One of Kelsey's most in-depth pieces of research in the run up to Jake's birth (and there were many of them, rather her than me!) was about reusable nappies. We had talked to some friends in the PBE and got conflicting views. Some said that they felt that they were a waste of money as it took so long to get them ready that they had to use disposables too, whilst others called them a god-send and a money saver. We were interested and had some money in our American account to put towards them.
The first thing that strikes you is just how bulky they are compared to regular nappies. You can fit around 40 disposables in the same space as you can put 8 resuables. This does make putting clothes on a little more tricky, especially onesies, as the snaps at the bottom sometimes fail to reach. In the summer this won't be a problem as the nappies are all brightly coloured and patterned so he can get away with wearing them as shorts, but for now he may start wearing more "real" clothes when he has a cloth nappy on.
The second thing that strikes you is the price tag. Like with any market, there's a wide range of prices and like any market, you get what you pay for, by and large. Ours range from £15 - £25 per nappy, which does cover the insert which means that it's a big initial outlay to get to the point where you aren't having to do a full wash and dry every single day. However, considering that the cheapest disposables on the market come out around 10p per nappy (though the ones we prefer are 16p...), you can see that it takes a while before they pay for themselves. However, at the start, Jake would go through at least 10 nappies a day, and whilst we've only started using them in the last couple of weeks, he still goes through 5 or 6 each day. Boring maths says that at this rate it would take us around 9 more months to break even. However, they're reusable so we'll just keep hold of them for baby #2 in the future.
We were sold by the idea of not contributing to the landfill created by disposable nappies (the stats say a new born creates something like a tonne of waste in nappies in the first year or two iirc) and the idea of not having the regular expense of disposable nappies each week. What we weren't sure about was the amount of effort involved in using them. Going into our third week now, it's not as hard as I thought it was going to be. The only complication is that we have 3 or 4 different brands of nappies, meaning that it can be hard to work out which inserts go with which outer layers. Fortunately, Kelsey has taken this on as one of her household chores (though she's keen for me to learn!) so I can just pick up and go. On average, we wash them every two or three days, but they're all ok for the tumble dryer so it doesn't take too long to restock.
The main bonus that we've found is that they are much more absorbent than most reusables (unless you're willing to pay top dollar) meaning that we use less and Jake can happily sleep through the night with a surprisingly heavy nappy. The main drawback we've found is when it's a dirty nappy and you end up having to spray the excess with the shower head...not a fun job!
All in all, we like using them and part of me wishes that we had been able to start using them sooner. As with this whole experience, however, you live and learn. We'll be professionals next time round!
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Working in the dark
Regular readers may have noticed a distinct slow down in the number of posts in September. In part this is due to my new teaching course which when combined with being a father means that I have little time or energy to write. It's also in part because Jake has reached his next developmental stage meaning that he is waking up a lot during the night. The result of our swaddling experiment was that there was little or no difference whether we put him in the Wombie or not.
I was resigned to endless nights of broken sleep and hard days at work (or days fueled by strong coffee!), but fortunately Kelsey had other ideas. When she took Jake to get weighed today (15.5lbs for those counting) she also asked the midwife about his sleeping habits and apparently we've been coming it at it from the wrong approach for a while:
Our belief - only put him in his Wombie at night so he associates it with a longer sleep
The advice - whatever you do at night, do for his naps during the day so he associates a certain pattern with sleep rather than catnaps. This may explain why he's never really been one for long sleeps during the day, meaning that he gets cranky in the evenings.
Our belief - he's just been getting hungry at night
The advice - a kid of Jake's age and size should be able to sleep through the night (and indeed he was when we were in the US). He has gone through a growth spurt recently meaning that he needs more food, but that should come through the day, and we've gone out and bought "hungry" milk on their advice. By feeding him in the night, we may have been creating a pattern that would be hard to break which makes sense to our way of thinking. My only concern is that we're going to have a lot of crying over the next few nights and I don't want to think that my baby is lying in the dark, hungry and upset. However, this may be something I need to deal with if it helps him develop good sleeping patterns and gets me some much needed sleep.
Our belief - getting him to sleep downstairs is a good idea as you avoid any crying or fighting sleep when you put him to bed
The advice - he's at the age where he can learn patterns and routines and if rocking or singing him to sleep is done all the time, then he may learn to depend on this which may make falling asleep alone harder. We put him to bed in his own room tonight and tried to set up a simple routine of food, change into a night nappy, story and sleep sack. His eyes were still open when we left and there was around 5 minutes of noises but there's now been nothing for the last hour.
