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DaveSauce posted:Uh, note that an Au Pair lives with you. Full time. So, I mean, if that's not weird to you, then sure I guess because for 2+ kids that's usually cheaper than day care. The problem is that because they are from a foreign country and can’t drive / can’t speak English as a first language / don’t have money / are entirely beholden on you personally for their lodging and employment - sometimes they do get treated as a 24/7 nanny. There’s a huge power imbalance and it’s a coin flip if the host family are good people or not.
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Nov 1, 2020 00:38
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Hadlock posted:Living in a high cost of living area means that it's between $12 and 20k cheaper per year to do an au pair, as daycare in our area is well north of $2800/mo for a single child. Nannies here start at about $24/hr I’m not a rando who read about it, I’ve met two au pairs here in the United States that described their working and living situation to me. One married a friend of mine and immediately left the program afterwards. To provide some non negative feedback - she did mention that one of her friends in the au pair program worked with a very nice family that followed all of the rules. I guess it’s not related to the host experience but just be aware that the reason au pairs are much cheaper than nannies is due to weird labor laws and international visas, not due to any lack of ability or effort on the part of the au pair. If that sounds like a screaming deal, then go for it. Edit: anecdote is obviously not a substitute for data, if anyone would care to research or describe the legalities of au pairs I would be very interested. I don’t know anything about that, just relating what I was told. space uncle fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Nov 1, 2020 |
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Nov 1, 2020 05:39
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Thanks Mat, this is the data I was looking for. Two really interesting statements here: "During 2017 and 2018, the Government Accountability Project surveyed 125 au pairs, the majority of whom had been working in that capacity in 2016. Of this sample, 83 au pairs said they regularly worked overtime, and many said they had reported it to their companies. Of the au pairs interviewed in 2016, more au pairs from Cultural Care and Au Pair in America alleged reporting working over hour limits to their companies than the companies themselves reported to the government." vs. "Despite evidence that some companies didn’t report allegations of extra work properly, the program’s advocates downplayed complaints. “If you were able to speak with about 125 au pairs who participated in the program, that is only .01% of the total 100,000 au pairs who participated in the last five years,” EurekaFacts, a surveying company hired by the Alliance for International Exchange to produce reports about J-1 programs, said in a statement facilitated by the lobbying group. “That is not a big enough sample to draw conclusions about the program as a whole.” But that's now how statistics works. Let's assume that our 125 au pairs questioned were a representative random sample and that the good and bad experiences of all au pairs fall on a normal distribution, then use some stats to see if 125 is a good #. n = 125 p = 83/125 = .664 = 66.4% au pairs report working overtime z =1.96 (95% confidence interval) Margin of Error = z*sqrt(p*(1-p)/n) MoE = .083 = 8.3% So if the 125 truly were randomly selected, then at a 95% confidence level, the margin of error is less than 10%. So while the official stat is 2/3 of au pairs report regular overtime, at the very last over half of them do, and maybe up to 3/4. This is why you only need to poll like 400 people in the state of New York to get an idea of how they're voting for president. Overtime isn't necessarily always a bad thing, but it is a little crummy if you're taking care of small children for 45 hours a week already and hoping to gain some cultural experience in America. A lot of the good experiences in this thread show that the au pairs really loved the kids and families, I'm sure some of us here were willing to work unpaid overtime for friends/family/jobs that we cared about. The whole discussion is probably pointless anyway because COVID has shut down the au pair exchange. Sorry for nerding out, we're still pregnant so I have nothing valuable to contribute to this thread, just enjoying reading everyone's experiences and picking up the useful advice/tips.
