Parenting Catch-all

BE, I can relate to a lot of your post. Likewise, we have a 5 month old, our first. We considered the plusses and minuses of having my wife stay home--math wasn't quite as good for us to have her keep working, she stayed home. That certainly wasn't an easy decision and as a result I'm working overtime to help us tread water for a few years.

We also had/have a lot of sleep issues and while I didn't get smacked awake I'm sure I was an inch away. Without having the experience of understanding what it's like to be through this completely and looking back on it, I'm still going to echo the previous posters when they said that it's just a stressful time and cocktail of problems. I think the first thing to improving your situation is just sitting down with your wife and acknowledging that and trying to cut each other (but just as important: yourself) slack.

Beyond that, we've found the book Precious Little Sleep to be helpful in understanding what is going on with infant sleep and giving us some options on how to improve things. Note that I said improve, not solve. Sometimes we still get frustrated that things aren't solved, but I do my best to step back and remind ourselves that progress has been made from where we were a month and a half ago. Not straight line progress. In fact, within that time period is the worst sleep issues we've had yet, but we feel like we had some tools and knowledge to help us get back on track.

As an amateur looking in, the 5 pm bed time is not doing anyone any favors. It robs you of time with your baby and it shifts your baby's sleep schedule so early that it's causing a larger portion of the night to be poor sleep which causes problems for you. Getting bed time to at least 7 would align your schedules much better and solve some (not all) issues, imo. Best of luck!

Bfgp wrote:

Yeah it sounds normal. Babies grow fast enough and they get to the point it's far more interactive, then they're so active you can't keep up. Don't write off the idea of having a second one! My wife was adamant we weren't having a second one but the boy grew up so quickly and he was so easy after hitting about 2 that we went for the second one. Like larryC said, the second one can help with having them keep each other company. But it's not for everyone, especially when the kids fight or you have everyone sick at the same time. Parenting is honestly a full time job and any stay at home parent is a hero.

Ironically, I considered sibling rivalry and fighting to be the biggest perk of having at least two kids. If both kids aren't yours, you have limited room to maneuver and arrange the interaction. When both are yours, you have all the power to influence them both.

It's unrealistic to think that they'll never fight, and it feels a tad creepy, even. Siblings fight. That's the normal thing. But when they're both yours, you can teach them how to fight in a good way, how to resolve differences productively, negotiate, and think laterally. It's a good time to teach them that a disagreement doesn't have to be a bad thing, and that reaching an amicable settlement and compromise can actually mean that they both gained from the interaction compared with not fighting at all, or not having any disagreement.

Not that it'll be easy. But it's easier than if the other kid is someone else's.

mrlogical wrote:

Finding daycare is such an incredibly stressful thing to do, and I am so relieved that, knock on wood, I may have figured this out for the last time ever.

Coincidentally, this morning my son (now 11) made me watch the scene from Daddy Daycare where the parents are checking out daycare options for their child. He thought it was hilarious. The sad thing is my experience wasn't that much better -- I remember the woman whose dark apartment smelled like cigarettes, and the 2 kids sitting on the floor watching a violent action movie on her crappy TV while we interviewed her for our kid.

We finally found a really great spot, but it was long, hard, and scary.

Daycare hunt: do not want. Spouse and I agreed early on that our particular brand of stubbornness required a center as a primary daycare provider. Team of caregivers. Rock-solid hours. Set in stone procedures and clear expectations. Guarantees as to content of curriculum, daily activities, and nutrition. As a bonus the only center that had an open slot for us provides regular updates and pictures via an app.
Thar be a rant!

Spoiler:

The cost is exorbitant. We gritted our teeth and let it coast. The Little flourished. Every god-damned teacher in that place greets my Little by name and gushes to me about Little's progress. Bastards.
Well now I have two Littles enrolled and the burn is starting to consume our savings.
This is unsustainable so we are back in the "waiting list" game. We saved and are relatively frugal, so worst case we can maintain status quo for another year.... But if ANYTHING happens. Roof, car, tradewars, state budget cuts, insurance rate spikes.... That math changes very quickly.

