|
Any book recommendations for early childhood? I've heard good things about Happiest Toddler on the Block, Brain Rules for Baby, and Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child. Any must-haves I'm missing?
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2012 19:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:06 |
|
|
So a lot of people have recommended "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child," but does it ever recommend anything other than Cry It Out? I'm about 100 pages in and it's complete garbage so far.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2012 06:32
|
|
|
Fionnoula posted:No, the gist of the third method is identifying sleep patterns, then gently shifting them while helping the baby learn to self soothe. There's no letting the baby cry. Break down the act of putting to bed into a whole bunch of tiny steps, there's more than just HOLD BABY and PUT BABY DOWN AND WALK AWAY. There's a lot of suggestions about routines (the book recommends a flexible routine, but a routine nonetheless), including daytime routines to facilitate healthy sleep, helping your baby learn that the bed/crib is a happy place to be, using key words, music, and loveys - and how to introduce them, how to break down the getting into bed process into tiny steps that your baby will accept so that eventually you CAN get to where you want to be with sleeping. It's not a quick fix, it's a long slow incremental change. This sounds great and is more in line with the type of training I'm used to. I know babies aren't dogs, but using pure R+ on my dog and then turning around and letting my baby cry it out just seems so wrong.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2012 21:55
|
|
|
El Gato posted:Hi all, The Healthy Sleep Habits book says if the baby is early, then the schedule shifts so you don't count time before the due date. In sleep terms your baby would only be 6 weeks old, and thus just entering the point where she will develop a predictable sleep schedule. I don't know how true that is, though.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2012 19:33
|
|
|
AngryRobotsInc posted:Talk to your doctor about getting on antibiotics if you aren't already on them. It doesn't do much for the symptoms, but it helps shorten the time you're infectious. That'll let you get someone to help out without the concern of spreading pertussis around. There is a vaccination for pertussis, you shouldn't need to worry about spreading it as long as you tell anyone coming over that you have it. Frankly I think the fact that Chandrika's doctor didn't make her get it as a new parent is a huge failure of medical duty (or if she was informed, then just a horrifically irresponsible decision by Chandrika).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2013 23:49
|
|
|
Andrias Scheuchzeri posted:When I was pregnant with my daughter--the same age as hers--there was no mention of boosting my pertussis vaccine. With my recent second pregnancy that changed, but three years ago they weren't pushing it. You would still think in the last 3 years, considering the rise in incidences, her pediatrician would have brought it up. Maybe it's just because I'm near the heart of the anti-vaccine movement that I hear so much about it.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 10, 2013 00:04
|
|
|
Our 12.5 week old also hated tummy time at first. Two things that really helped were putting a rolled-up towel under his chest (play around with how fat you want the towel to be) and naked tummy time (we're using cloth diapers which are pretty bulky). Even then, he would only tolerate it for about 30 seconds to a minute at a time at first, before just slumping down and trying to eat his fist. After a few weeks of building him up though, he'll now tolerate it for 10 minutes or so. It's a physical exercise for them, so just like for an adult you have to build up their endurance over time.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 16, 2013 20:45
|
|
|
What are you doing for bottles? Are you just doing lappy cup instead or is there something other than a silicone nipple?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2013 05:43
|
|
|
You could get stainless steel cups instead of plastic, they're often sold as camping gear. You could also use metal water bottles, some of them have internal coatings but a lot of them don't.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2013 06:24
|
|
|
FordCQC posted:Those of you with kids in pre-school: One suggestion I saw was to save it and use it as wrapping paper for gifts to extended family.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 20, 2013 21:09
|
|
|
Acrolos posted:So our baby is 19 days old and was born about 10 days early, weighing 6 pounds 7 ounces. On the day we came home from the hospital (day 4), she weighed 5 pounds, 11 ounces. Since that point, 15 days total, she has gained up to 8 pounds 6 ounces. A total of 2 full pounds, and almost three pounds from her lowest point. Is this normal? I feel like she's gaining at a much faster rate than she should be...but everything I read says to feed to her hunger at this point. We never force her to feed, but anytime we see a her put her fingers in her mouth (which always is her sign of wanting to eat), we'll feed her. We thought that maybe we were misreading the signals, but when we've tried to not feed her, she always cries and demands to eat...so we know that it's hunger. It's normal yeah, our baby gained 2 pounds in the first 2 weeks even though he never went below his birth weight (he was on an IV the first couple days). Now at 4 months he's gained about 10-11 lbs and looks like: 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2013 02:30
|
|
|
Sleep tracking: when did he go down, when did he get up, with places to enter how he went down (nursed, rocked, etc), where he went down (crib, carseat, parents' bed), and a miscellaneous column for what activities lead up to the sleep (e.g. bath 20 minutes before, 2 books read after bath).
