A young mother sat at the end of the last pew, in a church filled with wedding guests. In her lap, a nine month old baby girl squirmed, threatening to destroy the peaceful decadance of the sacred occasion. Alone in a sea of strangers, there to witness her childhood friend’s special moment, the young mother began to wish she hadn’t come. Where does one retreat, in a strange church, with an unruly baby, when every ear is craning to hear the maiden whisper of emotion filled vows?

At the reception later, she planned to stick it out through the receiving line so her friend at least knew she’d made the journey to be with her, when an older woman behind her in the long line tugged playfully at her baby’s foot.

“Is this your only child?”

“Yes, she is.” The mother turned, and recognized the older woman as one who had spoken to their MOPs group about homeschooling. Quickly she re-introduced herself to the tall blonde, and in turn was treated to meeting each of the woman’s teenage daughters.  

“Where do you live now?” The older woman asked, resuming their initial socializing.

The line of guests moved along, and the two women chatted like old friends. The young mom went from feeling lost, to deciding to stay longer. Soon a dark-haired toddler tumbled to the floor, landing at her high heels.

“This is Clarissa.” Sheila, the older woman, stooped to steady the little one and help her on her way.

The younger mom’s arms ached from corraling her own youngster the past two hours. She watched curiously as Clarissa’s mom reclaimed her little girl and thanked Sheila.

Surprise heated her face when Sheila beckoned her to come over.

“Mary, do you know Kim yet?” she asked, her kind smile smoothing over any initial discomfort between the two young moms. “Kim is a stay at home mom, out in the country just like you, and Clarissa is only three months older than your little girl. Best of all, you gals only live maybe fifteen minutes from each other.” Leaning forward, she rescued the nine month old from her exhausted mother and departed with her, saying over her shoulder, “I think you two are the answer to each other’s prayers.”

***

And come to find out, we were. Kim had been praying fervently for a heart-to-heart friend, someone who shared her values and had children the same ages as hers. Right there in the line, with the friendship only five minutes old, she confided to me that she was expecting her second baby and hadn’t told anyone but her husband yet. Our bond forged, we planned a playdate for our little girls and we’ve been great friends ever since. We started homeschooling together; we attended Taste of Home cooking shows together; we’ve canned pickles and peach lemonade together, in her kitchen and mine, at night and during the day; we’ve bemoaned our shabby back porches together and brainstormed parenting issues for many phone hours together; we’ve welcomed each other’s new babies with casseroles and home made baby wipes…and best of all, out of all our acquaintances with kids the same ages as ours, we couldn’t pick any children we’d rather have our own hang out with.

Isn’t God good?

We parents have the great responsibility of protecting our children by choosing appropriate playmates and families with which to form lasting bonds.

Are you feeling alone, wishing you had another mom who loved the Lord as you do, someone to sharpen and grown alongside as you raise your children together? If you have young children and haven’t yet found another family at your pace in life, I encourage you to pray about it. Give the desire of your heart over to the King of Kings. Don’t you think He wants to pair us up with godly friends, so together we can spur ever onward and let His glory be made known?

Maybe there’s another mom out there, waiting around in a wedding line of strangers, and a future God’s got all mapped out just waiting for you both to discover…

In response to some questions at my other Infant Scheduling post, I’ve been emailing a mother of an almost three week old baby girl this week. Here’s a slightly edited version of my letters to her. Wanted to make this follow-up info available here on the blog…

Dear “Mother” of two-three week old infant,

So daytime naps are the issue. She is still very young. My girls didn’t always take their naps in the crib at that age. I varied the places they slept. Another thing to think about is if you’re returning to work and need to have your daughter accustomed to sleeping in a variety of places…not just in her own cozy crib at home. KWIM? At 2-5 weeks old, I let the baby swing have one nap session, the bouncy seat another, and even a cushioned (w/several blankets) area on the floor be another.

I think wearing her in a sling is fine for a nap now and then, but it’s a little different than the other “sleep aids” because she’s being held by one of you guys. She just might get to liking that a whole lot and fuss for it eventually. Not to say you can’t hold them and love on them, or even rock or bounce them to sleep once in a while. The danger is in them getting used to it, having it done consecutively to the point that they expect it and feel that they need it. Because typically they don’t need it “to get to sleep”…they DO need it during their wake times, to know that all is well in their world and they are loved muchly!