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Nov 2, 2020 22:31
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PerniciousKnid posted:Someone said becoming a parent is like winning the lottery and amputating a limb on the same day. This feels especially true for us. We have a 5 week old and it’s been great and tough and rewarding and horrible. My wife now has nerve pain in her wrist, elbow, plantar fasciitis in her feet, and persistent weakness in her left hand from cubital tunnel syndrome? We’re trying to set up appointments with neurologists and podiatrists and surgeons and masseuses to fix it. We struggled with breastfeeding as it caused insane blood sugar crashes and the baby cried all the time anyway. We’ve switched to a combination of pumping and formula and everyone is much more sane and happy and baby is putting on weight. I love my son and love being a parent but there are a lot of consequences and repercussions. Maybe trade off is a good word - you’re going to lose a lot to gain a lot. A lot of other posters with older kids have talked about the break even / payback point where having a 2 year old or a 9 year old is infinitely more rewarding than the loss of sleep or sanity is depressing. I can see that. I like the newborn phase, I like the easy simple mechanical flowchart of keeping him happy -> wet, tired, hungry, sleepy, rinse and repeat on a 3 hour cycle. I don’t like weird health issues, I don’t like dealing with COVID, but what are you gonna do.
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Jan 3, 2021 22:39
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PerniciousKnid posted:Our first had latching issues and lost weight, and my wife went through a lot of pain before we finally gave up on breastfeeding about six weeks in. In hindsight, we should've switched to formula after 2 weeks. Breastfeeding is great when it works but don't be afraid to stop if it's not working. Holy crap that’s terrifying. Do you have to keep an epi pen on hand? Good to know about the delayed reaction. The baby never even lost weight, he’s decent at latching, he could breastfeed exclusively but it was just hours and hours and hours of time a day, and my diabetic wife’s blood sugar just couldn’t support it. Pumping on a schedule is much easier. We have been supplementing with formula the whole time too to try and take some stress off her.
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Jan 4, 2021 02:48
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I’m not sure about throwing this “I am a sex haver derail” into mortality chat but I need to brag about it to somebody and it seems a little weird to actually say it to people I know (somehow telling strangers is better?) Anyway we had sex about 6 weeks post partum, for the first time since like 2nd trimester (my god has it been that long?). It was not what I would call a success for a variety of reasons but it was nice to know that we can still try. Thread title is accurate and very funny. Will continue to take it slow and make sure there’s no pain or discomfort. All of the baby apps were so cheeky “week 36! Your hormones will make you so horny! This means that it might be time for some sex! It will help with cramps and could help promote on time labor! Get laid!” And we encountered literally 0 of that and just pure discomfort and absolutely no fooling around.
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Jan 10, 2021 18:30
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I don’t know what happened but my two month old baby hates it when I feed him now. Not sure if it’s nipple confusion or preferring breast milk over formula or what but I feel like a massive failure. Just handed him off to Mom after he had a complete meltdown over an ounce of formula and it sounds like she got him to drink it no problem. What the gently caress. Edit: never mind she just gave up on feeding him. I think he wasn’t that hungry and I was forcing too much on him. Need to adjust to longer gaps between feeding. space uncle fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jan 17, 2021 |
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Jan 17, 2021 08:28
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Koivunen posted:It’s hard not to take things like this personally but... don’t take it personally! My husband felt rejected for the first several months of our daughter’s life because I had the boobs and did a majority of the feeding, but it doesn’t mean your kid actually has a concept of love and hate, or who is the one making them feel frustrated, or why they are frustrated in the first place. Thanks Jose and Koivunen, you’re both right. 1. I lightened up my grip on the bottles and the baby likes that better, even though he bats it out of his mouth or spits it out still. 2. I think it’s a weird formula regression like you said. We will cycle through a few of them again and see what sticks. My wife has some surgery coming up so we may have to pump and dump or switch to formula altogether, which will be a huge pain to wean him off breast milk if that’s his favorite.
