This is so true! They'll tell you if they're hungry! (The only exception is when a newborn has jaundice and you MUST wake them every few hours to eat. Ugh! Not a pleasant thing!) I'd recommend a book called "Healthy Sleep Habits: Happy Child" to get you started. It helps you recognize the natural signs when your child is tired, and helps you get good habits started NOW so they'll sleep better LATER. This made my life with twins so much easier than life was with our first son. If anybody tells you this book is evil because it says that it's okay for your kids to cry once in a while, that's just silly. If you coddle your kids and give them every little thing they want, you'll soon find that you're being controlled by a six-month old... You're the parent, it's okay for you to act like it. A little crying when they're young will save a lot MORE crying when they're a little older. Others may disagree with me on that.
My son asserted his personality early. First thing he did when the doctor pulled him out (via c-section) was start urinating on him. Smart as he was, the doctor just pointed him the other way and let him urinate on the assisting MD. Baby Boys: Good Times!
You forgot. "Don't ever brag about your childs sleeping patterns if they are good as it generally will turn the rest of the parents whose children don't sleep well against you." Our little one didn't sleep much at all until she was about 2 months and then she slept 10-12 horus straight for about 3 months, and then all the teeth started comign in and the growth spruts started goign nuts now she sleeps for about 5 hours at a time. She is 9 months and 30"! She also has 7 goign on 8 teeth already. But yes, listen to him when he says, do not wake a sleeping baby. There is no point, they can wake themselves to eat. Waking a sleeping baby is downright insane.
AMEN! Breastfeeding was the most stressful thign for my wife. Not all babies care to latch on. And there is no proof your babies life is any worse if they don't breastfeed, some literature likes to scare you itno feeling terrible about yourself.
if you have on, hide the breast pump!! Its an evil device invented by women to ensure men do not get a good night sleep
Bah!!! CHILDREN are God's natural way of ensuring that NO parent gets a good night's sleep, breast pump or no!
if you have the breast pump, always make sure to say 'time to milk ol' bessie' whenever she uses it. trust me. they LOVE that.
Yeah, with our luck if we have another child it'll be on a 2 hour cycle. Wow, my son will be 9 months on the 20th (a few weeks away) and he doesn't have any teeth. It doesn't even look like any are starting to come through.
Yeah, that's important. We do everything we'd normally do when he's asleep and it doesn't faze him one bit. We know a couple that has 3 year old twins and they're so protective of them. They unplug the phones at night and when the girls are taking naps. They ask nobody to stop by during their nap times and after 8pm. They've got so many weird habits and it doesn't make a lick of difference. The girls are little devils that misbehave terribly, act spoiled and will not listen to anyone. They've got their parents wrapped tightly around their little fingers.
My best advice for you: feel free to be selective with any and all advice you receive. Most of it that you get offered is not solicited and can be quite maddening. I know we always preface our advice with advice to ignore our advice whenever they want to! Another thing to keep in mind: many who encounter you will feel no compunction about commenting on your baby - and not just to say how cute s/he is. "S/he's so big!" is a popular one. Many of these comments can come across as barbed. Ignore them (or, applying my first bit of advice, ignore my advice to ignore the comments! ) My oldest is ten now, and I swear I felt like I had a neverending crush for about nine months. How terrific that was! And it was repeated when my youngest (now six) was born as well. Walking around and getting a big goofy grin just thinking about our baby is an experience I would love to relive. And the relationships get better and better, at least until age ten and a half! Congratualtions. P.S. Ismitje is a fine name, if you're still looking for one.
despite what the laleche league says, "nipple confusion" does not exist. the overwhelming majority of babies have no problem switching between the boob and bottle. if there's milk, they'll eat.
Thanks for all the great advice. Some pretty damn funny responsesm also This has been a help as none of our friends in Hungary have children....so getting a lot of ridiculous advice. Due date is today, so when there is news will post that Thanks again...this has been more help than you can imagine
Ours made this sorta galloping sound (along with the sucking noise) When ever my wife would start pumping, usually in the dining room, I would prance from the kitchen to the living room and back as though I was riding a horse. It took her a few tiomes before she realized what I was doing. it was the ONE joke that finally made her laugh. AHA!!!!!!! I knew it! This is why your baby sleeps so well! Wait until the drool comes in buckets and he starts chewing on his hands and trying to bite your face when you hug him. The teeth, the teeth, they will come and when they do...you will never ....sleep....again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry.