Here’s my first thought. When is her first feeding of the day? If it is in the early morning/still dark hours, I’d lay her back down to sleep. When my babies started sleeping through the night, they slept anywhere from 10-12 hours straight through. So if I put them to bed at 9 pm, they’d wake up for their first feeding sometime between 7-9 am. That’s when I’d start the feed-wake-sleep cycle. Since your darlin’ is still too young to make it through the night, I’d still treat her early morning feedings (anything while it is still dark outside) as middle of the nighters, which would mean you feed her and lay her back down in the bassinet. Maybe her biological clock is telling her she needs more night-time sleep before starting the scheduled part of her day.

On to daily nap times:

If you’ve put her down for a nap, and you know all the obvious things are taken care of (dry diaper, full tummy, no diaper pins poking her, no bubbles needing patted out of her!) then going in to comfort her at intervals is all I can suggest, and you’re already doing that. I’d start by just patting or lightly rubbing her back as she’s lying in bed.

[Explaining why back and not tummy: in my case, our babies never slept well on their backs--somewhat okay propped on their sides but they drifted off best on their tummies! My doctor reassured my concerns by saying that it's the high-risk infants whose mothers smoked, or who had low birth weights that are at risk for SIDS]

Anyway, first try comforting her without picking her up. If this doesn’t work, then go ahead and pick her up, do whatever you need to do to get her on the edge of sleep and lay her down again…or put her in the bouncer seat or swing, etc. She should outgrow this phase and adjust to normal naptimes in her crib by 5 weeks, I’d think?

The typical 3-5 week growth spurt would cause her to be more hungry, ie: less time between feedings, but it shouldn’t affect her naptimes, unless she doesn’t need many. It could be that she takes after her mama, you indicated that you like to be on the go a lot. You might try only waking her during the daytime when she’s gone four hours from the “beginning of one feeding to the beginning of the next”. Four hours was the longest I waited while they were that age. I didn’t “make” them wait that long, but if they were sleeping, I let them go up to that point. Just be careful of your milk supply. Probably up to this point you still have an overabundance, but as she goes longer and longer w/o feedings, and starts sleeping through the night, you might need to add pumping to your routine, so that your milk supply stays up to her needs.

Maybe TMI: Just an extra caution…two weeks postpartum seems to be the time when most women develop mastitis, from a plugged milk duct, so don’t forget to massage/press down on your breasts while baby is nursing, to get every last bit of milk out of each duct. Mastitis is HORRIBLE. I thought I was going to die, I’ve never hurt so badly that I couldn’t keep from crying/moaning out loud, but I was in so much agony and had such a high fever, and with my first daughter I had no idea what was happening to me! I learned my lesson, and came close to getting it with one of my other daughters but caught it in time.

Difference between overstimulation and sleep cues:

Overstimulation always hit my infants hard after they’d been at big gatherings and passed around from person to adoring person! They would cry and cry upon reaching home, and dh and I thought it was no wonder, can you imagine how sore we’d be if people passed us around constantly, and adjusted how they held us and positioned us? Talk about too much for a brand new baby and thank God for baby carriers! I think that’s why infants so often sleep when they’re around groups of people. Could be their natural way of shutting all the brightness and activity out.

Sleep cues would include fussiness, droopiness. Do you let her suck her thumb, or use a pacifier? Sometimes they seem to want to suck on something as they drift off. You could try swaddling her really tight in her receiving blanket, with her arms tucked next to her.

How many naptimes?

If she’s on a 3 hour schedule, say starting at 7 am, she should be napping 4-5 times during the day at this point. Eventually she’ll nap early-to mid-morning, then again right after lunch, once in the late afternoon and then another short nap around 6-6:30 pm. Her naps will gradually spread out but she might still be napping 3 times a day at 9 months old. Depends on how much sleep she needs. Of course, when they get that last nap, they usually stay awake/alert a little later with the last feeding being around 9:30-10 pm. And it’s so variable per infant.