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2013 00:43
|
|
|
Yeah the thing with most of those categories is that you only track them as long as you're having problems, which for most people makes them temporary by nature. We only tracked diapers for a day or two after we got home because there was no reason to do anything more, we never tracked feedings because there was no question that he was eating enough, you would hopefully only need to track sleep habits for a month or so until you had figured out a solid routine, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2013 23:32
|
|
|
Mnemosyne posted:EDIT 2: It counts each spelling variation as it's own name, so while there were 14,779 Aidens, there were an additional 6,181 Aydens, 1,142 Adens, 335 Aydans, and 329 Aydins. Yeah I wish there was a way to see the rankings with the spelling variations lumped together. Like 2-2.5% of all girls were named Sophia last year if you look at all of the spellings.
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2013 22:34
|
|
|
frenchnewwave posted:Re: sunscreen, I did some research and found that California Baby seemed to be the gentlest and least chemically for babies. It's $$$ but my daughter is only 6 months so she won't need a ton. The No Cry Sleep Solution has tons of strategies in it. The key with any type of animal training (not calling your baby an animal, but the principles are the same) is extraordinary patience on the trainer's part, coupled with incremental steps towards the goal behavior. Going from nursing to sleep 100% of the time to 0% of the time in one step will be extremely difficult for your baby; one of the strategies in No Cry is to gradually reduce the length of each night nursing to wean her off of the need to night feed. One way to teach her to self-soothe so you don't need to intervene every time she wakes up is to wait until she's calm, then put her in the crib and soothe until she starts crying (if she does), then pick her up and repeat, repeating the process until she falls asleep. Over time this will teach her to fall asleep on her own. That said, some babies just have different needs than others. A month ago our son was waking up once or twice to feed in a 12-hour period at night; now at 6-months-old he is back to waking up every 3 hours to feed. I'll watch him on the monitor though and see him wake up in between those feedings and soothe himself back to sleep, which tells me that he actually is hungry and not just nursing for soothing.