I'm really pleased that Kelsey got the advice today, but I'm also a little frustrated that it wasn't given freely as part of our exit from hospital or as part of the health visits early on. The leaflet they gave us is full of good ideas and reasons behind and match up with our own reading and thinking. It worries me that we could have gone on just accepting a lack of sleep without any strategies to try.
P.S. For those people who have children of their own and have their own stories to tell about sleep training, it would be good to know your strategies, failures and successes. However, please accept that this blog is also a personal diary for me to look back on rather than a prescriptive journal on how I think all babies should be treated. With that in mind, keep coming back as I'll be posting about the success (or lack thereof) of these approaches over the coming days/weeks/months.
I was resigned to endless nights of broken sleep and hard days at work (or days fueled by strong coffee!), but fortunately Kelsey had other ideas. When she took Jake to get weighed today (15.5lbs for those counting) she also asked the midwife about his sleeping habits and apparently we've been coming it at it from the wrong approach for a while:
Our belief - only put him in his Wombie at night so he associates it with a longer sleep
The advice - whatever you do at night, do for his naps during the day so he associates a certain pattern with sleep rather than catnaps. This may explain why he's never really been one for long sleeps during the day, meaning that he gets cranky in the evenings.
Our belief - he's just been getting hungry at night
The advice - a kid of Jake's age and size should be able to sleep through the night (and indeed he was when we were in the US). He has gone through a growth spurt recently meaning that he needs more food, but that should come through the day, and we've gone out and bought "hungry" milk on their advice. By feeding him in the night, we may have been creating a pattern that would be hard to break which makes sense to our way of thinking. My only concern is that we're going to have a lot of crying over the next few nights and I don't want to think that my baby is lying in the dark, hungry and upset. However, this may be something I need to deal with if it helps him develop good sleeping patterns and gets me some much needed sleep.
Our belief - getting him to sleep downstairs is a good idea as you avoid any crying or fighting sleep when you put him to bed
The advice - he's at the age where he can learn patterns and routines and if rocking or singing him to sleep is done all the time, then he may learn to depend on this which may make falling asleep alone harder. We put him to bed in his own room tonight and tried to set up a simple routine of food, change into a night nappy, story and sleep sack. His eyes were still open when we left and there was around 5 minutes of noises but there's now been nothing for the last hour.
I'm really pleased that Kelsey got the advice today, but I'm also a little frustrated that it wasn't given freely as part of our exit from hospital or as part of the health visits early on. The leaflet they gave us is full of good ideas and reasons behind and match up with our own reading and thinking. It worries me that we could have gone on just accepting a lack of sleep without any strategies to try.
P.S. For those people who have children of their own and have their own stories to tell about sleep training, it would be good to know your strategies, failures and successes. However, please accept that this blog is also a personal diary for me to look back on rather than a prescriptive journal on how I think all babies should be treated. With that in mind, keep coming back as I'll be posting about the success (or lack thereof) of these approaches over the coming days/weeks/months.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Swaddling
Those who have met Jake will know that he is an extremely active baby. Even when he was in the womb, Kelsey could feel him constantly moving to the extent that it took her 4 hours to get his heartbeat measured because he wouldn't lie still. This means that he likes to be on the go a lot and when he's not being moved by someone else, he will sit and flail his arms and legs like there's no tomorrow.
This is all well and good until he tries to go to sleep (or we persuade him that he's tired and wants to go to sleep). Right from day one, he will startle and flail in his sleep which often results in him hitting his face or just generally jerking himself awake.
A few weeks in, we found the Wombie which will be our gift of choice to anyone we know who has a baby in the future. It's effectively a baby strait jacket that zips from top to bottom making him feel swaddled without having to worry about swaddling technique and whether he'll fight his way out of it. After a couple of minutes of struggling, he will settle down for a good long sleep.
Recently, however, he's woken sounding frustrated and pushing against the Wombie which has led to a discussion about how long we should be swaddling him for. On the one hand, it still helps him fall asleep quickly. On the other hand, we're moving him into his room this weekend and I can't help but wonder if, with his 4 month birthday coming up on Saturday, whether we need to start getting him to sleep without his arms pinned by his side.
The books and internet are their usual mix of parents who have never swaddled their babies and think it's inhumane to those who still swaddled at almost a year. The usual advice of "what is right for your baby is right for your baby" is good, but not entirely helpful. Matters are also slightly confused by the fact that he has been waking in the night the last few weeks absolutely starving around 2am after being able to sleep through when we were in America.
