you a good reason why saying no doesn’t make sense.  Most parents will say “Too bad, I already said no” no matter what the kid has to say.  Maybe they had a nap and aren’t tired at bedtime.  What harm could it possibly do to let them stay up later?  I’m pretty sure most kids have enough sense to go to sleep when they’re tired, unlike a lot of adults I could name.

Not only does this sound more like how we treat ourselves and other adults, it’s also much easier to remain consistent.  If the kid knows that you’ll give them the answer you think best each time, then they’ll more likely accept it if you give them different answers each time.  They might question it (heaven forbid) but assuming you have a good reason for your answer that shouldn’t be a problem.  On top of that, you won’t have to worry about them pulling the “Mom said it was ok/Dad said it was ok” trick, or just choosing the parent most likely to give the best answer.  You also don’t need to try and remember what you said last time, because it doesn’t matter anymore.

The only thing that matters is the here and now, which is how it should be.

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