|
|
#
¿
May 23, 2013 17:39
|
|
|
Ariza posted:I know some people on here are into it, but I would suggest never sleeping in a bed with an infant. It is demonstrably dangerous and babies die every year from it. As with any parenting advice, along with sleep strategies, talk to your doctor and peers and do your own research. Don't feel bad if you choose a method that some people don't agree with. Advice always changes and some people derive their self worth from judging and denouncing other people's parenting methods. Do what you think is best for your family and everything will be fine. My son sleeps in bed with us for the last few hours of every night, and when he's in his crib his favorite sleeping arrangement is with his lovey completely covering his face. Last night our dog also sneaked into the bed at around 3am (don't worry, he weighs less than the kid). When we found out my wife was pregnant, we bought a king size bed for a reason. If you don't smoke, drink/do drugs, aren't obese, your baby is generally healthy, and take basic common-sense measures (plenty of room on the mattress, no big blankets on baby, back sleep, etc) the risks associated with co-sleeping are very, very small. The vast majority of co-sleeping deaths occur in babies under 2-3 months old, because that's when most people are co-sleeping and when babies are more fragile. By 6 months, the risk of SIDS has dropped exponentially. This quote is where I basically fall: quote:Based on evidence from research into SIDS it is questionable whether advice to avoid bed sharing is generalisable and whether such a simplistic approach would do no harm. Parents of young infants need to feed them during the night, sometimes several times, and if we demonise the parents’ bed we may be in danger of the sofa being chosen. A better approach may be to warn parents of the specific circumstances that put infants at risk. Parents need to be advised never to put themselves in a situation where they might fall asleep with a young infant on a sofa. Parents also need to be reminded that they should never cosleep with an infant in any environment if they have consumed alcohol or drugs. http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3666
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2013 19:33
|
|
|
Lullabee posted:Alright, Cs 4 months next Saturday (oh god how'd he get so big so fast?! Our jumper is for 6 months and up, and you're not supposed to put them in it until their toes touch the ground when they're in it (we put a book underneath to get him started, now don't need it at 6.5 months). For toys, lots of good stuff here: http://www.manhattantoy.com/ Our son loved the Winkel and REALLY loves the Skwish.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2013 21:14
|
|
|
Oxford Comma posted:The pirate ship *is* awesome and the kids absolutely ignore it. It really only gets used about 3-4 times a year when we have other kids over. Sell your TV.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 12, 2013 04:59
|
|
|
Yeah, pro-tip: take everything your pediatrician says about nutrition with a massive amount of skepticism. Do your own research or talk to an infant dietitian (a friend of mine has a master's in infant nutrition and works in a NICU if you have anything special you want me to ask her). Have fun, we've been giving ours solids for two months now and it is seriously the most fun. Like you're planning, we started with avocado and sweet potato and now the list is about 30 foods long. He LOVES food.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2013 05:26
|
|
|
Dandy Shrew posted:Oh, dang, no, I don't just leave him screaming for 15 minutes 2 minutes is fine. Our son was just like that at 3 months. Now at 7 months he'll spend most of the day on his belly, and is right on track for crawling (he's squirming across the floor, getting on hands/knees and rocking back and forth, etc.). It seemed like he needed to cross a certain threshold of neck/back strength and then tummy time clicked.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 3, 2013 17:54
|
|
I should've specified - I put him on his tummy until he starts protesting, which is usually like 2 minutes at the most. Sometimes I can get him to be chill for 5 minutes with a baby mirror or his red crab chewy thing, but generally it's just 1-2 minutes.
|
Schweig und tanze posted:We swaddled until Simon was 4 months old and stopped when he began rolling over in his sleep and it became unsafe for his arms to be swaddled. He sleeps ok in his bed, we only bed share after his 3am feeding because I usually fall asleep while nursing him. There is literally no way he can fall out of bed as he sleeps between me and my husband, and as of right now it allows me to get another 3 hours of sleep without him waking up constantly. If that changes we will reassess. Yea this is basically what we do and did. Swaddled for the first 3 or 4 months when the 5 S's were still effective, and he sleeps in the crib until around 2am or 3am wakeup when it becomes easier for us to just co-sleep. Co-sleeping is absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend it if you don't have any of the risk factors (overweight, smoker, drinker). Some of my favorite moments have been in that early morning when the whole family is waking up and there is nothing like waking up together. On Father's Day my 6.5-month-old literally turned to me and babbled, "hi dada" as we were waking up and it was the most  moment imaginable. I don't care that it was just baby babble, it was cooler than any Father's Day gift I could have imagined.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2013 04:54
