FFFC w/o 3/22

mrosek91

peachy0709

I don't actually care about college basketball, but I am streaming round 1 of the tournament because I just don't want to do any real work today. 

sourlemon

I have a new cleaning person here today. I've cleaned a lot in preparation for her to come and clean. Also, I'm totally judging her cleaning as she goes. So far, I give her a B. 

zamoraspin

The only time my purse gets cleaned out is when my dog gets ahold of it and empties it on the floor.

mkrel

@sourlemon I always end up cleaning before the cleaning lady comes.

Someone may flame me for this and it may be a combo FFFC/UO but here goes:
Inspired by a post in a mom's group yesterday that had me fuming.  I judge the shit out of people that try to sleep train and schedule their young babies.  Like first few months of life young.  If you can't be on someone else's schedule for a few months when they are completely tiny and dependent and need nourishment around the clock, then maybe you shouldn't be having children.  
I have zero issues with people sleep training in general if that is what they want to do later on, but trying to "hold off" feedings for an 8 week old child so you can get a longer stretch of sleep is just wrong. 
Also confession, I didn't realize until I became a mom what strong feelings I would develop on certain parenting topics. 

MamaK225

@mkrel - I wouldn't say that's such a UO. I'm right there with you ... if you want to try and get on a schedule when they're super young, parenting is going to be a big surprise and a struggle. If you happen to get one of those magical, easygoing babies that can go with the flow or can tolerate some scheduling, that's awesome - enjoy that and run with it. But delaying feedings, etc to accommodate your schedule is like brushing your teeth after eating Oreos ... and a bit much to put on those teeny, tiny shoulders.

@sourlemon - I definitely tidy before the cleaning lady comes. Mostly because I want her to clean, not pick up crap my family should be keeping put-together/put-away anyways. I found a new one about 6 weeks ago (after going about 6 months without, I wasn't happy with the previous company) and I'm soooooo happy. She's a dream come true and I love that she sends me pics and texts while she's doing everything. It makes coming home almost like a vacation.

Also, just like I freakin' knew would happen. I finally broke down and bought a doppler this week because I was surprised with how little, infrequent DD2 is moving around (given that I'm nearly halfway). OF COURSE, now that it arrived and I can feel less anxious and more reassured, she's been making her presence pleasantly known every couple hours. Ah well, at least it was FSA-eligible and pretty reasonable.

*TW, loss* For those who don't know: I was originally pregnant with twins, but lost one at 8 wks, only a few days after hearing both heartbeats and seeing them both dancing around. So I've been a lot more anxious about the surviving baby than I ever was with DD1. And so has DH, so the thought was to give him something tangible since we're nowhere near him being able to feel her just yet. *TW end*

Beauxbaton

I don't want to be wearing underwear today. I'm considering putting a nightgown on and calling it a day.

thirdtimesacharm2019

@Beauxbaton 😂😂 this sounds like something I would do. I gave up on pants a while back. Long dresses are my jam. Yes, long dresses because I’m not shaving everyday. That may change when the pool opens, or it may not. IDGAF - I wish somebody would say something about the hairy pregnant lady. Sorry. I’m in a mood today. 😒

MamaK225

@Beauxbaton - I'm right there with you, I actually opted for tights today (under a knee-length dress) just so I could go "free" ... and @thirdtimesacharm2019 so I didn't have to shave - since they're thick and dark gray! I have also purchased appoximately 6 new work-appropriate maxi dresses to carry me through this summer with my current inventory #preggowins

FFFC: waitlists for daycare are a f@cking racket. We get preferential waitlisting if we already have a child at the facility. I called the first day of my 2nd trimester and two women had already put themselves ahead of me TWO MONTHS before I called. Really? So you're telling me if I would've called you when I started trying (the first of 7 FETs was Jun 2017), I would've been ahead of them ... even though it took me 18 months to get a positive test? Rude. Still fuming over that/this. Grrrrrrr.

ElcaB

@mkrel I don't really judge, as long as they're meeting baby's needs. I know a woman who trained all three of her children to be on a schedule and they were STTN by three months old. As someone who's daughter didn't STTN until 13 months I definitely wish I could have had the determination to follow suit! 

zamoraspin

@mkrel I'm not very well initiated, so what is involved in this very early sleep training? Is it literally not feeding them when they want to eat or is it not waking a sleeping baby to feed it? My sister's pediatrician told her to wake the baby up every two hours at night to feed her when she was a newborn. My niece was normal weight, not premature, and a good eater. I found it a little nutty to wake a baby up that frequently through the night and I think for myself I'd let the baby sleep a little longer if the baby was sleeping. I would definitely feed a hungry newborn though. 

