congrats!
We are now frighteningly close, just another 20 days till due date..welp.
Hopefully we've got everything we need, i'm amazingly excited and terrified at the same time!!!
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ParentGaf OT: Birth, Bib and Beyond
- Thread starter User 100115
- Start date
congrats!
We are now frighteningly close, just another 20 days till due date..welp.
Hopefully we've got everything we need, i'm amazingly excited and terrified at the same time!!!
Skellig Gra
Member
QuantumSquid
Member
I will probably never have kids but I just want to say I have so much respect for all of the parents/soon-to-be parents in this thread. We'd have a brighter future if the average parent was more like the parents that post here.
indigo-cyclops
Member
Our little guy seems to have regressed significantly the past week; was having on-and-off sleeping issues since we got back from visiting relatives over Thanksgiving. He's 10 months old now and showing some teeth, so the inevitable eruption of more may have something to do with it. But the past few days have just been awful. Last night my wife, god bless her, was up countless times and he was waking up every 1.5 hours. The ups-and-downs, the not really knowing what's going on, it can be too much at times.
So Parent-GAF, does this sound familiar to you around this age? He's crawling like a champ, even takes 3-5 steps on his own at this point. Gets into everything, very curious, mostly happy during the day. Naps well. I feel developmentally he may even be slightly ahead of the curve, but he's never been a problematic baby. He was sleeping like a champ up until we went out of town.
I really have to gather myself some nights to keep it together. My wife stays home with him so there's an inner push-pull where I do my best at night so she can get some much needed sleep, especially on the weekends.
Funny thing, nothing brings me more joy than seeing him smile the next day.
Hope you all have a wonderful new year.
So Parent-GAF, does this sound familiar to you around this age? He's crawling like a champ, even takes 3-5 steps on his own at this point. Gets into everything, very curious, mostly happy during the day. Naps well. I feel developmentally he may even be slightly ahead of the curve, but he's never been a problematic baby. He was sleeping like a champ up until we went out of town.
I really have to gather myself some nights to keep it together. My wife stays home with him so there's an inner push-pull where I do my best at night so she can get some much needed sleep, especially on the weekends.
Funny thing, nothing brings me more joy than seeing him smile the next day.
Hope you all have a wonderful new year.
Vincent Grayson
Member
Skellig Gra
Member
So Pete has been puking constantly the last day and a half and I just joined the club. Puking on New Years has a different meaning these days heh.
Anything and everything can go.
WE used sleep training techniques at that age for our first kid, and our second. Second we had to untrain somebody habits (grandmother used to carry him to sleep), and it took a lot of work, but he has been sleeping through the night for at least 4 months (he's 18 months), and we now just do his sleep routine, put him in his cot, turn the lights off and walk out. Sometimes he sleeps straight away, sometimes after 30 minutes, but he doesn't fight it and sleeps through anywhere from 10-12 hours.
With teething, he doesn't show much sign apart from a loss of appetite. Our first kid, though, would wake p through the night like yours.
hahahaha.
This year, with Maya around we got TONS of packages in the mail. ALL of them for the little munchkin. We have yet to purchase her any toys and the house is full of them. Not to mention the mountain of clothes as well.
Happy new year tho! i mostly lurk this thread, but this year perhaps i can partake in some of the discussions and share some pics of the little one soon.
Vent time.
My 13 month old is having a hell of a sleep regression. Averaging about 2 hours a night to soothe him to sleep. He wants to go to sleep, he's lying there still periodically closing his eyes but he just can't shut down. He's also teething so he's super unsettled.
So tonight I used one of those 8 hour YouTube lullaby videos. Took just under an hour but it worked pretty well... until the plot twist.
About 20 minutes after he finally went to sleep the YouTube thing blasted an Allianz Insurance commercial at about 4x the volume of the lullaby. Scared the shit out of him and he screamed for 10 minutes and got so worked up he can't get back to sleep again.
