I was in the kitchen one morning and noticed it was awfully quiet, so I went to check on the Doodlebug. I found him sitting in our great room on the floor studying something intently. I didn't see anything there so I just stood back and watched him for a minute. Can you guess what he was doing?

He's trying to pick up the sunlight off the floor.

He stares at the patches of sunlight on the floors, puts out a hand to grab them and comes up empty handed. So he leans over to see them up close and they promptly disappear (since he's now between the window and the sun on the floor). He sits back quickly in surprise and presto! They're back. He's pretty perplexed about the whole series of events.

I love watching him explore the world and see things for the first time.

Some Reasons I Love Being a Stay at Home Mom

1. Baby giggles are the best things ever. Seriously, if I could bottle them sales of Prozac would drop dramatically.
2. On beautiful spring days I get to play outside.
3. Doodlebug is my favorite baby in the whole world and I get to hang out with him all day.
4. When I’m really tired, I can take a nap (as long as Doodlebug is on board with this plan!)
5. I get to play with bubbles.
6. The commute is awesome.
7. My boss is so stinkin’ cute!
8. Doodlebug makes sure I don't take myself too seriously.
9. Part of my job description is snuggling.
10. Every day is a new adventure.
11. I love seeing my little guy discover the world.
12. I get to be creative and stretch my capacity to be resourceful.

Cutting Hair at Home

I started cutting Doodlebug’s hair when he was about 6 months old. He had this little patch on the top of his head that was about 3 inches long. It was very cute until he got fitted for his helmet. It stuck out and he looked like a rooster, and not in a flattering way. So we went to Target, bought a mustache trimmer and started trimming.



I bought a mustache trimmer instead of a hair clipper because it was smaller and I wanted to have more control over it. It turned out to be the perfect size.

Since Doodlebug was not yet sitting up on his own I stripped him to his diaper, put him in his Bumbo and started clipping away. He did great, never even flinched. Not that he was still, he squirmed away but never even noticed what I was doing with his hair.



I started with the longest setting on the trimmer and for this haircut that was all I needed. Now that he has more hair to work with, I leave it a little longer on top and trim the sides a little bit shorter. And just a helpful tip, if you put the trimmer down during the haircut always make sure that the guard is still on the setting you thought it was. I don’t know this from experience. And especially not the experience of moving the guard from the longest setting to the shortest one without noticing the day before his first birthday. Because I would never do that. Oh no, I would never do anything like that.

Now when I get ready to cut his hair I put an Elmo DVD in and sit him on a large towel in the family room. It works great. He is mesmerized by Elmo and I just buzz around him trimming him up.

I am linking up to We are THAT Family and the Works for me Wednesday posts.

Teaching Babies Sign Language

I have always planned to teach my son a few sign language signs. Babies can sign much more easily than they can verbalize words. In fact, children being raised in a home where sign language is used can start to sign around 6 months of age.

My goal is to teach my son simple words so he can communicate a desire to eat, sleep, drink, use the bathroom…. If he is able to communicate his needs more clearly to me it will reduce the amount of frustration on everyone’s part.

One of the great things about using sign language is that you are able to take the child’s hands and move them to make the sign. It’s not possible to make a child repeat a sound after you. Sometimes the parent physically guiding the child to make the sign helps the child to understand what is expected of him or her.

We worked on this concept with Doodlebug for months on end. He just wasn’t getting it. He understood when I signed to him, but did not know what I wanted him to do. Finally one day he took my hands and guided me through signing the word “book”. Progress! Within a few more days he could sign “book” when I showed him the sign and verbally encouraged him to sign it. And a few days after that he started signing the word spontaneously.

He was reading books by himself shortly after that. He looked down at his book, signed “book” (to himself) and then picked it up and started to read. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

How To Teach Your Baby To Drink Through A Straw

I have been wanting to teach Doodlebug to drink through a straw for a while now. But when I asked friends how they taught their kids to do this, they all said they didn’t know. Hmm…that’s not so helpful.

So in case anyone else is wondering, this is how I taught Doodlebug to drink through a straw.

Remember when you were a kid and you would dip your straw in your drink and put your index finger over the top? When you pulled your straw up out of the drink the liquid would stay in the straw until you took your finger off the top. This is exactly what you do. I drew up only a small amount of liquid and offered it to Doodlebug. When he closed his lips around the straw I took my finger off the top of the straw and let the liquid go.

