The Smear Campaign Continues

New Year's Eve brought another baby's death in Milwaukee.  Another sad, tragic case that they are blaming on co-sleeping.  I am completely saddened by the idea of a baby dying at such a young age (approximately two months old) and yet I am angered that it is being used to continue a smear campaign. 

From what I have read, it goes something like this:  Baby was passed from 22 yo aunt to 10 yo aunt at bedtime.  10 yo takes baby into a room with a few other kids all sleeping on two crib mattresses on the floor.  Sometime in the night, someone sees baby is unconcious, which is when they go wake up the parents that are in the house!  And somehow this is called a co-sleeping death!

A few points to this story make me really upset--one, that the baby apparently had been throwing up and having seizures the day before and yet was not at the hospital or even being closely monitered by parents.  Two, that baby was left in the charge of a ten year old.  I babysat as a kid, I started at 11 and was very mature for my age.  But, never did I have a sick baby in my care!  Three, that the parents were home but were not taking care of their own (sick) baby.

This is a case of neglect, pure and simple.  A case that has everything to do with the poverty these people are living in and the fact they are obviously uneducated on how to take care of a child.  The baby was passed from person to person throughout the night, when her parents were in the same house sleeping.  There was no cosleeping, there were a bunch of kids shoved in a room with a baby in the middle.  That is not cosleeping!! 

Instead of finding a scapegoat in cosleeping, which can be a very beneficial and lovely practice, the authorities should be educating parents everywhere on how to safely care for a child with basic ideas like don't leave your baby with a ten year old!  Or don't put a 2 month old in a bed with other kids!  Those are easy things to teach people, right? 

Cosleeping Smear Campaign

I just found out about this ad campaign that will be starting soon in Milwaukee.  I am absolutely sickened by this and I am going to try to find out what I can do to get it stopped!!  Ads of sleeping babies with KNIVES next to them saying sleeping next to a parent is just as dangerous! 

Here's a link to the article in our local paper.  You can see the ads there. 

I am absolutely dumbstruck by how uninformed people can be!  One of the things that strikes me about this is it says infant deaths was 5.9 per 1000 in whites and 14.1 for blacks.  Obviously this has something to do with the inner city and poverty.  Another article I read, which I have to search for, said something about how people aren't cosleeping for any baby benefits, but because they don't have a crib for their baby.  They are sleeping on the couch or in a recliner because they don't have a bed.  Perhaps we should figure out a way to get cribs to low income families instead?

It makes me so mad to see these ads.  Instead of scaring the shit out people who might not know what to do, let's educate them, shall we?  There are reputable places to go to find out more about safe cosleeping and bedsharing, like La Leche League,  or Dr. Sears.  And they all have similar guidelines, why not make an ad showing correct cosleeping techniques instead of a picture of a baby with a meat cleaver???

This just brings up so many emotions because being a mother is so hard.  They don't come with instructions, you get told so many different things on what's right or what works.  Then you have people intent on telling you every scary story of anything bad that ever happened to anyone they've ever known.  It's nerve wracking to be a new parent.  One thing I wish I would've known when having Ingrid is to follow my own instinct.  To follow Ingrid's wishes and needs.  But instead I was told to not hold her or she'd be clingy.  To get her on a schedule so she would be easier to deal with.  To make her sleep on her own, at certain times.

I tried those things and felt stressed out because they didn't work for me.  So I held her.  I fed her when she wanted to eat.  I had her in our room, in a vibrating seat because she didn't want to sleep in a crib at first.  I always felt like I was doing something wrong because I thought I should be able to get her to sleep in a crib--because people told me she should.  Not because it's a well known fact babies love cribs at a month old, but because they want babies to love cribs at a month old!

And then with Otis I finally felt comfortable enough to say fuck it and do what felt right to me.  He took all his naps in the Moby for the first six months, he ate whenever he wanted, even if it meant getting up four times at night (no, he's not sleeping through the night at eight weeks, are you crazy???) He was in our room for eight months.  And not once did I feel like I was doing anything wrong, I felt like I was doing things right!  Because they worked!  He was a happy, healthy baby, and I know it was because he got his needs met. 

I have been thinking of this for awhile because there's a group I started on Facebook for local moms and some of the things people post just make me sad.  "My daughter is nine weeks old and won't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time in her crib.  It's driving me crazy!"  So wear that little girl!  Get your house cleaned while she sleeps :)  "My daughter loves to be swaddled but I want to know how to get her out of it, I'm afraid she'll have sleep issues if she is swaddled for too long."  Really?  Your kid will tell you they want to be swaddled or not swaddled.  Ingrid didn't like it at all and was out of swaddling after a couple weeks.  Otis loved it and was swaddled for months.  Trust your babies to tell you what they need!

And you know what?  They don't need to sleep with a knife.  They do, sometimes, however, need to sleep with their mother. 

Just Roll With It.

We are having some issues over here at the Liddle house.  Ingrid has been sick and clingy, whiny, non sleeping, crabby, you name it, she's felt it in the span of six seconds...I'm trying really hard to just go with it, let her have her phase of being crabby and sick, nurse her through it with cuddles and patience, but after a week of this, my patience has run out.  I'm going on very little sleep and at 2am, when she's screaming in her bed but doesn't actually want or need anything, it's very hard to see this as a small glitch in our routine.  I start thinking things will NEVER go back to "normal" (whatever that is, anyway...)  Things start becoming massively important, like if we take her into our bed to sleep another night, she'll absolutely never learn how to sleep on her own again.  Or if I go in there to calm her, she'll be up at 2am every single night of her life and I'll never once get another good night's sleep. 

