Jonathan Spencer's Tales of Ordinary Wisdom » Baby

My Toddler hasn’t slept properly in 6 weeks (neither have I)

jonathan — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 10:08:56 +0000

So the baby now 20 months was a great sleep, we had her in a great routine and she went down easily slept through the night and woke up in good temper. Then suddenly this stopped, she began not wanting to go to bed, waking in the night calling for mummy. Towards the middle of the first week we bought Gina Fords complete sleep guid and tried to put it in practise. By the end of the week we felt guilty as hell and were deciding GF was a bit of too regimental and unfeeling for us.

“The Complete Sleep Guide For Contented Babies and Toddlers” (Gina Ford)

By the end of the week she was really quite ill, with a raging temperature up around 39.5. Then she developed diarrhoea and her stomach has not been the same since, now she complains that her tummy hurts alot of the time and is not just aware of passing urine and stool but is frightened of it, despite now having gotten over the illness. We gave up with GF and just went on consoling and lowering the fear factor in our sick child.

The illness and its after effects have dragged on depite seeing 2 doctors a health visitor and now a homeopath (who is at last someone who can help). She sleeps through the nigh rarely and now wakes at 5. She doesn’t want a bath never mind bed, if she wakes in the night she 1 out of 10 times can put herself back to sleep and now she has developed a cough.

So if your child suddenly develops an allergy to going to bed or sleeping problems after being fine with bed time, don’t automatically reach for a baby sleep manual, it could just be that she is ill, about to be ill or genuinely needs help as she reaches a life stage whee she becomes more aware of her individuality and seperartion. When we sat down and thought about it in our tired and emotional state recently, we remembered she had been ill last year in the same way (with a weeks lead in time and disturbed sleep).

We may go back to Gina Ford, as she has some good points but following one persons view religiously without trusting your own experience and gut feelings is, in my opinion, a mistake.

“The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night: Foreword by William Sears, M.D.: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep … Foreword by William Sears, M.D. (Pantley)” (Elizabeth Pantley)

One last thing, we did put her back in her grobag sleeping bag, we had taken her out of it thinking she had out grown it, where in fact it does seem to make her more cozy (its only a light weight 1 tog) If you dont know what a grobag is see this wiki link… Sleeping bag (infant)

Innoculation the battle over babies

jonathan — Sun, 20 May 2007 10:30:00 +0000

So it nears the time and though I did not get my other two children vaccinated. It was because my ex-wife and I believed similar things. My new partner is a health professional AND INSISTS SHE WILL TAKE OUR CHILD TO BE VACCINATED. She will not read any of the websites such as the “informed parent” as she says they are unbiased as they campaign against vaccines.

If I find something with research and stats say against the DPT vaccine she will not look.

I am scared for my little daughter, perhaps everything will be alright, and she will not be ill, have convulsions and all will be well. Perhaps I and my children (all unvaccinated) will die of tetanus or small pox.

What can I do, what might I say to persuade or show her another side.Â Why am I so frightened of the vaccine but not of the illness. Why don’t I trust Doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, medical research and so on. I trust my gut instincts some vague anti immunization research and a thousand websites and people saying their children were damaged.

Do we now live in a time when life in the western world is os good we can live clean healthy lives and see vaccinations as an evil. I am confused. If she (my partner takes my daughter to be immunised and she is damaged, what should i do? To whom can I turn, tell me your story, lend me your advice…what do you think I want to hear your comments.

“Vaccination: A Guide for Making Personal Choices” (Hans-Peter Studer)

Technorati Tags: baby, vaccine

Birth and Babies – Pressures on your relationship

jonathan — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 14:08:00 +0000

Most people will tell you having a baby draws you closer together, because it is a wonderful and miraculous thing. It involves a special shared intimacy and care both for the baby and your partner. However pregnancy, birth and the babies early months can put a lot of pressure on your relationship.

Pregnancy itself puts everyone into a different space as a pregnant women goes through a multitude of physiological and psychological changes and it follows so does the person she is with. Intimate relationships, and I mean intimate not just sexual, can change dramatically and after the birth even more so. This is because a woman’s focus of intimacy changes, many adults before the birth of a first child would appear to practice child rearing on their partner. If you wonder what I am talking about, then just think of common terms of endearment like ‘baby’ and active diminutives like adding ’little’ to other terms of endearment.

I certainly found myself slightly embarrassed to find my self calling my new daughter by similar names that had previously been terms of endearment between my wife and I.