The main thing to remember is that if you can keep the feed/wake/sleep cycle the key thing, she should end up very well-adjusted and sleeping through the night by 8-10 weeks. Barring health problems, that is. The sleep part will work itself out eventually. I remember stressing a lot over wanting mine to always go down in the crib, and my firstborn slipped into that routine with no fuss, but she also refused to nap at church or at Grandma’s house because she became reliant on her own bed! The other two I made sure could sleep anywhere!

And please don’t take my comments on the sling wrong. We never got into sling wearing, but I’ve observed it to be a wonderful thing for other mothers. I had a baby frontpack, but somehow never owned a sling–so I’m really the wrong person to give advice about it. I do know that my girls slipped into “ruts” easily when they got used to dh or I holding them to sleep. That’s not to say they didn’t get their fair share of chest time on daddy while he snoozed in the recliner–and I counted it as a naptime!

One last important thing. Pray for wisdom! There will be times when you’re exhausted and have no new ideas on things to try to help your little one settle in and sleep. New mommyhood is a beautiful and stressful time of adjustment. If you’re unsure about any of it, pray for a breakthrough, and God will give it. He’s told us to “be anxious for nothing but by prayer and supplication, let our requests be made known to Him”…

It’s really awesome, having children that go to bed happily. That even initiate the bedtime process! That’s the reward at the end of all this second-guessing of sleep-training.

So hang in there and when in doubt call upon God for what to do next. No doubt there will be times when the fussing is legitimate, maybe they’ll be tangled in their blankets or have a leg stuck through a crib slat…baby monitors are great for helping you determine what kind of cry it is before you actually open the door and let them know of your presence!

God bless,
Mary

For everyone else’s information, the importance of the feed/wake/sleep schedule is flexibility. There will be times, during growth spurts and such, when your baby will need to eat more often than every 3 hours. Go with it. My own personal rule of thumb was no more often than every two hours, from the beginning of one feeding to the beginning of the next.

This method worked for us, it worked amazingly. I don’t rant against attachment parenting, or assert that this way is the “only way”…I share what’s worked for our family and encourage all of you to do what’s best for yours, whatever that may be. We moms need to be on the same side here. The side of healthy, thriving infants, however we may approach reaching that objective.

God bless us all as we try to do our best with our babies, and to Him be the glory!

I’m posting today at Writer…Interrupted, a post of encouragement for parents of sick children.

As an extension of that, I wanted to mention that there’s nothing nicer than a care package when the germies have been making their unwelcome rounds. My oldest sister stopped in last fall, during our bout of influenza, and dropped off a grocery bag of goodies including:

• individual sized squirt bottles of Sunny D
• Campbell’s “Soup at Hand”–their microwaveable “heat and sip” soups
• lip balm

My mother in law is another one for spoiling sick loved ones, only her “care packages” usually contain:

• jello or pudding cups
• gogurts (yogurt in a tube, good frozen or thawed)
• juice boxes
• Pedialyte
• half a dozen cans of varying kinds of chicken soup (chicken noodl-o’s, chicken and stars, Dora chicken noodle soup…)
• crackers
• new books or toys

And my mom still sends over a kettle of chicken and dumplings, which always seems to me, to be the best medicine of all. That and her prayers…

What traditions have you lovingly brought into your family’s healing processes? I’d love to hear about them!

I checked in at Beck’s yesterday and was treated to a great post, as always, entitled, Bad Mother.

Beck reprimanded her daughter with a “Shame on you” in front of a guest whom she describes as a “certain Baby Boomer relative”. Anyway, I took this little gem of Beck’s and wanted to share it with you here:

The civilizing process demands that we learn to behave appropriately regardless of however much we may feel like smacking our younger brother in the head with a book for singing too loudly (just to use a “random” example.). Shame might not be a popular emotion, but it’s a necessary one and the appropriate response for letting our feelings overwhelm us and spill over into hurting another person.

The snippet above precedes a riotous and on-spot review of Corinne Maier’s book: No Kid. Apparantly this author wishes she’d never had kids, because of the huge disappointment they’ve become in her life. Sad stuff, people.

Jaunt on over to Beck’s and read the rest, it’s worth it. There are some insightful goodies in the comments as well.

Funny, as we walked through the wind and misting on-again-off-again rain at the state fair on Monday, trying to find a carnival ride for which oldest wasn’t too TALL and youngest wasn’t too SHORT …almost impossible by the way…I realized how nice it was to not have the kids all squabbling about “fairness”.