My wife and I are practically in tears. We just wanted a little bit of quiet time tonight to stare at the TV and regroup.
My 13 month old is having a hell of a sleep regression. Averaging about 2 hours a night to soothe him to sleep. He wants to go to sleep, he's lying there still periodically closing his eyes but he just can't shut down. He's also teething so he's super unsettled.
So tonight I used one of those 8 hour YouTube lullaby videos. Took just under an hour but it worked pretty well... until the plot twist.
About 20 minutes after he finally went to sleep the YouTube thing blasted an Allianz Insurance commercial at about 4x the volume of the lullaby. Scared the shit out of him and he screamed for 10 minutes and got so worked up he can't get back to sleep again.
My wife and I are practically in tears. We just wanted a little bit of quiet time tonight to stare at the TV and regroup.
H.Protagonist
[-_-]/
That's...the worst. I had something kind of like that happen when I was forced to use my phone for Mia's sleep app one time. The sleep sound app doesn't have commercials or interruptions or anything (maybe this would work for you guys if you have an old phone like we do?), but if anyone, say, calls or texts, it'll shut right off. Messaged my sister ahead of time to say not to text, but what did I hear going off like mad at 3AM? Ding! Ding! Ding! Dingdingdingding! App was all the way up and therefore the message dings were earth-shatteringly loud. Cue screaming and tears for the next couple of hours. Oh, but I figured I'd just send a few cute pictures of the cat! That's not distracting like actual messages, she says... -_-
But, anyway, sympathy from afar. May the regression end swiftly.
I would suggest buying a cheap sound machine that has variable white noise, timer and volume controls. We bought one and it has become part of our son's sleeping "ritual" each night and even for naps in the crib during the day. He sleep SOOO much better with it on in the nursery.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
I probably shouldn't be worried, but our daughter is going on 18 months and still isn't really forming words or repeating anything. When is the common window for speech?
Skellig Gra
Member
What do you mean by "isn't really forming words"? Can she say any words?
ChronotriggerJM
Member
She babbles, but doesn't seem to be interested in mimicking speech. We're not even at mama and papa lol.
That said, she's mimicking physical actions pretty rapidly.
Skellig Gra
Member
I think around 2 years is when they are supposed to really have huge growth in speech. I wouldn't get too worked up about it.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Don't worry. Kids don't only learn at different rates, they learn in different ways.
My youngest was more-or-less on whatever the 'normal' was considered to be at the time.
My second was talking really early, but in a language she had made up herself that only she and her elder sister could understand. Then took her a while to pick up English as a second language.
My eldest was slow apparently. I say apparently, because she had just internalised all the language stuff. One day I was heading out to work and couldn't find my car keys and was getting a bit fretful about it. I picked M up and asked if she knew where the keys were - and she said, clearly and loud "they are in the pocket of your dressing-gown Daddy". Those were her first words.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
Okay, thanks for that lol. It's so weird how shes learning many physical actions from watching her mother, like putting on make-up, cooking, cleaning, dancing etc. but had no interest in speech. Just had me a little concerned, and Google searches brought up some crazy ranges. Children really are all different lol.
ChronotriggerJM
Member
LOL that's awesome.
Her receptive language is hit or miss. For some things like certain toy identification, it's very good, but for things like milk or food, she's not quite there.
Unrelated, she doesn't like to eat real food at all, and the misses still purees everything
she's nearly got a full mouth of teeth. Definitely need to work on that.Sorry for the whining lol, I'm way more "let them develop at their own pace" kinda guy, but the misses gets me concerned sometimes lol.