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Jan 18, 2021 10:30
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nachos posted:Is this formula from a bottle? Our daughter hated feeding at around 2 months and would cry bloody murder and it turned out to be a cows milk protein allergy. The other issue could be the nipple size. She would bat at the bottle and that went away when we increased the size by 1. They might be working too hard to drink. Yes formula from a bottle. We settled on a single nipple and a single formula brand, we were rotating through a few of them. I also admitted that I was being too heavy handed and pushing the nipple in his mouth and he’s enjoying a much lighter touch where he gets to move his head around and try and hold the bottle. Just fed him 4oz with 0 fuss. We also got a formula prep pitcher so maybe the formulas we were shaking up ad hoc were too foamy for him. Or maybe he was just going through a weird phase.
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Jan 20, 2021 04:29
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Joey Steel posted:My wife swears by the Willow pumps. Mobile, battery powered, and reasonably good. It's no hospital pump, but she isn't chained to a wall socket either. My wife tried to use the Evie wireless pump and is returning it. Issues: 1. Says it can be used with the microwave disinfect bags, it can not. Parts warped. To their credit they shipped us replacement parts. 2. A button stopped working. They shipped us a replacement part and asked us to disassemble and re-assemble it. 3. Due to the warpage in problem 1 it leaked a lot. 4. Not as powerful as wired pumps obviously. 5. Expensive, like the Willow above. But having your hands freed up and being able to walk around is a game changer. If you produce a lot of milk and need to get stuff done then it's a good buy. If you're struggling with production then stick with the wired unit or maybe get a Hospital grade one. I wish we had looked into the hospital rental stuff more.
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Jan 21, 2021 17:54
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Why does everyone say babies are defenseless? These little suckers evolved claws before the rest of us did. Have to keep filing down my baby’s talons like it’s a velociraptor and not a human child. I bought a baby nail clipper and immediately nicked his thumb and felt like the worst human being in the world.
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Jan 23, 2021 03:11
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in_cahoots posted:Amazon sells a ton of cheap electric nail filers. The listings are sketchy and the pads wear out after a few months, but they work and won’t cut your baby’s fingers. Ah good thinking, dunno why I thought nail files were limited to the Emory sticks. Just ordered this one Baby Nail Clippers 20 in 1 by Royal Angels Baby | Safe Electric Baby Nail Trimmer, Baby Nail File Kit, Additional Replacement Heads, Newborn Toddler Toes and Fingernails, Trim and Polish (Blue) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077QBJNVM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_oK7cGbAVXPMC4 Will see how it goes!
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Jan 23, 2021 06:54
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remigious posted:There is something I am confused about as a new parent. I have 30 days from date of birth to add baby to my health insurance, which requires his SSN. However, the SSN can take up to 8 weeks to arrive. Am I missing something? I got the birth certificate and SSN in two weeks so easily hit the 30 day health insurance grace period. Unfortunately my company didn’t correctly post date the coverage to birth so here’s a $9,000 bill in the baby’s name.
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Feb 1, 2021 14:07
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slave to my cravings posted:My wife did exclusive pumping from the beginning and it seemed to work out fairly well for us. Nursing was just not working for her and the baby in the first few weeks. She had a good supply, but just couldn’t get him to latch well. Early on she pumped every 2-3 hours due to some clogging issues but was eventually able to stretch it out to 4, 6, and now 8 hours. It takes her anywhere from 15-45 minutes to pump. Echoing all this, really comprehensive and great advice. My wife’s production never really peaked high enough so we just always supplemented with formula. That takes a ton of stress off too where if you miss a pumping session or have a clog or spill a bottle you aren’t on the edge of disaster. So now our little dude eats about 50% formula 50% pumped milk, mom breast feeds every day or two (helps with clogs and production and makes them both happy), and pumps more casually. If she really strictly followed the “pump every 3 hours for the first 3 months rule” then maybe her production would step up but we would definitely have lost our minds by now.