Hate this feeling. Hate this process. Hate pulling my kids from a place that is letting them flourish, but we can't afford it.
Two people working solid white collar jobs with no major debt aside from a mortgage for a modest starter home can't afford a nice daycare for their two kids. f*ck this economy.

Sorry Rezzy, I totally sympathize with your experience, and agree that it is unbelievable how hard it is to find and pay for childcare. I am, by any reasonable metric, incredibly privileged, and I feel like I just barely can make this work. And yet I expect a majority of families are getting by with even less.

I can say I faced a similar change in the last couple of years, transitioning our kids from a shinier, fancier daycare to one that was a lot cheaper (~$100/week) and much closer to our house (the time it took me to go from my office to home with my kids went from nearly 2 hours with the old place to about 40 minutes with the new one), but felt like it was of a much lower quality. The building was much less pretty, it smelled bad, there were more kids overall, and our initial impression of the teachers wasn't super great. The improvements in cost and convenience were massive, but we felt really guilty about it, like we were cramming our girls into this dingy building with stinky kids and weird teachers so we could save some cash and I could have a shorter commute. But it's ended up being a great decision, because although they don't have all the fancy resources the previous facility had (the old place had a pool, and the kids got swim lessons basically all year round!), there are still tons of books and toys, plenty of place to play outside, the teachers are all just as kind and loving as the teachers in the previous more impressive schools, and our kids are thriving just as well as they did at their old place. Obviously there's no guarantee whatever alternatives are available to you will work out, but lower cost daycare options can still be loving and enriching environments.

I don't know how we would have managed it without the extenuating circumstances of my wife being a nanny.

So SHE was our high-quality trustworthy daycare. It allowed her to care for our kid, while still bringing some money in caring for another kid or two on top of that.

I had to remind her on a few occasions of the hidden $$$ value of that. She'd look at her paychecks and feel like it wasn't a lot of money for the work she was doing.

mrlogical wrote:

Obviously there's no guarantee whatever alternatives are available to you will work out, but lower cost daycare options can still be loving and enriching environments.

Thanks, and that's the hope as we try to figure out what options we even have available to us. The facility we currently use is just a few minutes away from my spouse's office. A 45 minute drive from mine. But through some of the highest traffic routes, so a 2 mile stretch can take an hour depending on when and where you get stuck. So this place was never our first choice, but they were the only ones willing to commit to an open spot. Now we are down to basically two options unless we're willing to forgo regular safety inspections or any kind of pretense at structure.
Either would save us a ton of money and be closer to home, but neither has slots open for the asking and we have to throw our names into the pile and hope we get a call.

Frustrating.
Edit: Especially since we SHOULD have been on the waiting list for one of them since before our first was ever born, but every time we call they have no record of anything... sooo... shenanigans?

Jonman wrote:

I had to remind her on a few occasions of the hidden $$$ value of that. She'd look at her paychecks and feel like it wasn't a lot of money for the work she was doing.

Hidden $$$ my foot. That's a Goldmine! This year I'll be able to stop submitting daycare receipts for our FLEX plan after February.

I feel you Rezzy. We lucked out and got some raises that kept us treading water after cutting a lot of our expenses, but we've put off buying our first home in large part because we've sunk all of our extra money in to daycare. We're finally coming out of it after two kids and paying a more reasonable amount, and we're looking to get our own starter home, so I envy you that. I want to have a yard to send them out to play in so very bad.

... So the daycare that's at the top of our list. Non-Profit. Run by Educators. Highly recommended by the Early Access folks I work with. They do Open-Enrollment one day. First come, first served. Their waiting list is only for slots that open during the year. So now I'm trying to figure out how early we would need to camp at their door to get in.

Rezzy wrote:

... So the daycare that's at the top of our list. Non-Profit. Run by Educators. Highly recommended by the Early Access folks I work with. They do Open-Enrollment one day. First come, first served. Their waiting list is only for slots that open during the year. So now I'm trying to figure out how early we would need to camp at their door to get in.

Bring your camping gear.