|
|
|
Crazy Old Clarice posted:Additionally, if you plan on breastfeeding, you are going to have to stop frequently, and it will add a lot of time onto your travel. We did a few 6 hour trips with E before he was 6 months old and with the three-ish stops to feed/change diapers it became an 8.5 hour drive. We've done several 9-hour drives and just did 2 6-hour flights at 8 months. The drives were MUCH more pleasant. Being able to stop at a rest stop, have a snack, let him do some tummy time on a blanket, and breastfeed just makes everything a lot less stressful, even if it takes longer. We did have to have someone sit in the back with him and had to listen to his Music Together CD non-stop for at least 2/3rds of the drives. But on the plane, he's crammed into 2'x4' of space and there is nowhere to put him down, and every toy or distraction seemed to interest him for 20 seconds at which point he'd start fussing again. It was just exhausting. The plane ride back was actually way better because he had a fever and just slept in my arms the entire time (and then puked all over my wife on the train ride home). But with a healthy, active baby, the flight there felt like the longest flight of my life. e: Separate topic, I know this has come up but what's the teething remedy rundown? He's cut 2 now and has one on top that is about to come through, but the last two nights have been up-every-hour-nursing nights. We're at the point where we're supposed to take a week off from tylenol, and teething rings only interest him for so long. I'm thinking about getting one of those baltic amber necklaces but anything else I should go for? Papercut fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jul 20, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2013 23:57
|
|
|
shadysight posted:What always worked well for us was cold celery, right from a piece of tupperware filled with water, in the fridge. It's cold, soft enough to chew on but hard enough to give some resistance, and actually food, which seemed to make it more interesting. He never really finished a piece, but it was interesting to watch them get more and more masticated as he got more teeth. rectal cushion posted:The amber necklaces don't work, it's a load of pseudoscience. Amber is pretty though Gah, we're already doing frozen carrot sticks, the mesh feeder, and refrigerated teething rings. Oh well, looks like we'll just have to tough it out. My friend's parent is a dentist and he told us to put some creme de menthe on the gums, then cut the gum with our thumbnail to break the tooth free. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2013 16:11
|
|
|
Axiem posted:The same way that amethyst is supposed to prevent you from getting drunk? (In fact, it's how the word came to be: 'a-' meaning 'not' (like in atheist), and 'methyst' meaning 'drunk' (ultimately from the root 'methy', meaning 'wine')). Well in my case I just followed one of the links in the OP, searched "teething", and saw a bunch of people recommending them. I just assumed it was a good thing to gnaw on, not that the amber itself had some magic properties.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2013 20:18
|
|
|
Professor Bananas posted:My son is almost 9 months and is starting full time daycare in just over a month's time. He's an awful sleeper, has been bed-sharing for months and even then wakes up every 2 hours at best (cot is every 1 hour and harder to resettle). He's fed to sleep except daytime naps which are in the pram as it's the only way he'll sleep for 90mins with no one beside him. And he's still breastfed on demand (along with his solids). So it's going to be a really big adjustment. Is he jumping straight into full-time care or is there a trial period? Our 8-month-old just finished a week of 3-hour days as a trial, and this is his first week of full-time. My wife doesn't go back to work until mid-August so in a pinch she can pick him up early (although luckily that hasn't been necessary). I would see if you can do some short trials first to get him and the caretakers warmed up. It took him a few days to get used to new people feeding him; the first day he didn't take any milk but yesterday, for example, he drank all of the milk that we sent with him. Have you tried a straw cup? Our son never took bottles so we went straight to sippy cups, but we recently tried a straw cup and he really took to it (he downed 6 oz of water while I was looking up ways to teach him to use a straw cup  ). It's definitely easier than a sippy cup, because sucking on a straw is a lot closer to breastfeeding than