Then I repeated this about 100 times. We did this after every bite of food 3 meals a day and one snack a day for about 4 days. As he got used to this I let him suck on the straw a bit to help draw out the liquid before releasing it.

After he had that down, we graduated to a juice box. I placed the straw in Doodlebug’s mouth and squirted a small amount in. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Once he could seemed comfortable with that I just let him suck on the straw and he figured the rest out on his own. We just moved him up to a slightly wider straw and keep on practicing.

Ta da! The whole process took less than a week.

Big Week for Doodlebug

Doodlebug had a big week this week. If you will allow me to brag on my little boy for a moment....

First he learned how to drink out of a straw. Yay! He's been a bit behind in hitting his developmental milestones and one area we've really been struggling in is to get him to drink out of a sippy cup. He either could not or would not do it. I finally asked his speech and feeding therapist to tell me how to teach him to drink out of a straw. She gave me a couple of pointers and in less than a week he was doing it on his own.



We have been working to teach him sign language since September. That's eight months people. We want to teach him a few signs like "more", "finished", "eat" and "potty". Since he has no spoken words yet this would really help us out a lot if he could tell us some of these things. This week he finally got it! He only has one sign "book" but he uses it consistently and without prompting from us. He loves to read and we've been reading to him even more than usual this week.



And he took his first step. He's been pretty good about waiting to hit new milestones until both Chris and I are with him and he that for us again. One minute he was cruising along the ottoman and the next he let go and took a step towards me. What a sweet baby boy.



Dear Doodlebug,

I am so proud of you and all you have accomplished in one short week. It's so much fun to see you conquer new things. Remember, you are my favorite baby in the whole wide world.

Love you,
Mommy

The Big Scare

A couple of months ago I blogged about Doodlebug lagging behind in hitting his developmental milestones. Since then we have been making the rounds of the specialists to try and find out what is going on.

A month ago we saw the opthamologist. Apparently looking at the optic nerve can sometimes give indications of causes of developmental delays. When the doc examined Doodlebug I was told that his optic nerve looked good and his vision was fine too.

We also started working with Child Developmental Services (CDS) to have his speech, language, cognitive functioning, fine motor and gross motor development assessed. He was evaluated when he was 14 months old but was generally functioning at the level of a 9-12 month old child at that point. As a part of the assessment I received a written report. It contains their findings as well as notes on the findings of relevant medical professionals. One of the medical professionals that was referenced was our opthamologist.

So, I was in the kitchen reading my way through the assessment and making Doodlebug's breakfast. Perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning. And without warning it changed into one of the moments in my life I will never forget. When I got to the part from the opthamologist's and read "Dr. Blinkity-Bloop suspects anoxic brain damage."

The world pretty much fell out from under me. No one has ever suggested to us that Doodlebug's problems could be from brain damage. No one has even mentioned those words to us. In fact, most people are thinking he's just a late bloomer. Maybe need a little help to get caught back up.

After I managed to get myself back together and feed my boy, I called the opthamologist's office. I explained that I had received this report and wanted to verify the doctor did believe that he had brain damage and find out why no one had mentioned this to me. That was at 9:00 AM.

While I sat at home listening for the phone to ring I cried. Hugged my baby. Wondered what this meant for his life. Can he still go to college? Have a family? Will he struggle through school? Be teased? How will this affect our family? And then the mommy guilt set in. Is this my fault? When I was in labor and pushing his heart rate kept dropping into the 40's. Should I have done something different? I didn't want a c-section and the doctors thought I was refusing the surgery when I said that. Were my baby's brain cells dying while that was going on? Could I have prevented this?

The doctor's office didn't call back that day. I had a lot of time to think about it.

The next morning at 9:15 a nurse called me back. First she told me she didn't call me yesterday because the doctor had Doodlebug's file and just gave it back to her. Then she told me they didn't know what report I got the information from and that she couldn't give me any information anyway because the doctor's notes had not been transcribed.

As patiently as I could, I explained about the evaluation. I told her I had signed a release for the doctor to send the information to CDS because they wanted to verify his vision was okay. I had gotten the summary from CDS and it stated the opthamologist suspected anoxic brain damage and I wanted to know if that was correct.