Hoping to gather some opinions and insight:

Since beginning daycare at about 4 months old my daughter has been consistently sick. After a trial day in mid December, she got a slight case of RSV. She started full time on January 2, and had cold symptoms by the next week. Last Sunday she had a fever which got her sent home from daycare on Monday. We found out later that day that she had the flu. The fever still persists if we aren’t giving her medicine for it regularly. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I took sick days and Thursday the wife did. We were both off Friday.

We have to pay the daycare regardless of whether or not she goes. My wife only has one sick day left for the rest of the school year. It isn’t a great look for me at work to be taking a ton of time off.

My wife thinks we should find a full time nanny, which would be at least $150 more per week than daycare. I lean toward giving daycare another month. A lot of people say this sick streak early in daycare is normal and will happen regardless of when she starts.

Thoughts on what we should do?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Thoughts on what we should do?

Not going to daycare isn't really a guarantee against Littles getting sick. Our pediatrician assures us that these early expressions of the immune system kicking in aren't necessarily bad and can set up the Little for less issues later.

The lack of time off and the daycare banishing Littles with fevers is a pain in the ass and I don't know what the best route there is. Parents don't have a lot of flexibility in the workplace, but in my experience an honest chat with HR and/or your supervisor may unlock some flexibility in the rules/expectations that were put in place to combat abuse of the leave system.

We considered the nanny route, but those things are human and prone to illness too. If your nanny gets sick.... we decided a daycare with staff and their own network of subs was the only way to get both of us back to work semi-reliably, without depending too much on luck. Good Luck!

It is expected when they start day care or preschool. Ours started in July at 2 years old and has had a cold basically every other week since then. Luckily nothing more serious so far outside of an ear infection that cleared up on its own.

You can deal with it now or when they start preschool or school. A nanny just puts off the problem until they start spending time with more kids and also slows social development but at 4 months that is not a big deal. Maybe you go the nanny route for a bit until she is a year old and then try day care again when she is a bit older with a more mature immune system and can deal with colds a bit better? From what I have read the general consensus seems to be until 18-24 months that one on one care is best and after that a group setting part of the time helps development. Finances permitting of course!

Agreed with others. My first daughter's first couple of months of daycare was just a nightmare of all of us trading diseases, until presumably we all developed an extra billion antibodies and things went back to normal. If you're otherwise comfortable with the daycare, I'd say press on. You've probably already had the worst of it.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Hoping to gather some opinions and insight:

Since beginning daycare at about 4 months old my daughter has been consistently sick. After a trial day in mid December, she got a slight case of RSV. She started full time on January 2, and had cold symptoms by the next week. Last Sunday she had a fever which got her sent home from daycare on Monday. We found out later that day that she had the flu. The fever still persists if we aren’t giving her medicine for it regularly. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I took sick days and Thursday the wife did. We were both off Friday.

We have to pay the daycare regardless of whether or not she goes. My wife only has one sick day left for the rest of the school year. It isn’t a great look for me at work to be taking a ton of time off.

My wife thinks we should find a full time nanny, which would be at least $150 more per week than daycare. I lean toward giving daycare another month. A lot of people say this sick streak early in daycare is normal and will happen regardless of when she starts.

Thoughts on what we should do?

1) Sick streaks when starting daycare are normal.
2) Have a conversation w/your boss. I don't know your industry, but most white collar places are going to be very flexible on this. Blue collar may be a bit more of a challenge (boo capitalism!). Depending on industry/workplace, shared leave may be an option (where your teammates donate to you during this tough time).
3) Bottom line: is $600/mo worth it to you? W/o knowing the context of how much of your income that equates to, advice here may not be helpful. That said, $600/mo adds up quick ($7200/yr) in a 529 for Little college, your 401k, or emergency savings.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Hoping to gather some opinions and insight:

Since beginning daycare at about 4 months old my daughter has been consistently sick. After a trial day in mid December, she got a slight case of RSV. She started full time on January 2, and had cold symptoms by the next week. Last Sunday she had a fever which got her sent home from daycare on Monday. We found out later that day that she had the flu. The fever still persists if we aren’t giving her medicine for it regularly. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I took sick days and Thursday the wife did. We were both off Friday.

We have to pay the daycare regardless of whether or not she goes. My wife only has one sick day left for the rest of the school year. It isn’t a great look for me at work to be taking a ton of time off.