mrosek91

@zamora_spin that does sound nutty. My doctor said wake the baby every 3-4 hours but usually they didn't last 4 hours. That only lasts the first, I think it was 4 weeks assuming they were gaining at a healthy rate. Then you can just feed when they wake up.
Different people mean different things with sleep training, but typically it's a method to encourage the baby to not need to wake up/eat as often.
We established a bedtime at 4 months and started STTN training at 6 months. Both times after consulting the pediatrician that the boys were ready for it from an age/weight perspective.

goldfishcraker

I love this thread.
It's one of my favorites.
@sourlemon and @zamora_spin you literally made me laugh out loud.

Oo! I was gonna leave it there because I have nothing good to contribute! But then I suddenly remembered...

My FFFC is that I purposely mispronounced (very VERY badly mispronounce) one of the baby girl names my DH loves...because I hate it. It's a French name, and Impossible for English people to pronounce. There are sounds that don't exist in English. I'm not subjecting my child to a lifetime of that.
So I play dumb.

thirdtimesacharm2019

I guess I’m old-fashioned. I’m not going to great lengths to sleep train (regular schedule is good)... but I’m also not waking the baby to feed them. They will wake up when they’re hungry!

MamaK225

@chillycanadian - Girl, same! As a person's whose names (both given and maiden) were difficult to spell (last was impossible to say) ... thank you. I'm of a similar opinion and strategy, myself  

@thirdtimesacharm2019 - Me either. If DD2 is willing and compliant, sure, but I'm not going to put her or myself out trying. DD1 was about 13 months before she went from 7:30-7:00, and I'm ok with that (there was only a 2a wake-up from 8 months, on - just a quick bottle and a burp and right back down).

FFFC: I was so proud of myself for being good for the last few months and whittling my credit card balance down significantly ... so I just "rewarded myself" by spending $150 on Carter's for stuff for DD1 and a few cute, kinda match-y things for DD2.   But - hey - eBates and credit card points!

goldfishcraker

Oh. Also..
FFFC 2 for this week...
I have found in the past few weeks that I have REALLY enjoyed getting into educational arguments with random idiots on Facebook.
I'm usually very non-confrontational.
 Maybe it's the hormones, but lately, when I see someone post something so obviously and horrendously incorrect, I feel the need to educate them.

For example, yesterday someone posted that people were being too harsh judging a 24 year old who drove drunk at 3 times the legal limit, and smashed her car head on to another car on the highway. He said everyone drives drunk, and it's just one little mistake and shouldn't ruin her life.

Or a few weeks ago, a news story about a woman complaining about getting a bill from the ambulance after she fell and couldn't get up. She was assessed, lifted, given oxygen, cardiac monitoring and vital assessment. She then refused transport because she didn't want to pay. 
She said if she had known she would get a bill (half the cost of a transport bill), she would have called a friend to help her off the floor.
Some idiot was commenting that she was being discriminated against because of her age, and was being punished with a bill, to be taught a lesson for calling 911 in a non-emergency. And that we should be ashamed of ourselves for punishing a low income citizen.

Anyway. I usually would roll my eyes and scroll on. But lately I find it...cathartic to reply with all the proper information.

I'm a horrible person, and shouldn't feed the trolls.

aecm

@zamora_spin - I was originally told to feed my kid every 2hrs around the clock...and I didn’t find that sustainable for very long. I think it’s one thing if your kid is waking up hungry, and something else if you’re having to set alarms (which was my case). We quickly moved to every 3hrs overnight (w/ pediatrician approval) and not long after went to every 4hrs overnight.

As far as schedules go in general...I feel like your priority first needs to be what works for your kid, then what will keep you sane. My kid has always been happier with a somewhat regimented daily schedule, and because it’s what kept her happy it’s also what kept me happy. That was particularly true with her feeding schedule for the first 6-9 months. I’m the last person to give advice about sleep training tho - I got one of those magical babies that wanted to sleep through the night from the time she was about a week old (I hear they’re rare, lol). 