Again she repeated that she couldn't tell me anything since the notes weren't transcribed yet but they would be done soon and sent to Doodlebug's neurologist. The notes were not done yet (a month after the appointment) because first the doctor was on vacation and then the transcriptionist. How nice for them, but you see, I really don't care. I am a little more concerned with the words brain damage right now.

When I asked how I could get a copy of these notes she seemed very surprised but said she could mail them to me. They should be in the mail by the end of next week.

And then she tried to get off the phone. Umm, no. We're not done yet.

I asked how CDS got that information if the notes were not done yet. She had no answer for me.

I thought, perhaps she doesn't understand why I am so upset about this. Maybe she thinks someone has already mentioned that he might have brain damage. So I explained that Doodlebug is developmentally delayed. We are trying to figure out why, but this is the first time we have heard the words brain damaged and we are freaking out. Could she please do anything to expedite these notes or get me any additional information under the circumstances?

She told me that "those words are in the report" (anoxic brain damage) and the the notes would be done by Monday and mailed to me. I don't know how that's expediting anything since Monday was her original day. I decided just to get off the phone with her (since I believe her name was The Unhelpful Nurse Who Blames Everyone Else).

I called my husband and asked him to call the doctor's office. If they get enough calls maybe they'll get our report done sooner just to make us stop calling.

He got a nice nurse on the phone who apologized to him (imagine that!) and told him that those words were part of a billing code, not a diagnosis.

Now I'm even more confused. Technically the first nurse didn't say that anoxic brain damage was an actual diagnosis or suspicion, but she sure didn't mention this. And if she knew that and didn't mention it I think I will change her name to Cold-hearted Mean Nurse. (Okay, okay, maybe the name I called her was a bit more colorful, but I was having a really bad day.)

This post is getting really long. Anybody need an intermission? Seriously, feel free. I'll still be here when you get back.... Ready? Okay, here we go.

I called our case manager's supervisor at CDS and explained the situation. (I wasn't going over our case manager's head, she is off getting married and not in the office right now.) She looked at the notes from the doctor's office and confirmed she had them and that matched what was on the report. She suggested I try to contact our pediatrician or our neurologist to get some more information. Maybe a doctor can get the process moving along.

Now I love our pediatrician. Love him! He is great with Doodlebug, tells me like it is and answers my mile long list of questions when we go in without making impatient noises or faces. I love him. So I called and left a message for his nurse to call me back.

Within two and a half hours he was on the phone with me. He told me that he had no idea how an opthamologist could make that diagnosis. Anoxic means that no oxygen got to the brain which resulted in cell death and brain damage. And since there is no known event where Doodlebug got no oxygen for a period of time no one could make this diagnosis on him in his opinion. Then he told me he called a neonatologist and reviewed Doodlebug's birth history with him. (See, I told you. This is why I love this man!) The neonatologist said that a heart rate dropping into the 40's a couple of times could not have caused this. If it had gone on for several hours or days, maybe. But not 2-3 pushes over 20 minutes. And Doodlebug came out breathing just fine with Apgar's of 8 and 9. He said that when the opthamologist's report comes in next week we will review it together and until then I should try not to worry about it, because there's really nothing he can see to worry about.

Whew! I feel so much better. Dr. E shoots straight with me and if I needed to worry he would tell me flat out.

And then the opthamologist office got it together and got the notes transcribed. They called my husband and read him the report. Here's the gist.

Optic nerve is fine.
Vision is within normal limits.
Follow up at age 3.

So where did the anoxic brain damage come in? A billing code. Yep, all that over a freaking billing code. Apparently that is how they will code it for insurance (as a visit to rule out anoxic brain damage).

I am so relieved I don't know what to do with myself. Doodlebug's still delayed, we have lots of work ahead of us We still don't know why he's behind, but at least no one is saying the scary phrase anoxic brain damage any more.

It's Been a Rough Kind of a Week

Last month at Doodlebug's 12 month visit to the pediatrician did not go as well as we hoped. He is healthy, but he's not hitting his developmental milestones on time. This wasn't a total shocker. He's always been the kind of kid who hits milestones as late as possible and can still be considered in the normal range. But at 9 months he was still okay. At 12 months he was not crawling, not pulling up and not able to cruise furniture. He also cannot finger feed or chew food and just figured out how to use a sippy cup.

