Up to nine children die from SIDs per day in the United States. One can interpret this as either a positive considering that since there are tens of thousands of babies born each year, statistically the odds of your baby dying from SIDs is very low. Unfortunately, if you are one of those affected, the statistics mean nothing.
Children are generally considered to be at highest risk of dying of SIDs between birth and one year of age. Cases of SIDs have been reported in children as old as two years, but this seems to be rare.
I decided I wasn’t willing to take the risk. A friend of ours had a baby a few months before us. They had looked into the topic of SIDs and found several products that looked promising.
The product I and our friends both settled on is an infant motion monitor. It works by sensing the baby’s smallest movements from breathing and all other body movements. As long as the baby is breathing, it will flash a green light. If it doesn’t detect movement for 20 seconds or if movement slows to less than 10 movements per minute, a loud alarm sounds.
We bought the HiSense BabySense V Infant Movement Monitor from Continue reading ‘Help prevent SIDs with a movement sensor’
I’ve spoken to many parents to say that their child sleeps through the night easily and others who say getting the child to sleep in the first place is next to impossible and getting her to sleep through the night IS impossible.
I’ve been looking into the topic myself as I refuse to believe that there isn’t a way to get an infant into a routine.
Most of my research has shown that there is a system.
First off, don’t bother trying to get your infant into a routine any earlier than two to three months old. They’re just too young and don’t have any clue what is goining on. They are not self aware enough to get into a system until close to three months.
We got a preview of what was to come as my wife’s sister had a baby girl 9 months before Alexandria’s due date. Things didn’t go well for my sister-in-law and her husband. Her parents came in from out of town to help with the new baby. The problem was that they came for 6 months.
Upon their arrival, her parents decided their sole reason for being there was to keep the baby happy at all costs and that the baby should never cry. They did and outstanding job if that was their goal. The moment the baby w0uld utter a peep, they would go running to her side. They would be on top of her and talking or singing or playing with her every waking moment of the day until the baby would go to sleep for the night. They would hold and rock the baby to sleep.
This went on for 6 months straight. By the time the grandparents left and went home, they had completely convinced the baby Continue reading ‘Train your infant to sleep through the night’
Before Alexandria was even born, my wife and I often discussed how we were going to deal with the topic of sleeping since the one thing everyone with kids can agree on is that sleep becomes a luxury when the newborn comes home.
Since my wife’s sister had a baby 8 months before Alex was born, we had an idea of what to expect. My sister in law and her husband, started out by keeping the baby in their bedroom. Every time the baby would wake up and cry, both of them would get woken up and both would be up until the baby went back to sleep, even though only one of them was actually changing or feeding her.
While this is very noble and full of camaraderie, I am completely against it. The two of them both looked like zombies for months.
Wifey and I talked about it and decided the best approach for us to try is for us to split up. Since my company allowed me to take a couple of months off after the baby was born to help my wife, we were able to get more creative than we would have been had I needed to go back to work right away.
Since we had converted our guest room into the baby’s room, we already had a bed in there. Instead of both of us getting up all night, Continue reading ‘How to get sleep with a newborn’
So, having officially arrived at the hospital on Thursday since we checked in after midnight, we could stay there until at least Sunday and could stay until Monday.
Friday night I left the hospital and wifey was feeling well and positive. I expected to come back on Saturday morning finder her feeling great. We had already talked it over and decided we’d stay in the hospital until Monday so that we would have an extra day of help with the baby and an extra day of monitoring showing us that everything is going well.
Fast forward to Saturday morning. I call wifey to see how she’s doing and let her know that I’m on the way. She’s crying and says that she wants to leave. I ask for details and find out that she’s had a day from hell.
She’s experiencing a lot of pain from the C Section incision and is taking pain killers. The nursery brings the baby to my wife’s room every three hours since we’re breast feeding and don’t want the baby on forumula.
When wifey needs help to put the baby in the cradle and so she can go to the bathroom, she hits a call button next to the bed. It’s an intercom that rings the nurses station. She was pushing the call button and asking for help for several hours. Each time, she was told that her nurse would be there shortly. No one was coming.
Two hours passed at one point when my wife was laying in pain as she had a full bladder and was holding the baby. She couldn’t put the baby in its cradle and couldn’t get up by herself. Continue reading ‘Hell at the hospital’
Well, I came home on Wednesday night around 7:30 from a training class I’m taking for work. Wifey was passed out sleeping on the couch. She never takes naps as she hates the groggy feeling she gets after waking up.
I should have known that something was amiss.
I started getting busy around the house and settled in at my computer in the home office. Around 8:00pm wifey woke up and decided to get some dinner. She happily ate on the couch and was watching some tv when all of a sudden she called out to me telling me she was having a bad cramp. She had been having some cramps on and off for a few days so I didn’t think much about it.
The cramps kept coming periodically and we were concerned that something may be wrong. I whipped out the doppler monitor and we checked the baby’s heart rate. Normal. Nothing to report. We decided this was fine and decided to go about our night.
The cramps kept on coming and around 9:30pm wifey went to the bathroom. She suddenly yelped and called me in. There she was on the toilet holding toilet paper that was full of orange/red blood. Continue reading ‘Alex is born 4 weeks early!’
While researching how best to care for our new baby, we came across some sites with interesting thoughts on things as mundane as baby wipes. The sites basically advocated using as many natural products as possible and keeping as many chemicals and other artificial products away from your baby as possible.
Now I’m not the hippy type that thinks you should wipe with leaves or anything, but they made some very compelling arguments.
Considering all of the childhood diseases and conditions that seem to be on the rise whose causes are unknown, why take chances by exposing your child to chemicals and artificial products if you don’t have to?
Do you really know what is in diaper wipes? What chemicals are in them? How they are made? Neither do I. The alternative suggested Continue reading ‘Why you shouldn’t use Baby Wipes’
Listening to your baby’s heart beat can be one of the most comforting things you can experience.
One of the best purchases we have made during this pregnancy is our home fetal heart monitor. I can’t tell you how many times it has saved us from paranoid trips to the emergency room out of fear that something was wrong with the baby.
From what I understand, it works similar to a sonogram. The machine sends sound waves into your tummy which bounce off of whatever they hit. It measures how long it takes the waves to bounce back and plays the result as sound.
When the heart is beating, the machine detects the pulses and plays them. Early in the pregnancy, it sounds like a little whoosh-shoosh-whoosh sound. If you get the same model we have, it has a small digital display that shows the heart rate in numbers. You’ll find that the baby’s heart rate is Continue reading ‘Expecting: Home Fetal Heart Monitor (Doppler)’