What I found you need to feed your baby solid foods:
-a hand immersion blender. Don't invest in the bulky food processor, I found this pretty much does the job.
-glass pyrex storage dishes. food can go straight from the fridge to microwave without having to transfer into another dish.
-a fork. yep. for mashing stuff.
-a nice kid spoon. one that has a long end that you can hold on to but enough room for your babe's hand too.
-bibs. the kind that wipe off. don't get the velcro ones, my little guy figured out how to take them off awhile ago.
-tolerance for a big mess. as they get older they just want to explore, throw, squish, slide, shove all the food. get ready--it's fun and messy.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Why I am glad to be a parent in Canada
I've been thinking about how fortunate my husband and I are to have moved to Canada just before we had our baby. Yes, it is thousands of miles from all of my family and the good majority of my friends but there are a lot of good things about being in Canada and also in Montreal.
1. Parental leave. This benefits me in a few ways. First, my husband has access to it all since I haven't worked a day in Canada. In his work, he doesn't get the time off really, but it alleviates some of the major projects. There were several weeks in there, when sleep was really bad, that his schedule was very flexible and it was really helpful. Second, this benefits me because other mamas have off to. Not just a few weeks or even months, they have a year off. They need to do something to fill that time so they're looking for other fellow mamas. Lucky for me I have the cutest little ice breaker.
2. Health care. I don't even want to think about how much it would've costs for all of our baby's health care needs. Many days in the NICU and many tests. And the tests are continuing and may continue. And it seems like the healthcare is good quality so that isn't compromised.
3. Linked to both of these things is the fact that I am here in Canada as a stay at home mom or I would be on maternal leave if I worked in Canada before the baby arrived. For me this is particularly good because I don't produce much milk when I pump. I need my babe there to do the work. Had I been in the states, I would've had to go back to work and more than likely use formula. And really what my baby needed was the best stuff.
4. Once my French improves I will feel better about living here but I know that it will be such a wonderful thing for my babe to be bilingual. It's so cool to be in a place where you can easily speak in English or French, in most parts of the city. Using that part of his brain at such a young age will hopefully help him learn other languages later in life too.
5. The countless events and things to do in Montreal, especially in the summer. I have taken advantage of the local wading pool a ton of times this summer. Also the myriad of parks in my neighborhood. The festivals, the library hours, free museum activities, discounted kid sessions....the things to do are actually countless, it's an amazing place for a kid!
More to come....
1. Parental leave. This benefits me in a few ways. First, my husband has access to it all since I haven't worked a day in Canada. In his work, he doesn't get the time off really, but it alleviates some of the major projects. There were several weeks in there, when sleep was really bad, that his schedule was very flexible and it was really helpful. Second, this benefits me because other mamas have off to. Not just a few weeks or even months, they have a year off. They need to do something to fill that time so they're looking for other fellow mamas. Lucky for me I have the cutest little ice breaker.
2. Health care. I don't even want to think about how much it would've costs for all of our baby's health care needs. Many days in the NICU and many tests. And the tests are continuing and may continue. And it seems like the healthcare is good quality so that isn't compromised.
3. Linked to both of these things is the fact that I am here in Canada as a stay at home mom or I would be on maternal leave if I worked in Canada before the baby arrived. For me this is particularly good because I don't produce much milk when I pump. I need my babe there to do the work. Had I been in the states, I would've had to go back to work and more than likely use formula. And really what my baby needed was the best stuff.
4. Once my French improves I will feel better about living here but I know that it will be such a wonderful thing for my babe to be bilingual. It's so cool to be in a place where you can easily speak in English or French, in most parts of the city. Using that part of his brain at such a young age will hopefully help him learn other languages later in life too.
5. The countless events and things to do in Montreal, especially in the summer. I have taken advantage of the local wading pool a ton of times this summer. Also the myriad of parks in my neighborhood. The festivals, the library hours, free museum activities, discounted kid sessions....the things to do are actually countless, it's an amazing place for a kid!
More to come....
