??? Weekly Check-in ??? 10/3/2011

Re: ??? Weekly Check-in ??? 10/3/2011

• SanHawaii08 member

  October 2011

  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO?  he'll be 11 months next week!
  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share?  feeling..okay.  just switched teams at work, so it's about to get super busy as i ramp up. 
  (3) Next appointment date?  Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up? 1 year appt
  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week?  2-1 nap transition, and sleep in general!  had a great 2 1/4 hr nap on friday.  followed by a 23 min nap on saturday.  we traveling over the weekend, staying in a huge house with 3 other families (4 other kids), attending a wedding, so i expect him not to get much sleep.  but it's been brutal.  been dealing with 4:30am wake-ups the last few days now too.
  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between?  in between.  we wore E a ton, co-slept, ebf, etc.  but also, especially now that he's older, CIO as needed.
  (6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them?  i think we had almost every issue possible wrt bf'ing   determination, persistence, lots of visits with lactation consultants (i think I saw or talked to at least 5 different LCs!), lots of tears, and gritting my teeth through the pain (initial pain, thrush, mastitis, vasospasms)
  (7) Is BFing babies with teeth difficult? How do you encourage them not to bite?  E's bit me a few times.  each time, i yelped "ow!" pretty loudly and immediately pulled him off, waited a few seconds, then put him back on.  he caught on pretty quickly.  then for a short while, i noticed he would start to bite when he was full or bored, so i'd just pay more attention and unlatch him when he was finished. 
  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night?  i think we started around 1.5 or 2 months, when he was no longer sleeping in our arms, and had started developing a longer stretch of sleep.  it's changed over the months - initially, it was music, swaddle, binky.  now it's diaper, nurse, 2 books (the same ones every night), seahorse, blankie, put down in crib, leave the room.  yes, we do it every night, and when we travel, we bring the seahorse, the books, etc - everything - with us
  

  

  Report0 Reply
• Loading the player...
• MrsNJSwimmer member

  October 2011

  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO?  Nearing 23 months

  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share?  We've all been sick/allergies on/off for a couple of weeks now.  No one felt good this weekend.  He's just super cute and I can't stay mad at him for long.  Why do they need to test boundaries? 

  (3) Next appointment date?  Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up? Thanks for the reminder - I need to schedule his 2 yr appt.

  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week?  boundary testing - UGH!

  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between? somewhere in between, but more than I originally thought I would be.

  (6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them? yes - I didn't overcome them - I gave up after a week and felt such a relief b/c it was so taxing emotionally. 

  (7) Is BFing babies with teeth difficult? How do you encourage them not to bite? n/a

  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night?  about 5 months - we did it every night - in the beginning I didn't bath him every night, but we did the rest.  Bath - nighttime diaper/jammies - brush teeth (once he had 2 teeth, I added this in) - read books (he is allowed to bring one to bed to cuddle with)- lay down in (my) bed - put the sleep sheep on, sleep.
  

  Blog

  Report0 Reply
• MauiBride2008 member

  October 2011

  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO?6 months on Sunday!
  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share?  We have finally converted all naps to the crib and I moved that darn swing out of his room!  His room feels so much bigger now.  I decided to just dive in and just do it.  The transition has been great and he is napping much better now.  I think he actually enjoys to sleep in it since he moves around all over the place through the duration of his entire nap.
  (3) Next appointment date?  Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up?  Not until his 9 month well visit.  We just had his 6 month well visit and it went really well.  He is still a tiny little guy (very long and very skinny).
  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week?Nothing so far, but we are going to be flying on Friday out of town and I'm very nervous.  I'm scared he will act just crazy and I won't be able to rock him to calm him down and be "that lady" on the airplane.   Anyone have any suggestions on how to handle this trip with ease?  Also, I will be flying with R all by myself to my Dad's the following weekend on a 3 hour plane ride...I'm terrified!
  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between?I'm not too sure to be honest what this means, but R never wanted to be worn...he hated it.  I had to stop BF around 1 month old and co-sleeping was not for us.  R was pretty much sleeping at night in his crib at 1 month old, but our room was right next door to his so it was actually a very easy transition for us.  He as always preferred to sleep on his own.  He hated the bassinet and he would fuss a ton while in bed with us.
  (6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them?  I had to stop BF at 1 month so I didn't get to experience this to it's fullest.  Hopefully I will be able to BF with baby #2 when that time comes.
  

