Posts belonging to Category Children

I’ve spent the last week exchanging and replacing 3 of our expired car seats and washing the new ones as I continue to nest. For anyone else in the same boat, Babies R Us has a promotion until Feb. 20 where you can trade in your old car seat (or stoller, high chair, etc.) for a 25% discount on a new one. At least it is something!  I ended up with a better deal than anything I could find online.

Also, my husband let me know about another car seat recall of Britax infant seats.

My 7 year-old son, who used to be the pickiest of eaters (he ate almost nothing in his younger years), just came home from school and ate, in one sitting:

-a bowl of blueberries

-bacon

- 2 bananas with peanut butter

-and a slice of pumpkin bread

-all washed down with a glass of water

He used to eat only cheerios and yogurt, and drank only milk or apple juice. We have come a long way! My theory is that as long as you stick to good eating habits, kids will eventually realize that they are hungry and will (for the most part) start eating the foods that you offer them. Good luck to all of you moms of picky eaters – I feel your pain, but it will get better!

Back at one of our yearly check-ups, I can recall the doc saying, “Oh, you don’t need to worry about night-time dryness until 7.”  ”Whew!” was my response.  We had plenty of time to get there.  I thought about the potential our family might have to write a post like this, but quickly shrugged it off saying that surely by the time it was necessary to write this post, the problem would be gone and we’d be home free.  Newsflash: We’re not.

In two shorts weeks my oldest, M, will be turning 7.  It is a magical time of boyhood full of imaginary play, toys and legos, increased reason.  I am really enjoying this phase and watching his maturity emerge.  I can’t even begin to describe the elation I feel when I’m able to sit down and have a rational conversation together.  It is one of absolute joy.  It has taken a long road to get here, still with bumps in our path, but many fewer. Thanks be to God.  Despite the increasing maturity, however, my almost-7yo is still wetting the bed.

He still wears Pull-Ups; he still leaks through almost every night; I am still washing sheets A LOT (but probably not as much as I should–I am one woman).  He’s inherited my deep circadian rhythms and sleeps like a champ.  Always has.  The one problem is that his brain hasn’t learned to shut off his plumbing while resting!  And we are all suffering through.  My main worry is he has begun to become self-conscious about the problem and ask us to help him find a solution.  We’ve also had to turn down sleepover invites because he’s embarrassed to be wearing a diaper to bed.  Poor guy!  Thankfully his younger brothers haven’t conquered it yet either, though our 3yo is dry most nights.  Sure enough, J has always been the lightest of our sleepers.

We’ve tried a few things with little to no success–reduction in fluids before bed, sticker charts for dry nights (these do nothing bc he has zero control!), waking him later before we go to bed…

The doctor has talked about putting him on a drying medicine to reduce his overall fluids, which I am adamantly against.  I do NOT want to medicate him unnecessarily, especially if there is a behavioral product that will help us.  We’ve also looked into the night-time alarms, but their sticker price has prevented us from going forward.  I’ve read mixed reviews on their effectiveness, so I’m not sure it’s worth the investment.  The kids who have done well with them seem to improve within days.  Anything that’s that good, I’m almost willing to spend any amount of money!

What to do?  Can anyone offer some wisdom on this front?  Should we go with an alarm and try it out?  And if so, which one do you recommend?

Her eyes are finally open!

Josie will be two weeks old tomorrow.  It has been a very blessed and very tiring two weeks.  Some call it a baby moon, but that term doesn’t seem to do justice to just how taxing those first few weeks can be!  It is truly the best kind of exhaustion, but we are all exhausted none-the-less, and now that I have older children, I am realizing that the postpartum time is a true transition for them too.  Two of my children have adjusted to life with Josie with nothing but joy and excitement.  The other two love their little sister but are having a bit of hard time navigating their new roles in our family.  It will take another few weeks, and I know that by February they will all have forgotten what life was like without her.

It’s funny how after delivering 6 babies I am still learning and relearning things about my postpartum self.  I had forgotten how good it feels to not be pregnant.  Those who know me well know that I suffer from great anxiety and even depression when pregnant.  I feel an intense and wonderful transition in my mood within a few hours of childbirth.  It is as if someone is pumping happy drugs into my system, a happiness that I don’t often feel when pregnant.  After my last two deliveries, that feeling of deep joy and peace was masked by postpartum bleeding complications.  This time around I got the right medical attention immediately after childbirth and so the sudden positive emotional change has been wonderful.