The carousel always draws us first, and usually dh hops on to stand beside toddler (3 years old) since she’s always been under the height requirement to ride it alone. My equilibrium gets off for a week if I get motion sick. I’m weird that way. I avoid carnival rides. I buy stock in Dramamine for road trips.

So we’re standing in line at the merry-go-round, hoping our youngest is tall enough, and come to find out, she isn’t. Her Daddy, off drooling over stock trailers, had  plans to meet up with us under the ferris wheel at 3 p.m. We normally don’t split up at the fair, but the threatening weather kinda forced us to make the most of the time we had…

So here we are, a mom and three woe-begone girls, chilled and wet and wanting to eek just a little bit of fun out of the experience.

“You guys can ride it without her, we’ll find something her size after this.” I told my older girls, helping toddler back into the double jogging stroller and velcroing the rain shield down over her.

They look at me like I’m crazy. 7 year old especially. “Mom! We’re not going to ride the first ride without her!”

Okay. So we finally find a motorcycle one that 7 & 3 year old can ride together with 9 year old’s urging. Poor 9 year old, she’s tall for her age. Too tall for a kiddie carnival!

But the best part for me was that 3 year old was happy either way. She LOVED the rides, but she accepted the fact that she wasn’t big enough for all of them. To the point of waving wildly at her sisters as they zoomed through the air on baby elephants. A really cool ride in the eyes of a toddler, yet she was ecstatic just to wave and holler hello at them each time they made it around to our side.

Today at lunch toddler brought up the carnival motorcycles and how much she wanted to ride one again.

“That was fun, wasn’t it?” I agreed.

She grinned, her spoonful of rice suspended mid-air. “I’m gonna be big enough next year. Next I’ll be four and I’ll be taller to ride, won’t I?”

Yes, you will, babe and on the off chance that you aren’t, we’ll make sure daddy’s there to save the day!

Child training, for our family, always began in the hospital.

Before even starting our family, I participated in a Growing Kids God’s Way class at my church titled Preparation for Parenting by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo. I sat in the pew, excitement filling me, thinking, This makes sense! So I ordered my own book and tape set and studied up for our children’s future.

Our three girls could be poster children for the success of their first years. I scheduled, not rigidly, just making sure that:

• No less than 2 hrs passed from the beginning of one feeding to the beginning of the next. I aimed for 3 hours, but didn’t sweat it at two. My firstborn was in the 90th percentile, and I figured the child needed extra nourishment!
• At night, I let them sleep as long as they would, not waking them to nurse, but nursing them if needed those first 8-10 weeks.
• I kept to a strict cycle of: feedtime/waketime/naptime

According to the Ezzo’s, and I found this true with all three of my girls, if you switch up the “feed/wake/sleep cycle” you mess with the infant’s ability to sleep through the night by 8-10 weeks of age. So if you subscribe to this theory, your infant never requires sleep props, because you keep them awake after feeding. Even if you just tickle their feet or change their diaper, minutes of awake time with a newborn, are sometimes all you’ll get! They’ll develop the habit, with no hardship, of falling asleep on their own. (w/o rocking, bouncing, shushing, swaddling, nursing…)

My first child slept through the night at exactly 8 weeks of age. To the night. And we’re talking 10-12 hrs each night, consistently, except when teething!

My second child made me sweat it, wondering if firstborn had been a fluke. She didn’t start her 10 hours a night till she was 9 weeks old. But from then on, she too, remained a consistent sleeper.

Third daughter…same scenario. Worked like a charm.

I know you all think I’m spoiled with all that great sleep, but this was trained into them from the hospital by the scheduling.

I always stress that, because I think so often moms wait till they’ve got problems to try to figure out how to solve them…and then you’re in for a lot of fussing and “crying it out” if you go that route, and some have to if they want to break the habit and ever get their 2 or 3 or 4 year old to sleep through the night!

By starting out with my little routine from day 1, my infants fell right into line and I had the blessing of several things:

1. Knowing that if they cried, its cause was either a dirty diaper or pain or needing cuddled. Btw, so often nursing becomes an overfeeding problem which can lead to upset tummies, fussing, etc, when maybe baby just needed more mommy-time…
2. Knowing that I had a two or three hour block of time before the next feeding came in pretty handy when planning grocery expeditions, etc!
3. Having a happy, well-adjusted infant and toddler who knew what to expect and had her expectations satisfied.

