Nurture, Inc’s HappyTot and HappyBaby foods that come in pouches are being voluntarily recalled. Really these pouch foods seem like a good idea, but I constantly am reading about failures in them, from not staying sealed to bacterial contamination. Staying away for now, relying on the “old fashioned” jar, which isn’t perfect either.

I need some reassurance from these companies. Time for damage control!

Check these pouches for swelling or leaking, but check the product info and return if there is any doubts to get your refund.

Another worried parent rant.

There is a price to be paid however, which is our reliance on these technologies. Many parents have become dependant on their cool gadgets and that can spell trouble, particularly when it gets in the way of living life.

They’re Everywhere, They’re Everywhere You can find a million products to help keep an eye on your baby in their crib, it feeds our parental need to know what our baby is up to every second.

New parents are the most succeptible and often receive these as gifts early in their baby's life. The assumption being that they will need to monitor every movement.  While we have them on camera all day taking pictures and video of their latest tricks, we seem to want to extend that obsession to night time.

A Watched Pot Never Boils

I won’t argue that they are certainly very helpful to keep an eye on your baby’s sleep habits without disturbing them, especially if you are transitioning them to their own room for the first time.

But at the same time, there is also a downside to these constant surveillance techniques.  It can keep us from allowing them work things out on their own. Hearing every grunt or movement can also be a hindrance to parents trying to learn how to get their baby to sleep.

Alternative And Freedom

I’m not saying that you should close the door and ignore your baby, but at times it might be a good idea to turn off the monitor and just let your baby relax on their own.  (Also, new parents need to relearn how to relax.)

There comes a point where all this staring into the baby monitor is more stressful and sleep-preventing than helpful for your baby. The baby will do what they are doing and you hearing every sound they make at night can keep you wide awake with the anticipation of more cries or demands from the crib.  I know I slept better when I didn’t hear every sleep disturbance amplified through the static of our monitor receiver!

If you find yourself hovering over your baby monitor, breathlessly waiting for the next squeak or squawk signaling wake-up, just turn it off (or at least turn down the volume) and try to read, talk to your spouse or just get some sleep.

Not to dishearten the new parents, but our daughter turned one today and the last three nights have been a return to what life used to be like before we returned to sleep.  Up every 2 hours and fits of crying.

The culprit?  We wracked our brains and thought it was one of the following:

• New footed pajamas bugging her.
• Too cold in her room (weather has been between teens to negative digits for a week now).
• Noise from visiting parents in our guest room scaring her.
• Teething.

It’s always the simplest solution — she has her first cold.  Well, at least it looks like a cold, runny nose is tormenting her at night time preventing easy breathing — frustration and tears.

But this turns out to be symptoms something bigger.

Her one year checkup today informed us that she is teething, not just one or two teeth mind you, but four of her back molars are coming in at the same time.  (Can you hear my screams of anguish?)  Not just for me and my wife returning to no sleep for days, but for our daughter being uncomfortable, tired and cranky for who knows how long?

So the lesson I’ve learned is, just because things have gotten better, don’t count on them staying comfortable.  There is a high likelihood of returning to the “olden days” of broken sleep patterns.  And there really isn’t much you can do about it since no amount of sleep training will really get your child to sleep through this much discomfort.

Just make sure you keep at least one bottle of ibuprofen laying around, for everyone involved.

From a little wriggling helpless newborn all the way through new teeth, talking, crawling, standing, sleeping through the night… amazing!  If only I could grow and learn so much in a single year.

Happy First Birthday to my baby girl!  I love you!

Article link1 : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231896/When-Daddy-goes-deaf-How-men-really-DONT-hear-babies-crying-asleep.html

Article 2 http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/143188/Sleep-patterns-Yes-dads-do-turn-a-deaf-ear

One of the conclusions they found was that men’s sleep is not as likely to be disturbed  by a baby crying as a woman.  For the most part I can believe it, but I sure do wake up fast when our baby cries in the middle of the night.  I don’t think I’m overly sensitive, but I am a light sleeper and this definitely woke me up.