  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night?

  We did a bedtime routine from the start.  We start with a bottle at 7 then every other night DS has a warm bath followed by lotion, jammies, story then bed.  He gets excited when we do his routine!
  

  Here is Mr. Boy's 6 month picture:

   

  
  
  
  | Olowalu, Maui ~ August 6, 2008 |
  | Family of 4 ~ April 2, 2011 |
  | Family of 5 - October 24, 2012 |

  Report0 Reply
• lorem ipsum

  October 2011

  Can you change my screenname in the list to my new name? Thanks!
  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO? 17.5 months...almost a year and a half!
  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share? I'm feeling...tired lol. Chasing two toddlers around the house is HARD! Let's see, milestones...I don't think they've really hit any new ones, but everything they already do is improving daily. Vocabulary (especially animal sounds - you should hear Will mooing and Dash chattering like a monkey lol), dexterity, climbing on everything in sight...you get the idea!
  (3) Next appointment date?  Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up? Ooooh, I need to make their 18 month checkup appointment...
  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week? Discipline. I think this is a REALLY hard time in child development. They have pretty much zero impulse control, you can't reason with them, they're too young for timeouts, etc. It's very frustrating when they repeatedly do something they shouldn't over and over.  Yesterday I was thisclose to selling them to the circus.
  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between? I'd say somewhere in-between, but closer to the "not for you" side. BFing didn't work out, twins are very difficult to wear (yes, a rare few MoMs do it, but it's very physically strenuous), we weren't interested in co-sleeping (and our bedroom would have prohibited it anyway), etc.(6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them? Many, many BFing issues. Primarily with low supply, but - I believe, although the LCs I saw denied it - some latch issues due to their tongue ties. We overcame them by...not overcoming them. I stopped BFing at 6.5 weeks, and it was absolutely the best decision I could have made. I literally started feeling more sane the minute I decided to stop. Sometimes I wish it could have worked out, but under the circumstances, I have no regrets about giving up.
  (7) Is BFing babies with teeth difficult? How do you encourage them not to bite? n/a
  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night?  We started one at...hmm. 8 weeks, I think? At that point, it was just bath, bottle, bed. At 3 months we added a book into the routine. These days it's bath, book, bed, and we follow that religiously. (Especially the book part, which Ben reads to them - he doesn't get to spend a lot of time with them during the week, so this is something special they do together.)
  

  * the artist formerly known as redshoegirl *
  life in oz
  
  

  Report0 Reply
• vanilla15

  October 2011

  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO? 13 months!  how time flies!

  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share?  Same as Lisa, not sure any new milestones, but what she does, she is getting better at.  Her vocabulary is definitely growing & she tries to parrot a lot of what we say.

  (3) Next appointment date?  Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up?  Just had her one year last week.  Since we are behind in shots, we will need to schedule a shots only visit next month to keep trying to catch up on shots.

  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week?  sleep, but that has been the challenge the past year.  But this weekend, everything is changing!  We are going to try Dr. Jay Gordon's method.  I had read about it on the leakyboob blog & I figure it is worth a try.  We've got a long weekend so hopefully this weekend is the weekend she starts STTN!!

  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between?  I wouldn't say 100% for it, but probably more than I had anticipated.  We EBF until 6 months & I still BF her.  We did wear her sometimes as a newborn (and 2nd time around I will probably wear all of the time.  It really was easier, but the moby made me nervous once I got the beco gemini, I loved it & it was so much more comfortable for me).  We do co-sleep but that definitely wasn't the plan & we didn't until probably around 6 months.  I had to go back to work & she kept getting sick at daycare so it was the only way any of us got any sleep whatsoever. 