I am also relearning that Dad does a tremendous amount of work in the first month.  I am on night duty and nursing duty, but with each subsequent delivery staying off my feet in the first few weeks has become more important.  That means Mr. Red has to deal with all his office responsibilities during the day, and also tend to a great deal of housework, cooking, child care, and cleaning in the morning and evening hours.  He is very tired too, and it is very easy for me to forget his tiredness when the baby awoke 4 times last night.

I am also learning about jaundice in babies that arrive early, about newborn size baby clothes (I’ve never needed or owned clothes of this size before!), and about “block nursing” for women who overproduce milk.  I am relearning how good it feels to get a new pair of running shoes–shoes that will be used for running in one month!  And I am doing all of this learning while holding a sleepy newborn baby in my arms, which is really the best way to learn.

I hope your week is off to a blessed start!

There is a line in one of our favorite songs, One by U2, that goes “Will it make it easier on you now? You got someone to blame.”

I recently read the following in a wonderful book, “How to Raise Good Catholic Children” by Mary Reed Newland, in a section called “Encourage your child to offer up his sufferings”:

Can I do this in a suburban?

The advent of my third trimester has me contemplating logistics, especially those pertaining to car seats.

I need 5 seats in our suburban come April, 4 full forward facing seats and an infant seat. Our 50 pound 6 year old has frequent meltdowns in the car due to sensory and other challenges, so I must keep him in a five point harness. I can’t move the 5 year old into a booster without inciting more meltdowns since the 6 year old would remain in a car seat. The 6 year old cannot sit next to the infant. I would like the 3 and 6 year old in back with our carpool seat (not always in use) in between them and our infant and 5 year old in the middle.

I can get three in the middle easily, but then two kids have to climb over the back seat through the rear of the car, which is awkward and painful and not a very practical long term solution. I would like to keep one third of our middle bench row folded down so kids can get in and out of the car and I can help them buckle.

I have scoured car-seat.org and other car seat forums and my head hurts. There is anecdotal evidence of 3 Radians in a third row of a suburban, but no one has posted an actual picture of this set up in a Suburban. I cannot ascertain if a minivan third row is wider than that of a suburban since the wheel wells take up so much room, though I will try to measure a neighbor’s minivan and compare this weekend. As much as I would rather not swallow a fortune worth of new car seats, I do have two forward facing ones that are about to expire anyway.

The Radians are 17″ wide and the Chevy website says there is only 49.4″ of hip room in the 3rd row, which would make it an inch and a half too narrow. Does anyone have any experience with 3 forward car seats in the back of a suburban?

The Birth of Josephine Marie–

First, I would like to thank my sister Elizabeth for the following beautiful photos of Josie’s arrival. She did a phenomenal job capturing Josie’s first moments outside the womb, and I had a very difficult time picking ONLY 10 photos for the blog! If you live in the Philadelphia/Southern NJ area and are interested in her services, visit the Sweet Pea Photography website.

Now on to the birth! Josephine arrived 3 weeks early due to a very small abruption in my placenta. I am overwhelmed with gratitude that I had enough “symptoms” of this issue and that my doctors and midwife acted to hasten things along in the labor department. I had A LOT of anxiety during the process, but the prayers of many family members and friends provided great comfort.  After only 5 hours of labor, little Josie arrived just before midnight on Tuesday January 3rd.

Back in the fall we made the decision to have Gianna come to the hospital to be a part of Josie’s entrance into the world. My sister was generous enough to act as our photographer and Gianna’s support person. Gianna is still rather young, so we had her leave the room for the last hour of my labor when things got rather intense, and she returned immediately after Josie’s birth. She stood behind a curtain and heard her sister’s first cries. She was the first to offer her little sister kisses and held her hand during the newborn exam. It was so special to have her there!

And now, onto the photos…

January 3, 2012

Is it the hat?

My teeny tiny baby

First meeting

I have no words for how much I love this photo

She looks so much like my other babies

newborn exam

Holding her big sister's hand

My support team

We are proud parents--it never gets old!

We are hosting Christmas this year, and since my blood pressure has been a bit high, I’m trying to rest as much as possible in these last weeks of pregnancy.  My parents will do most of the cooking at my home on Sunday, but I’m trying to keep this house in some semblance of order prior to Saturday.  I’ve solicited the help of my older two children in this regard, as I bark orders from the sofa.  They did a lot of cleaning for me yesterday, and I was quite impressed.  This morning I wandered into the schoolroom and discovered their battle plan.  Gianna had posted the following notice for her siblings (this is the unedited version)–

Rules for Makeing the house Neater–

1.  When you leve the room clean it up

2.  Clean up the room before playing

3.  Don’t play with a lot of toys

4.  Don’t make really cool things (ouch!)

5.  Try not to cut paper

6.  Keep small and breakable things away from Claire

7.  Don’t let the babys get markers

8.  Don’t let the babys get sicors (scissors)

With the exception of #4, which stung a bit, not a bad list.