The pressure is incredibly increased during and after the birth. I think for many men whilst beautiful and miraculous birth and watching your partner give birth is also highly truamatic. Even more so if it goes wrong and probabaly for the first time in their lives the man feels the weight of someones life on their shoulders and in their hands.

Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus

After the birth everything needs to be revisioned in an environment of love and care, but this is not always possible, as illness, tiredness, personal traits and more can get in the way.Â Men can end up in their caves ( as in Men are from Mars Women are from Venus) while women can wonder where it all went wrong.

This is the point where in part you have to trust and in other parts you need to work very hard to draw things together. For women often very tired from broken nights, and feeling the baby blues, everything can look bleak and like they have had a baby with an uncaring cold uninterested man who is more interested in (strike out what doesn’t apply) golf/thenews/computers/TV/the pub/ than your lovely baby. For 99.9% I doubt this is true but men do withdraw to an inner or outer space (golf computing TV etc) when they are under stress in order to try and sort things out in themselves. Women under stress can be more demanding of social/intimate behaviour… talking cuddling and each can see the other as being and feeling negative if they don’t sort this out quickly.

I think some relationships are made in heaven and just sail along in a beautiful symbiosis, most don’t, they need work and energy applied to them, and you apply this energy because you care for and love your partner. This refocusing on your partner can really help. As a man you have the opportunity to do little things, like buy small gifts or flowers (not just immediately after the birth but as often as you can), dont leave a women to breastfeed on her own, or if you are on bottles take part of the routine as yours (the middle of the night feed gets big brownie points). Do something spontaneous, the other evening I took some ice cream up to the nursery where my partner was breastfeeding the baby and fed it to her…she loved it. Just making her a cuppa can show you care. For the women, you need to let him go off and do the male loner thing if he wants, just once in a while. He can sort his head out and will come back a better person.

You may find all that cuddling the baby means you do not get to cuddle each other very much, remember to maintain a personal relationship you need intimacy that is sustained. This means dont forget to kiss and cuddle each oher, but also (men especially) remember you partner will be building a strong and important bond with your baby, just as you will but it can often be to the exclusion of you, don’t be worried or put out by this, she still loves you but for a while the baby needs to come first, your intimacy can come from a shared connection to the baby.

Your Baby – The First Six Months

OK well I have covered some of the peaks and pitfalls that birth can bring, and want to tell you my own baby is now getting on fine, even sleeping, and my older children have been ten times more interested than I thought they would be, even my son complained the other day he was not getting enough cuddles with the baby, And I am workjing to love and suport my partner and go to work and am every day more in love with our amazing miracle baby. What I have found too, is my love for my other two children has increased and my desire to be more loving and a good person has expanded……bloody hell, a white light will be coming out of the sky with angelic music, I better stop here.

Technorati Tags: baby, communication, relationships

A New Baby – Colic

jonathan — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:21:00 +0000

Perhaps I spoke too soon , as our baby continued not to sleep and to exhibit signs of digestion discomfort and colic. We began to realise that when she did sleep this was due to total exhaustion (imagine how we felt) and whilst in all other respects she was fine and lovely as well, the sleep and feed thing was wearing us down.

Now having got over it I thought I would write a little on what we did to help. All the books say all sorts of things which if you do not have a conformist baby, is just plain crap. Much better to trust your instincts and be loving and caring, The sears Fussy baby book is very helpful on this, but otherwise here is what we did.

The Fussy Baby Book: Parenting Your High-need Child from Birth to Five (William Sears, Martha Sears)

Isis was hardly sleeping at all, would exhibit discomfort towards the end of her feeds that would continue to the next feed, by the time we got into the run up to bed she might be feeding every hour. She did not bring up wind easily and her poos were explosive to say the least…it seemed as if she was trying to pass all her wind through herbowel One tuesday the health visitor arrived to find the baby crying and my partner crying and everything going awry.

I took my second week of paternity leave to support her.

Firstly we took her to the cranial osteopath and asked her to concentrate on her stomach. The osteopath noticed that Isis stomach was very tense and showed elaine by getting her to feel, before and after treatment with the babies stomach. Even though we had taken her to the doctor for a 6 month check and numerous mid-wives and health visitors had looked at her, it was the osteopath who noticed she had a supra-umbilical hernia. This was not complicated by anything else and ruled out as a problem.