This morning one of the twins just wouldn't stop crying. He kept taking his cereal bowl and dumping it upside down (Mm, thanks, I love cleaning up soggy cereal and milk off the floor, babe), refusing to eat, etc. Finally, I decided to give him some pain reliever since that was my best guess about his crying. As I was dispensing the medicine into his screaming mouth, I looked inside and saw little drops of blood around a new pearly white. The teeth! The teeth! They will come and when they do... your children will never... sleep... again!!
That suggestion deserves more bandwidth. The most important is to have fun. I'm no fan of infants and toddlers, but your child will go through these stages so fast it'll make your head spin. Enjoy it, because you really can't go back. You can, of course, have more children, but the experience won't quite be the same. The second thing I would recommend is to have confidence in yourself (whihc of course was the great revelation of Dr Spock. But it still bears repeating today. There is nothing you will ever do that will make you feel vulnerable than being a parent. You are creating, raising, nurturing, growing a living creature, who is totally dependent on you for years to come. There's so much to agonize over: is the kid growing, eating, developing, walking, talking, reading, making friends, etc, etc, etc. And you will play a role in ALL of those stages. The urge to second-guess yourself will be overwhelming. My eight year old is miserable at school and has an Asberger-like inablitity to make friends, and it tears me up. There is nothing I wouldn't give in this world for him to have one good friend (and he's now aware that he doesn't have friends) and the vulnerability I feel as his father is hard to describe. And yet, I am not prone to second-guessing. I do what I can, but I know so many parents who can be miserable over their failings at parents. Try not to succumb to the pressure, and if you feel it, go back to point 1, which is that this is still fun and the greatest gift you can have. And thidly, watch Parenthood with Steve Martin.
I think I was most surprised that teething goes on for years - thinking previously for some illogical reason that once the main teeth broke through, that was it and the others wouldn't be so painful. Teething: the fin seems to never stop, but that's because 2.5 years can seem so long!
don't take the tags off any clothes you get for the kid until you're for sure they'll wear it. because when our little guy was born, all anybody bought us was clothes and we had more clothes than we knew what to do with. nobody bought us bottles or anything useful. no, they all bought us cute clothes. as such, he grew out of some of it before he had a chance to wear it. fortunately, we left tags on everything and pinned the receipts to the clothes. we were able to take it back and get him something in a larger size.
As your child grows, the best, and most important thing you do for your child, is to show love to your wife everyday, and vice versa. Little things, big things, but make it a priority. That will be harder than it sounds because the little one will be demanding large amounts of time that would otherwise be available to you both. But nothing makes the child more secure, and therefore more willing and capable of venturing out and growing, than to see and know that things are great "back home." And in the end, keeping this as priority one, will enable your own relationship to grow as well. Not that it will be the same, it won't. It will change but it will grow stronger, and your child will benefit greatly. And don't think that just because the newborn is still very narrow in focus it does not "feel" the environment around it. It does. So start right away making this a priority. Communicate early and often about things that are helpful and about problems/concerns, but don't obsess. But most of all, enjoy this wonderful gift you have been given.
So many memories reading through this thread and my daughter is only 2 and a half. Lots of good advice too. One thing I haven't seen touched on is crying. A couple of months after she was born, it became fairly common for our daughter to cry for a half hour or sometimes longer at the end of the day. We, of course, assumed we were doing something wrong and/or that it was colic. Our doctor was really great. First, he assured us that babies are very resilient (within the normal range of parenting, of course). Second, he said if it wasn't happening for longer periods of time and post-feeding, it wasn't colic. Finally, he said that some babies just need to burn off some of the excess emotional stimulation of the day. Since by the end of the day, my wife was usually tired also, I would take my daughter into a darkened room, lay her on the bed and softly rub her back. She grew out of the crying in a few months. (Hmm, probably better to say those particular crying jags.)