Friday, August 9, 2013
Baby logs, Type 3: Sleep teaching
We were desperate for our baby's sleep and our own that we resorted to sleep teaching/training/crying it out. It seemed all of the parents we talked to said this is what you had to do. We needed to do something. I said to myself that I couldn't have more kids if i'd have to sleep teach them, I hated it that much. Seriously, I think I even posted here that I'd rather give birth again. Hearing your baby cry is the worst. As mothers, I suppose (my husband could handle it much better than me). You just have this biological tick and it eats away at you. I hated it. But I have to say we have an especially stubborn baby. Parents on the local listserve are like 'oh my baby cried 20 mins the first night, 10 the second and 3 the next and done.' Ha! Not mine (and I know bc I kept a log). He cried some for about 12 days (my log is 17 days!). 12 days of agony. But it did work. He did get the hang of sleep and became a good sleeper. Until we traveled, then it all goes to shit. Luckily, you (usually) don't start at square one bc they remember how to soothe and sleep a bit.
Now remember back to that second log I took of my kid's shitty sleep, well it had some value. I was able to see a pattern of when he typically woke to be fed or soothed which helped in the sleep training. According to the school we used, you'd go in 1 hour before he typically started to cry to try to get to him before he cried and hopefully avert the crying.
There was one fateful night where I woke up to feed him (yes I set my alarm for 3 different times to wake in the night) and I peed. While peeing he woke up. And so it goes, you can't go in to him when he cries or it sends mixed signals. So I had to wait til he stopped crying...pretty sure it was an hour and 40 mins. I am sad to even admit that here. that we let him cry that long. who ever is reading this, please note how desperate we were. our baby would not sleep, for anything. It was effecting our parenting, our marriage, our baby, our life.
Sleep Teaching started on the first of the month.
We logged:
Bed time
1st check in to try to calm
2nd check in to try to calm
Etc
(note we stopped going into calm him at some point bc it just made him that much more upset that it wasn't me and my husband wouldn't pick him up, we felt it was making it worse)
Total time cried til sleep
Wake up time and the time he cried to fell back asleep
Times went in to Dream feed
We kept a similar log with daily naps (every 2 hours at his age).
For memory's sake, the first night he cried 46 mins before falling asleep. He woke 3 times in the night.
2nd night he cried 40 mins. 3rd night, he fell right asleep. We also did naps at the same time, as the book recommended. Sometimes this was harder bc it was the middle of the day.
In the heart of the training you're supposed to do it in 12 hour chunks for night sleep and 1 hour for naps. Any time they wake in this chunk, they need to soothe and go back to sleep. This was the worst part. My baby sleeps 35-40 min naps. And he sleeps 10.5 hour sleep cycles. May be this is bc I am wuss and go and get my baby and should just let him cry but after the heart of the training where he was getting so much more sleep, I didn't think it was worth it. And that made me feel much better.
Wishing all babies happy, long nights of sweet sleep. And their parents too.
Now remember back to that second log I took of my kid's shitty sleep, well it had some value. I was able to see a pattern of when he typically woke to be fed or soothed which helped in the sleep training. According to the school we used, you'd go in 1 hour before he typically started to cry to try to get to him before he cried and hopefully avert the crying.
There was one fateful night where I woke up to feed him (yes I set my alarm for 3 different times to wake in the night) and I peed. While peeing he woke up. And so it goes, you can't go in to him when he cries or it sends mixed signals. So I had to wait til he stopped crying...pretty sure it was an hour and 40 mins. I am sad to even admit that here. that we let him cry that long. who ever is reading this, please note how desperate we were. our baby would not sleep, for anything. It was effecting our parenting, our marriage, our baby, our life.
Sleep Teaching started on the first of the month.
We logged:
Bed time
1st check in to try to calm
2nd check in to try to calm
Etc
(note we stopped going into calm him at some point bc it just made him that much more upset that it wasn't me and my husband wouldn't pick him up, we felt it was making it worse)
Total time cried til sleep
Wake up time and the time he cried to fell back asleep
Times went in to Dream feed
We kept a similar log with daily naps (every 2 hours at his age).
For memory's sake, the first night he cried 46 mins before falling asleep. He woke 3 times in the night.
2nd night he cried 40 mins. 3rd night, he fell right asleep. We also did naps at the same time, as the book recommended. Sometimes this was harder bc it was the middle of the day.
In the heart of the training you're supposed to do it in 12 hour chunks for night sleep and 1 hour for naps. Any time they wake in this chunk, they need to soothe and go back to sleep. This was the worst part. My baby sleeps 35-40 min naps. And he sleeps 10.5 hour sleep cycles. May be this is bc I am wuss and go and get my baby and should just let him cry but after the heart of the training where he was getting so much more sleep, I didn't think it was worth it. And that made me feel much better.