Another fun aside is that all our girls loved bedtime! People would be so amazed when visiting us at night and our crawling eight month old would grab her blankie and say, “Night-night!” (with no prompting from us) and head for her crib. Not a one ever gave us any bedtime trials. Kisses and hugs and special-lovin’ tucking in’s and they were practically counting Z’s before we had the door shut…

We’re all different, and I have nothing against breastfeeding on demand and co-sleeping…

I just can’t beat 10-12 hours of sleep at eight weeks post-partum! That, my dears, really rocks!

My friend Andrea gave birth to a baby girl today! Congratulations, Mama! We’re thrilled for you…

And…

MInTheGap happened to write an awesome pro-life post today: Children, Pregnant Mothers and Doctor’s Know. He argues that everyone, from abortionists to young children realize that an unborn baby is not simply a blob of tissue. A snippet for you:

Feminist Jean Garton tells the moving story of her three-year-old, who wandered into her room late at night and inadvertently saw a photo of a ten-week abortion. his mother describes his reaction:

His small voice was filled with great sadness as he asked, “Who broke the baby?”

How could this small, innocent child see what so many adults cannot see? How could he know instinctively that this which many people carelessly dismiss as tissue or a blob was one in being with him, was like him? In the words of his question he gave humanity to what adults call “fetal matter”; in the tone of his question he mourned what we exalt as a sign of liberation and freedom. With a wisdom which often escapes the learned, he asked in the presence of evidence before his eyes, “Who broke the baby?”¹

Go read the rest!

MInTheGap credited the following source: Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments

Jessica asked me to sometime post on my methods and beliefs regarding discipline.

First I’ll be up front and tell you I’m having to correct a lot of lazy parenting in my youngest. That said, I know what’s worked for us, and that’s what I’ll share here.

Realize the difference between punishment and training.

• Do we want children that have been forced into obedience (whether by threats or other fear tactics)?
• Or do we want children that have been trained to cheerfully obey?

Training is reinforcing good behavior positively. As much as possible, we need to encourage our children to do the right thing.

Punishment should involve several things, here are two for you to consider:

1. Spanking is only part of child training, it’s not the end all cure all. (It is an important part though, especially when training a young child!)
2. If you spank for bad behavior and then give your child what they want anyway, you’ve punished, but you’ve mis-trained. Better to not spank at all, imho.

Training

One way I encourage cheerful compliance, is by never giving them what they want when they’re whining/crying/pouting/screaming for it. That’s rewarding the negative behavior. You miss the boat on this one even once and your child’s memory won’t soon forget it. Consistency is key here.

This means, even if you spank for the whining (or whatever) don’t give in to the immediate gratification of whatever it was they were whining for in the first place. Or they’ll think the spanking was worth it: they still outsmarted mom and dad and got what they wanted.

So often you don’t even need to spank.

The following scenario happened here two nights ago: My toddler was crying with resentment that I wouldn’t let her have watermelon before her hot dog was finished.

I asked, “What’s wrong, did you bite your tongue?”

She frowned at me, and if she were old enough to employ sarcasm, I’m sure she would have.

“No. I don’t want hot dog. I want watermelon!”

“Oh.” I nodded and thoughtfully took a bite of my supper. “That would have been nice. Too bad you whined when I said ‘not yet’. That watermelon is really yummy. Better finish your hot dog and maybe tomorrow you can remember to obey and then you can have some watermelon.”

Of course the lower lip came out. She’s been perfecting “the pout”.

“Smile at Mama and eat.”

You know, she wasn’t thrilled but she didn’t explode because she knew what would happen. (Spanking)

Then last night, watermelon was again on the menu, this time with cheese burgers. She didn’t demand watermelon, she asked nicely, scarfing her hamburger down in the process.

Maybe she prefers hamburgers to hot dogs, or maybe she’s a fast learner.

More of my thoughts on this subject later! Meanwhile, add yours!