I particularly liked this quote:

“These differing sensitivities may represent evolutionary differences that make women sensitive to sounds associated with a potential threat to their children while men are more finely tuned to disturbances posing a possible threat to the whole family,” said psychologist Dr David Lewis.

But then they describe what men wake up for:

1. Car alarm
2. Howling wind
3. Buzzing fly
4. Snoring
5. Noise from drains
6. Crickets…

Since when are crickets a threat to the whole family?  Not sure I get that.

Anyhow, I’m sure some of these would keep me from getting to sleep, but would I actually be awoken be a dripping tap?  I think the jury still is out on that one.

I believe that men and women would react differently to the sound of a baby crying, especially their own baby. (I don’t recall it bothering me much before we had our own.)  But I always wonder about these studies and the intent behind them.

Car alarm

Howling wind

Buzzing fly

Snoring

Noise from drains

Crickets

Emergency sirens

Clock ticking

Drilling/workmen

Dripping tap

With the holidays barreling towards us, it’s time to find a great product for your baby.

Parent’s magazine has put out it’s list of Best Toys for Baby 2009 and there should be a good selection for anyone with a younger child, babies to toddlers.  Don’t shop for your teenager from this list or you’ll be in serious trouble!

Even worse, cribs are not exactly a disposable item. Many have paid a great deal of money for their model thinking it would last for many years.  So there is pressure on parents to replace the crib, but the financial realities prevent them from doing it.

I feel fortunate that my wife and I were talked out of buying the drop-sided cribs when we were in the market.  Probably it was due more to a sales clerk being anxious to sell the model this small store carried rather than us going elsewhere, but I think there was also the issue of the wear and tear on the drop sided cribs.

I guess it makes sense not to get swept up in the latest hysteria and dumping a model that has not been seen to have this danger.  Not that there isn’t a danger there, but hopefully this will initiate a review of all the other makers and models to ensure there have been adequate testing so that these tragedies won’t occur again.

I always think it’s amazing anyone is crazy or wealthy enough to manufacture any baby products due to the legal issues if there is even one accident with any product.  I guess there is enough reward to mitigate the risk of lawsuits and recalls.

But even still I’ll be Stork Craft is hurting right now.

From the US Consumer Product Safety Commission

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), in cooperation with Stork Craft Manufacturing Inc., of British Columbia, Canada, today announced the voluntary recall of more than 2.1 million Stork Craft drop-side cribs, including about 147,000 Stork Craft drop-side cribs with the Fisher-Price logo. The recall involves approximately 1,213,000 units distributed in the United States and 968,000 units distributed in Canada…

Go To The Full Announcement

We just moved to a new house and my office was situated right across from our daughter Ella’s room. It is convenient if she needs anything, but also the noise computers can generate can be a problem.

Especially the keyboard.

Ella can’t stand the sound of typing on a keyboard and I can’t blame her. The sounds of computer typing like there are two caffeinated mice running around in a cage. Unfortunately, since I write a lot, that’s pretty much all I do on my computer. Additionally, I also owned the cheapest old PC keyboard in history and setting it on a wooden desk just made it sound even more like there were squirrels trapped in the walls. So I needed a solution fast.

After a few fruitless searches (why does Best Buy keep so few keyboards on their shelves anyway?) I found the perfect winner.

The Logitech K300 which I termed the “ninja stealth” keyboard.

It satisfied all my demands:

1. It was relatively cheap.
2. It didn’t need to be wireless.
3. Had to have normal, full-sized keys.
4. The keys are quiet!

In fact, this thing is nearly silent. I was impressed.

It also had the additional benefits of:

1. Being low profile which I find easier to type on.
2. Backlit button bar on the top which just looks kind of cool.

So if you’re in the market for a quieter keyboard, I’d consider this one. It’s priced at about $30.00. Anything cheaper seemed to be the old noisy kind, and there are a lot of more expensive models for gamers and ergo-fetishists.  I chose the middle-way.

