Kudos To All Stay-at-Home Moms

dmc -- we gave out daughter infant Zantac, which really helped with the reflux. When we switched to formula, she was taking Good Start, which sure as heck was not cheap.

After some miserable months, she turned into a very happy baby, and pretty great toddler.

When her baby brother comes in 3 months, I'm guessing that she'll be in for a rude awakening.

 

There is another option.



"Princess, guess what? I'm going to be moving in with you. Isn't that great!"

 

I recently read that about acid reflux. Like a lot of things in babies, the sphincter between the tummy and esophagus isn't developed yet.

 

Out little girl spits up a good bit, but the doc said it's not acid reflux.

We would KNOW if it's that, she said.

When our girl spits up, she is not in pain. Knock on wood.

 

Both of our kids spit up a lot. We desperately need to get the couch in our den re-covered, but there are always sippy cups with loose lids and wet crackers and other bits of food that find their way on there. I think we'll just wait a while.

Ours are 3 1/2 and 1 1/2, and they're the best things that ever happened to me. My wife is a stay-at-home mom and loves it. There's no way I could do that.

 

My son cried a lot. A pacifier soothed him, but the kid had to have a special one. It was a Winnie the Pooh pacifier that was slightly smaller than the others. The others almost gagged him because the nipple was so big. So we learned to stock up on Winnie the Pooh pacifiers. He was probably two before he gave it up. It took a little work on our parts.

My daughter almost never cried. She was an angel, and she never wanted a pacifier. In fact, buying them was a complete waste.

Babies are strange. Each one has a special button that you must find. Some like to be wrapped tightly in a cotton blanket, some like have their heads rubbed. My son was crazy about ice cream. I fed him rum raisin when he was barely able to stand. My daughter was scared to death of the stuff. She couldn't stand it being so cold.

And the phases. My lord. My son went through a phase where he had to have a banana almost all the time. Then he quit cold turkey. He wouldn't even taste a banana. Now he's back to loving the things. He won't touch peas, but he loves broccoli, calls them "little trees." He thinks Klondike makes "ice cream cheeseburgers." Of course, he loves those things.

The boy was bugging me about MLB The Show. He's been wanting to play for two weeks. So I poured some honey pretzels and some Cheetos on a plate and decided we were going to have a baseball tournament before the NCAAs started. An hour into our tournament, I hit a home run in the ninth inning with Junior to a 9-8 lead on his Angels. Then he heard the theme song for his favorite show in the other room, where his sister was stockpiling stolen Cheetos. Game over. But that's okay. The day's first basketball starts in 30 minutes. Too bad I have to cover a damn boring city commission meeting tonight. Had it not been for that, I might have been able to watch every televised game of this tournament.

 

Fellas... Congrats! If your baby cries a lot, try a book called Happiest Baby on the Block. It's a godsend. Also Baby 411-- the modern day Dr. Spock.

The new gold standard in sleep books right now is something called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, or HSHHC as its known in the 'mom biz.' It basically tells you about sleep rhythms, how many naps, approx. times for naps, etc. for a particular age.

And gotta plug breastfeeding... it's CHEAP, always the right temp, keeps viruses at bay, keeps ear infections at bay, sets up immunity for life. Braggin' here-- but I did it for 14 months-- the most fulfilling thing I've ever done.

Months 8-15 were like heaven for me in terms of sheer sweetness... now we're hitting the terrible twos-- early.

Love to the SAHDs. You guys are awesome.

 

Well Luggy, I ordered the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child from Amazon.

It was only $10 plus shipping. I figure it's a small investment even if it doesn't work.

 

Oh good - I hope it helps! IIRC, the book will tell you that newborns eventually fall into a 3-nap routine... I should also warn you that the author does advocate some crying at the appropriate age (4-5 months??) if the baby isn't sleeping... I ultimately could not follow his method and went with Ferber's method instead (aka 'Ferberizing'). But Weissbluth really has a handle on rhythms.

If anybody else was blessed with a challenging sleeper like me and wants to rant or discuss books, I'm here... I've read 'em all from 'No Cry Sleep Solution' to 'Babywise' in an attempt to get a handle on sleep. I think I finally did... for now!

 

I will give the boss (my wife) the info on the sleeping book.

The doc gave us 411, and it is very good. We also have a Baby's First Year book, or something like that. It is darn good as well.

We also noticed that the boss does not produce as much as is needed, so we are pretty well into the formula right now. That gave us the discovery that Puddin is a little lactose intolerant. We are just figuring it out one day at a time.

This might be too much information, but the misses and I had our first "time" together since the birth last night.

Yeah!!!

But mom is so adamant about not having another kid so close to our first that she made me wear a condom.

Boooo!!!

 

This thread started us reminiscing tonight.

Mr. Smithskey took a longer paternity leave than my maternity ones after birth of both daughters.

His take:
"A hard day at home is harder than the hardest day at work."

His favorite pastime was loading them up in the car, driving them to sleep and circling Atlanta until they woke up.

Luckily gas was only 77 cents a gallon back then (circa '98).

A shoutout to all SAHPs!

 

We haven't been given the OK for nookie yet. But we're popping our second one out in June of 2009. We'd have it sooner, but Mrs. Inky is standing in a Sept. wedding.

We're off the breast milk, too. My wife, like Devil's, wasn't producing. We pumped as much (which was little) as we could for as long as we could.