having to learn to tilt the cup enough to get anything out of it.There are a million pieces of advice about sleep out there, so I'll just tell you what worked for us. At around 7 months it just sort of clicked and putting him to bed became a breeze (usually), and he started sleeping longer stretches at night (then he started teething and it got bad again, yay for babies): - Making sure he got 3 naps per day (but remaining flexible, if he woke up late then napped late, then his 3rd nap might just become his bedtime) - Lengthening the bedtime routine so that he's really tired and relaxed by the time he goes in the crib. After my wife feeds him, I read him books for about 20-40 minutes in his room, lights dimmed and noise maker on, before even putting him in the crib. - Using a lovey and the seahorse. The lovey is crucial for him, the seahorse he can do without but it does help him stay calm. - Trying to limit how often we nurse to sleep. We know he can fall asleep without nursing so we're not too strict about this, but if he can ONLY fall asleep while nursing then you should work on developing alternative habits.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2013 20:28
|
|
|
Professor Bananas posted:Thanks for all the advice! He will be settling in during the week or two before so I hope that will help. Can I ask which straw cup you use? Some say 12m+ and I'm worried the Nuby one I like will be hard to clean (he likes his Nuby sippy cup but the valve is so hard to clean I don't think it would be hygenic with milk). It's a Zoli but we didn't do any research or anything, it was just what was on sale at the local store when we needed one. The straw part is definitely hard to clean. Also we were really worried about the daycare getting our son to nap, because we often have a hell of a time getting him to go down at home, but they haven't had any issues. They know what they're doing, and I think being around all of these people and other babies is pretty exhausting.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2013 00:38
|
|
|
It's basically just a distraction for us, when Logan starts to get really fussy in the crib I turn it on and it distracts him long enough for him to take a deep breath and relax. I'm still the one who has to get him to sleep (well me and Sandra Boynton, he loves books)
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2013 15:08
|
|
|
^^^ Holy crap this is such an awesome post. It just nails it so perfectly. I have a friend who is pregnant now and was telling her over the weekend to ignore any advice (barring obvious safety stuff) that is too rigidly absolute, because the best thing you can do is read your baby's cues and adapt accordingly. I'm gonna send her this because it sums this approach up perfectly.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2013 20:14
|
|
|
Brennanite posted:My 2 yr old has started insisting on sleeping with a sippy cup of milk. He doesn't drink it, he just wants to hold it. Denial results in a huge, thrashing tantrum. How can we break this cycle? We've tried offering a stuffed animal and making sure he has his blanket to no avail. My husband tells me it started shortly after I left for eight weeks (stupid employment). We hoped that my return would naturally end the situation, but no such luck. Why don't you want him sleeping with it?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2013 18:09
|
|
|
skipdogg posted:FWIW our pediatrician and dentist are both very anti going to bed with drinks. Right but assuming Brennanite is right that he's not drinking it, I don't see the harm. Brennanite, I second the idea of trying to add some weight to it without actually having any liquid in there. Or alternatively you could get a second lid and just permanently seal the top so that nothing can leak out. As far as emotional attachment, is your husband just philosophically opposed to loveys/blankeys/etc? Parenting is hard enough as it is without picking arbitrary things to refuse your children.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 19, 2013 19:04
|
|
|
frenchnewwave posted:V has been on a round of antibiotics for 2 weeks for a staph infection Are you sure she's getting a vaccine? The only reason she would is if you skipped it at the 6 month visit, based on the AAP's recommended vaccination schedule. We just had our 9 month appointment on Tuesday and it was just a checkup.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2013 15:49
|
|
|
There's a little boy who just started at our daycare this week and he's been crying every day too. He's not even mine and it's still painful seeing him upset every morning  . The reassuring thing is that he's been crying a little less each day. Don't worry about his crying being ignored, the caretakers will give him any extra attention he needs until he's settled. He'll probably learn to love it eventually. My son has been in daycare for a month now, and when we go in in the morning he gets really excited, starts kicking his legs, and smiles at his auntie. He seriously does not care that we're leaving him, he's like "okay see ya gonna go play now".