  (6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them?  I was very lucky.  I didn't have any trouble with mastis or anything like that.  It was hard & painful & I really didn't know what I was doing but I met with LCs & went to a few mom groups that were really helpful.  Thankfully my little piglet was happy to take food any where she could get it so we introduced pumped milk early on from a bottle and she gladly took it.

  (7) Is BFing babies with teeth difficult? How do you encourage them not to bite?  It is difficult even if they aren't biting you just the new teeth change their latch or something and it hurts pretty bad again.  LO has bit me but like Sandra said it is pretty much when she is done.  So if she bites me, I stop nursing her b/c I know that means she was finished anyway.
  

  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night? We started a bedtime routine probably around 2 -3 months.  Bath, book, nursing, crib (she is in the crib until we go to bed & pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow, she wakes up & wants to get in our bed)  I probably shouldn't nurse last but it is what we have always done.  Often she won't fall asleep nursing and will fall asleep on her own in the crib, but it is still going to be hard to cut the nursing part out of our routine when I quite BFing.  

  

  Report0 Reply
• Married2MrWright member

  October 2011

  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO?

  Libby is 20.5 months old and I am 25 weeks PG.

  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share?

  TIRED. I am not sleeping well due to multiple leg and foot cramps each night. I am eating bananas, drinking coconut water and taking my PNV plus a magnesium supplement and additional calcium, stretching, you name it and still every night excruciating charlie horses!

  (3) Next appointment date? Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up?

  GTT test on Monday the 24th. I am expecting that I'll fail and proceed straight to an endocrinologist and insulin. Sucks!

  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week?

  Libby is having these major meltdowns for no apparent reason. She'll be perfectly fine and then just wig out with huge crying jags that last anywhere from 15-30 minutes and then, just as suddenly as they've started, they stop and she's on her merry way. We cannot figure it out.

  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between?

  I'd say we're probably closer to 100% than not...maybe 80%? We definitely practice the 7 B's as much as possible. And I am all for gentle/positive discipline too. That said we stopped bedsharing at 11.5 months and transitioned her to her crib using modified CIO. She's slept in her crib ever since but still, most nights, cries for 5-15 minutes  before settling down. For naps, she won't cry, but we've not gotten there just yet for sleep, which is terribly heart breaking and not a night goes by that I don't ask myself if I am doing some serious psychological damage by letter her CIO each night. That said, she's very verbal and we talk about it and I say, "time to get cozy in your bed....you don't have to cry yourself to sleep if you don't want to." And she says, "Cry, want to!" And I tell her, "it's okay if you want to cry, but you don't have to. You're safe in your crib. I'll see you in the morning."

  (6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them?

  Yes and yes. Despite introducing the bottle at 3.5 weeks and her taking it, around 6.5 weeks she rejected ALL bottles. We discovered it was due to my producing BM with excess lipase. Once I learned how to handle that, she was off the bottle altogether so my mom and DH cup fed her my expressed (and scalded) BM when I returned to work. I also had oversupply and foremilk/hindmilk imbalances which caused her to spit up a lot and also choke during my forceful letdown. I started block feeding and that cleared some of it up for the better. I still managed to BF her until 18.5 months, 16 weeks into this pregnancy, then my milk dried up and we weaned (she as down to 1x/day at bedtime).

  (7) Is BFing babies with teeth difficult? How do you encourage them not to bite?

  As far as I remember Libby only bit me on purpose once and I promptly removed her and said "owie, that hurt mommy. no biting!" and she got it. Other times, as teeth were cutting, her latch would be off or more intense as she figured out how to accomodate the new teeth. Sometimes they'd leave an indentation on my nipple and I'd unlatch her and show her and say, "owie! your teeth are hurting mommy." and then ask her to re-latch. That worked most of the time. Other times I just grinned and beared it until she worked it out accomodate the new teeth which took only a few days.
  