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Feb 6, 2021 20:44
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My wife had to get carpal tunnel surgery on her right hand and is now going back for carpal/cubital tunnel on her left arm. Good thing I’ve got some parental leave coming up so I can take care of both of them. I was kind of losing it for a while there, just trying to plow through everything. Taking care of a 1 month old newborn and a diabetic wife who can’t use her hands well was a lot of work (and is still a lot, but getting better) 1. Baby crying - need to warm bottles 2. Wife’s blood sugar alarm goes off, get her juice 3. poo poo bottle overheated 4. Change baby 5. Wife needs painkillers for horrible nerve pain 6. Feed baby 7. Wife trying to breastfeed - can’t lift baby 8. Blood sugar alarm 9. Baby crying 10. Try to get WFH job done without it being obvious that I’m leaving every 6 minutes to troubleshoot some crisis 11. Baby pooped 12. Blood sugar alarm 13. Make dinner 14. Baby crying 15. Take out the trash 16. Feed the dogs 17. Go to bed at 1AM now that baby is asleep. 18. Wake up at 3AM to change baby 19. Wake up at 5AM to feed baby 20. Wake up at 7AM - blood sugar alarm My god, things are finally getting better as we get the sugars under control with breast milk production and as the baby gets older and sleeps longer. We got a swing so I can finally put him somewhere where he won’t wake up and cry. My wife’s right hand is getting back to normal. But what a loving month. Picked up some mild alcoholism so now I’m taking a break from drinking two beers every single week night to chill out, which wasn’t going to be sustainable.
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Feb 9, 2021 16:28
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Man I was just bitching about low blood sugar but so far in the past 24 hours that has been solid and instead I’ve received the following concerns, requests, and complaints about: 1. High blood sugar 2. Air is too dusty, need to change filters 3. Primary care physician didn’t read chart, asked if diabetes was cured after pregnancy (lol) 4. Traffic was bad coming home 5. Late to dr appointment due to nursing. Doctor was mediocre 6. Boob hurts 7. Is it mastitis? Might be mastitis, hard and not producing. Keep trying to nurse/pump/compress and make another doctors appointment. 8. Coronavirus vaccine not available in our state for her yet. 9. Primary care told her to go to specialist for coronavirus vaccine referral. What’s the point of primary care then? 10. Why did you throw away the non stick pan now I have to cook turkey bacon in a stainless skillet and somehow create an enormous amount of burnt on carbon. Oh it’s not thrown away it was in the cabinet the whole time. Why did we buy expensive stainless skillets if they’re burning all the food don’t tell me I have the heat too high. 11. Can’t open jelly jar due to weakness in hands from nerve pain 12. Nerve pain really hurts in arm 13. Strange man in yard, get out of the bathroom and investigate (false alarm was pest control guy) 14. IUD has caused bleeding for 4 straight weeks now, which is normal. Still expecting another period however 15. Coronavirus vaccine not available in other state where parents live, so her parents can’t get it, so parents can’t visit and meet baby. 16. Local Mother in law being too happy about visiting baby, makes her feel worse that her parents can’t visit. 17. Mother in law gloating about high quality of swing purchased for infant, baby did not like the original swing purchased by her parents 18. Dog being annoying 19. Dog unfairly blamed for getting couch wet (it was actually me I tried to clean the dog slobber off with a stain remover) 20. Can’t unzip dress 21. Friend graciously offered to buy us food but I picked the wrong food and we can’t order that. She will pick 22. Employee at jimmy johns was dicknosing his mask and got yelled at by her (lol) 23. Feet hurt, could be neuropathy 24. The bachelor is a terrible show and the producers have it rigged but she will keep watching that garbage (this one made me lol) 25. Dropped phone behind couch while investigating mystery wet patch. I moved couch and retrieved it. Ok thanks for letting me get all that poo poo off my chest. My wife is a lovely person and most of these are legitimate complaints, it was just a very high volume recently so I’m sharing our frustrations with the internet. That was cathartic. I will try and be a more supportive spouse.
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Feb 9, 2021 23:23
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PerniciousKnid posted:Sorry your wife is broken, hope she's under warranty. She ordered some delicious pho and agreed to play Hades with her semi working hands. The boob clog was resolved and let loose a furious torrent of milk, hilariously. She enjoyed Hades quite a bit. Had a great night with our baby and he FaceTimed with his grandparents, who were thrilled.
