Breast Milk – Formula
I expressed my milk for the first few weeks then stopped because it was just easier & faster to directly feed from the nipple. What a mistake that was. This made it incredibly difficult for Nova to transition from breast milk to formula as she was highly resistant with bottle feeding. So here’s a word of advise for breastfeeding mums.. express your milk into bottles & commit to this as it will make it easier for bub to transition to formula later on. Also, mixing breast milk with formula really helped with transitioning. We did that for about 2 weeks & eventually Nova gave up the nipple for the bottle on her own.
Spending Too Much Time Trying To Get
Alright, I know we may be a little obsessed about “sleep” as in “is my bub getting enough sleep”, “why isn’t my bub sleeping when it’s their bedtime” & just over stressing the period of trying to get bub to sleep. The longest time I’ve spent trying to put Nova to bed was just over an hour. It wasn’t just that one time, it went on for days & I felt like ripping my hair out. Eventually, I just listened to Daniel & moved on “if she doesn’t want to sleep, don’t make her sleep, she’ll fall asleep when she’s tired” & it was the best thing I’ve done for all of us Lol No more unnecessary stress & better use of time. I know it’s exhausting which is why you just want your bub to go to sleep when you need a break, but honestly if you are forcing it on your child then you’ll be overworking yourself for time that could be better spent on other things.
Pressuring Baby To
There are many who will dream of a luxury lifestyle with nice cars & fancy things.. & here all we desire is for our bub to finish her meal without being fussy.
It’s ever so natural to be worried when you think your baby is underfed, but we learnt that pressuring bub to intake more than they wish has a negative impact on their feeding experience. During early months of teething Nova went through a phase where she would reject feeding after a few minutes in so I had to use coercion & occasionally force to try & get her to finish her meal. She hated it. We hated it. It was not a nice scene. We didn’t realise that by pressuring Nova to eat when she no longer wanted to.. what we were actually doing was pushing her to develop negative associations with the food offered. As soon as we realised what we were doing was not right for Nova, we quickly ditched our ways & started over. It sure took a lot of patience, but it certainly made progress & it’s been quite consistent since. She now finishes her meals without fuss & even for the few times that she doesn’t, we no longer pressure her to.
Not Quick Enough To Establish A
We learnt that routine is key. Having a schedule make things so much easier for both bub & you. It’s easy for babies to get their days & nights mixed up when their internal clock isn’t regulated yet & following a routine can help prevent this. Being newly parents we went with the flow for sometime, but things got real tricky after 4 months where Nova started to go through all sorts of developmental milestones. Reaching a developmental milestone has so much impact on your bub’s routine. Things get real interesting when bub becomes more alert & by “interesting” I mean “difficult AF”. Though, as soon as we identified her eat/play/sleep pattern we were able to develop a schedule for her where we slowly eased her into a routine. Having established this for your bub makes everything feel more organised & thus less stressful.
Over
Ok, I think most of us parents, if not all of us are guilty of buying soft fabric with cute prints. Let’s not forget the obvious fact that babies grow very fast which means a lot of products we purchase will be useful only for a few months (if not weeks).
If you’re gonna get a baby bouncer, don’t bother with a baby swing & vice versa cause you don’t need both. I know a lot of parents may be drawn to the idea of a swing being able to nurse baby to sleep, but that depends on your baby as well. If you do, don’t fuss about getting a fancy one, it’s not worth it; for you or bub. Avoid jolly jumpers at all cost. Nova didn’t enjoy the jumper at all probably because it was so restrictive, it was even uncomfortable for us to see her in it. We also didn’t like the fact that;
(1) there was a caution time limit (20mins) as to how long you can leave baby in the jumper
(2) injuries can occur if fingers become trapped by the chain or springs, by bouncing into walls or objects
(3) a little bit of an effort to strap baby in
..umm ain’t no parent got time for that kind of sshhh.
Baby car seat is definitely one to fuss about & do take some time to do your research carefully before purchase. We did look into a few before heading out to purchase one, but I guess our research was far too minimal & thus we ended up settling for one we thought was great at the time. Turned out to be a total inconvenience & it was quite costly too. Not as disappointing as the bottle heater though. We were sold with this product upon introduction because who wouldn’t want the convenience of a machine that heats up your bub’s milk bottles right? Wow this machine really tests both bub & your patience during feeding times cause by the forking time the milk is heated to the appropriate drinking temperature, your bub will be hangry AF & you’ll be ripping your hair out! Also, if you think you can leave the milk bottle in the machine to heat, think again. Milk can only be left out for a certain period of time (both in room temperature or heated) before it needs to be discarded.
Lets remind ourselves here that our bub is not a fashion blogger (yet) so lets not overdo it with the clothes. We were fortunate enough to have almost all of Nova’s newborn clothes gifted so we put very little effort in that department. We should’ve put no effort in at all really cause we ended up having just far too many clothes for Nova. On another note, onesies & bodysuits are a must-have, particularly ones with inverted zippers. It makes it so much easier to dress/undress bub which will save you some time & fuss when it comes down to changing. I cannot express how conveniently perfect it is, especially for cooler seasons because you don’t have to strip the whole outfit off for every diaper change.
Letting Baby Sleep
This is easier said than done, more so for Daniel than myself. I’m real strict when it comes to setting the rule & control, I don’t break so easily. That being said, if we were to have a baby boy maybe it’d be different Lol So I can reason why it’s easier for Daniel to slack off on parental control now that he has a daddy’s girl.
Now that Nova is 1yr of age she’s become very alert, somewhat needy & occasionally will have separation anxiety which is no good for us when it comes to bedtime. Daytime, on some days she’ll fall asleep just fine on her own in her cot. Other days she’ll only do so with our assistance & it can take up to an hour or more (this was before establishing a schedule) which I have absolutely no patience for. Our night time ritual involves her getting drowsy in our bed & then when she’s knocked out we’d transition her into hers where she will stay asleep (5-8hrs) until she wants a feed. We do still get days where she’d be exhausted from day time activities & will just fall asleep immediately – anywhere. Just why can’t this be all the time! Though, I must say things have gotten much easier now with routine in place as it only takes 10-15mins to put her to bed. I personally believe that unhealthy sleeping habit was developed from us allowing her to sleep in our bed at earlier months.
I read on PARENTS.COM that “you can still rock or nurse your baby until they get drowsy. The point is to put them in their crib while still awake, so that the last thing they see is their mattress-not you. Then when they wake in the middle of the night, they’ll be so accustomed to this familiar sign that they’ll probably fall back to sleep.” I love this, but if only it worked for us. Whenever Nova wakes up in the middle of the night she’d be sooking for a cuddle or usually a feed & would not fall asleep again in her cot. So she ends up in our bed for half the night. Although, we have a king size beg it now feels like a single & I really do miss my space Lol
No Comments