Marty Chinn
Member
18 months isn't quite concerning yet as maybe she's a late speaker, but the one thing that I have noticed is girls tend to pick up speaking earlier than boys do. I'd be slightly concerned if she's not saying any words, but you're still in that window where it's still can be normal and not a definite problem. It's usually around 12 months when it's pretty common that they're saying a few words. Just as a reference point, my daughter said probably about 8 words by then, and my son about 2 words. At 18 months she was over 120 words, and then at 24 months she was well over 500 words with 4 to 5 word sentences. So it really can explode pretty quickly. By contrast, my son was still only doing single word communication at 24 months with a much more limited vocabulary. In the long run, my daughter was pretty advanced in speech compared to other kids while my son was a bit behind for awhile until it really kicked into gear sometime maybe around 2 and a half. At their respective ages, my daughter was well ahead of my son; it was anywhere from six months to a year difference in speech ability.
After going through a miscarriage one year ago, my wife is now expecting once again, thank God. She is now 12 weeks pregnant and out of that first trimester and all is going wonderfully with no problems at all. We once again told my family on Christmas Eve but we waited a month longer than last time. Last time we told them on Christmas Eve of 2015 and just a few days later we knew something bad was wrong. It's been a hell of a hard year, 2016, as we sat there with no luck and cousin after cousin and friend after friend all became pregnant, and even my niece got pregnant a little while after our miscarriage and had the baby just before Christmas. We considered going on a vacation for both Thanksgiving and Christmas and were just going to skip all holiday activities entirely since it was so tied into our announcement the year before, but sure enough we found out just before Thanksgiving so we went with it. Here is the thread I started on the miscarriage. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1167020
Talk about a sigh of relief for the two of us though. We are very happy to be out of that first trimester. Now we have our fingers crossed that all else goes well!
Talk about a sigh of relief for the two of us though. We are very happy to be out of that first trimester. Now we have our fingers crossed that all else goes well!
A general time window for the first word is between 7 and 18 months. But that doesn´t mean it is uncommon that she isn´t forming a word yet (but I can understand that you are worried, this is normal for us parents^^). I know parents where their child started far later. Just keep an eye on her and talk a lot. If you have the impression she has problems with her ears see a doctor (again, don´t worry). Friends of us have realized this around the second birthday of their child and a small operation had to be done. After that their little one was talking non-stop.
Congrats!
ChronotriggerJM
Member
Awesome to hear. I hope for a smooth journey for the two of you.
Our little one listens to Baby Beatles (piano & xylophone only, no lyrics) on my 2013 Moto G.
There's a lot of other good stuff on Spotify as well. Enable offline play and there you go. Or just buy the albums and use a purely offline music player.
It's hard early on, but gets much better when they're a little older. Built in best friend!
TheBryanJZX90
Member
On that note, try baby sign language! It actually worked for us and our daughter and we were similarly worried about her language development around that age.
7DollarHagane
Banned
2 was easy for me. 3 is a constant struggle of testing limits and not wanting to be told what to do ever about anything. Good luck.
Oops I thought you meant age not quantity of kids, lol.
Marty Chinn
Member
1 is easy. 2 is hard. It's more than twice the work. With 1, you outnumber the kid. Someone can watch the kid while the other does other chores or takes a break. With 2, you no longer outnumber them. A lot of stuff no longer gets done because in many cases you each take a kid. One was easy for us. She made us cocky. Two knocked us on our ass and smacked reality into us. I wish someone warned me how much harder having two is over one. I have to imagine three is even worse because now they outnumber you.
I remember thinking I can't wait until my kid walks because I'm tired of carrying him around. My friend then said no, no, no it gets worse when they walk and run because then you are chasing them around. He was right. LOL
The first 9 months was the easiest for both my kids. Sleep, eat, shit, repeat. That's it.
The first 9 months was the easiest for both my kids. Sleep, eat, shit, repeat. That's it.
SSGMUN10000
Connoisseur Of Tedium
Hello ParentGaf. I am a father of a 5, 3, and 1 yr old. These kids are very active. Its tough but wouldnt trade it for anything.
Being a mom of a toddler and a newborn I find it hard to get home made meals for the family. Does anyone have suggestions or tips or recipes for quick and easy meals?
