So I've brought 12 babies home from the hospital in the last 15 years, all but one within 18 months of the last one, and yet, there are things I forget and learn with each child.
They eat, they play, they sleep. You do not feed a baby to sleep. You feed them until their "full" light comes on, and then enjoy the happy awake time that follows, even if it happens at 3:30 a.m., for as long as it lasts. Then, when they get sad again after the happy time is over, that's 'tired' and that's when they need to sleep, preferably without nursing again.
Wait for it: the critical need to burp. A crying baby doesn't know why he is crying. He doesn't know why he's sad. He just knows something doesn't feel good. If you offer to nurse him, the good feeling that nursing brings will override whatever was sad, for a while. And a baby that needs to burp will keep eating until he hits *TILT* and then you will wear the top-offs all over your shirt. But I forget this everytime and keep feeding and feeding and feeding.
The hindmilk/foremilk balance. Especially in the above scenario, I have a habit of switching, er, sides everytime a baby nurses again. So I wind up giving a baby lots of foremilk, never get to hindmilk, and that makes for a fussy baby, and sometimes a thrush-y baby.
Thrush=nightmare. It goes like this. I have a baby. People bring food. Lots of food, and lots of desserts. Enough dessert for all 14 people to have 2. Or for all 11 eaters to have one and mom to sneak the other 16 or so servings throughout the day. And my sugar tooth takes over. I am back to my pre-delivery weight and the yeast in my body starts to increase at epic rates. The baby has a yeast infection in the diaper, thrush in his mouth, and I'm in pain. Then I have to (or should) cut out all sugar, white flour and dairy, get a prescription for diflucan, take probiotics, wash with a vinegar/water solution after I nurse, put on the magical motherlove diaper rash thrush cream, and usually wind up painting baby's mouth and my, as sk8 calls it, "nursers, with gentian violet.
Change the diaper, for crying out loud. I have a theory, that God made our poop and pee to stink so we would know to get rid of it and not eat it or keep it on hand. Unfortunately (or sometimes fortunately) my nose doesn't always work. So sometimes my poor baby is crying and I'm nursing and burping and pacifying like I'm getting paid for it and finally it dawns on me to check the diaper and he/she's been sitting in a yucky diaper for a while and my brain just forgot that option.
Too hot to handle? Some of my kids don't like heat. Nuff said.
Babies need sleep, and they need to go to sleep in their beds. If you teach the baby to fall asleep nursing in your arms, they will think that's the only way to get there. You have to put them in bed awake. Exhausted, burped, full of tum and clean of bum, eyes barely open, and let them take it the other 1/10th of the way there. And as soon as they are big enough to sleep longer, somewhere past 11 or 12 lbs, having them a little farther away from my bed means we all sleep better, as they get practice falling back asleep . . . but that only works if they learn to fall asleep on their own.
Anyway. As I'm going through this for the 12th time, and kicking myself in the head remembering these things, I thought I'd write them down. Maybe if I get to have another baby someday, I'll come back and read it and not screw up so bad with the next one.
1 comment:
These are the exact things I learn every time, too. I was hoping I'd already know them by #12, though. Sigh. Oh, and thank you for reminding me that sleeping through the night comes with weight, not necessarily age. My 5 mos-old is not yet 11 lbs (very weird for me), therefore I should have grace for her when she wakes me @ 5am to nurse. :)
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