Friday night’s “last movie bash” was fun. We rented the Mickey-Donald-Goofy version of Three Musketeers (b/c 9 yo just read the classic and loved it!), and to our surprise, we stumbled upon our favorite Little Rascal’s episode, A Lad and His Lamp. We girls made homemade pizza–each daughter made her own individual pan pizzas, and then we sliced up a big watermelon and pulled out the sleeper sofa. For dessert: root beer floats.

At 9 P.M., with the children tucked in bed, dh and I unplugged the TV/VCR and the DVD player and moved the whole set-up to our bedroom where it’s now residing atop hubby’s chest of drawers. This keeps it out of sight and mind (less tempting) and made for a fun “hotel-like” movie time for us! (Yes, we had one last fling ourselves with Sandra Bullock and the movie Premonition)

Saturday morning began dh’s labor day weekend, and while he and I slept in (thanks to all the bonus features on our DVD keeping us up past midnight!) our nine year old daughter fixed scrambled eggs and set the table with donuts and milk…

She also put together a “fun box” for toddler, complete with Leap Pad, books, and games.

Pretty cool to have everyone on board like that!

Also a nice side to having absconded with the TV is that my living room furniture doesn’t have to be centered around the black box. I moved all the furniture into a more cozy setting…a recliner at each corner of our limestone fireplace with our couch facing both and coffee table in between. And most exciting, my friend Deborah recently brought the rest of her furniture and belongings from New York and gave me a 9′x12′ rectangular area rug…perfect for this conversational seating arrangement! Our living room is around 15′x23′, with the fireplace on a long north-facing wall.

Out with the old…

Normally on Saturday mornings, we tape CBS’s Madeline and Horseland shows and watch them during lunchtime. Here’s where making the old habit unavailable really opens life up to more fulfilling options. We took our lawn chairs out to a shady spot in the yard (deck is in full sun at noon) and had leftovers. One thing led to another and the girls started a running contest. Over and over they ran around the house with daddy timing them on his stopwatch. They progressed to making obstacle courses in and around the yard and outbuildings, and again raced them according to dad’s stopwatch. For at least an hour they were vigorously exercising…and enjoying themselves way more than if they’d been inside watching silly cartoons!

Sunday and we’re still going strong except that 3 year old is in the middle of a full-blown cold. Dh stayed home from church with her…and they kept the TV off, doing puzzles and reading instead. Deep down, I’m wondering if the whole crowd gets this feverish-head cold junk, will I have the fortitude to resist the comfort-glaze of movieland?

At least I can honestly say not a one of us has missed the flashing lights. Toddler hasn’t even questioned the absent TV!

We’ll see how we’re doing this time tomorrow!

Sometimes, my 3 year old has ADHD-like tendencies.

And she watches too many movies.

Thus the TV/Movie Challenge: Giving both up for one week.

We don’t have cable, and living in the country, our reception is pretty limited. So the TV part of the challenge will be easy. It’s the movie part that I’m dreading. But at least I have the promise of having done this before and reaped the benefits. That’s huge.

Did you ever get that restless and bored feeling as a child once the television had been turned off? Growing up, we rarely had ours on. Occasional reruns of The Brady Bunch or Little House on the Prairie helped sick days fly by faster, but for the most part we entertained ourselves. 3 yo’s gotten to repeating a phrase that saddens me immensely:

“What can I do, Mama? What can I do?”

She’s forgotten how to keep herself busy. That whole “productive” road to happiness thing? Mm-hm.

When my oldest was around 4 years old, we took AFR’s annual challenge and went without TV/movies for a month, and couldn’t believe what a difference it made. My then 4 year old really didn’t spend scads of time in front of the tube, but when it wasn’t available she went from keeping her door shut against her toddler sister (keep her out, mommy!) to welcoming her in to play for hours. Who would’ve thought? Suffice it to say, we left the TV off for over a year after that month was officially up.

I wish we’d never turned it back on.

I’m not excited about losing my #1 babysitter for 3 year old, but I’m ashamed for letting it get to this point. I have no choice. I told hubby the TV has to go, and thankfully he’s backing me up. See, we both remember the idyllic days when our household wasn’t “under the influence”.

Want to join me in the “TV and Movie Challenge”? My family is beginning tonight, after one last movie fling. A week sounds really doable to me, how about you?

Hopefully a week will turn into a month, etc. I’ll keep you updated on the highs and lows! Pray for us…

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