It is heartbreaking to have other moms say brightly "Is he walking yet?" and tell me that their child, who is 4 months younger, has been pulling up for months now. It is devastating to hear your pediatrician say that this puts your child in the bottom 10% developmentally. It literally hurt my heart to be told by a neurologist this week that he is developmentally delayed and that we need to undergo genetic and metabolic testing to make sure there's nothing more serious going on.

The bright spot is that her gut says he is just a late bloomer.

But, since her gut is not always right Doodlebug has appoinments with an optomologist, geneticist, child development center (for speech, fine motor and gross motor assessments) and more blood tests than I can count. I'm slogging through the insurance underworld to try and get approval for everything she wants to order. And this is just the tip of the iceburg. She also wants an MRI and other genetic testing, assuming we find nothing from all this.

My heart is breaking for my little boy who is behind and he's only a year old. Playing catch up already. He's going to be poked, prodded and stuck with needles. Naptimes will be interupted in favor of doctor's visits. Instead of playing with my sweet boy he is watching Elmo so I can make the 5th phone call of the day to fight with insurance or give a medical history over the phone, again.

In the middle of all of this I noticed his arms and legs turning dusky and finger and toenails turning blue. That earned us another trip to the pediatrician and a bonus round to the cardiologist next week.

Sweetheart, please give your Mommy a break.

This is not what I wanted for him. For us. For our family. And yet here we are. My head screams "I don't want to!" and "I'm not ready!" and "I can't handle this!" But I know I have to. Because I'm the mommy and I will do anything, even deal with the insurance company, for my sweet boy.

Things I Never Understood Until I Was a Mom....

1. Nursing is really hard work. I never understood this until I realized the reality of a nursing cycle for us. Nurse for an hour. Change baby and play for a few minutes and put baby to bed. Pump while baby sleeps. Put milk in fridge, wash out pump. Get baby up from nap. Repeat all day every day for months. While recovering from 9 months of being sick and major surgery.



2. Why moms allow their children to go out in public with food all over their faces. I clean my child up after every meal. Without fail, when we get to the grocery store or the YMCA I see a smear of stray fruit or rice that we missed. It's really hard to check a moving target for cleanliness.





3. What is the big deal about teething? Until you watch the helpless child you love scream for 4 days straight, not eat and just be generally miserable as teeth come in. Now it makes sense.



4. How much I would love him. Everyone is so eager to tell you about how you will never be able to nap again. True. How much money they will cost. Also true. But they never mention that baby laughter is one of the happiest sounds in the world. Baby kisses are wonderful beyond almost anything else. That this little person will change your life in all sorts of ways, but most of them are for the better.

Doodlebug's First Birthday

As we neared Doodlebug's birthday we suddenly got bunches of catalogues showing all the latest 'accessories' we would need to have a memorable day. Everything from high chairs covers (for that perfect photo) to themed invitations, to little royal thrones. Are you kidding me???

We took a slightly simpler approach. I sent out evites (and mailed a hard copy to the one person on our list without email), Daddy made a cake, Mommy made cookies, we bought balloons at the Dollar store as favors and called it a day. We also limited our guest list to family, godparents and one family that we have regular playdates with. Even without all that stuff from the catalogue we managed to have a pretty good time and some really cute photos.



The highlight for the boys was chasing my dad through the kitchen, down the hall and back into the kitchen. I have no idea why that was such a hit but they were laughing hysterically almost the entire time.






Doodlebug needed a little help opening his presents so both kids gladly jumped in.





Doodlebug was pretty preoccupied with the ribbon off of one of the packages.



Here's his little friend helping with the wrapping paper. Yet another activity that I had no idea would bring such a thrill.



This sweet little girl is known for her one liners. When I asked her who the gift was from she replied, with great enthusiasm, "Target!!!!!" And when her mom told her to thank us for having them over she came in the family room, gave me a great big hug and yelled "I love this party!" She just cracks me up.



We wrapped the party up with a little bit of cake before the guest of honor crashed and had to leave for a nap.



Exhausting, but oh so much fun!

Birthday Cake

We had Doodlebug's first birthday party over the weekend. It was so much fun! And I am so tired.

I was planning to upload a bunch of pictures and make a fancy collage. What was I thinking?

I thought I'd start a bit smaller and upload our cake pictures. My sweet hubby made a really cute cake for Doodlebug.

