Summer Days, Drifting Away

T-minus two weeks until school starts! There are two reviews on deck in the near future (Freakonomics and The Tipping Point) but in the meantime, a few random updates:

• A is cutting her third tooth of the summer and the fourth is not far behind. These include her lower molars. It has not been a great time.
• Also not a great time: A has decided she hates when I change her diaper and will not lay down for me. I've tried nearly every suggestion I've come across, including introducing the potty, but nothing has worked. The alligator wrestling is getting old. 
• Our house is currently cleaner than it's been since before I got pregnant. Yay! This is because we're dealing a fruit fly infestation. Not yay. Not yay at all.
• The job search hasn't been going well. I seem to be limited by my lack of Masters in Education and my lack of counselling experience. It's discouraging and makes me think it's easier to just stay in teaching.
• Speaking of which, a full-time teaching job came up for the fall semester that I think I have a reasonable shot of getting. After some initial panic, I had an epiphany of sorts and am actually really hoping to get this. I'll write more on this in the near future. 

I think that covers the main goings-on around these parts. Stay tuned for some reviews (and hopefully employment news) soon!

Review: What to Expect The Second Year

What to Expect The Second Year, Heidi Murkoff 

Non-fiction, reference, parenting

Sometimes it feels like my daughter went from a sweet, immobile little baby to a full blown toddler over night. Suddenly, she's throwing food on the floor, getting into every nook and cranny she can find, and mimicking us saying "nonono" as she does the exact thing we'd tell her not to do. At first, it was a little overwhelming; just when we thought we had the whole baby thing figured out, we were back in uncharted territory.

I picked up WTE The Second Year from the library looking for some comfort and guidance. It's always reassuring to know that my kid is perfectly normal and that it's all a phase. I already knew that, of course, but it always helps to see it in print! I was particularly interested in a few specific things:

• Dental hygiene. We were already brushing before bed most nights but I wanted to get into a more consistent, twice a day routine with an upgrade from her baby brush.
• Eating habits. Between the food throwing, the lack of interest in cow's milk, and the 20th percentile weight she's been maintaining for a looooooong time, I had some concerns.
• Behaviour/discipline. I know how to deal with teenagers since that's my job, but I wanted some tips on setting a good foundation and managing behaviour at this age.

The book addressed all of those and much more. It was actually very reassuring to know that we are mostly doing the "right" things, we just need to keep going. As fas the behaviour aspect, I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of what I already do in the classroom with teenagers applies to toddlers as well, just heavily simplified.

It was really helpful to learn how toddlers think at this age. For instance, they have a hard time sharing because they don't understand the concept of ownership yet. The book explains how their understanding of those concepts develop and gives some strategies for helping them learn. That stuff was very interesting to me and I feel that having a better idea of where A's frustrations come from can help me manage expectations and potential tantrums a little better. In that sense, I came away from this book feeling more confident and prepared.

The WTE books seem to get a bad rap, especially the pregnancy one, but I have to admit that I don't mind them. Their format can be obnoxious, sure, and they are written as if they are Cosmo articles in book form. But the information is good and thorough, which is the most important thing to me. That's why I keep coming back to them. WTE The Second Year is a good reference for this stage of development and worth checking out.

For more insight into toddler tantrums, I'd also recommend Dr. Harvey Karp's The Happiest Toddler On The Block. I'm not planning on a separate post for that because I didn't actually read the book. My library only had the dvd so I watched that instead. It was also very helpful. We don't really do the caveman thing with A, which is the main "gimmick" of this book/video, but there is a lot of useful information about the toddler mindset and managing tantrums. 

Reflecting On Our First Year

Two Fridays ago, Baby A turned one! It was simultaneously the longest and shortest year ever. My online mom's group had a discussion recently about surviving our first year and it was interesting to see what everyone had to say about their most favourite, least favourite, and most surprising aspects of motherhood. I've been spending a lot of time reflecting on these things lately, so here are mine:

Most Favourite 

Without a doubt, A's smiles and giggles are the greatest thing I've ever experienced. They are what I live for. There is such a sweet innocence to them and so much joy in her laughter that it makes my heart burst. 

A close second are her kisses, which she gives without prompting. They often leave me with a wet face but they are the best. In third place is her little voice saying "mama," even though I am still not sure that she knows what she is referring to when she says it. I just love hearing it.

Least favourite

The production required to leave the house with a baby is really fracking annoying. Having to strategize leaving the house around feeding and nap times is a pain, too, but is certainly much easier now than it was during the first few months.

The lack of flexibility in our lives is also a source of frustration at times. We were never really super spontaneous to begin with, but it was nice to be able to pick and up go somewhere whenever we wanted to. Now it's a lot more complicated.