We did take Isis to the children’s hospital, on the advice of the health visitor…who said we should do it to rule out things like reflux being a problem….very caring, but a dirty dingy depressing place, where the appeared to me (not my partner who works for the NHS) to latch on to our mention of reflux and ended up giving us ritidine and Calpol.( paracetemol suspension) I am thankful we did not use them. I am of the opinion not to use any drugs on a baby unless it is a medical emergency and all other paths of healing have been exhausted.

I bought some fennel tea and made some up for the baby and got my wife and I to drink a digestif tea of fennel, mint, licorice, and other herbs and hoped a little of it would pass through to the baby. I used the excellent homeopathy for mother and babyâ book to diagnose for the baby and got some Carbo Veg and put it in cooled boiled water.

What we also bought was Infocol and Gripe Water. In the end we felt she had got into a pattern of passing wind through and her stomach had become tense and found things difficult to digest. Fennel is warming on the stomach and a great digestive, depending on the type of colicky behaviour Chamomile can also help. Carbo Veg is good for Colic and exhaustion and a 6x dose seemed to help her if given a little before a feed.

However its probably the old fashioned Infacol and Gripe water that saved the day.

So there it is …stop colic with:

Cranial Osteopathy
Homeopathy
Gripe Water
Infacol
and Fennel Tea.

We did try Colief and thought it might be working but stopped using it, after not getting any permanent results.

she still has her moments but we are getting some rest and it all seems to lighten up.

If your baby suffers from colic, or colicky spectrum behaviour, s/he is in some discomfort, hold them love them, most of all stay as calm as you can.Â Most remedies like homeopathy and osteopathy and even infacol do not give immediate relief, they take time, sometimes a week or so, or a couple of sessions to really get going.

At 9 weeks she began with help to sleep through the night from 9/10 to 6, this was with “cluster feeding” in the hours before putting her down.

Technorati Tags: baby, colic, parenting

Babies: The first 3 weeks

jonathan — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:11:00 +0000

Every child is different, their pregnancy is different, their birth is different and their parents are different, so this is not “The Truth” is a truth as it worked for me.

The birth was luckily short and we were home with our Baby Isis isabel by the end of the day, much to the surprise of the doctors and nurses, who couldn’t understand why we wanted to get home.  The Midwifery staff at the hospital were fantastic.

The main thrust of this article is to do with the babies first 3 weeks, its very easy in those first weeks to project all kinds of things onto your baby; please remember that a baby is a survival machine and all they want to do is eat and sleep with a little, a very little activity (this can be as much as looking round) remembering that everything but everything is new to them and must be processed.

Face it babies cry…

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it is one of their only forms of communication and to this effect it is well worth reading.

âThe Child, the Family and the Outside World (Penguin Psychology)â (D.W. Winnicott)

Winicott first wrote this in 1957 when Dr Spock was all the rage and he was so far ahead of his time, especially on what he says about babies crying.  Both he and tracy Hogg ask you to listen and learn the differences between all your babies crying sounds. Dont always rush to stop a babies mouth with teat or breast.  Overfeeding can create problems too.  Babies from 1-3 weeks will happily feed every 2-4 hours depending on their weight.  Very often if they are fractious and crying they just need love and reassurance.

Babies need to eat and sleep and you must teach them both these things, they are used to the noise, rush and movement of being inside their mothers, the rush and gurgle of the stomach and the beat of the heart, they may find a quiet night somewhat strange.

Isis didn’t sleep at night for a full 3 weeks, this is wearing, tiring and can led to despondency, don’t worry it will all turn right. 

âSecrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect and Communicate with Your Babyâ (Tracy Hogg)

Tracy Hoggs book was perfect in helping us as was a visit to the cranial osteopath (http://www.cranial.org.uk/page3.html ), a session a week over the last 2 weeks and using some of Tracy’s methods Isis now has a regular and calm sleep pattern, sleeping 3-4 hours at a time at night and putting on weight and becoming more alert.

There are hundreds of books on babies and bringing up children, you don’t have to follow the fastidiously, just take what works for you and discard what doesn’t. Whilst you are learning, whether it is breast feeding, bottle feeding, nappies, putting to bed or giving a bath, your baby is learning too.

âBaby Einstein: Lullaby Classicsâ (The Baby Einstein Music Box Orchestra)

It was extremely hard in those first weeks as we got to know our daughter, and to listen to and understand her, lack of sleep takes you all sorts of places, so prepare yourself before hand and get all the sleep and rest you can.  Of course some of our friends from the National Childbirth Trust classes had babies that slept well immediately, but as I say we are all different. So the last couple of nights the baby has slept and so have we, long may it continue.