Last night the only thing that got me through was Sarah's post and knowing every mom goes through a period of wondering what the hell is going on with their kid.  This is why I love the blog world!  I feel so much support from other moms whether they know it or not.  Whether I've met them or not.  Whether the issues are the same or not.  Just knowing other moms are up at all hours and dealing with their kids makes me feel a little calmer.

So last night as Ingrid cried on, I just kept saying to myself every minute she cries is a minute closer to morning.  Be consistent, she'll fall asleep eventually.  And she did.  After an hour, many many trips into her room to rub her back and give her a hug and put her blanket back on her, after an hour of cries and wails of mamamama, she fell asleep and slept until 8am.  It was a very small blip in the big picture, one measly hour, but man, in the heat of the moment when all I want to do is go back to bed and curl up under the blankets and go to SLEEP already, it seemed huge.  Alas, it was not.

The same is true of her two days of not napping.  It really drove me crazy to see her rubbing her eyes and asking for her blankets and books only to put her down in her bed and listen to her jumping and singing and not sleeping.  And then getting her out of bed only to have her cry at every single thing that happened because she was so tired.  I was so crazy I almost started to cry.  Not only does SHE need the naps, but dammit, so do I!!  I work so hard every day taking care of her and the house, those two hours of her sleeping are my only time to calm down!!  And then people would tell me their kid stopped napping right around now and I seriously had a meltdown.  Brendan took Ingrid out of the house to drive around and let me nap, I was so upset. 

And now, with my cup of coffee in hand and a clear head from six straight hours of sleep, I can see that it's probably not the end of her naps, it's probably just a phase.  I need to just roll with it, let her talk in her crib if she wants to, not force a nap on her if she's just not going to, not get so upset if once or twice she doesn't nap.  Keep trying and just ride this wave of her being sick and everything getting out of whack.  I really want to be that calm mom who goes with the flow, but it's a struggle.  I have to physically tell myself to remember that, it is so completely not in my nature to do so.  I want to be in control of everything and have things go my way, and sadly, with kids it's just not possible.  So instead of fighting Ingrid, I'm going to fight my urge to have everything under my control.  Let go, roll with it.   

CoSleeping is Pretty Cozy

Yep, another post about sleeping.  Sorry, everyone, but it's a major thing here right now--did we get any?  How much did we get?  Who slept where?  How does that affect our mood? 

Last night and the night before Ingrid fell asleep in her bed, woke up as we were going to bed, and begged to go in our bed with us.  It's funny, she is absolutely screaming and crying and snotting and wailing "mamamamaamamma" and the second I go into her room she stands up and, with no hint of the previous crying, says "Bed?" and points to our room.  Drama queen.

So last night she slept with me, all cuddled up and kicking my bladder and making static sparks with her pjs and blanket.  We fell asleep right away, which I'm realizing doesn't happen often for me.  She, and Brendan, can hit the pillow asleep, but I take awhile usually.  However, with my little lady all curled up by me, I drifted off in no time and we both slept the whole night through.  Brendan came in as he was leaving for work to say goodbye, he actually had to wake us up!  We said bye and then laid in the cozy bed as the cats came up to say good morning and sniff us, and it hit me how awesome that is. 

When Ingrid was in her crib and crying every hour or so, I got no sleep, obviously.  And hearing her cry made me feel crappy.  And having to get up out of bed and go to her was annoying (and cold.)  Having her in bed with us is so warm and cozy and I sleep so much better.  I'm so glad she finally sleeps in our bed!  It seems counterintuitive but I really wanted her to be able to cosleep so those nights she was upset I could bring her in. 

Our doctor tried to tell us at our last appointment that if we wanted to sleep we'd have to take two weeks to let her cry it out.  "It'll take a long time but it will be worth it."  Inside I was cringing and rolling my eyes, but I just nodded and said uh huh.  And we really did do that once or twice, and she fell asleep...for an hour or two.  Nothing has made her sleep through the night quite like being snuggled between mama and daddy.  Take that, doctors.

Should There Be Another...

These are the things I will remember if we have another baby:

1. The first six weeks are hard and I will let the baby sleep wherever, whenever and not worry I'm forming bad habits.

2. I will wear the baby more than I wore Ingrid. I didn't know about wraps with Ingrid, we had a front pack and I used that instead of a stroller and when I wanted to get things done and she was fussy, but I will use a wrap and really WEAR baby #2. If we have one, this is all hypothetical :)

3. I will try to nurse. I have meds I'm on and I don't want to NOT be on them, but I never really tried to find out if there were similar meds that I could've nursed on. Formula sucks, I don't think it's evil, but BF would be so much easier I think.

4. I will try to cosleep. We had Ingrid in our room but I was so crazy about every single noise she made that I would jump up and check on her. We both slept better in separate rooms. Until just a few months ago when she started getting up every hour for a couple weeks--I would've loved to be cosleeping then so I could stay in bed and try to comfort her instead of getting up, walking to her room, rocking her, putting her down, walking back to my room, getting in bed, and then hearing her cry again.

5. I will for sure cloth diaper from day one. Now that I understand how much money those stupid disposables cost when you can get super cute cushy cloth ones, I can't believe I went a whole year using them!! I am such a convert!

I just read a blog carnival about cloth diapering and what you know now that you wish you'd known then and it just got me thinking of having a kid in general. There are so many things I wish I would've known when Ingrid was born. But that's a dumb reason to have another kid, right?