Most Surprising

I think what took me by surprise the most has been the sheer all-consuming nature of this gig.Once that baby is born, you're "on" and there is no "off" anymore. Knowing that intellectually before having a baby is very different from actually experiencing it. Mentally, physically, emotionally, everything was transformed in some way once A was born. It was exhausting in ways that I couldn't have imagined. Babies rely on you for everything and have zero regard for your own need to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. When you're completely drained and don't feel like you have anything left to give of yourself, the baby cries/vomits/has a diaper explosion (or all three at the same time) and you have no choice but to keep on giving.

That cycle brings with it a complex web of emotions that also took me by surprise. I'm generally pretty even-keeled but both pregnancy and this past year have been a roller coaster. There's the heart-bursting love and pride that I have for this tiny human I helped create. There's also the constant worry about every decision we make and whether it's truly the best one for her in the long run. I remember when she first started smiling at us around 6 or 7 weeks and being totally overwhelmed by the need to prove ourselves worthy of her unconditional love and trust. Then there's good ol' mom guilt. Often, it's all of these at once.


It feels like I am making it out to be a far more negative experience than it was. It was just a really big adjustment and was not without its challenges. There are definitely things I now wish I'd done differently. But all three of us made it through Year One and ultimately, I think we did pretty well. Those smiles and kisses have made all the rest worth slogging through and I have no doubt that they'll keep us going through the impending toddler years!

11 Months

This past week, Baby A turned 11 months old. I'm still trying to figure out where the time went! Now, the countdown is now on to her first birthday.

Here's what she's been up to over the last couple of months:

• Tooth #6 finally broke through this week. It was a rough time so I'm hoping we'll get a bit of a break from the teething now. 
• She can stick out her tongue, clap, and imitate my fingers doing the "Itsy Bitsy Spider"actions.
• She loves to imitate sounds, though she hasn't said anything with real purpose yet. DH always says "Tickle, tickle, tickle!" to her while he tickles her, so she likes to roll on to her side and say "tickatickaticka!" to get us to play. It's very cute...except when she does it during diaper changes. 
• She will try to play Peekaboo with random objects and thinks it's hilarious when we act surprised. 
• She's entered the food tossing phase. More ends up on the floor or on the wall than in her mouth these days. Can't wait for this one to pass! She loves fruit, though, especially bananas and oranges. 
• Her current favourite toy is anything she can get her hands on that is not actually a toy. She loves to pull things off of tables or shelves, and out of cupboards.
• She scoots backwards. We seem to be stalled here when it comes to crawling. I'm starting to think she may just skip it altogether.
• She pulls herself up to stand and walks all over the place while holding on to our hands or furniture. She just started letting go to stand on her own for a few seconds at a time. 
• She's finally decided that she likes music. Uptown Funk is a current favourite. She dances, which cracks us up because her "dancing" looks a lot like this:

These last few months have been so much fun. She's really developing her sense of humour and personality. The increased mobility and independence is bringing on the boundary testing, though, and she is starting to get whiny. She can be very quick to express her displeasure. Guess it's time to start bracing myself for the toddler life!

Spring At Last

It's here! After record cold temperatures this winter, spring is finally, mercifully here! Can you tell I'm just a little excited about it? This week has been filled with sunshine, trips to the park, and landscaping plans. And the best part: no boots or jackets required. Amazing.

Before we put the stroller away in the fall, walks around the neighbourhood were sanity breaks for me. Besides the car seat, it was the only way Baby A would nap without being held. She'd fall asleep by the time we got home and I'd sit out on the porch with her until she woke up. Now, she can sit upright and enjoy the view while we walk to the park. Even better, she can enjoy the swing once we're there. We tried it for the first time this past weekend and I think it's safe to say she loves it!

It's been wonderful being able to open the windows and get fresh air into the house again. Our yard and garden were woefully neglected last year so I can't wait to start getting those in order soon, too.

I didn't realize how much of a drag winter had been on my mood until things warmed up last week and I felt 1000x times better. Right now, life is good!

Inside Out

Yesterday was Baby A's inside out day! At 39 weeks, she's been an outside baby for just as long as she was inside. On Sunday, she'll be turning nine months old. Since I never did get around to sharing any belly photos, here's the comparison:

The 38 week shot is the last one I took since my water broke on the morning I turned 39 weeks. What a difference (almost) nine months makes! I'm still not sure where the time went, I just know that it's gone by way too fast.