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Feb 10, 2021 05:40
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meanolmrcloud posted:A minor thing if anyone can recall: our 7 week old sure seems like she’s getting her saliva in. Is it common for them to have a lot of it, and having difficulty swallowing it all? Is it a thing that just turns on one day? Googling just gives me a ton of generic stuff, or things about spitup, which is unrelated. My dude is 11 weeks now and the drooling continues to develop. He’s not even a mouth breather most of the time, but when he really puts his mind to it he just pours spit. Just today he got a new onesie because the whole neck was damp, blew a bunch of spit bubbles, and coughed several times from swallowing his spit down the wrong pipe. It’s so crazy to watch them learn stuff at this age. Every single day they get a little bit but noticeably better at everything.
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Feb 15, 2021 07:29
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femcastra posted:We usually put the little one down between 6 and 7, then give her a dream feed when I go to bed around 10 or 10.30, short circuits the night wakes and buys you a bit of time. Ah poo poo our 3 month old refuses to go to bed until 1AM. I’m trying to work his schedule backwards and got him in bed and asleep at midnight, but he woke up 30 minutes later screaming and incredibly hungry (despite all of the food he had just had). I think he’s got his days and nights mixed up a bit, but is very consistent on the 1AM bedtime.
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Feb 25, 2021 15:09
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Cant Ride A Bus posted:My daughter wouldn’t go to sleep until midnight when she was 4 months old. As a bonus she’d sleep through the night and wake up around 10-11. We just gradually worked her back and now she’s asking to go to bed around 7:45 or so every night. I got some funny looks from my parents when I said how late she was staying up, but as long as they get the sleep they need there really isn’t much issue. This fills me with great hope. Thank you.
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Feb 25, 2021 15:29
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Benagain posted:as a tip for people that we definitely didn't do the first time we had baby shots, get no-stick or some other kind of easy take off bandaid and bring them with you. The medical person should have no problem with you slapping those on instead and it's wayyyy easier getting them off. https://www.saveritemedical.com/products/uni-solve-adhesive-remover-wipes These are handy too. We’re constantly taping medical devices to people here so we have a full box of them but if you have little kids with bandaids then it might be a smart buy. Our kid took 4 shots at the 2 month mark and cried surprisingly little, just passed out. Then I used that stuff to soften up all the bandaids and he didn’t mind that either. He did cry outrageously at me for feeding him formula instead of breast milk (ear drum vibrating) and then had two diaper blowouts to balance things out karmically.
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Mar 2, 2021 03:24
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Yeah I’ve been short with my spouse which isn’t fair because most of her problems are medical issues and not attitude/personality. I’m definitely the rear end in a top hat but I kind of feel like I ended up with two newborns when I only expected one. Post partum and breastfeeding not only kicked the Type 1 Diabetes lows into overdrive but also somehow fried all of her nerves and required tunnel surgery in wrists and elbows. Fun to take care of an adult and a newborn simultaneously.
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Mar 5, 2021 22:11
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life is killing me posted:Kudos to y’all. Thanks, you too buddy. Anyone with >=1 kid in here is doing some superhuman stuff, I think we’re done at just one. Wife got her stitches and staples out and has fed the baby and wiped a poopy butt so I’ve already seen some light at the end of this tunnel. She’s a trooper.
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Mar 6, 2021 00:34
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John Cenas Jorts posted:
They started stabilizing at the 2 month mark like you said, because we gave up on breastfeeding and switched mostly to pumping. Made it a lot easier to plan bolus/juice around. We still go through a case of Juicy Juice a week and I have emergency glucose gel stashed in literally every single drawer. (She had some terrifying hypos during the 2nd trimester and I may be overreacting). Then she got steroid shots for the nerve stuff and that hosed up all the blood sugar again and created a huge amount of resistance. Those are wearing off so now she has to dial back the insulin. I left to go to the grocery store for 20 minutes tonight and she went low and texted me and called me and I missed all the phone vibrations and almost had a panic attack on the way home. She was fine. The grocery store is across the street from our house.