  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night? Maybe around 8 weeks or so, I cannot remember now. Since we bedshared it wasn't all that involved but we did use Twillight Turtle and I'd nurse her to sleep. We did that for 11.5 months and then transitioned to her crib.

  
  TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
  
  
  

  Report0 Reply
• Married2MrWright member

  October 2011

  Oops! Double post! I've had some "help" at the keyboard here.

  
  TTC/PG Blog | Mommy Blog
  
  
  

  Report0 Reply
• lelekay member

  October 2011

  (1) What week are you in/how old is your LO? 14.5 months
  (2) How are you feeling? Any new milestones or news in the last week to share? I'm having a rough week.  not bad, really, just super busy....my stepmom had surgery yesterday, so I drove 1.5 hours to be with her in the evening, and tomorrow I have a huge field trip with my 5th grader, and it's all day into the evening.  Two night with no Henry is rough on me.He did get tooth #8 this week, though! 
  (3) Next appointment date?  Any big ultrasounds/other exciting stuff coming up? I think just after Halloween.
  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week? We're getting in to this discipline territory that perplexes me.  He does things that he knows he shouldn't (i know he knows, since he hides what he's doing, and runs away when I catch him doing it, i.e. dig in the trash can), yet I'm at a loss for how to stop it.  I do a lot of "We don't ________", but it doesn't seem to work.  
  (5) Attachment parenting: 100% for you, 100% not for you, somewhere in between? Somewhere in between.  I tried so, so hard to BF, but BFing had it in for me.  I loved wearing Henry, and did it often, but not constantly.  We did bedshare for a while, even though I hadn't planned on it.  So, I guess in some ways more than I thought, and in some ways less.(6) Have you had any issues with breastfeeding or bottle feeding? How did you overcome them? Oh, BFing.......  I had a super low supply and a slow letdown.  My super impatient child was not having that.  80% of our BFing sessions ended with him screaming and me crying.  I still faithfully did it every feeding for the first two months, in addition to pumping 5 times a day (to only get 1-4 ounces a day total).  I was crazy about not letting it go.  But after two months I did give up trying ever feeding session and only tried a few times a day.  I continued pumping until 3 months, but then stopped that, too.  It seemed so incredibly futile, all that effort to only get a couple of ounces a day.
  (7) Is BFing babies with teeth difficult? How do you encourage them not to bite? n/a
  (8) At what age did you/will you start a bedtime routine? What's your bedtime routine and do you do it every night?  I want to say about 7-8 weeks?  We did bath, book, and bottle every night.  Eventually we dropped the bottle (at 13 months), and we now do books before bath.  He's so tired after bath, that he's not interested in a book, he just falls asleep.  So now we wind down by reading a few books, then get into the bath, and just snuggle and sing a little before lying down.

  
  

  Report0 Reply
• lorem ipsum

  October 2011

  lelekay:

  (4) What's been your greatest BR challenge this past week? We're getting in to this discipline territory that perplexes me.  He does things that he knows he shouldn't (i know he knows, since he hides what he's doing, and runs away when I catch him doing it, i.e. dig in the trash can), yet I'm at a loss for how to stop it.  I do a lot of "We don't ________", but it doesn't seem to work.  

  *sits next to lelekay on the wtfdiscipline bench*

  Both of my kids do this, and have been doing it since about that age. They know - KNOW - that certain things are out of bounds, but gleefully do them anyway. I am 100% positive they know they should not be doing these things - either they try to hide it, or they will stand there and wait until I see them, then laugh and do the no-no thing because it's funny when mama has a frustrated meltdown. 

  I really don't know how to stop it. At this age, you can't reason with them or put them in timeout. Everything I've read says to redirect them with a different activity or a fun toy, but my kids must be unusually focused because the most exciting activity or toy in the world will not distract them if they'd rather be doing something else. Ugh. It's got to get easier, right?
  

  * the artist formerly known as redshoegirl *
  life in oz
  
  

  Report0 Reply