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<\/p>\nWe have learned a thing or two in the past ten weeks about how to care for Lucy. She has specific wants and needs, and she is quite good at communicating them — or, at least letting us know when she is displeased with _something._ Here are a few tips we’ve learned:<\/p>\n
*The burp-and-wait.* You might think you are safe after you hear Lucy rip a big belch. You might be tempted to take her off your shoulder and give her a big kiss. But then you might get barfed on, because with Lucy, the spit-up comes 5-10 seconds after the burp. <\/p>\n
*The double burp cloth.* If you love doing laundry constantly, then you don’t need this tip. But we’ve devised a technique to extend the burp-life of a burp cloth from about half a feeding to possibly a whole day. Keep a stack of rags handy (old cut-up t-shirts work well). When it is time to burp, place a burp cloth on your shoulder, and one of the rags on top of it. When Lucy spits-up, the rag will get most of the damage and the burp cloth gives you extra protection. Re-use burp cloth. We’ve also found that the rag absorbs the baby barf quicker than the burp cloth, thus limiting the risk of spit-up sliding off the cloth and onto your clothes.<\/p>\n
*The dry, cottony feeling.* Here is a tip that we think helps to prevent diaper rash. After wiping Lucy’s butt with a baby wipe, dry her off with a clean burp cloth while saying, “It’s a dry, cottony feeling!” Pat her with the cloth until she is nice and dry before securing new diaper. Her bottom will stay smooth as, well, as a baby’s butt! Plus, she loves it.<\/p>\n
*The double swaddle.* We learned this technique at the hospital: swaddle Lucy twice. This really helps to increase friction — it’s like tying a double knot — and reduce the risk of her hands escaping (and waking her up). Not wanting her to swelter in hot weather, we made a couple of swaddling blankets out of old cotton sheets — nice and light. But we almost always use one particular blanket that I made out of an old yellow flannel sheet, 45″ x 45″. It is big enough to wrap around tight and tuck the ends in. Lucy is so strong and such a wiggler (as she has been since about 15 weeks in utero), we need to do whatever we can to keep her wrapped up tight so she sleeps well!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
*The shower soother.* Lucy really likes to be right next to us most of the time. Mama has found that she can almost always convince Lucy to enjoy the bouncy seat (which Joel & Melody generously have loaned us) while she takes a shower. There is something about the steam, the white noise of the fan, and the sound of the running water that soothes her for about twenty minutes — just long enough to get a clean and partially-dry Mama.<\/p>\n
p{color:gray}. Photo: Here Lucy is sitting peacefully in her bouncy seat.<\/p>\n
Now if only we could figure out how to clean out her neck-cheese without making her scream!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have learned a thing or two in the past ten weeks about how to care for Lucy. She has specific wants and needs, and she is quite good at communicating them — or, at least letting us know when she is displeased with _something._<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}