The price sure is right and now I can type and Ella can get her snoozes without interruption.

Fast forward nine months: Ella started sleeping through the night at about ten and a half months old.  One of those first nights when Ella was sleeping, James and I started having conversations again (somehow we remembered each other’s name and had this vague sense that we were married)!  After months of not having a real conversation, the first thing we talked about was how we were completely flabbergasted that ten and a half months later, sleep would still be an issue.  Pre-baby, we both had this notion (which makes me laugh hysterically now) that if you wanted a baby to sleep, you put the baby in his or her crib and voila, you have a sleeping baby.  I even remember a co-worker saying to me when I was pregnant that babies don’t know the difference between night and day, so they’re up all night and sleep all day.  I just wasn’t getting it; I KNEW that my baby would be different.

Now go back again nine months to the beginning, before we knew what the light at the end of the tunnel would look like.  Essentially, we were grasping at straws trying to figure it all out.  Our Bradley birthing class instructor said to get a five hour stretch of sleep several times per week or post-partum depression could set in.  Well, how is that possible if you’re nursing and the baby needs to eat every two hours?  Ella was too small to be able to nurse in the side-lying position in bed with me.  She needed to be held, so I needed to be sitting up, which meant getting up.  It was painful.

We went through many cycles of Ella sleeping in her crib and co-sleeping, and where she was sleeping depended on how we could best meet our needs as a family at that time.  Wow – this is quite a challenge: we take all of our competing needs and attempt to fulfill them in such a way that everyone thrives.  It requires a lot of patience (because sometimes our needs take a back seat) and openness (to realize we may need to meet our needs in a way that is not our first choice).  Here we are at a paradox again: as a mom, I would like to model taking care of myself and yet sometimes meeting my needs just isn’t going to happen.  Here is where the tricky balance comes in and I suspect that I’ll spend a lifetime trying to figure it out.  At the very least, I’d like to be able to chew my food and digest at mealtimes.

Back to the crib / co-sleeping dance.  We learned that if you are co-sleeping, everyone in bed has to be getting good sleep or it is not working.  Ella slept in a bassinet next to our bed when she came home from the hospital (or in our bed from time to time).  We were eager to get Ella sleeping in her crib because she would wake up every time we moved, so we had to sleep like mummies which was annoying.  Eventually James slept in the guest room.  Ella started sleeping well in her crib at eight weeks, but then eventually resisted going to sleep so we brought her in bed with us and we all fell asleep together during most of her fifth and sixth months.  Eventually, Ella would fall asleep in her crib again, but we would bring her in bed when she woke up to eat.  We did this into her ninth month.  I went back to work part-time when Ella was four months, so that’s the main reason why we brought her to be with us – it was very easy to nurser her during the night and I’d barely have to wake up.  However, she got bigger and started kicking, so we needed to get her back into her crib – i.e., the sleeping arrangement was no longer working for 2 out of 3 of us.  When we transitioned Ella back to her crib, she did very well.  She was ready to have her own space at night and being away from the “snack bar”, she woke up a lot less frequently.  At ten months, we let her cry one night when we put her to bed (because we NEEDED sleep) and she only cried for 20 minutes, and has slept through the night since.

Now the main concern that I have is WHAT IF SHE STOPS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT.  OK, I tell my self that I shouldn’t worry about things that I have no control over, but if Ella squawks at night, it’s like I get struck with a lightening bolt of fear that she’ll wake up and never sleep through the night again.  So far that hasn’t happened and I remind myself to trust the process – I survived ten and a half months of interrupted sleep, and I’ll survive again if I get a few more nights of bad sleep.

In summary, here is what I have learned about baby sleep: reading the many (and contradicting) books on baby sleep if that is what you want to do is fine – add tools to your tool box – but I would advise tuning into your family and trusting your intuition.  By fumbling through this process, Ella eventually learned to sleep though the night and so will your baby.  It feels like an eternity when you’re in the midst of sleep deprivation, and it’s painful.  I wish I could help with that, but all I can do is recommend drinking lots of coffee.