First he baked two 9 x 9 yellow cakes and carved them into the shape of a "1". We had a little trouble with the top and had to perform a little cake surgery. But it was all covered up by the frosting in the end.



Here he is frosting the cake. After he made the cake he told me this is only the second one he's ever frosted. I was very impressed.



After Chris frosted the cake we outlined it with jellybeans. They added some color and covered up the places where we smeared the frosting on our cake board.



I think the cake turned out really cute for our first attempt.

Happy Birthday Doodlebug!

Since today is Doodlebug's birthday it seemed appropriate to tell the story of his birth.

We arrived at the hospital on January 26th shortly after midnight for a scheduled induction. Since I had gestational diabetes my midwives would not let me go past my due date. We spent our first hour getting settled in the room, getting IV's started and finding out what to expect. Once we were settled the nurse checked my blood sugar, put in my IV, started my Cytotec and hooked me up to the monitors. I was given some Ambien and we settled in to try to get some rest. Ha! Everytime I would move so would Doodlebug and alarms would go off. I don't think we got more than an hour or two of sleep all night.

Around 7:00 AM my midwife came in to check my progress. I was still dilated to 1 cm(which is where I had been the night before) and she started me on Pictocin. Marilyn, our nurse, came in to meet us and discuss our birthing preferences. A lot of them had already been ruled out since I was induced but we told here that we were using Hypnobabies. Although she had never worked with anyone using Hypnobabies before, but had heard of it and seemed really interested in the whole process.

Soon my contractions were coming on a more regular basis and becoming increasingly uncomfortable. The Hypnobabies relaxation scripts were irritating me so I asked my husband to put on the relaxation music without words. I got up and into the rocking chair. When a contraction would start I would take a deep breath, drop my head and stop rocking. I would just sit in the chair breathing deeply and relaxing until it was over and then I would pick my head up and continue rocking. About 1:00 I started having a more difficult time relaxing through the contractions as they increased in intensity and requested an epidural. As we waited for the anesthesiologist the contractions became so intense I started repeating over and over "Help me, help me, help me..." Chris would rub my lower back, remind me to breathe and tell me to relax my hands, my shoulders, my arms etc.

The anesthesiologist was delayed due to a baby on the floor that was in trouble. Since we did not know when he would be able to come in to give me the epidural Marilyn gave me a narcotic to take the edge off the contractions. We continued to prep me for the epidural so I would be ready as soon as the doctor walked in the door. No sooner than the medicine got in my IV and we got me seated on the edge of the bed than the anesthesiologist walked in. Once everything was in I just laid in bed listening to my Hypnobabies music and relaxing. I didn't sleep but I did manage to doze in and out as I rested up so I could birth my baby. Not much later my midwife came in to check me told me I was at 5 cm and she broke my water.

I lost track of time at that point. I remember telling Chris and Marilyn that I was feeling queasy later in the day. Chris got a washcloth for my head and gave me my Hypnobabies "No nausea" CD to listen to. When Marilyn checked my progress she told me I was at 7 cm. I told her, "Yep, I'm in transition." Some time later the midwife came back in and inserted a catheter through my cervix to better monitor my contractions. Since Nathan was still squirming around and the monitor kept losing track of his heartbeat, a lead was placed in his head to better monitor his heart rate.

Sometime later I started to feel mild urges to push. Since I wanted a little more time for the urges to grow stronger before I had to start pushing I didn't say anything. Soon after Marilyn checked me, told me I was at 10 cm and asked me to give a little push to see if the baby would move. She told me I was only 5 or 6 good pushes away from meeting my little guy. My husband and Marilyn started to reposition me in the bed. They had me sitting up, on each side and finally on my back with Marilyn telling me to push. I got really vocal at this point repeating that I did not want to lie flat on my back to push but she told me that “The baby is getting tired and needs to come out.” I heard something in her tone of voice that made me realize something was not right so I shut up and pushed as hard as I could. A minute later she told me to stop pushing and went to the phone to call the midwife. My midwife was delivering another baby at that time and I heard Marilyn say that she needed a doctor, any doctor, to come in now. I did not know exactly why she was saying this with such urgency, but I remember thinking that this could not be good.

Things started moving very fast and the room started filling up with people. Someone gave Chris scrubs and told him to go and change in case we had to go to the OR. As soon as the doctor got there they put me on my back and told me to push again. The doctor explained that the baby’s heart rate was dropping into the 40’s each time I pushed and she thought we needed to do a c-section.