Wishing all babies happy, long nights of sweet sleep. And their parents too.
Baby logs, Type 2: Your kids shitty sleep
As my kid entered into his 3rd month is seemed that his sleep was getting worse and worse. I thought sleeping 2-3 hours was bad, but it turns out it was going to get much worse (that is my babe went through weeks of only sleeping 30 mins at a time). In my logs I was trying to see if there was a pattern to this bad sleep. And we also started a bed time routine.
At 3 months, we started with a bottle, book and swaddle and then the boob. We'd try at least 3 times to put him down most nights. That is, he'd wake up with his 30 min cycle and we'd have to rock and sing, give boob, whatever we could to get him to sleep so we could survive! We started trying to get him off of the boob and began rocking and singing to him to get to sleep at some point. We'd spend hours just getting him to sleep beyond 30 mins (usually 1-3 hours trying to get him to sleep in a 2 hour chunk)
In these logs I kept track of:
Pre bedtime sequence
Wake ups in the night (varying from 3-6)
Naps
And I'd also keep logs of how many times he'd eat during the day, typically 8-12 times a day
I kept this log for far too long (3 weeks with a pause and then started up again for 3 more weeks). I guess may be it made me feel like I was understanding what was happening or could find a pattern or find the magic-turn-3-times-pat-your-babies-belly-just-so and sleep will come sequence. It never happened. Sleep sucked for his 4th to 5th month. We resorted to him sleeping in the swing all of this month and it helped...a little. We also started bathing him about 3 weeks into this bad month. I was a walking zombie. No joke.
Then came the next log: sleep training.
At 3 months, we started with a bottle, book and swaddle and then the boob. We'd try at least 3 times to put him down most nights. That is, he'd wake up with his 30 min cycle and we'd have to rock and sing, give boob, whatever we could to get him to sleep so we could survive! We started trying to get him off of the boob and began rocking and singing to him to get to sleep at some point. We'd spend hours just getting him to sleep beyond 30 mins (usually 1-3 hours trying to get him to sleep in a 2 hour chunk)
In these logs I kept track of:
Pre bedtime sequence
Wake ups in the night (varying from 3-6)
Naps
And I'd also keep logs of how many times he'd eat during the day, typically 8-12 times a day
I kept this log for far too long (3 weeks with a pause and then started up again for 3 more weeks). I guess may be it made me feel like I was understanding what was happening or could find a pattern or find the magic-turn-3-times-pat-your-babies-belly-just-so and sleep will come sequence. It never happened. Sleep sucked for his 4th to 5th month. We resorted to him sleeping in the swing all of this month and it helped...a little. We also started bathing him about 3 weeks into this bad month. I was a walking zombie. No joke.
Then came the next log: sleep training.
Baby logs, Type 1: feeding
Our little man spent his first few days in the NICU. It was incredibly tough on us. And him, certainly. We didn't know anyone in Montreal and going through that experience essentially alone was terrible. A result of his long NICU stay was my milk not coming in. I didn't hold him for 8 days so my body didn't know what was up. This was the start of taking baby logs. We've taken 2 important ones so far in parenthood, one for milk/feeding/poo and pee and the other for sleep.
With the breastfeeding log we kept track of:
Date
Time of feeding
Type of latch (good, bad, ok)
Length of time on the boob, on each one (left and right)
How many ML I pumped
How much he ate from bottle/formula after in ML (a necessity to make sure he was getting enough food)
Pee
Poo
I did this every single feed for one month, day and night at any hour to make sure my baby was getting enough to eat. Almost drove me mad. I am not sure this is the stress free approach to breastfeeding that the lactation consultants recommend. Side note: the lactation consultants are the ones who recommend keeping the log.
With the breastfeeding log we kept track of:
Date
Time of feeding
Type of latch (good, bad, ok)
Length of time on the boob, on each one (left and right)
How many ML I pumped
How much he ate from bottle/formula after in ML (a necessity to make sure he was getting enough food)
Pee
Poo
I did this every single feed for one month, day and night at any hour to make sure my baby was getting enough to eat. Almost drove me mad. I am not sure this is the stress free approach to breastfeeding that the lactation consultants recommend. Side note: the lactation consultants are the ones who recommend keeping the log.
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