BABBY BABBY BABBY BABBY

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

If you do have a kids who has problems, also expect more of it. Reiterating shit you already tried and failed to work.

Yeah, you're a first time parent, therefore you don't know anything. However, some friend's sister's experience it totally pertinent.

Apparently I am unable to even handle routine viruses. I am not sure I want to imagine what you have had to put up with Q. FWIW I think you are a super mama.

It may be (and it is hard for me) hard to take criticisms of my parenting/child and not let them effect my relationships with adults.
I could rant about this for a solid week and still not have vented about it enough.

That's why god created PM and email, I am happy to hear rants about snoopy and rude people.

Also people will get offended at times that you don't take their inappropriate and/or out-dated advice and use it religiously, as it reflects on their parenting skill.

What is that about? Even making different choices than they did offends some people.

[irukandji]

all i can say is congratulations to the expectant parents....

be prepared to fall more deeply in love
than you could have ever imagined....

start there and the rest works itself out

[Deadlokd]

Congrats again Wildy and RA. Good conceiving.

All of the advice in here is good. We went with a lot of baby led, instinctive stuff. And that's probably the extent of my advice: Go with your instincts. You know what's best for your child. All of the anecdotes you will hear are about other kids, not yours.

And totally what wei said. Listen to your own music, avoid the Wiggles until they stick their skivvies into your house and ruin your lives for four years.

[Sock Puppet]

Oh, and by the way, at various times it'll seem like you just need to figure out the combination and then this one thing will be all worked out -- whether it's getting him/her to sleep, potty training, or whatever. And maybe for a few things here and there, you can. But usually, there is no combination. Or once you figure it out, your kid will immediately change it. What "works" today will not necessarily work tomorrow. Or 5 minutes from now.

I regret to inform you that this is perfectly normal.

[wei yau]

You know what else is perfectly normal? That bit about falling in love with the babby is kinda true. And like being in love there will be times when the babby will frustrate you and make you cry and make you listen to sad songs.

That's all perfectly normal, too.

[BrotherMan]

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

Yeah, be prepared for lots of "drive by parenting".

If you do have a kids who has problems, also expect more of it. Reiterating shit you already tried and failed to work.

It may be (and it is hard for me) hard to take criticisms of my parenting/child and not let them effect my relationships with adults.
I could rant about this for a solid week and still not have vented about it enough.

Also people will get offended at times that you don't take their inappropriate and/or out-dated advice and use it religiously, as it reflects on their parenting skill.

Sorry, Mrs. Q, but I win this event.

I was 21 when I had TLM, but people always thought I was appreciably younger than that. So it was the default, every time I went anywhere or did anything with my son, that complete strangers would meddle. Sometimes they'd lecture or yell at me, sometimes they'd just point and stare or make disapproving noises in my direction. Including the upstanding (metaphorically--he was actually half lying down on the sidewalk) moral gatekeeper who took time out of his busy schedule of getting shitfaced in the middle of the day and soiling himself to express his principled stance against my, um, sluttery? Something? But I'd get the regular kind, too, from people pushing some pop psychology crap or insisting that I raise my child exactly the same way as they did with their loathsome little monsters.

But there is no one true way to raise a child. Everyone is different. Every child is different, and any conscientious parent--like Q and Shea and you pretty soon--knows their own child better than any stranger or acquaintance or other family member does. And every parent is different too. We all raise children in accordance with our own values and principles, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

And the more conscientious you are in your parenting, the more likely you are to second guess yourself and to take ill-considered advice and ideas more seriously than they merit.

As such, I agree with Lady Shea that it's important to have your ideas clearly articulated just for your own peace of mind, so that you can readily dismiss irrelevant and inappropriate commentary when you come across it, as you totally will. (You're under no obligation to articulate it for random busybodies, of course.)

I don't know how huge a problem the type of randomly hostile invasive busybodying is when you don't look like you're fourteen years old, but I consciously framed those intrusions and insults not in terms of people giving me crap so much, but as them giving MY BABBY MAMA crap. That framing helped me a lot in overcoming my natural politeness instincts and shutting people down early and often when they were making my life harder than it had to be.

[wei yau]

Man, there must be something about me that makes people not want to approach me and give me advice. I never get anyone telling me how to raise my kids, except for LadyShea.