It may just be a phase, but part of me wonders if it's to do with the Wombie, so tonight we're experimenting without it so we'll see how he gets on. As I type, his arms are stretched out gripping the sides of his crib but he's fast asleep and fairly peaceful. Watch this space for swaddling updates!
This is all well and good until he tries to go to sleep (or we persuade him that he's tired and wants to go to sleep). Right from day one, he will startle and flail in his sleep which often results in him hitting his face or just generally jerking himself awake.
A few weeks in, we found the Wombie which will be our gift of choice to anyone we know who has a baby in the future. It's effectively a baby strait jacket that zips from top to bottom making him feel swaddled without having to worry about swaddling technique and whether he'll fight his way out of it. After a couple of minutes of struggling, he will settle down for a good long sleep.
Recently, however, he's woken sounding frustrated and pushing against the Wombie which has led to a discussion about how long we should be swaddling him for. On the one hand, it still helps him fall asleep quickly. On the other hand, we're moving him into his room this weekend and I can't help but wonder if, with his 4 month birthday coming up on Saturday, whether we need to start getting him to sleep without his arms pinned by his side.
The books and internet are their usual mix of parents who have never swaddled their babies and think it's inhumane to those who still swaddled at almost a year. The usual advice of "what is right for your baby is right for your baby" is good, but not entirely helpful. Matters are also slightly confused by the fact that he has been waking in the night the last few weeks absolutely starving around 2am after being able to sleep through when we were in America.
It may just be a phase, but part of me wonders if it's to do with the Wombie, so tonight we're experimenting without it so we'll see how he gets on. As I type, his arms are stretched out gripping the sides of his crib but he's fast asleep and fairly peaceful. Watch this space for swaddling updates!
Thursday, 6 September 2012
A balancing act
"There's only one of him, and there's two of us. How hard can it be?" Immortal words I uttered in the last days of the Pre Baby Era, and ones that I still live to regret. It's one of the things that they don't mention in the baby books about just how tiring it can be looking after a baby, even if there's two of you. At the end of the day, even if there's another person in the room with you, the majority of your attention is still on the baby, making sure he's ok and not about to scream the place down.
It therefore makes sense that caring for Jake needs to be a shared operation with enough down time away from the baby to keep us both sane. During the long summer holidays, it wasn't a problem as we were both at home, and it was actually quite nice to be able to send Kelsey out with her sisters or parents and have some quality Jake time at home. Coming back to the UK has meant that I'm back to work and that Kelsey is back home with Jake all day. I've recently started a teaching course meaning that I'm out of the house for a good 10 hours a day. This means that on my return, Kelsey is ready for a break and most of the time I'm more than willing to take him (let's be honest, I miss him during the day!).
For now, whilst the evenings are light, it's easy to keep him occupied by going outside for a walk or to look at the trees in the garden. In the winter, it's going to be a little tougher, and hopefully Kelsey will be able to meet his need to go outside each day where possible.
The balancing act comes in when I come home tired and it's sometimes tough to make the transition from being a trainee teacher at work to being a father at home when I walk through the door. Fortunately, just seeing him puts a smile on my face and gives me the boost of energy I need to scoop him up, even more so when he's in a chatty and smiley mood. My aim is try and keep school work at school so that when I come home I can give my full to Jake and Kelsey.
It therefore makes sense that caring for Jake needs to be a shared operation with enough down time away from the baby to keep us both sane. During the long summer holidays, it wasn't a problem as we were both at home, and it was actually quite nice to be able to send Kelsey out with her sisters or parents and have some quality Jake time at home. Coming back to the UK has meant that I'm back to work and that Kelsey is back home with Jake all day. I've recently started a teaching course meaning that I'm out of the house for a good 10 hours a day. This means that on my return, Kelsey is ready for a break and most of the time I'm more than willing to take him (let's be honest, I miss him during the day!).
For now, whilst the evenings are light, it's easy to keep him occupied by going outside for a walk or to look at the trees in the garden. In the winter, it's going to be a little tougher, and hopefully Kelsey will be able to meet his need to go outside each day where possible.
The balancing act comes in when I come home tired and it's sometimes tough to make the transition from being a trainee teacher at work to being a father at home when I walk through the door. Fortunately, just seeing him puts a smile on my face and gives me the boost of energy I need to scoop him up, even more so when he's in a chatty and smiley mood. My aim is try and keep school work at school so that when I come home I can give my full to Jake and Kelsey.
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