My wife thinks we should find a full time nanny, which would be at least $150 more per week than daycare. I lean toward giving daycare another month. A lot of people say this sick streak early in daycare is normal and will happen regardless of when she starts.

Thoughts on what we should do?

My best advice would be to first make sure it's nothing serious for everyone, and once you're sure it's not serious, get aggressive on symptomatic therapy for people who have to work. Paracetamol has a very high therapeutic index, and we have many drugs that can stop nasal secretions and dampen down the cough reflex. The malaise will suck, but we have painkillers for that, too.

Most work is a lot of grindy things so if your work is amenable, you can do most of the less important background stuff while you're not well. Do take care not to infect the entire floor.

It'll also be good not to be sick together, so instituting infection control protocols at home can stagger the infection so you will at least have a few days leeway so you don't overlap on each other's worst days.

Maybe this has been in this thread before, but saw on Facebook and got a laugh out of me.

IMAGE(https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/natural_parenting.png)

Open enrollment achieved. They had a preschool slot for June and a Toddler slot for September... and we are on the wait list with sibling priority in case something opens up. Under $200 a week each. *Relief* Now to figure out what to do for the next few months. *Panic*

Congrats, Rezzy. Hope you figure something out in the meantime. With kid #2, we had like a 3 week gap between end of maternity leave and start of daycare. Because it was during the summer, we were able to find a 17 year old in our neighborhood who had a lot of babysitting experience (both traditional stuff and working at a gym's daycare center on weekends), so we paid her for 3 weeks of basically daycare in our home.

HR for my employer (the State) just sent out a thing about how we are allowed to bring infants 6 weeks - 6 months old to work with us. Here's a (kind of crappy and condescending) article about it. It's an interesting idea. For my work, I have a lot of flexibility to work from home, so if we had a few week childcare gap or something, I would probably just prefer to work from home during that time rather than bringing a baby into the office, but it's an interesting idea. One of my coworkers suggested she might want to do that one day a week for breastfeeding/bonding time, which makes sense. I'll be really interested to see how this plays out in practice...

mrlogical wrote:

Congrats, Rezzy. Hope you figure something out in the meantime. With kid #2, we had like a 3 week gap between end of maternity leave and start of daycare. Because it was during the summer, we were able to find a 17 year old in our neighborhood who had a lot of babysitting experience (both traditional stuff and working at a gym's daycare center on weekends), so we paid her for 3 weeks of basically daycare in our home.

HR for my employer (the State) just sent out a thing about how we are allowed to bring infants 6 weeks - 6 months old to work with us. Here's a (kind of crappy and condescending) article about it. It's an interesting idea. For my work, I have a lot of flexibility to work from home, so if we had a few week childcare gap or something, I would probably just prefer to work from home during that time rather than bringing a baby into the office, but it's an interesting idea. One of my coworkers suggested she might want to do that one day a week for breastfeeding/bonding time, which makes sense. I'll be really interested to see how this plays out in practice...

Nice.
When my first was an infant in 2011, Vermont in general was mildly breastfeeding and pumping friendly. My wife worked at a bank that was flat out terrible about giving her a space to pump that wasn't just a bathroom.
Even though we're past that stage, I'm so glad things have continued to improve.

Baby slept 6 hours at a stretch this week. TWICE!

Light at the end of the sleep deprivation tunnel.

10 weeks the other day, and up to 10 pounds 6 ounces. This preemie girl is catching up well.

Stele wrote:

Baby slept 6 hours at a stretch this week. TWICE!

Light at the end of the sleep deprivation tunnel.

10 weeks the other day, and up to 10 pounds 6 ounces. This preemie girl is catching up well.

Well done. Once ours got to the 6 hour mark regularly we did the "cry it out" method to get her to 8 and then 10. Now she sleeps about 11 hours most of the time.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
mrlogical wrote:

Congrats, Rezzy. Hope you figure something out in the meantime. With kid #2, we had like a 3 week gap between end of maternity leave and start of daycare. Because it was during the summer, we were able to find a 17 year old in our neighborhood who had a lot of babysitting experience (both traditional stuff and working at a gym's daycare center on weekends), so we paid her for 3 weeks of basically daycare in our home.