A few minutes later we were in the OR and I was being prepped for surgery. I could feel people pushing on my belly and knew that the medical team was preparing for the c-section. A few minutes later I heard Marilyn say “We have a head…we have shoulders” and then I heard Doodlebug cry. I looked at Chris and said, “Oh my God, I didn’t even know they started.” Doodlebug was born at 7:55 PM on January 26, 2009. He was a little peanut at 6 lbs 2 oz and 18 ¾ inches long. And of course, the absolute cutest baby I have ever seen.


Happy birthday Doodlebug, I love you!

One step forward, two steps back

I've been potty training Doodlebug since November, when he was about 9 months old. Actually what we are doing is really more a form of elimination communication (EC). Basically I am watching him for signs of when he needs to use the potty and then just take him there. He's pretty predictable so we usually go after meals and naptimes.

Although every time we went potty his diaper was already wet, I was really encouraged that he seemed to understand what to do on the potty, and if he had to go when I set him on it, he went. He was using the potty about 80% of the time, and I hadn't washed a poopy diaper in weeks.

And then we hit a wall. Three days of missing every single time. Then one success. Then several more misses. Several poopy diapers to wash.

I don't know what's changed. I guess it's just going to be one step forward and two steps back.

Personality Change

My sweet little baby is no longer my sweet little baby.



When Doodlebug was born we noticed he was a very laid back baby. He rarely cries unless he needed something, always goes to other people easily and is generally pretty happy.

For the first couple of weeks we waited cautiously and held our breath. Is this really his personality? Could we really have gotten this lucky? Yep. We really did hit the jackpot. People who watch him in the church nursery or at the YMCA comment on how good he is. He watches the other kids, plays contentedly and is so pleasant to be around.



December was a really rough month. Almost as soon as we got home from Thanksgiving he got a supervirus. He ran a fever for a week and was sick for at least ten days straight. Poor little guy. Then he caught a cold. Then we went away for Christmas and he got really sleep deprived. Then his top tooth came in. This was a 5-6 day ordeal that involved very little eating, lots of fussing and Motrin every six hours. I was so ready for December to end.



When it did I noticed that Doodlebug was yelling a lot. Not screaming, not crying, but yelling. Or maybe bellowing. Hmm.

And he started throwing stuff on the floor. Not dropping, throwing. Hmm.

And then he started kicking at me. Not waving his feet in the air and trying to get his shoelaces. Hmm.

I thought that maybe another tooth was coming in. Or he was getting another virus. Maybe he's still not caught up on his sleep. Because this just isn't my sweet baby.

I finally asked my friend who has two kids older than Doodlebug, "Do kids have some kind of major personality change when they turn one?" Of course, I had to yell it pretty loud to be heard over the bellowing. Her eyes got bigger and she slowly nodded. And then I heard words I was dreading. "And it only gets worse."

Fabulous.

And just like that, we entered the toddler years. I'm not ready. I miss my sweet baby boy.

Guest Post

Today I am the guest poster on one of my favorite blogs Want What You Have. Here is a copy of that post.


Does it strike anyone else as odd that strangers in Walmart feel it necessary to give you advice on child rearing? There must be some secret school where people go to get an advanced degree in raising other people’s children. Their preferred method of spreading their knowledge seems to be accosting weary moms in produce aisles and checkout lines.



I am always surprised that I get a lot of comments on wearing him on my back. Usually I become aware of people laughing and comments about the “baby backpack”. I am not sure what the big deal is, but I have learned to keep to myself some of the less conventional things we do like making baby food and using cloth diapers. They seem to cause big reactions when I mention them. And my biggest secret? I started potty training my son before he even learned to crawl. And here’s the astonishing part, its working.

When I was pregnant with my son I first read about elimination communication. The basic idea is that infants instinctively do not want to wet or soil themselves and will attempt to communicate their need to go even as newborns. If their caregivers respond to this by giving them an alternative to using diapers they will do so.

I was fascinated by the idea that infants are capable of letting their caregivers know when they needed to pee or poop much like they are capable of communicating their need to eat. And I have to admit the idea of not washing tons of poopy diapers appealed to me immensely. But even though this is how women around the world care for their children I was pretty skeptical this would work. It seems common knowledge that most kids are not toilet trained until age three or four and most just aren’t ready before then. Right?

