Parent Thread

Marie is starting to crawl... the "I'm on my knees and rocking back and forth" thing is fucking hilarious.

I'd like to take a video of it but as soon as she detects a lens she's all "smile at the camera... don't move".

In other news, my wife broke her (own) arm a while ago so I had to stay at home for two weeks and take care of the kid while health insurance figured out if they were going to pay for someone to come and take care of the kid. Two more weeks until the cast comes off and I can hopefully convince the wife that it's her turn again to get up in the night and mix a bottle.

This. My son has never met his father, but he acts a bit like him a lot. Screams at the contestants onChoppedon Food Network, for instance. Sometimes it's uncanny, and even my mom notices.

Edit: This is in response to #392, page 20. Sorry 'bout that.

Congrats man. Enjoy it, I really mean that, they grow up so fast that you sometimes feel like you didn't have a chance to really just enjoy your time with them.

Alkorin_sl said:

HOLY SHIT. If I could go back and kick my own ass when I was saying this was going to be a mere adventure, I would. Our daughter was born on Saturday at 6pm, and I'm already feeling like I've been hit by the zombie truck. I was by no means ready for the steady state of "wake up/stumble over to baby/change diaper/bring baby to mom for food/bring baby back to crib/try to get back to sleep" that has been thrown at me, and we're only on day 3.

That being said, I wouldn't trade this feeling for anything in the world.

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My wife and I are on day 10 and I think, THINK, we're handling it pretty decently. My wife is especially tired from the constant breast-feeding attempts (my daughter refuses to latch) and pumping when she isn't trying that, but overall we haven't had any breakdowns yet.

Refusing to latch is a bitch, my son had that issue 8yrs ago when him and his sister were born my first born did not have the issue.
girl latched on fine, boy couldn't find a nipple if it was shoved in his face-which it was.

easiest thing to do is if your wife is having issues- being tired etc, if the doc's oks it, supplement with formula.

since she is pumping, supplement the pumped milk with formula- start off with ~ 3/4th breast 1/4th formula then go up to 50/50 milk/formula.

we did this and it helped due to the fact that I could do the feeding and SHE(wife)could sleep. also formula is more "filling" than breast milk - at least in my experience mighta changed in the past 8 years- which leads to kids sleeping longer in the evening.

after ~3 weeks we ditched the breast milk and just went whole hog formula- i'd make a half GALLON of the stuff a day in the morning..every morning.

both kids were 7lbs when born ...after 3 months the boy -who basically was on formula from the get go- weighed 4lbs more than my daughter who started mostly breast milk.

it gets better as soon as the baby sleeps through the night, try to adjust the baby's feedings- so that there is no 2am feeding. forget what the schedule was like but my last "evening" feeding was at about 12:30 am which was formula only(again see the more filling part) which allowed me and brenda to sleep until ~5am.


weight wise

my 11yr old son who was breastfed until real food- weighs in at ~77lbs
my 8yr old son was was bottle fed formula until real food- weighs 80lbs-and is not fat, boy is just stocky
my 8yr old daughter- was mostly formula but almost for first month breast, 60lbs.

So apparentlyall major baby food manufacturers have lead in their product. I don't know if this is serious or not, I don't know what the lead levels are like in everything else we eat. But holy shit.

We started to supplement right from the start, more or less. My wife ended up having a C-Section (daughter was big), so we think it delayed her milk by a few days more than normal. She's pumping enough now that we are feeding mostly milk, but we still have to use formula here and there. This latching this is stressing me out to no end because my wife is taking it as a personal failure on her part, despite the fact that we have a healthy, happy daughter. I think she's coming around slowly, though.

We've been taking turns with feeding for the last few days and it has made tons of difference with our sleep levels. We aren't walking around like zombies anymore, at least. Also, surprisingly, just getting out of the house for a walk around the neighborhood or something makes a world of difference.

Had a rough weekend, saturday night was one of the worst we ever had. Sunday around noon I found the reason: 4 teeth pushing through at once. Poor girl.

She also started pulling herself up on anything she can get a hold of. Gonna go and buy a tricycle really soon just to make the wife mad.
Really glad all our outlets are kidsafe. Also installed a stairs protector (whatever you call those) so she can't go up to the attic (which is still a work in progress at the moment).

Deathwing_sl said:

Never understand why people don't make their own baby food.

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My wife and I were just talking about this... you have any resources?

mkopec_sl said:

LOL, you boil some veggies, (in some broth if you like your kid to have some flavor) and blend them. You can even freeze them in ice cube trays for later use.

Carrots, carrots and peas, sweet potato, etc. Basically what you can buy in baby food you can make yourself.

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Good. I will continue to ignore all the baby food cookbooks.