HR for my employer (the State) just sent out a thing about how we are allowed to bring infants 6 weeks - 6 months old to work with us. Here's a (kind of crappy and condescending) article about it. It's an interesting idea. For my work, I have a lot of flexibility to work from home, so if we had a few week childcare gap or something, I would probably just prefer to work from home during that time rather than bringing a baby into the office, but it's an interesting idea. One of my coworkers suggested she might want to do that one day a week for breastfeeding/bonding time, which makes sense. I'll be really interested to see how this plays out in practice...

Nice.
When my first was an infant in 2011, Vermont in general was mildly breastfeeding and pumping friendly. My wife worked at a bank that was flat out terrible about giving her a space to pump that wasn't just a bathroom.
Even though we're past that stage, I'm so glad things have continued to improve.

They were violating federal law:

http://www.usbreastfeeding.org/workp...

As of 2010, not OK to just point to the bathroom and say, "That's the breastfeeding room."

A lot of places suck at following the law on that. Hell, my wife worked for my state's DHHS and they sucked at giving her a space that wasn't a closet. She ended up getting a conference room but had to fight for it.

Oh, I was well aware of it and made sure to inform my wife. But it was one of those choose your battle things, I I would support her however she wanted to proceed. Sometimes it was better and other times not. She was also in a back office position, so luckily she was able to get better accommodations than front line people.

As I said, I'm glad it's moving in the right direction.

Top_Shelf wrote:

http://www.usbreastfeeding.org/workp...

As of 2010, not OK to just point to the bathroom and say, "That's the breastfeeding room."

Another great part of the ACA.

Hey All,

Gotta admit, I'm more of a lurker on here - and god that sounds so creepy - but I just wanted to share that my daughter was born on Monday! She's my third child, and having been out of practice with nappies/sleepless nights etc for the past 7 years, I gotta say it's taking some getting used to! Think I'm gonna have to kiss goodbye to my late night weekend gaming sessions for a bit :'( But it's so worth it!

Cheers

Congrats!

Argh, I am having a hard time with my 11 week old baby boy. He's always spat up a lot more than either of our girls did, but it seemed to us he was growing pretty fast anyway, so we weren't too worried about it. But at his 2 month checkup they said that actually he had fallen off his growth curve a bit and they were concerned, so they recommended my wife give up cows milk to see if that would help. He also has had some really bad skin--dry and cracked and red--which was something I remember about our girls, that they had some bad skin for a bit early on and that it got better, so it didn't worry me too much. But that, too, has gotten worse, and seems to flare up around his feedings. Over this weekend things got worse, he was angry about eating, spitting up a lot when he did eat, and his skin was getting really blotchy.

We took him to the pediatrician on Saturday and learned he had fallen further off the growth curve, and his skin was quite bad. The pediatrician recommended we 1)see an allergist, 2)have my wife go on a more hardcore elimination diet, cutting out the top 6 allergens (I believe that's milk, wheat, eggs, soy, nuts, and something else?), and 3)at bedtime, put the baby in a bath, then slather him in aquaphor, then put him in damp pajamas (soaked but wrung out) with a layer of dry pajamas on top (which seemed totally bizarre). We've done all of that and it still doesn't seem like he's improving. Oh and we've also given him Nutramigen (expensive milk-free formula) at times to see if that'd help too, but basically all its done is make us confused about whether the problem is the milk we've given him or the formula.

It's really stressful, because the diet is really hard for my wife, especially this more aggressive version, and because we're worried about how to get him eating and comfortable and growing again. (We assume the skin stuff and the spitting up and not getting enough food down is all related, although I guess they could be separate problems). Through 2 nights, the wet wrap seems to have helped with some of the cracking and dryness on his limbs, but his chest sill looks really bad. My hope is that we will get to the allergist very soon and that they will be able to identify something that is actually causing all of this that we can just eliminate and fix this. But it's really stressful trying to figure this out, made all the more tense by the fact that my wife is supposed to be returning to work in about 3 weeks, which would be stressful enough without all this mess. Not fun.