A Real Dad?

I feel like an impostor when I even consider it. I am such an amateur at this parenting thing. It's like a kindergartner teaching college calculus, or the Grape Ape lecturing on recent advances in peanut growing techniques. You would smile politely and think that it was cute, but you wouldn't rely on Grape's knowledge when the time comes to plant your own peanuts, now would you? Really?

But with Lukas tipping the chronological scale at nearly one year, I am starting to believe I could actually have something meaningful to say. Something of value I could pass on to another new father who, by some freak force of nature, might happen upon my little "proud new father" daddy blog looking for just such advice. (Hey, as they say, if you give a hundred monkeys typewriters they will eventually create the complete works of Shakespeare, right?)

Well, here it goes. My first piece of advice as an experienced father of a happy one year old: Let your baby learn how to put himself or herself to sleep! It made all the difference in the world for Lukas, and for our sanity as well.

Mrs. LIAYF and I spent the first 6 months of Luke's life severely sleep deprived. He wouldn't sleep more than a couple of hours at a time. We were trying every 'trick' in the book to get him to sleep including swaddling, pacifier, nursing him to sleep, rocking, you name it we tried it. We cringed at the thought of letting him cry himself to sleep, and we went immediately to help him when he woke in the middle of the night. We didn't have to heart to let our son cry when we knew we could do something to make him feel better. It didn't occur to us until later that he was training us to come when he cried, because he relied on us to put him to sleep. That was our failing at the time.

We finally hit the wall at 6 months. We had to do something. We decided that Lukas needed to learn how to put himself to sleep, both at bedtime and in the middle of the night, just like everyone else on this planet. We bought several books and finally purchased an on-line program that outlined everything all the books had said:

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(1) Babies and toddlers need 13-14 hours of sleep a day!!!!! This includes 2-3 naps per day until age one, and 1-2 naps after that.

(2) Babies respond to a consistent nap-time and bedtime routine, which will cue them that it's time to go to sleep.

(3) Babies need to go to bed between 7-8pm. And,

(4) YES, babies will cry when as they learn to put themselves to sleep, but with consistency the baby's response improves quickly.

With these guidelines in mind, there are several ways to put a baby to bed - sitting next to the crib, sitting in the room, leaving the room and checking on the baby. All involve a bedtime routine, putting the baby in the crib awake and NOT picking up the baby after you put him in the crib (unless they are sick or otherwise need special attention). This can be painful for parents who rush to pick up their baby every time they cry - as we did.

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Yes, Lukas did cry for over 2 hours that first night before putting himself to sleep. We were there in the room with him and soothed him every 10 minutes or so. When he later woke in the night, we waited 10 minutes before going in to soothe him. I would go in, rather than Mrs. LIAYF, because we decided to skip the night nursing. Yes, it was excruciating the first night, but it got much better the next night, better yet the night after that. Within days Lukas was SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT and napping like a champ! We also noticed he became much happier with the extra sleep.

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Since then, barring the minor blips during developmental phases and the nasty cold and flu season, Luke has been a terrific sleeper. We put him to bed at 7:30 and use the same routine every night. Now he sleeps pretty soundly (knock on wood). This routine gives Luke the rest he needs to regenerate for the next day, and also gives us a bit of down time together in the evening to unwind. Everyone wins! We wish we would have considered sleep training much earlier with Lukas. The crying didn't hurt him any - it was just his only way to communicate that he didn't know how to put himself to sleep. Now, he goes to sleep without any crying at all and enjoys his bedtime routine - he will actually let us know when it's time for him to go "night-night."

Hopefully, some new dad will stumble upon this post someday and reap the benefits for his own little one. There it is, my first piece of official daddy advice. Yes, I finally feel like a real dad now!

Finger Eat'n Bad!

This moment brought to you by one tired 9 1/2 month old, and two parents who are still not jaded. We can still see the humor in a little person who when bedtime is fast approaching and he has already had enough to eat, believes the proper thing to do with yams and polenta would be to rub them in your hair, smear them on your face, and fling them over your shoulder (for good luck, no doubt)!

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I am sure there will be a time in the near future where we are not so amused by such a display, but for now we still think fiascos such as this are adorable. I hope that time doesn't come for quite a while. We can, and plan, to teach Lukas that life should be full of fun and that messes can be cleaned up without taking certain things too seriously. Check back with us from time to time to see how that is working!

This is How We Roll...

Albert Einstein famously said once: "The definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different result. ... " Countless parenting books, magazines, doctors, nurses, friends with kids, and just about any reference we could find say "put an infant, up to the first year of age, to sleep on his back.