MamaK225

@chillycanadian - It's either the hormones or full moon. I've been correcting the misinformed political posts on my newsfeed lately. I don't think it's out of anger or anything like that, I'm just REALLY tired of seeing idiocy and scrolling through, I feel like being tolerant of others' (misinformed) "facts" is only emboldening them ... secretly hoping those specific people just unfriend me. Or maybe it's time to just ditch FB and go to IG exclusively like all the cool, young people.

mkrel

Oh don't get me wrong, I did not wake my daughter to feed her once getting the okay from my pedi at her 2 week appointment.  But when she woke up hungry, I fed her.  Sometimes that was 2 hours, sometimes 4, and eventually even 6 after a couple of months, but when she woke up I comforted and fed her.
@mrosek91 We started working on a bed time routine and reducing wake ups around 6 months too and I have no issue with that, it's just the first few months when they are itty bitty.  I cannot even imagine trying to withhold food and comfort from a basally newborn baby just so I could get a little more sleep.

olivemomma

We also were told to wake every 2 hours to feed until they were back to birth weight (and FTMs that’s 2 hours from when they begin eating! So in the middle of the night if they eat for 45 minutes and you put them down you are supposed to be up basically an hour later to feed them again). Ugh it’s horrible. I’m honestly not sure if I’ll do it again this time if he goes full term and is a healthy weight. I’m all about feeding on demand those early months but waking up a happily sleeping baby is torturous when you need your sleep too. 

We did sleep training with DD at 6 months when she literally refused to sleep if not attached to my boob. My pediatrician was like, “why didn’t you do this sooner?!” Luckily DS has loved sleep as much as a college kid since the day he was born so we never had to go there with him. But I have learned that sleep = sanity. Especially if you are SAHM, breastfeeding, and doing exclusive night feeds like I have always done. 

thirdtimesacharm2019

@chillycanadian I work for a state agency and the general public has no idea how taxes fund certain programs and others have their own revenue streams. My particular agency is in the news a lot and have to refrain from correcting the crazies on FB that think they know it all. And it’s not just a pregnancy thing... I want to correct them all. the. time. And the media perpetuates the ignorance. 

suzycupcake

What exactly does sleep training do? Like what is the reason for waking a baby up to feed vs letting a baby let you know they are hungry? Wait is sleep training a different thing from a feeding schedule? *goes to google*

mrosek91

@suzycupcake waking a baby up to eat is the opposite of sleep training. The philosophy behind it is that some babies would rather sleep than eat and if you let them set their own schedule they would not get enough to eat.
Sleep training is teaching babies when and how long it appropriate to sleep for at night. Typically you would not start sleep training until you got the ok from your pediatrician that the baby is growing at a healthy rate and does not need to be woken for feeds anymore.
Personally we used the cry it out method of sleep training which was one of the most painful things I've ever done. But working full time and waking to feed the baby every 4-5 hours was just not good for my mental health.
Sleep training like all of parenthood is very different for each person and baby, and requires consultation with your pediatrician, your partner, and your feelings.

suzycupcake

@mrosek91 How would they not get enough to eat? Do they sometimes not cry when they are hungry? 

That sounds like it was very painful for you to do that, I'm so sorry. Mental health is important and I can understand making a decision like that to be the best that you can be for your baby. Society needs a huge overhaul in mentality when it comes to maternity leave, etc. Mothers shouldn't have to go back to work so soon. And now I'm rambling....

olivemomma

@suzycupcake I think the concern in the early weeks is that the baby will not necessarily wake up if hungry on its own and because caloric intake is incredibly important early on (especially until they get back to their birth weight) most docs will recommend you wake them up regularly.

yes sleep training is basically ‘teaching’ your baby to self soothe and stop relying on other methods (I.e. rocking, eating, mom) to be asleep. It is really hard to do and I cried like a crazy lady the first night - but I was going insane and literally it would take hours to get DD down each night as she would fall asleep on me and then startle when I tried to transition her to her crib. If I did manage to make the transition the second she was awake she was screaming again to eat. It wasn’t because she was hungry but was using me as a method of soothing. I was getting no sleep and her sleep was very interrupted. In the end she cried it out and it was the best for us both. Within 2 weeks I could put her in her crib drowsy but still awake and she would smile up at me and go to sleep for 8-9 hours. It was glorious

aecm

@suzycupcake So, in the “newborn basics” class I took at the hospital we were told “Babies will cry when they’re hungry! Babies won’t starve themselves!” I think that’s probably true for the vast majority of babies...but I found out it’s definitely not true for all babies. My kid had very little interest in eating, especially at night, so for the first two months we had to set alarms to wake her up to eat / aka get calories into her so she would gain weight. 

All that said, if your kid is getting enough to eat during the day and is gaining weight appropriately, I would highly recommend not waking a sleeping baby 👍🏻

WinchesterGirl

For a healthy, full term baby without excessive weight loss my pediatrician never told us to wake for night feeds more than he woke himself, not even from day 1. But it's important to remember that until your LO is here, you can't know what 'extra' help they may need. 

