I was going to ask a simple question, which led to asking, “Why isn’t there a general ‘Tricks to Make Parenting a Treat’ thread full of bits of parenting wisdom?” which led to making one.
So, please, share your tricks of the trade here.
Q. What’s the best way of keeping a pacifier IN the baby’s mouth?
Got a clip on thingy to keep it from landing on the floor when she spits it out, but playing ‘soother fetch’ is tiresome. Obviously, she needs to want it, and to be a little less enthusiastic in her sucking: but how?
What I’ve learned so far.
Do: Yawn at your baby when you want her to sleep. Yawning’s socially contagious. 90% of the time, if I show her a jaw cracking yawn, she’ll follow suit within a minute or two. And not long after that, she’s out.
Don’t: clean your baby’s mouth (with a wet cloth on a finger) after she’s eaten. (duh) Too easy to tickle her gag reflex, after which mom’s got to feed her all over again… and do more laundry.
Another way to get newborns to sleep is to gently stroke their nose in a downward motion, from the forehead to the tip of the nose. The proximity to the eyes makes them want to shut instinctively, and if you do it gently enough, the baby will discover how comfortable that is, and keep them shut.
This works best when they’re already really sleepy, but fighting it.
A treat? Fix it so’s its only the wife that can get the kid to go down. Ours, for example, just wants to play when I try to put him down, even though he’ll go down for Jojo in 5 minutes. Therefore its the wife’s job. Same with the final feed of the day. I can’t do it – he just won’t.
Dad, and ONLY dad, is for breakfast, anyone will do for the daytime feeds, and mum and ONLY mum will do for the last one. It works for us.
He was never interested in a pacifier (is that a dummy tit, right?), which is good, as we were told too much of the dummy can give them snaggle teeth. Ours only has two teeth, though, and they’re already snaggle. Shows how much the pundits know!
For inducing sleep, we’ve found that VERY gentle massage works wonders, followed by gentle back-patting for a few minutes (he has never, ever, slept on his back.)
Oh, and tonight I read to him from “Introduction to the DX pile technology and Extruding-expanding devices” with full-colour illustrations as well. That worked.
Gerber grape juice in cereal when she doesn’t want to eat it or in water when she was refusing to drink it
Cheerios when she refuses to drink her nasty formula. Still trying to get mom-in-law to realize that they are nutritious and not cookies. She prefers rice, fish, fruit, and sweet potatoes.
Reading books to them, current favorites are “Peek-a-Who” and “Where is Baby’s belly Button” Card books are great and I had a number of them shipped here from the US. She’s torn the flaps out of her ChaoHu books.
As opposed to the cloth ones with crinkly stuff sewn in. Those are hyper-making machinations-of-sleeplessness-and-jumping-up-and-down-till-we-puke monstrosities. It was an evil, evil person who invented those things.
Card books-Books made out of thick card stock so your little one doesn’t tear it apart. A friend of mine’s daughter tore through her Dr. Seuss books at 2 and my daughter has already torn up some of her Chaohu books on normal paper.
I love those books and plan to have them for awhile.
Lil’ Sprout’s been Very gassy for the past few days. Mom supplied this bit of wisdom for gassy babies.
[quote]Is her tummy tight or hard? If it is, you can try to relieve some of the gas by
touching opposite elbow and knee together across her tummy. (Do this on an empty tummy) [/quote]
[quote=“Jaboney”]Lil’ Sprout’s been Very gassy for the past few days. Mom supplied this bit of wisdom for gassy babies.
[quote]Is her tummy tight or hard? If it is, you can try to relieve some of the gas by
touching opposite elbow and knee together across her tummy. (Do this on an empty tummy) [/quote][/quote]
Hmm thats a sit up right?
No pacifiers for our boy they look horrid and are lazy parenting IMHO (don’t flame me for that). we never had them and my sisters 2 boys don’t either.
Like the sleep inducing ideas, my grandmother used to put whisky in my brothers milk. hmmm
My favourite tip so far is not to use nappies that are too small - it gets very messy
Always but always put a bit of tissue or cloth over his winky when the nappy is undone - or you will get shot
[quote=“Jaboney”]Lil’ Sprout’s been Very gassy for the past few days. Mom supplied this bit of wisdom for gassy babies.
[quote]Is her tummy tight or hard? If it is, you can try to relieve some of the gas by
touching opposite elbow and knee together across her tummy. (Do this on an empty tummy) [/quote][/quote]
A baby’s massage includes what your mom says, also bring the knees to the tummy and rolling the baby from side to side…and the best part is when you stretch your legs, put your little baby on her tummy on your legs and rub oil on her tiny little back and bottom…and gassy fireworks will go off!! then its time for a bath, feed, sleep and more gas!
How come when they talk about babies (like Divea, but also on most of the babby websites I look at) they always assign the feminine gender? This is blatant sexism if you ask me!
Seriously, why do they do this? I’ve noticed it many times, and in books, too. If my manly-man child starts to develop an unhealthy interest in Barbie dolls I’ll be holding YOU PEOPLE responsible, I’m telling you.
[quote=“sandman”]How come when they talk about babies (like Divea, but also on most of the babby websites I look at) they always assign the feminine gender? This is blatant sexism if you ask me!
Seriously, why do they do this? I’ve noticed it many times, and in books, too. If my manly-man child starts to develop an unhealthy interest in Barbie dolls I’ll be holding YOU PEOPLE responsible, I’m telling you.[/quote]
Sometimes what they do is switch genders from one paragraph to another, so it seems like the same baby has two sexes or is two babies. Or, they call it “baby” without an article or pronoun, as if that were its name.
[quote=“sandman”]How come when they talk about babies (like Divea, but also on most of the babby websites I look at) they always assign the feminine gender? This is blatant sexism if you ask me!
Seriously, why do they do this? I’ve noticed it many times, and in books, too. If my manly-man child starts to develop an unhealthy interest in Barbie dolls I’ll be holding YOU PEOPLE responsible, I’m telling you.[/quote]
Just been reading with my lad the bit in Diary of a Wimpy Kid where Greg admits to having been bought a Barbie doll for Christmas by his well-meaning uncle. AND he says he even played with it (twice).
I wrote my response to Jaboney coz I know Jaboney’s li’l sprout is a girl. I also specifically mentioned his mom’s advice who also refers to the baby as ‘her’.
There is a lot of sexism, associated with babies but that is another topic!
Just joshin’ you, Divea. Seriously though, I’m looking right now at a book on breast feeding and it uses “she” and “her” exclusively for the baby. Its really pretty common and I just wondered if there’s a reason for it.
well, I think they are doing it coz all the vintage books did ‘he’ and ‘him’…so they go overboard a bit!! And a lot of people don’t like ‘it’ …even when the baby is unborn. I am sure before ultrasounds they referred to babies as him or ‘it’.
CLICHE : Isn’t there a ‘he’ in a ‘she’ but not vice - versa. Okay this is kitschy too…
She prefers rice, fish, fruit, and sweet potatoes.