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Mar 6, 2021 03:49
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L0cke17 posted:My son's new favorite toy is my 20lb kettlebell. He's really become particularly attached to it in the last month or two. He drags it around behind him everywhere he goes. He cries when I pick him up because he doesn't have the hand strength to lift it off the ground yet, so he just drag it in endless circles around the house. People keep asking when we stopped supporting our 3 month olds head and I’m trying to think of if we ever started. He’s always had an intensely strong neck and would stare even before he got depth perception. You’re trying to give him a bottle and he just kept craning his neck back as hard as he could. Now he’s like a tiny muscly ball of drool with big chubby cheeks.
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Mar 13, 2021 07:30
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meanolmrcloud posted:What are your opinions on vaccinated adults around unvaccinated children? We are lucky enough that around the middle of April, all grandparents and us parents will be vaccinated, but our (by that time) 3.5 month obviously will not be. Our pediatrician’s nurse line suggested that we call our local hospitals Covid line, but after an hour we just got disconnected. I figure we can ask at the 3mo appointment, but the grandparents are licking their lips for unfettered access. We’re letting vaccinated adults see our 3.5 month old baby if it’s been 2 weeks since their last shot. Our pediatrician gave us the #s on covid in infants, and while you obviously don’t want them to get it and we don’t understand long term complications well - they are almost always fine. Morbid statistics ahead, skip if you don’t really want to play this particular lottery. I think the #s were like 200 covid related infant deaths in 2020, and 650 influenza related infant deaths in 2020. The normal mortality for flu is around 1200 so they’re one of the few populations where excess mortality likely decreased. Once again I’m not a doctor, the other posts saying 90% immunity and very low chance of spread sound about right.
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Mar 16, 2021 06:34
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We’re trying to setup a nanny share with another couple and do it the legal way with taxes and payroll and contracts and sick time and vacation time and all that jazz. It’s really hard, I’ve never run a business or hired anyone before. We’ve also all been salary for a while now and back when I was hourly I never learned any employment laws. I also never worked enough to get overtime. So anyway we quoted some dollars/hr to the nanny and she agreed to them and we said awesome. Then the other couple asked for 50/hrs week and the nanny agreed and were still golden. It’s only when I started looking at the payroll software and the contract that I realized we hadn’t accounted for overtime. You can’t pay a nanny a flat rate for 50 hours a week. That’s illegal. So now we have to go to her and give her a raise so that we follow the law. I’m sure she will be happy but whoops we really should have covered this originally.
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Mar 25, 2021 21:53
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KirbyKhan posted:Nah dude, just acknowledge the OT by giving her the 1.5X rate of $75 for those 10 hours above 40. A simple chat room or Google form can do hours tracking. In california milage is p simple as well: commute from home to job or job to home is unpaid, everything in between is charged 0.53/mile. Yeah you’re right. I’m nowhere near Hollywood so I don’t have to worry about that, and splitting the nanny cost in half makes it a lot more reasonable. Even with the added cost of charging for 2 kids vs charging for 1 kid. The other couple wanted to try what you said, the magic # approach. I sat down and did the math and showed the magic # to them and the nanny. The other couple kept trying to figure out a more magic # once they saw the 1.5x dollar figure, so I kept politely reminding them that screwing with OT was illegal. The nanny looked at the magic #s and said, that leaves me open to schedule changes. I said well we really aren’t gonna do that to you, we’re writing the contract and bringing in two separate children to give you as steady of employment and paychecks as possible. But she didn’t like it and it’s only 1.5x on 10 hours so I should bite the bullet and pay it. Lesson learned on discussing OT up front.