What she's up to these days:

• Tooth #3 just cut through and #4 is not far behind. 
• Lots of smiles and giggles. She can be so playful and I live for the sound of her laughter.
• Just started waving and pointing. 
• She can babble like a champ! She's been saying "mamama,""dadada," and various other sounds for a few months now. Lately, she's been stringing together different syllables but no real words yet. 
• She does understand some words! This has been so much fun to see. During meals, if I ask her if she'd like some water, she'll either get excited and say "ba!" if she wants to drink or look away if she doesn't. 
• She knows what to do when we get a camera out. 
• Loves to look at her reflection in mirrors or screens. 
• Can sit up, though she hasn't totally mastered pulling herself up to sitting yet.
• She can stand with support and wants to be on her feet all the time. 
• She can lift her butt in the air but that's as close as we get to crawling attempts. Why bother when we can stand, right?

There's a HuffPo piece making its way around the internet right now and even though it's a little early, so much of it rings true for me. This part especially, every day:

Sometimes, when we're looking at each other laughing, I also feel the urge to cry, because you must be too good to be true. I never want any of this to end.

This little girl makes my heart so happy, it hurts. 

Books of 2014 - Pregnancy & Baby

Last year was a mixed bag when it came to reading. For the majority of the year, I read books related to pregnancy, birth, and babies. I tried to read novels too but they were a slog. It was hard to get into anything and maintain interest. In this post, I'm rounding up all of the baby related books and sharing my favourites.  

Pregnancy & Birth

I continued use The Mother of All Pregnancy Books as a reference (I discuss it in detail here). The "Complaints Department" chapter and chart of medications were the most useful. If I didn't already own that, I'd have bought the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. I borrowed that one from the library and really liked the section at the end of each month that broke down various symptoms and indicated if/when to report it to your doctor. Finally, though I am generally not a fan of Dr. Oz, I did enjoy YOU: Having a Baby. I didn't make it through the section on labour and delivery but everything up to that point was interesting. I liked that it wasn't the typical weekly or monthly guide. 

As we were gearing up for our baby showers, Baby Bargains was awesome for building our registry. That, along with the Lucie's List site helped us keep our registry pretty simple and focused on what we'd need.  It was helpful to have an idea of the different brands and what to watch out for.

In my birth story post, I mentioned that I had hoped for a med-free birth. To that end, I read Ina May's Guide to Child Birth and Husband Coached Childbirth by Bradley. If you are interested in going that route, I highly recommend Ina May's book. Initially, I was put off by the fact that the first half of the book consisted of birth stories; it felt too hippie dippy for me. By the end, though, I found it very empowering and increased my confidence a lot. The informational portion rubbed me the wrong way; it was biased, fear mongering, and not consistent with current research. The Bradley book had a lot of useful information but Bradley himself seems insufferable. 

Baby Care & Development

If I had to do it all over again, I'd spend less time focused on birth and more on what to do with a newborn baby. Many late night nursing sessions were spent googling various things I didn't know I would need to know. The books I have referred to regularly since A arrived are Baby 411 (by the same people who did Baby Bargains) and Dr. Sears' The Baby Book. My own parenting philosophy lies somewhere in between the two ends of the spectrum these books represent so I've found them to be a good combination. 

Thanks to the other moms in my birth month group on The Bump, I discovered The Wonder Weeks. I highly recommend this book and it's corresponding app. Everyone talks about the physical growth spurts but there are also cognitive ones, and those lead to predictable patterns of fussy behaviour. The book describes what baby is learning during each "leap" and how to help. I liked the suggestions for developmentally appropriate toys and games because my experience has been with older kids so I had no idea when it came to babies. The best thing about this book might be that it always reassures me that "this too shall pass." The app has a calendar that is customized to your baby's due date and describes each Wonder Week, along with some play suggestions. You could get by with just the app but it wouldn't hurt to check out the book from the library. It has a lot more detail and check lists.

At six months, we introduced solids. Since we are mainly doing baby led weaning, I read up on that as well. I definitely recommend reading this if you are interested in BLW because it provides information about choking vs. gagging, which is a common concern.

Infant Sleep

Oh, where do I begin with this one? Once the sleepy newborn stage wore off, we had nap issues galore. We could handle those because night sleep was going well. Around 4.5 months, that went to hell too. Two and a half months later with no end in sight, we were exhausted and reaching our breaking point. I read a lot of sleep books. I read a lot of blogs (Troublesome Tots is awesome). In the end, Ferber rescued us from the depths of sleep despair. Out of the many sleep resources I consulted and methods I tried, only a few were truly useful. These are my favourites:

The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep, Dr. Harvey Karp - Similar to The Happiest Baby on the Block (we watched the dvd, it's good!) but more focused on sleep. I'm a big fan of Dr. Karp and the 5S's were a big help with our fussy newborn.

Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, Dr. Marc Weissbluth - While Weissbluth is best known for being an advocate for full exctinction sleep training (crying it out with no soothing), that's not all this book is about. There is a lot of solid, helpful information here about sleep and sleep issues. It covers newborns through adolescents and this is the only book that discusses how to handle colicky babies in any detail. The formatting isn't great and often gets a little too academic, but still worth it for the information.

Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, Dr. Richard Ferber - Everyone's heard of Ferber but few have actually read the book, so there are a lot of misconceptions. Ferber recommends graduated extinction, or crying it out with soothing, but just like Weissbluth, that's not all that is discussed here. Lots of good information, though not as thorough as Weissbluth.

If you are giving me the side-eye right now for recommending Weissbluth and Ferber, consider yourself lucky that you were never desperate enough to need either of them. And if you haven't had kids yet but think this is awful, never say never! That's how we started out too.

And there you have it. In the next post, I'll list my favourite non-baby related books from last year. That will be a much shorter list!

Birth Story

When I last posted in 2014, I had just entered the third trimester of my pregnancy. Before returning to the discussion of books, I thought I'd share how things turned out.

The third trimester was tough, particularly the last stretch from 34 weeks onward. That's partially why I stopped blogging at that point; everything required too much energy and brain power! On the day I hit 39 weeks, I had an OB appointment scheduled for 11:45 am. Shortly after 1 am, however, I woke up feeling something wasn't quite right. Over the next few hours, the slow leak I'd felt turned into a gush and by 5 am, I knew it was baby time. So much for my plan to decline a cervical check that day! I had a light breakfast and a quick shower, and bounced on the exercise ball for a while. A few random contractions came and went but no regular pattern emerged. At 8:30, I started getting concerned that I wasn't feeling any movement so we decided to head to the hospital. 

At the hospital, triage confirmed that my water had broken and that I was barely a fingertip dilated. I was admitted and sent to walk the halls in the hopes of getting things moving, with the warning that if I wasn't in labour by 1:30 pm, they'd have to induce. Hospital policy is that once membranes have ruptured, baby needs to be out within 24 hours due to the increased risk of infection. They were willing to give me 12 hours to do it on my own but I was running out of time. All along, I'd been preparing to have a med-free birth so as I walked the halls, I was trying to make peace with the fact that it wasn't going to happen.

At 1:30, they started the oxytocin drip and we waited. I progressed steadily and labour was generally uneventful. I did have some awful back labour for a while and the nurse said my contractions were showing a couplet pattern, so they suspected that the baby may have initially been sunny side up (which could be why I didn't go into labour on my own). I was really disappointed that I couldn't use the tub in the birthing room that I'd hoped to labour in because of the continuous monitoring. I did get to try the ball and a few different positions, but the monitors made it awkward. After being checked at 4 cm, the contractions got really intense and started coming on top of each other. I was having a very hard time relaxing and breathing through them, and wasn't getting a break in between. That was the point when I decided to get the epidural. That was also the only time during the process that I cried because it felt like failure, or like giving in. I know that's not true but it was not what I'd planned or wanted beforehand, and in the moment, it was hard to accept that. 

Once the epidural was placed, I was able to relax and as much as I hadn't wanted it, I think it was the best thing in the long run. I needed the rest and wouldn't have been able to without it. Around 9 pm, I was fully dilated and they gave me an hour or so to labour down before pushing. During this time, they also turned off the epidural. I started pushing around 10:30...and kept on pushing. The baby was stuck and it seemed like no matter how hard I pushed, she just wouldn't budge. We were closing in on the 24 hr limit and they told me that if she wasn't out within three hours of pushing, we'd have to decide between the forceps or vacuum to get her out. I pushed for the full three hours and made it just in the nick of time. It was agonizing and I've never been more physically exhausted in my life, but I absolutely didn't want any more interventions. Our beautiful baby girl was born at 1:49 am, weighing 7 lbs 15 oz and 20 inches long.

My sweet girl at six days old.

It would be another three days before they let us go home because my bladder stopped functioning properly after delivery. I had a really hard time with the hospital stay; I was so exhausted from the pushing that I barely remember those first moments and hours with my daughter. During the four days in total that I was there, I barely slept and the bladder issues were more than a little uncomfortable. A lot of that time still feels like a blur and it took several months before I could think about it without sadness or anxiety. 

Seven months later, we've survived the roller coaster ride that is the newborn stage and it's starting it feel like we might actually know what we're doing! We have a little girl who adores her daddy, thinks peek-a-boo is the funniest game ever, gives wet kisses, and sits up like a champ. It's been so fun to watch her personality emerge. Our lives have been turned upside down and inside out, but it has been completely worth it. We wouldn't have it any other way.