And I'm pretty sure she does it not out of concern for my kids' well-being, but more out of a need to make me feel like crap.

[Qingdai]

There must have been something about me as a pregnant woman that defied being touched too, I never got poked or prodded by anyone, except my mother. My mother pokes and prods me no matter what, until lately when I drew a heavy black line between her and I.

I wouldn't count your chickens yet, Ms. lisarea, I'm still getting drive by parenting and will for many years to come.
It's not over!

[LadyShea]

Wei, it's likely that people approach your wife with their nattering. Another weirdness I have observed is that fathers often escape such intrusion so much that they don't know it exists. Hubby was the primary caretaker for all of Kiddo's infancy and toddlerhood, but people still addressed all questions and concerns to me.

And yes, my mission in life is to make you feel crappy and inadequate. Maybe you should start directing all inquiries to the kids' mother like a real man

[wei yau]

OTOH, I do kinda resent the way dads are treated like barely functioning brain-damaged idiots when it comes to child raising. Some women can get pretty condescending towards fathers.

But, I've used that to my advantage to get help with gift wrapping and fixing the girls' hair.

[LadyShea]

It is to be resented, for sure. And that assumption of cluelessness is the most likely reason men are less intruded upon, in general.

[lisarea]

Originally Posted by wei yau

OTOH, I do kinda resent the way dads are treated like barely functioning brain-damaged idiots when it comes to child raising. Some women can get pretty condescending towards fathers.

That's because the patriarchy hurts everyone. I just lol about that part, though, because it only happens to dudes.

[Deadlokd]

I meant to mention something else last night but was too tired.

Despite what you may read on mainstream parenting forums your six month old baby does not know how to manipulate you. If your baby is crying he or she has a reason. If it is just for attention, then he or she deserves attention. Sorry Wildy, not really addressed to you, more to the idiots who go around advocating controlled crying to 'train' babies.

[Clutch Munny]

Some aggregated remarks I wrote lo these five years past here at FF, on spanking and discipline.

The research I've seen, reflected in the official positions of bodies like the American Association of Pediatrics, for example, suggests that spanking is an ineffective long term strategy for changing kids' behaviour, though it can be effective in the short term.

For that matter, a belief in the positive effects of punishment in general and the negative effects of reward ("spoiling") has attained the status of a textbook example of the regression fallacy.

I spanked my first child until she was four. She received maybe a half-dozen three-whack spankings over that time, and her younger sister got a few too. My youngest has never been spanked.

I was doing it because it had been done to me, and, embarrassing as this is, I became a parent without thinking very hard about whether it made good sense to spank my kids in turn. My reflections in advance mostly concerned whether it was positively impermissible to spank, and I decided it wasn't.

I'm not so sure of that now, but my decision six years ago was of a different sort. Irrespective of whether spanking can be given a defense, I hated hitting my kids and thought it could only make me look weak and unimaginative to them. I hated the way it made me feel about my connection to them, no matter how carefully I explained the reasons to them or how much I hugged and kissed them afterwards. I came to think that physically hurting my kid represented a complete failure of imagination and responsibility on my part. If I can't think of some way to get my kid's attention -- or respect for my opinion -- except by whacking him/her then I've messed up.

So I stopped spanking. My kids are wonderfully behaved, polite and considerate, even the youngest. We've found there is no shortage of ways to encourage good behaviour, nor to punish them for that matter.

Now I'm working on my voice. The next step is to stop raising my voice, to never speak to them loudly when I'm angry. Some success on that front, too -- and still no sign of being run roughshod-over by the children.

Overall, I think it's frankly insane to think that one would need a special argument against physically hurting one's own children; the badness of that outcome should be default, and a special reason for doing it anyhow should be required. I don't say that no such special reason can hold. But I will say that the situations I once thought met that description have turned out not to -- in my experience.

In fact the reason I am working on minimizing the shouting is simple: my oldest daughter asked me to. It gets her into a tizzy and is counterproductive, she's said for a couple of years now. Upon considering the evidence I've decided she's right. Since she (and to all appearances the others) are perfectly open to taking stern words seriously even they're not delivered at jet-engine decibel levels, I believe the default norms of respectful treatment and my obligation to actually be the grown-up in our relationship combine to compel me not to indulge in shouting at them.