ChronoTriggerJM, if your daughter understands you and is progressing well in other areas, you probably don`t need to be concerned. At 2 years old, my son barely talked. Due to his personality, he didn`t seem to understand what was being said to him. (He is quiet and shy and loves doing his own thing and not necessary play or interact with other kids) His daycare caretaker thought he was possibly autistic. He is almost 4 now and can talk up a storm when he wants to. Anyway, during that time, I went through various assessments for him through local child development centers to determine if he was truly developmentally delayed. You probably can find some resources online for Age and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) which was what the centers used for my son.
ChronoTriggerJM, if your daughter understands you and is progressing well in other areas, you probably don`t need to be concerned. At 2 years old, my son barely talked. Due to his personality, he didn`t seem to understand what was being said to him. (He is quiet and shy and loves doing his own thing and not necessary play or interact with other kids) His daycare caretaker thought he was possibly autistic. He is almost 4 now and can talk up a storm when he wants to. Anyway, during that time, I went through various assessments for him through local child development centers to determine if he was truly developmentally delayed. You probably can find some resources online for Age and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) which was what the centers used for my son.
Marty Chinn
Member
My wife has been going through this struggle. Some suggestions are:
- On the weekend, precut veggies and other stuff and put them into ziplock bags so that during the week, they're just ready to go
- Plan your entire week of meals ahead of time during the weekend before so you know exactly what you need and already know what you're going to cook on each day
- Simple things that she does is cooking pasta. For pasta, we have an electric water kettle and we use that to boil water quicker and poor that into the pot which sort of speeds up the process of bringing the water to boil to cook the pasta rather than letting the water boil from scratch in the pot.
- An easy chicken recipe that can be done with any number of sauces is get some chicken breast, dump your sauce over it into a baking dish, and cook for 30 min at 400 degrees. It's super simple and easy to prep with minimal effort. We do BBQ, mushroom sauce, teriyaki, etc.
- Crock pot any time you can and let it just cook during the day so it's ready when you get home. Stews are pretty simple to do since you just throw everything in and let it go
All great advice.
I just wanted to point out the elect water kettle...it still amazes method what is basically a standard household appliance here (and every motel and hotel room has one here) is considered something of a special appliance in US. It boggled my mind. Just differences I guess.
Time for a cup of tea.
Do you have routine hearing tests there?
Over here, while you're still in the hospital, a hearing specialist will test a newborns hearing. Our son was sort of mild fail, and had followups since then. He's been diagnosed with mild hearing loss, and now has routine checkups every few months to monitor it. Hearing loss can obviously affect language development.
For our son, it's not meant to be bad enough to affect learning. He does seem a bit slower to pick up the language stuff compared to our daughter, but it's nothing to be concerned about yet, we feel.
Our son was such a champ with food from the start. He'd give anything a go. Broccoli, avocado, eggplant, zucchini, cauliflower, pumpkin... he'd eat it all.
The fussiness has well and truly kicked in now though (13 months). Nutritionless starchy carbs to the exclusion of everything else. If we're eating out we can't order anything with fries for ourselves because he just wont be able to accept any other food while they are in sight.
Ugh. Going to have to start finding ways to creative. Can only get away with disguising hidden veg in mashed potato or ravioli for so long. We've done savoury muffins with wholemeal flower and carrot/sweet potato and also wholemeal mini-pancakes with banana and berries but that's still a fair bit of empty carbs. He still gives fruit a fair go, mainly banana and strawberries but would like to get more variety into him.
The fussiness has well and truly kicked in now though (13 months). Nutritionless starchy carbs to the exclusion of everything else. If we're eating out we can't order anything with fries for ourselves because he just wont be able to accept any other food while they are in sight.
Ugh. Going to have to start finding ways to creative. Can only get away with disguising hidden veg in mashed potato or ravioli for so long. We've done savoury muffins with wholemeal flower and carrot/sweet potato and also wholemeal mini-pancakes with banana and berries but that's still a fair bit of empty carbs. He still gives fruit a fair go, mainly banana and strawberries but would like to get more variety into him.