When my son was 9 months old I decided to give it a whirl. What did I have to lose? I already knew to expect a poopy diaper shortly after a meal and figured it might be easier to sit him on the potty rather than wash out the poopy diaper in the toilet.

The first time we sat on the potty I just plunked him down and started reading him his favorite book. After a few seconds I don’t think he even noticed he was on the potty. After all, Pajama Time! is a pretty engrossing book.

My only focus was on making potty time be a positive experience for him, and to my surprise he pooped in the potty. Wow! When I started singing and clapping about his success he looked slightly confused but quickly decided it didn’t matter why we were celebrating and so he sat on his little potty and danced along.

After that I sat him on the potty once or twice a day after meals or if I noticed he was trying to poop. To my utter amazement, it usually worked and I soon realized he was using the potty 75-80% of the time I put him on. We stepped up to using the potty at almost every diaper change.

I gradually realized that he was taking less and less time to go potty. If I sat him there when he needed to go, he was pretty quick about it. Could he be getting it? Were we really potty training at just 10 months old? He’s doesn’t really understand what he’s doing does he?

Last week I sat him on the potty and wasn’t paying much attention to what he was doing. I was busy looking at a boo-boo and band aid he had on his foot. When I looked up at him he was pointing down into the potty and looking right at me. Sure enough, when I peeked in there, he had peed. I think he gets it.

We have a long way to go before he is fully potty trained and I’m sure we’re going to have some more bumps along the way. Maybe the shoppers at Walmart will have some suggestions for those too, but in the meantime I’m just going to enjoy not having to wash out as many poopy diapers.

Babywearing with a Mei Tai

The term babywearing has always sounded a bit odd to be. I wear a coat, a sweater, some socks, but not my child. He is not an article of clothing. I always think a more accurate term is babycarrying. But I digress....

I really love carrying my son around in a wrap. I can put him on my back in less than a minute and he is happy on my back for about an hour or so while I do whatever needs to be done. We can mop floors, go shopping, plant daffodils in the backyard, go for a walk, or any number of things. And he loves to be on my back and be able to see things from a different perspective. He espcially likes it when I turn on the Kitchen Aid mixer. Silly boy.

This picture is from a Halloween festival we went to. It was really muddy outside and a stroller would not have worked well going up and down steps, over the muddy grass and manuvering around tons of little kids.



I'd say more than half the time we go out I find it easier to have him in the Mei Tai than in the stroller. I also find that he is better behaved in the Mei Tai. He is usually pretty quiet, looking around and taking it all in.

And the most common question I get is, how the heck do you get him up there? This is the method I use the most often. I feel I have the best hold on him while wrapping and there's no danger of him slipping off my back while I'm tying the straps.

Every once in a while I will wear him in front of me. It's not a very convenient hold to get stuff done since he tends to be in the way, but it's a great way to take a sick baby to the Doctors. He feels snug and secure and I can have my hands free to get out my insurance card.

When he is sick I also use a hold where I place him tummy to tummy with me and put bot his legs out of the same side of the wrap. I can't get much done this way, but it gives my arms a break from holding him when he wants to be held 24/7. It's also a lifesaver when you end up sleeping sitting up in a chair holding a sick little one.

And last but not least, here is a picture of Doodlebug just after hunting for the perfect Christmas tree in the Mei Tai. He always grins like that when I get him out.

Hypnobabies

One of my dear friends just found out she is pregnant. Yay! As she and I were talking on the phone I realized I had a lot of information I wanted to pass along but who wants tons of advice? And just how much can you take in one sitting? So I just decided to blog about it. I can give her the link and she can read it if and when she wants to.

One of the best things we did was hypnobabies. Now in order for you to properly understand why the outcome was such a big deal for me you need to know how a I felt about childbirth. To say I was terrified was the understatement of the year. Whenever I started to think about giving birth I would feel panicky and start to cry. I am not good with pain, the sight of blood makes me throw up and I could not fathom that a baby could actually come out of a hole so small. I mean come on, that sounds more far fetched than Santa Claus! Not a really good place to be once I got pregnant. But since I was in fact pregnant and this kid had to come out somehow I knew I had to find a way to get a handle on my fears and bring them down to a more rational level.