I agree that my daughter was brave -- braver that I was with my dad, at her age -- in being willing to tell me (under very stressful circumstances!) that I was making things worse by yelling.

My response at first was that there's a valuable lesson in the fact that [doing stupid thing X] causes people to yell. Then I thought that (1) while that may be true, it's not a particularly praiseworthy fact about people that makes it true; and (2) it's teaching the more immediate lesson that her dad is unwilling to try being more constructive than other people. It's worth trying harder. And it's working. When she's driving me nuts, I find ways of unambiguously communicating this to her which don't leave her sobbing or anxiety-ridden or jittery or frazzled -- like shouting sometimes did.

It's been one of the best things I've ever done. I don't know if other people have this worry, that once they're adults there's really no way for them to change their behaviour in any non-trivial way. But I did. This taught me that I can make myself better (if I absolutely have to ). And beyond the direct improvement to how discipline works with Daughter #1, there's definitely a sense that she feels herself to be not just loved, but respected.

Which she is.

The being-less-shouty thing pretty much worked out, by the way. I practically never do it anymore and haven't done for ages. The kids seem to respect my ahhthoritahh just fine anyhow. The only problem, of course, is what to do with the ocean of rage.

[Clutch Munny]

And also there was this whole Fatherhood thread, and I thought of stuff there too, as did lots of other people. I even already said the diaper thing.

[wildernesse]

Thanks for all the replies and discussion.

We got some screening results back that indicate we will probably want to do some more screening to see if it makes sense to have an amnio. More than a little unsettling.

[The Man]

"babby babby babby babby" - Google Search

Congrats on the babby. I don't have anything constructive to add.

[livius drusus]

, wildy.

[Qingdai]

Did you do the nuchal tube test ultra sound with the blood test? That's pretty accurate, more accurate than the amnio, from the research my midwife did.

Also the ultra sound was pretty cool, seeing my now son swimming around.

If it's the Quad blood test, that's remarkably not accurate.

[wildernesse]

Originally Posted by Qingdai

Did you do the nuchal tube test ultra sound with the blood test? That's pretty accurate, more accurate than the amnio, from the research my midwife did.

We had a nuchal US and blood test, and were told that the US results were good. Overall, the test isn't diagnostic, it only predicts increased risk, from what the drs. have said. The amnio would be diagnostic, since it would isolate and analyze baby's DNA.

Basically, baby's risk for Down's is higher than expected for my age. It is lower than the likelihood that the test's information is inaccurate (in a false positive way), though. Other, more fatal, trisomies are extremely unlikely.

[Qingdai]

Hm. I was told (even though I did well with the nuchal test) that I should do the amnio because I'm old.

I elected not to because by the time they do the amnio, what the hell was I going to do anyway? It would be too late in the pregnancy to do much. There is a small risk of miscarriage with amnio.
You might ask for whomever does amnio to give you some statistics on their miscarriage rate/false positive/false negatives rates, you know in all your (lol) spare time.

[ms_ann_thrope]

Yay for babby!

Babby equipment I highly recommend:

• Travel system is v. handy (my total OCD brother researched EVERYthing and ultimately went with Chicco for his kid, so when it was my turn to have babby, I just went with that)
• A Boppy was much more comfortable for me for breastfeeding than a regular pillow
• Glider and ottoman also v. pleasant for breastfeeding
• Pack-n-play type thing
• Motorized swing
• Bouncer (not the door-hanging thing, but I mean the lounger-type thing)
• Blankets for swaddling (my babby was positively addicted to swaddling; YMMV)
• Diaper Champ (if you are doing disposables)
• Breast pump (Medela Freestyle is awesome)
• Lullaby mp3s (I made a 10-hour mix for
  all-night listening comfort)

Those were my essentials for the first year. Have fun getting ready and enjoy this special time!

[Vivisectus]

Don't worry too much about screening results. Ours came back with increased risk of Downs Syndrome and Trisome 18 syndrome - had my wife sick with worry for weeks - but the majority of these screenings are false alarms. Our daughter had nothing wrong with her whatsoever. Do follow up, but don't treat it as an actual warning sign - the vast majority of these do not in fact turn out bad.

[Pyrrho]

You have cats?

Pregnant Women and Toxoplasmosis | CDC Healthy Pets Healthy People