IIf you don't have a crock-pot or slow-cooker I suggest you get one ASAP. They're the best. Just need 10 mins to chop meat and vegetables and throw in a slow-cooker type sauce sachet and you can walk away. 4-8 hours later dinner is waiting. If it's a stew you can chuck dumpling balls in there with an hour to go. Casseroles you can serve with crusty bread or rice.
If you can get a 1 hour window on the weekend you can even make up the slow-cooker ingredients in advance. Chuck it all in zip lock bags and put them in the freezer and you have delicious, nutrious meals ready to go that require about 30 seconds preparation on the day you want it (i.e. plop that frozen mass in the cooker and turn it on).
Can do so many things with a slow cooker... stews, curries, lamb shanks, casseroles, ragus, soups, pot roasts, pulled pork, brisket, ribs, even desserts. The meat always comes out super tender and melt in the mouth too. And the meals puree really well for the little ones too. You can also do amazing homemade baby food in it.
There are awesome slow cooker groups on Facebook with recipes galore.
Our slow cooker kept us alive over the last 6 months. It's a hot Australian summer now so it's kinda hibernating for a while though. Not the sort of food you want when you're sweating.
Kids are funny like that, huh?
WE've only really started to give our kid food that we eat, and it just means he is less interested in his own meals, and just wants us to give him what we have, even though we know he won't go for it.
He loves noodles though.
He's a weird one. like we'll steam him a bowl of broccoli and carrots, and have some ready to steam the next day. First day, yum, carrots, throw the broccoli away. next day, yum broccoli, won't touch the carrots.
OH, just something to try for the kids as well, try steaming vegetables instead of boiling them. they taste way stronger and nicer.
Hello everyone, I'm in a tricky situation right now. My son (7 months) won't accept breastfeeding during the day easily.
We started giving him "Milchbrei", I think this translates to milk cereal or something similar. It's this powder with milk and stuff in it, you pour hot water over it and feed it.
We gave it to him because I'm a stay at home Dad right now and my SO finishing university.
After 1 1/2 month we have more time to breatfeed regularly again but he starts crying and screaming when breastfeeding during day. Night and morning is no problem though. Eventually it will work but not after a lot of hassle and sometimes he will just get so angry his head nearly explodes.
We stopped giving him the milk cereal, only real food. Vegetables, a bit of bread and fruits. We also stopped giving him natural flavored tea and switched it for boring preboiled water.
Anyone has an idea how to get him into breastfeeding again? Similar experiences?
Thanks everyone
We started giving him "Milchbrei", I think this translates to milk cereal or something similar. It's this powder with milk and stuff in it, you pour hot water over it and feed it.
We gave it to him because I'm a stay at home Dad right now and my SO finishing university.
After 1 1/2 month we have more time to breatfeed regularly again but he starts crying and screaming when breastfeeding during day. Night and morning is no problem though. Eventually it will work but not after a lot of hassle and sometimes he will just get so angry his head nearly explodes.
We stopped giving him the milk cereal, only real food. Vegetables, a bit of bread and fruits. We also stopped giving him natural flavored tea and switched it for boring preboiled water.
Anyone has an idea how to get him into breastfeeding again? Similar experiences?
Thanks everyone
I don't know what the nursing experts in your country suggest, but in our country, they suggest breastfeed until as long as possible, preferably for a couple years at least.
But in my experience, baby will wean when they feel like it, which has been in the past about a year. Maybe your infant just doesn't want to. I'm not an expert, so I don't know the best advice, but consider that you can't just force a baby to do what you want it to do all the time. If you want to continue with breast milk, maybe consider bottles and a pump for those times when he's not willing to latch?
Otherwise maybe consider why he is not latching - is it a supply issue, or maybe with solids he is relying less on milk.
Again, I'm no expert, just offering possibilities.