Beauxbaton

We had to wake our babies every 3-4 hours until their jaundice went away. After that they were golden to only eat when they woke naturally.

moon1417

OK this is driving me crazy and two ppl just said this on FB.  When you’ve seen something happen. People say “I seen it where it’s xyz."  The “I seen” makes me cring and makes me immediately think that person is uneducated. I am not always grammatical but omg I’m going to flip out.

edited because it also drives me nuts when people don't "put the period inside the quotes." I did that with he xyz thing up there.. ugh I even annoy my self sometimes.  

MamaK225

FFMC: DH needs to CTFO or else I'm going to be delivering this baby in orange.

We live in the South, so it's Pollen season. My RE suggested I wait until 3rd Tri to take my usual Zyrtec because it had recently been moved up on the OTC meds schedule, but said that Benadryl is a-ok - as needed - until then. I've been relatively unscathed, but I've had some really gnarly mucous build up that makes me cough/gag often enough that I decided I'd had enough. So I took at 25mg Benadryl (which is what I was taking 3x daily during my FET cycle) and drank a glass of water ... and fell asleep for like 20-30 min. When I woke up, DH was freaking out like I had ran away with the pool boy and emptied the bank accounts. Granted, it was about 5:45 when I (was very rudely and abruptly) woke(n) up, so he was FREAKING out because dinner needed to be made. Like ... wtf did you do before I came along? Sustain solely on air? Worse case, throw on some blue box, put a couple of chicken breasts in the oven, and dice up any of the numerous veggies I had just stocked the fridge with

I think I was mostly mad because he woke me up in a panic and was absolutely mental about it the whole time: freaking out that it's so late (yet, when I press - not full-on freak out - that it's time to eat he tells me it's too early or that I need to calm down); swearing the whole time he's going to ruin dinner and I'm not going to eat it (I am a particular eater, but not nearly to the degree he was acting like); and just being absolutely an irrational @sshole the entire time. Like, DUDE, I'm making a baby. I'm allowed to doze off. If it's that damn stressful, we've got Waitr, several frozen pizzas, and/or tons of Toddler-friendly quick meals. We'll be ok, kid. ... Maybe this was more of a rant than an FFMC, but DAMN, I'm still incensed.

wabash15

@suzycupcake some babies especially those born before term can be "sleepy" babies and will sleep rather than eat. They can loose weight and have a lot of issues, so those babies may need to be woken up (undressed/harassed) to eat. Other babies may have latching or other nursing related issues and need extra help or more frequent feeds. No not all babies cry when hungry.  

elizabeth_1985

@suzycupcake On the other end of the spectrum...My second DD was born hungry. She started licking her lips within 20 minutes of being born. (She was 8 lb, 3 oz at birth.) She ate about an ounce of formula. She gained weight in the hospital. 

So...Bottom line- Babies are diverse. And you don't know what you'll get until it happens.

wanderlustsoul

@MamaK225, I would have had a very hard time not killing him. Damn. Can't he cook? My allergies have also been horrible so I completely sympathize. 

MamaK225

@elizabeth_1985 - I totally agree. DD1 fluctuated between hunger and sleep, but lost 7.5 oz in the hospital. However, at her 2 week appointment, she had gained that back plus a pound (and never looked back!).

She was born at 40+1, so was just a tiny baby, but her growth was incredible once she was out: she was a great eater and decent sleeper, but didn't sleep longer than 4 hour stretches until she was close to 5 months. It was due to my hesitancy to move her up past 4 oz (she was such a fast eater and would be on the verge of vomit if I gave her more - regardless of how often I paused during feedings) for a long time. So it required 6-7 feedings a day. Hence 4 hours.

MamaK225

@AKuzReve - I have NO idea what his issue was, I'm still confounded. It was like a switch flipped and he had a minor panic attack. It was absolutely unwarranted and unnecessary. Having active experience with a 2.5 yr old, I knew just to let it proceed and work itself out ... no need to start a fight over him going momentarily insane. I guess all that work with Toddler has finally paid off in other tangible ways!  

wanderlustsoul

@MamaK225, LOL. Glad it's useful for something. Who knew (maybe everyone?) that it would be also useful for husbands. Last night I literally just got up at like 8 PM and went to bed because my allergies were horrific. My H knows better than to question it so he got me the Vicks and turned on the fan for me. 

MamaK225

@AKuzReve - I always call DH my oldest child, for reasons like this. They already have the ability to wipe their own butts and - mostly - take care of themselves. And don't get me wrong, he is incredibly engaged and carries more than his weight around the house (and doesn't say a peep when I engage third parties to assist: cleaning lady, any yardwork projects, etc.). I'm "luckier" than most, but they all have their moments.