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Mar 25, 2021 22:25
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KirbyKhan posted:There is no employer in the world that can guarentee absolutely no schedule changes in the future ever. Lmao the job is child and fiddly adults trying to find the most vulnerable optimization. Agreed. I’m not trying to become a small business tyrant and start loving over the first person I ever hire. We just had her over part time this week and she was great with the baby. He has an awesome time with her and having an extra set of hands to clean bottles and feed him and clean up after him is huge. It’s expensive and we’re super privileged to be able to afford help, but daycare is also expensive and is scary because of Covid. I signed up for Poppins.com to figure out paperwork and payroll and taxes and so far that’s a lot easier.
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Mar 25, 2021 22:50
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Renegret posted:The clear cups are starting to get cloudy, I think I should turn off the high temp setting. Thinking the heat's doing a number on them. But otherwise, yeah, the concern is more the lids. I take the lids apart and the straws I still do by hand but she doesn't fully trust it. Personally, I don't give a poo poo, it's a ton of work and I'm sick of doing it every single day. I also have a dipshit knock off Roomba that will suicide into the shower and get stuck on the sliding door every time. But man does it pick up a ton of dust even when it does a half assed job. The other 3 parents (my spouse lol) aren’t happy that offering the nanny slightly less money per hour to make it up with overtime payments wasn’t immediately accepted. The new thinking is that she is worried about fluctuating hours, especially with two children involved. So I wrote up a new contract with a guaranteed weekly salary + overtime that pays pretty much the same as the flat hourly rate we agreed to, but is better for her if we try to shaft her on hours. Let’s see what everybody thinks about this one. I’m gonna laugh if my wife loses the nanny share because she’s trying to save $60 a week (essentially raising the costs to us by 50% instead). Oh well.
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Mar 26, 2021 02:45
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KirbyKhan posted:Newborn question: the only thing my son scratches is his face so where TF is all his nail grime coming from?!? Our kid is the same way. It’s like wolverine healing factor knives coming out of his hands. Constantly scratching himself but somehow there’s a bunch of junk under there too. He met grandpa this weekend for the very first time. Can’t wait for this pandemic to be over. I saw some research that MMR is protecting kids from Covid and that you can request it as early as 6mo. Im guessing the infant covid research won’t be done in 2 months so I will probably ask for an early MMR. The kid still needs the 1 year and the 4 year booster but if I can cover him earlier then I’ll go for it.
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Mar 28, 2021 06:11
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More anecdote for the person trying to collect sibling data- I have one bio sibling who is 2 years apart from me and we are very close. I loved having them as a sibling growing up and now. My parents split up and each had their own blended families with lots of step siblings of largely varying ages. I was never as close to them and am still not particularly close to any step siblings. My wife has a sibling that’s 15 years older, which is such a large gap that they were never close. She’s actually much closer personally and in age to his kid and her nephew. We’re torn - I definitely agree with the folks describing the feeling of “barely holding on.” We also had lots of health complications from birth that I’ve bitched about previously in the thread and swore off bio kids from now on. We may still adopt another kid but it seems overwhelming.
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Mar 29, 2021 20:10
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life is killing me posted:Wooo, though I am not the one who carried and birthed this child, it really is insane how much easier and how much less time it took this time around. Over 24hrs of labor for our first and like hours of her pushing. This one? Like 9 hours total from when we checked in to birth. Two pushes. My wife was a total rockstar. Now she’s all about sushi. Grats! Excited for all four of you.
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Apr 20, 2021 03:34
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Nanny’s husband has Covid so now we don’t have childcare for 2 weeks and get to take the baby’s temperature a bunch. The chances that she got it from him and then gave it to the baby are very very small but oh boy what a fun 2 weeks. At least we’re useless white collar professionals that can hopefully juggle a baby for a while and take time off while we WFH.