When I was a child in a Catholic elementary school, I had a teacher who told our class a funny story. She began her story, saying, “Now class, I am going to tell you a story about something that happened a few years ago. I was teaching my students about the crucifixion and told them that above Jesus’ cross hung a plaque, and that on the plaque were the initials INRI. When I asked if anyone knew what INRI stood for, one of the students replied, ‘I’m Nailed Right In!’”

Of course, the entire class began giggling, thinking that this was the funniest response ever. My teacher, on the other hand, was mortified, and let us know that she thought our behavior was disrespectful and unacceptable. How could we laugh at such a story, she wondered aloud? I can remember thinking to myself, “How does she expect us to hear something so clever and to keep a straight face? What did she expect us to say?” In short, my teacher was setting us up for failure – yes, perhaps our response was a bit disrespectful, but what did she expect of 6th graders? If she didn’t want us to laugh, she should not have told us this story, or at least she should have prefaced her story by letting us know her expectations for our response.

In what areas of life am I setting my children up for success, and in what areas am I setting them up for failure? Do I have certain unfair expectations of them given the circumstances of our family life? Are there certain areas where I could have higher expectations? These are questions that I will be bringing to my prayer time, but a few examples come to mind right away. For example, I am setting my son up for failure when I expect him to make his bed and brush his teeth in the morning before school, but at the same time ask him to stay in the kitchen so that he does not wake up his little sisters. I am setting my daughter up for failure when I ask her to sit still at dinner, but am up and out of my seat for most of the meal getting drinks for this child and more rice for that child. I am setting my children up for success when I tell them about the importance of friendship with Jesus, and then pray with them every night. I am setting them up for success when I limit their screen time, and also limit my own screen time by choosing to read a book or newspaper instead of turning on the computer or TV.

St. Lucy, patron saint of eyesight and patroness of light, pray for us! Through the grace of God, give us eyes to see the inconsistencies in our own lives, and shed light where there is darkness.

I am an O- mom entering the last ten weeks of pregnancy, so it is time for my beloved Rhogam shot. For those of you who are not Rh negative, you may not be familiar with the risk associated with delivering Rh+ babies. Essentially my body is full of antibodies developed to combat any baby born with Rh+ blood. Enter Rhogam. This miraculous drug, developed just 40 years ago, is injected into my large pregnant gluteus maximus before each new baby is delivered and then again within 72 hours post-birth with an Rh+ baby. It saves these babies. They would otherwise be susceptible to brain damage, organ failure or even death.

Receiving this shot prompted me to reflect on the blood types of our three children – the first is always safe because your body has not yet generated the dangerous antibodies, but our eldest emerged O+, so my body produced the antibodies then. Number 2 is O-, so he was safe. But Number 3! He is O+ and very well might not have been born healthily without Rhogam’s protection. If I were a woman in the developing world, or a woman without healthcare coverage, this little boy could have died. He is an articulate 2-year-old with massive brown eyes and silky hair who looks and acts like his father and holds my heart in the palm of his hand.. alive because of our blessed circumstances.

Then, I found precious free time to read a National Geographic article on Brazil’s shrinking family size. This article is part of a series that the magazine is running in “honor?”/ “terror” of the milestone of Earth’s population reaching 7 billion. The author maintained a fairly neutral position on small versus large family size, but she made it very clear that Brazil’s ability to lower its national birth rate from 4.2 to 1.9 (below replacement value — cheer!) in just 40 years is viewed as a success by demographers worldwide. 1.9, hmm, 1.9 I kept thinking..  that number also would have eliminated my precious clay-faced Number 3. If I were a statistically average woman in Brazil, I never would have birthed this little guy. The article profiled woman after woman who proudly touted her tubal ligation at age 24 as a real liberation from the difficulties associated with raising more than one or two children. It was explained that two is viewed as socially acceptable only if there is one of each gender. But us!? We had that desired couple. One girl, one boy, and we went for it. We received the most precocious, big-brother-loving toddler I have ever encountered. How dare these “promising statistics” dissuade any woman from meeting her amazing third child. OK, so maybe I was taking this a bit personally, but I am an emotional pregnant woman treasuring the final months of this little guy being the baby.

Really, as my husband and I have continued to live this exhiliratingly terrifying journey of being open to life I am grateful for the gift of each new soul under our roof. I am grateful for the sledgehammers over the head like Rhogam shots and self-centered Brazilian woman for refocusing me on what a precious gift from God each of our children is.