Call me insane, but don't say I didn't have the best intentions. Budlet has been on a roll lately. Literally rolling around the floors of the house practicing his moves and trying to crawl. He gets his arse up in the air just fine sometimes and gets up on his arms often also, but hasn't quite mastered the art of putting those two skill sets together to actually begin to crawl. But he is getting awfully close. It is a bit humorous to see him try to crawl with his back end up and his face still planted on the carpet. I am surprised he doesn't yet have a rug burn on his nose.

Anyway, all this leads me to my delimma last night. After a good hour and a half of sleep on his back, Lukas decided it was time to practice his rolling and attempts at crawling. It apparently wasn't successful since he started to cry and when I went to check on him he was on his hands and 180 degrees rotated in his crib looking quite desperate. I rolled him over and turned him then tucked in his cover to the sides of the crib and comforted him. All seemed well for maybe a minute and I was ready to slink out of his room when over he went again. I again went through my motions of getting him settled and over once again he went. Well, this happened about 10 times with me attempting to lay a firm hand on his chest to keep him from rolling over (more cries until I removed said hand) but in the end Luke ended up where he intended which was on his stomach and asleep soundly.

What to do? I stood there in a state of delimma for a few moments until I decided to do what my gut instinct told me to do. Yes, I went downstairs and asked Mrs. LIAYF if I was being safe to leave him that way. I thought it was ok, and she did as well, but we were both (as new parents) struck with that lingering doubt that comes with bucking what all the expert advice tells you to do. It was the 'What if....?' That is a pretty strong devil on the other shoulder, so... needing assurance, Mrs. LIAYF called her younger sister who has the expert experience that we needed in just such a situation. She has 4 kids! She assured us to our relief that we were doing the right thing in leaving him to sleep on his stomach, since he can and will let us know if and when he needs rolled back to his back. We left him that way and that is the way he woke up this morning at 6:30. It seems that Budlet will be a side or stomach sleeper and we can't do a lot to prevent it. Que Sera, Sera!

Humble Pie?

Perhaps I should have named my blog something like "The Humbled Father" or "Just When You Thought You Were Getting the Hang of Things . . ." It seems that in my short experience as a father (Lukas was born June 27, 2007) every time my wife and I (especially me) begin to think we have things about figured out (and I mean figured out to the point we can start to do a bit of bragging to our friends and families that we have reached a certain milestone) life, or to be more specific parenthood, has a nice little way of reminding us that we are still amateurs. It slaps us upside the head and says "just what were you thinking anyway?"
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Case in point. Sleeping through the night! We spent the first 5 1/2 months of Lukas' life struggling with sleep deprivation. The first 6 weeks we were both off work so, even though we only slept in 1-2 hour increments, we slept when he did an were able to manage to get 8 hours of sleep in in the course of a day. After the first 6 weeks, I went back to work and tried to adjust. I continued to get up and help Mrs. LIAYF out at every feeding and would go to work on only a few hours of sleep, trying to catch up on the weekends. To compound matters, we have a very old and noisy house (think very creaky 100 year old fir floors!) and often when we would successfully get Lukas to sleep, the slightest step in the wrong place would result in eyes popping open suddenly, followed very shortly by intense screaming!
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We compensated by using a pacifier, swaddling, nursing, and rocking him to sleep, all of which had varying levels of success but accomplished one unintended thing. Lukas never learned to put himself to sleep without those sleep aides.
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We were of the mind early on that we wanted Lukas to sleep in his crib in his own room so that is where we would put him down for the night, swaddled and with a pacifier. Life was getting better. We were now getting 2- 3 hour stretches, sometimes even 4. Then, just when we thought we were getting things figured out... Lukas began to spit out the pacifier and wake up wondering where it was! This began to happened more and more frequently, until I was getting up almost on the hour to run back to his room to give him the pacifier and get him back to sleep. It had to stop! I was almost falling over tired at work as was Mrs. LIAYF at home. We decided to begin to take away sleep aides. First it was the rocking, then the swaddling, then the night nursing so that all that was left was the pacifier and it had to go!
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Yes, there was a lot of crying and yes was PAINFUL to hear (we stayed and comforted him every 5-10 minutes)! But in the end, Lukas learned to put himself to sleep and began to sleep through the night more often (7:30 -6:30). We were ecstatic! This is where the humbling part comes in. It may just be coincidence, but it seems that whenever we decide, because we are so ecstatic, to brag a bit and let people know how well Lukas is doing, things go horribly sideways!
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Well, not horribly really, but just not nearly as well as they were. We decide to brag that Lukas is sleeping through the night, so he begins to roll over in his crib several times a night and cries for someone to help, or decides that 1 AM is actually playtime and not sleep time. Parenting is a work in progress! So, if you are one of our friends or family who listens to us brag about sleep, or some other milestone Lukas has reached, please just give us that knowing look or come right out and remind us that we are really still amateurs and not to get to comfortable, because we are just getting started on this parenting thing.
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We will thank you later!