Parenting always includes a few bumps along the road. Nothing you can do about that. But I’m always pleased when (as Jon often puts it) I draw upon the resources of my culture and discover that I am able to smooth these bumps over a bit.
p{color:gray}. Photo: “Stop, Mama! Don’t get worried — get solutions!”
h3. Bottle
You may recall that we were having some trouble with Rosie “taking a bottle”:/news/2008/no-thank-you/ a few weeks ago. While I wouldn’t say that we’re completely out of the woods quite yet, we have made remarkable progress due to some regular practice and a somewhat titillating-looking new “bottle”:http://adiri.com/products_html/natural_nurser.asp that we obtained at a rather “high cost”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00143Z9EO/octothorppres-20 (but with free shipping). Rosie had a hesitant practice run or two with this bottle shaped like a boob — but then we left her, the bottle, and quite a bit of milk (pumped under carefully sterile conditions) with our fabulous “babysitter”:/news/2006/friends-2/ so that we could go see a “play”:http://timelinetheatre.com/fiorello2/index.htm. Mama worried the whole time that Rosie would holler for the real thing all night long, but we returned to a happily sleeping and sated baby and rave reviews from Allie. (We think it might just be that Allie’s the most terrific babysitter!)
One of the best side-benefits of learning about this unusual bottle is reading their list of “tips”:http://www.pumpstation.com/pumpstation/dept.asp?s_id=0&dept_id=3279 on how to get a baby to take a bottle — concrete and helpful, plus a good reminder that helping babies learn this is just a process.
h3. Sleeping
You may also recall that Lucy has been distressing us with her “early wake-ups”:/news/2008/early-bird/ lately. Putting her to bed a bit earlier was helping for a night or two, and covering her windows with aluminum foil for a total black-out certainly didn’t hurt. But then her 4:54 am wake-up on Father’s Day motivated us to research some new solution. Enter Google. Among the many ideas I read, I found one that seemed promising.
# Purchase a fancy new nightlight with your toddler. Find one that looks cool.
# Purchase a timer for the light.
# Tell your child that the light will turn on in the morning when it is time to get up — but while the light is still off, it is time to sleep.
So far, Lucy seems to be responding well to this kind of structure! I like it better than trying to teach her how to read a clock (too young still) or putting an actual sounding alarm in there (too disturbing). Lucy is enjoying her crazy blue fish night-light, and we are planning to delay her waking time in five minute increments until we can get back to a godly hour.
h3. Training
I’ve even received some training to _prevent_ problems in the future: I took an infant/child CPR certification class! Our church offered it a few weeks ago, and Jon watched the girls (along with Grandpa Boyd’s help) so that I could learn some emergency-intervention skills.
I was a bit worried that I’d have a meltdown thinking about seriously injured children all day, but I managed to get through the whole class without crying — and now I have something productive to do when my mind starts imagining toddlers with concussions.
I also learned that “AmeriCorps”:http://americorps.org/ has volunteers that will offer a class of this kind for free to any religious or community group, so you should think about hosting one yourself. I highly recommend it — I’m really glad to have some emergency situation skills.
Hopefully I won’t ever have to use _this_ solution!
Hey Ann – that’s funny about the nightlight. I did that with Benjamin when we were having a similar problem, although I didn’t google it – it just seemed like a good idea (I had a friend who told her toddler he couldn’t come out of his room until they turned their hall light on, so I took that I idea and instead got a nightlight with a timer). Anyway – we no longer use the nightlight/timer (he actually sleeps with a nightlight on all night), but it did work for a while.
If Lucy doesn’t bother Rosie and the nightlight stops working, you might consider setting a time that you consider reasonable and leaving her in her room until then no matter what (crying it out in the AM). After a couple days, she should hopefully adjust her wakeup time (at least, it worked for us).
go, Rosie, go! Hopefully the progress will continue this evening with Allie + Rosie + Boob-Shapped Bottle!
oops. I spelled “shaped” wrong.
A couple things…
1. We tried the Adiri with Eli but I think way too late. I hadn’t heard of it till last fall – at which point Eli was NOT even sorta interested in trying to nurse and was pretty well stuck on Dr. Brown bottles (which we now know leach BPA – argh!)
2. I love the nightlight idea! That’s brilliant! I hope I can remember it when I need it someday. :)
3. Nathan and I took a free Infant CPR class while I was pregnant – can you imagine?! I can’t believe I got through it. The videos were the worst! Even though it was clearly a dummy-baby and the actors were HORR-I-BLE, I remember still chocking back a tear and a sob. But the whole time we practiced the CPR sequence I kept thinking, “better to know this in case you need it than to stand there helpless”. We also still have the little pamphlet of CPR sequence on the frig. Ann, good for you for taking the class! Not the most pleasant of experiences but well worth it!