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Apr 21, 2021 18:54
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Our nearly 5 month old is chowing down on his slop twice a day. He opens his mouth real wide and tries to bite the spoon, sometimes he spits stuff out. About 2-3 Tbsp a day of oatmeal and puréed fruits/veggies. Winners are oatmeal and bananas. Runners up are pears and sweet potatoes. He doesn’t know what to think about the quinoa oatmeal, I think it confuses him. Apples got mostly spit out and when he kept them down he was real gassy. But that was the first fruit we tried so we need to circle back.
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Apr 23, 2021 02:27
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We celebrated the last two nights because the baby went to sleep at 8:00, and then at 7:00 PM. The celebration was premature as he’s now waking up more often during the night for feeding, changing, and getting stuck on his stomach. It feels like a regression to newborn habits, maybe he’s just a lot hungrier due to a 5 month old growth spurt. He can easily roll on to his stomach and also learned how to sleep there in the last two days, but usually he gets really pissed about it and needs to be flipped like a tiny turtle. We will wake up 2-3 times a night to flip him and then you gotta watch him for 5-10 minutes as he self soothes with a pacifier and tries to flip again. We also just got him a little standing activity center (kind of like a bouncer?) and so far he’s absolutely thrilled with it. Tons of stuff to do and today he figured out the piano keys make noise. It’s also very fun to take your rattle and just bang it against the plastic as hard as possible.
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Apr 28, 2021 19:10
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The afternoon nap today was brutal. My guy (5 mo) got real cranky and I knew he needed to sleep. So I put him down in his crib in his sack with his pacifier - he promptly rolls on to his stomach and starts crying. Roll him back, hold him. He squirms until he’s calmed down, as soon as I let go - stomach crying. Roll back. Stomach crying. Ok I pick him up. He immediately falls asleep in my arms. I’m flattered but know he should be able to nap on his own, so I put him down. Stomach crying x 10. Just a battle of wills - me trying to keep him on his back to sleep, him determined to roll like a crocodile with a fawn in its mouth. Finally he wins. I am defeated. I pick him up, sack and all, and strap him into the swing. He falls asleep immediately and naps for an hour and a half.
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Apr 30, 2021 00:00
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sheri posted:Is there's reason you keep rolling him back? He starts shrieking on his stomach. I’ve seen him sleep on his stomach a couple times but usually he just yells. I guess I should try and let him yell it out?
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Apr 30, 2021 00:48
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femcastra posted:Yeah once they roll, they need to learn to sleep where they end up or roll back themselves. Assuming their arms are free in the sleeping bag, they’re safe to leave on their stomach. Thanks for the advice, I’ll keep trying it. So far no luck on comforting him, he is completely devastated by being asked to sleep on his stomach and refuses to roll onto his side or back (even though I know he can do both!) maybe just not enough strength right now. The 5 month regression also took us from 0-1 feedings a night to 2-3 which is getting tiring.
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Apr 30, 2021 17:16
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meanolmrcloud posted:Nthing the sound machine at what I would consider very high volumes. My wife read it helped one night, and though it sounds like Niagara Falls in the nursery, the quality and quantity of sleep has increased, and we can pretty much do whatever else we want in the rest of the house without worry. I’ve tried avocado, sweet potato, and green bean so far starting at 4 mo. Little dude hated green beans, likes sweet potatoes, had about half of his avocado tbsp before he started spitting it out. We also have the white noise machine and mountains of drool. Our pediatrician gave the opposite advice on fruits and veggies. Honestly how much more sugar content is in an apple vs. a sweet potato. We started with applesauce, mushed banana, pear purée. So far pears are the losers and banana is a huge winner. As for technique - because our guy was still a bit floppy for the high chair, we stick him on a lap. You start by resting the infant spoon on bottom lip and eventually they will open their mouth a bit, then stick it in. They won’t know how to bite or use their tongue so it will take a while to actually get the food off the spoon, you may need to do some scraping against top lip. After a few days our guy figured it out and now opens his mouth super wide as soon as he sees the spoon coming, and tries to chew on the spoon. Baby will also want to grab spoon and bowl which is a terrible idea.
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May 1, 2021 19:39
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