I found them by doing internet searches for ways to alleviate the pain and fear of childbirth. I have to admit I was really skeptical, pretty much the whole way through. I mean hypnosis, really? What kind of hocus pocus is this? Once I figured out that hypnonsis is really only focused relaxation and I was not going to cluck like a chicken during childbirth I was able to get past the new agey name and learn the techniques. I liked the classes since we learned a lot and the relaxation techniques did seem to work and oftentimes put me to sleep, which is great when I woke up with pregnancy insomnia at 3:00 every night. It seemed a bit incredible to me that you could do an entire birth pain free and med free. I really just did not want to have to be restrained from running screaming from the hospital.

I had a rather high risk pregnancy and had to be induced, which I really did not want. I put it off as long as possible until my midwife finally just scheduled the induction and told us when to come in. When I started feeling contractions my husband put the hypnobabies music on the stereo and I sat in the rocking chair. I was hooked up to all sorts of monitors so I could not go much of anywhere. The only way they could tell I was having a contraction was I would drop my head, take a deep breath and stop rocking. I did end up opting for the epidural when the contractions became more intense, but we kept the music on and I just laid in bed and basically relaxed. I was so relaxed that the nurse and my husband kept thinking I was asleep. The day after my son was born our nurse came by to visit. She had never worked with someone doing hypnobabies before and she told me, "I don't know what you paid for that class, but it was worth it."

I used hypnobabies a lot after my son's birth. I ended up having an emergency c-section which left me pretty sore for a couple of days. I used it to stay relaxed when I first got up to walk, when they took my staples out and when the nurses would come in to look at my incision. It kept me from tensing up and making the pain worse and gave me a sense of control over some of the situation. I may not be able to control a lot during my son's birth, but I could control my reaction and I was able to keep myself calm

A Conversation With My Boy

Let it go down in history that my baby has uttered his first phrase on August 19, 2009! Of course, I have all the details and I can't wait to share them.

I heard Doodlebug wake up and start talking in his crib. Just your typical baby babble stuff. I walked in his room and leaned over the crib smiling at him. "Hey there Umboo, what're you doing?" (Umboo is one of his favorite things to say, we have no idea what it means but he likes it when we say his words too.) He grinned up at me and replied, "Hey baby!"

Shocked silence. I wasn't expecting that to be his first phrase!

The bad and the good of motherhood.

Yesterday I took Doodlebug to have his helmet adjusted. No big deal, we do this every week. When we got there I smelled a poopy diaper. For some reason we almost always have one on the way to his helmet appointment. I just picked him up, carried him into the office and took him in the bathroom to change him. Oh.My.Goodness. I saw pooh coming out of the leg of his diaper. Hmm, that's not good. Then I noticed a large wet spot on his outfit just above the waistband of his diaper. Uh-oh. Upon further investigation it turned out to be more pooh leaking from his diaper. Great. And when I looked down at my shirt I realized he had gotten it all over me too. This is just getting better and better.

It's hard to know even where to begin in cleaning up a mess of this magnitude. So I opened his diaper. He stuck his hand in the poop and then tried to put it in his mouth. I cleaned off his hand. I took the diaper off and soon realized that I did not have enough wipes to get him cleaned up. So into the sink he went. Thankfully he cooperated and stood in the sink while I rinsed him off. But then what do you do with a slippery wet baby? I can't really hold him since my shirt's still all poopy, I can't put him on the changing table for the same reason.... So I dried him with paper towels and laid him on the floor to put a clean diaper on him. I took my shirt off and washed it in the sink and then put it back on. By then I had to call for backup and had to leave the restroom to ask for some Lysol wipes and plastic bag. It was a long afternoon.


By the time we got home Doodlebug had catnapped in the car and would not go back to sleep. I was beat. We had been to 2 doctor appointments and met my husband for lunch. I hadn't slept much the night before and was just trying to hang on until Daddy got home. I turned on the TV in our room and layed him on the bed. I lay down next to him and he happily babbled, cooed, giggled and watched TV. I was too tired to act silly and interact with him much and he gave me several puzzled looks while we were lying there. He rolled away from me and picked up his paci which he looked at and then looked at me. He rolled back and stretched out his arm to hand me his paci. My sweet little boy gave me his most precious possession. I took the paci and thanked him and told him what a sweet little boy he is. He was so proud of himself and rolled around on the bed grinning from ear to ear and cooing. I guess I just looked like I needed a paci to him.