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2013 19:11
|
|
|
Dandy Shrew posted:How do you guys deal with family members who don't vaccinate/don't BELIEVE in vaccination, and their desire for interacting with your kid(s)? My husbands family are all a bunch of anti-vaxxer homeopaths, and there's some sort of party/reunion we're being pressured into going to because only my husbands father and sister have met the baby. I'm kinda skeeved out by it because in every persons home I visited before having the baby, not one of these mother fuckers even had handsoap in their bathrooms. Is there a tactful way to be like "nah, y'all are gross", or do I just turn off my phone and feign ignorance? Don't let them interact with your kids until they (your kids) have finished their vaccination schedule, which I think is sometime as a teenager. There's plenty of information here: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/default.htm I mean seriously, it's like asking how to safely take your children to a leper colony. My family are pretty huge into garbage homeopathic stuff but they at least weren't crazy enough to be anti-vaxxers.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 2, 2013 17:32
|
|
|
I'm pretty sure it's come up here, definitely has been posted on the Facebook group at least. The nice thing about this fault is that if it happens, you're going to know as soon as you put the batteries in. We haven't had any problems with ours but we don't use rechargables.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2013 19:26
|
|
|
Gagging is how babies move food from the back of their mouth to the front. Gagging by itself isn't a sign of choking and is totally fine.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2013 22:38
|
|
|
Our baby picked up pink eye at daycare and we're currently kicking ourselves for not recognizing it soon enough to clear it up with breast milk. Also my wife and I both think we too now have pink eye and are squirting breast milk in our own eyes. If our dog starts showing symptoms we know what he's getting, too.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 12, 2013 05:42
|
|
|
DwemerCog posted:I'm not sure I have the willpower to eat rice and vegetables for a month, and I'm not sure it would be a good idea. My breastmilk is made of what I eat. If it doesn't clear up I will ask the pediatrician if this is a good idea (internet medical advice and all.) There's BLOOD in your infant's poop, jesus loving christ. Harden the gently caress up. "Hmm continual internal bleeding in my infant versus temporarily eating bland food, I just don't know, this is a tough choice".
|
|
#
¿
Sep 18, 2013 20:46
|
|
|
PapFinn posted:In theory, I'd like to have my wife stay home with the baby. It would be awfully tight budget-wise and would require a better look at our finances. It wouldn't have been an option before she was pregnant, as she loved going in to work, but since being pregnant she's not as smitten with it. I don't think either of us know what she'll want to do when the time comes. She may go back to how she was or be even less inclined to continue. Don't forget about benefits when thinking about this. My wife went back to work not so much for the salary, but because her healthcare plan is a million times better than mine and literally hundreds of dollars per month less expensive. Also, she might find that by a certain point she wants to go back to work. Being home with a baby all day by yourself is EXHAUSTING, way moreso than working most jobs. quote:We are going to check out some day care centers around us this week or next. No one puts tuition rates on their site, so I don't know what to expect beyond ranges from $3000 to $12000 annually. That is cheap as hell, jesus christ. Our daycare is really cheap for the area and is $1500 per month. quote:Also, her job is not on a set schedule, so some weekdays she is home all day and others she works for 12 hours. I don't know if day care centers accommodate that and that would change the price or if it's just a monthly cost for as many days hours as you have your kid there. I can only go from my experience, but our daycare has longer hours than most and it's 7:30am to 5:30pm. There is no place where you could get a 12-hour day. And no place where you would only be able to pay to have the baby there part-time, unless you could find another family that wanted to put their baby in for the other portion of your part-time. Our friend uses an at-home daycare that is a lot more flexible, but the lady who runs it is caring for 6 babies by herself (our daycare limits it to 3 babies per caretaker). I just can't imagine someone taking care of that many babies and giving them all adequate attention/interaction. Again just speaking for my area, but in terms of getting a spot in a daycare, you'll be well-served by taking tours/doing research/asking questions now, but there's no reason to actually start applying unless you're willing to start paying for a spot. They won't hold a spot for you when they could give it to someone else, no matter how much they like you.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 8, 2013 03:58
|
|
|
What does the doctor say? Eye gunk is usually a sign of pink eye or a plugged tear duct, but I've never seen either of those look like that. For pink eye you need to use antibiotic eye drops. I don't know what they do for babies, but when my wife gets a plugged duct she massages it and does hot washcloth compresses.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2013 05:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:06 |
|
|
My little dude goes crazy for brocolli: Just the flowers though, he throws the stems to the dog who has an equal love for broccoli but only cares for the stems.  It's a symbiotic relationship.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2013 19:33
|
|