New Here with a 10 Month Old

[Bonnie615]

Hello,

 

We are new here and I wanted to introduce myself, talk about some of our challenges and just look for support in general.

 

So this may be a little long :(

 

We live in the Nashville area and do not have a lot of friends or any family around us.  We certainly do not know anyone else that is parenting the way we are.  So, I am unsure if we are just facing "normal" challenges or something special.  Up until now, I have been on babycenter and those situations certainly look a lot different than ours!  

 

I am hoping to learn and maybe meet some friends here :)

 

A little about us...

 

We are "older" (35 & 39) parents of a 10 month old little girl.

 

I have a 22 year old son as well and no children in between.

 

My life took a complete turn when I became pregnant this time around.  I was a workaholic, never home, wasted a lot of money, etc.

 

Now I'm a stay at home mom, gave up my car so we are a one car family, living simple and frugal, getting more and more organic and whole food oriented every day, planning to homeschool, learning to garden, sew, craft and just longing for some friends with the same lifestyle.  We co-sleep.  I breastfed until I ran into some problems after a surgery and I THINK I am practicing attachment parenting... I'm not really sure, but we are basically following a lot of principles from Dr. Sears and we just go with the flow.  I could not do baby led weaning - my girl was (and still is really) so sensitive about solids.  I also tried baby wearing a few times with poor results.  I am willing to have another go at it though, if that's possible at her age.

 

I am so new at this, it's not even funny :(  but I believe this is how it's supposed to be.  We are happy and secure in our new lifestyle; we just need a few friends that won't think we've gone crazy!

 

Our little one is almost 11 months old.

 

She drinks an organic lactose free formula.  After I had to stop breastfeeding, we continued to feed her as if she still was - cuddling her, not propping the bottle, always being with her when she was drinking.  As a result, she rarely holds her own bottle, pushes it away when done and we really don't even have a word for "bottle" around here, we just call it milk.  I thought this might be a good thing but recently realized that this is something I just have not seen before.

 

She recently just started becoming more comfortable with chunky solids.  For a time there, I thought she would be eating purees forever.  Somedays she's a great eater; some days not so much.  She eats a variety of food and seems pretty flexible, even though she does seem to hate plain veggies.

 

She has a few weird sleep/comfort patterns.

 

First and foremost, she comforts herself from holding onto our ears.  I have yet to hear of another child doing this.  She used to grab at our faces.  She still pulls my hair and grabs my nose on occasion but, mostly, it's our ears.

 

We have her crib in the "daybed" mode, sidecarred and attached to our bed.  It's very secure and safe... and seems to be of no use.  She quickly wakes or just rolls to us in her sleep if we attempt to put her in there.

 

We have been through various stages of success with naps and sleeping through the night but currently, she must be held for almost all naps and does not sleep much at all at night if someone is not laying next to her.  We have had a few days of cool weather and noticed, with the windows open and breezes flowing, she seems to sleep much better. 

 

Some nights are better than others, but sometimes we go through stages where she must actually hold my ears throughout almost the whole night.  This results in one exhausted, half rested mommy!  If she does completely wake up, she is very sweet and quiet and usually just lounges on my lap until she falls back asleep, about an hour.  Sometimes we choose to give her a late night or early morning bottle to keep her sleeping but it's not everyday.

 

During the day, she has good and bad times but does seem to through little "tantrums" already.  I was surprised by this as we have a very free and open house for her to explore.  Of course, there are things that are dangerous and when I redirect her - oh boy :(  

 

Some days I endure a lot of what we refer to as "scrining" - it's a combination of crying, screaming and whining... this also results in a wore out mom :(

 

She shows a lot of love - always giving us kisses, throwing her arm around our necks or holding our faces in her hands - very sweet.  She IS remarkably independent most days and then will have phases where she wants to be on our hip all day.  I always let her "help" me, even at this age, cook, fold laundry, garden, etc.  She's incredibly curious and determined.  She's shy around strangers most of the time but occasionally will be incredibly bold.

 

We don't have a set schedule but things often happen at the same time anyway.

 

I guess I just want to make sure we are on the right track.  I am SO against CIO.  Some weeks, it seems I can get nothing done and I'm so exhausted.  It's those times my husband looks at me like "why are we doing this?"  And then, just from reading a few posts here, I feel like we're very fortunate and all of this is just regular baby stuff.

 

Being that I'm not adhering to any rigid method, I just wanted to get some feedback in a positive place where the first comment won't be "What, your baby sleeps in your bed?"

 

If you've survived this whole post, thanks for reading!

[foreverinbluejeans]

Are you on the right track? It sounds like you want to attachment parent and you have no support, no mentor, and arent' sure what to do about day to day issues.

I was a little confused about breastfeeding. You said you stopped breastfeeding because of a surgery. You may be able to resume breastfeeding and breastfeed a year or two or three longer. Unless you had both breasts removed or milk ducts cut on both breasts it may be possible. Women nurse older adopted babies. I'm not saying you made a bad choice, doctors may have given you misinformation.  

You are giving your baby a lactose free formula. Does the baby have a genetic problem with lactose? Lactose is the milk sugar in human milk. Did that have something to do with weaning? If she doesn't have a genetic issue then she should be getting lactose. She should get about 32 oz a day of formula with iron

Dr. Sears was the one that came up with the idea of Attachment Parenting in the 1980s. He has a book called Attachment Parenting. I was raising my children during that time and I heard Dr. Sears and his wife Martha speak at conferences several times. At one conference I got to eat lunch next to Dr. Sears (before he was famous). I knew who he was and I was so excited! One of the greatest benefits of AP is that you enjoy parenting.  

Another good author is Elizabeth Crary. Her book Without Spanking or Spoiling changed my life. I knew I didn't want to parent like I had been parented or like I saw everyone else parent but I didn't know what to do. This book gave me the tools I need to parent the way I wanted. Her book Love and Limits is good.

[foreverinbluejeans]

Computer was messing up and I had to restart. Continued ....

La Leche League had state and international conferences that are great! State conferences are usually cheap and have a famous guest speaker. There are sessions about parenting. You can go to the LLL web site and see if there are any near you. I loved going to them.

Online there is something called Meetup. Groups in your city can put their meeting on the site. You join and you can find all the meetings. I belong to a Chihuahua group that I found out about on meetup. There are all kinds of parenting and mom groups where I live. There is an Attachment Parenting group and a Babywearing group. Living in a big city you should be able to find a group of like minded parents.

I had 3 sons and co-slept with all of them. The first was the longest. Once he had a room and a cool bed it was easier to move the second on into his brother's bed when he was arond 4. The youngest moved into his brother's room when he was around 3. I probably slept with kids for a total of 10-11 years. I now live with my son, dil, and grandson. My grandson will be 3 on Sunday. He sleeps with his parents or me. It works out great for them that I am here and if they really need sleep that he will be just fine sleeping with me. He weaned at around 2.5 years. He never sleeps through the night. None of my boys slept through the night until they were 3.

Sometimes babies scream and cry a lot right before a developmental leap. She may soon start walking, I don't see if you say that she is walking yet. My grandson cried a lot and once he started walking he was much better. When he started talking he was much less frustrated and it was even better.

I've given you lots of info and I hope it's helpful. If you are interested in relactating www.kellymom.com is a great website.