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Sunday, February 14, 2010

still learning

After four children, one would think that I pretty much have the parent thing down. There aren't a lot of things the kids are going to do that are going to catch me by surprise anymore. I've been there, done that. I remember when I was pregnant with Bella, I read all the baby/toddler books on What to Expect. I was a nanny during college but I still wanted to be fully prepared for my own child. I followed all the "rules" and advice given in the books. These were experts, they had to know what they were talking about, right?
Enter child number four. He needs his own separate chapters. I assure you there was nothing in any book, anywhere to prepare me for his special brand of pickiness. The first rule I broke was sleeping. After fighting to put Drew to sleep for an hour and having him sleep for maybe 10 minutes and then fighting to get him back to sleep for another hour and having him sleep for maybe 10 mins. Well you get the point. I was exhausted. Jason was exhausted. We had three other children to take care of and a job to go to. He would sleep for 2-3 hours if he was on our chest but the minute you laid him on his back, he would startle himself and start screaming uncontrollably. We tried wedging him between the sleep positioner on his side. Finally I put him on his belly and he slept for 5 hours. Before I receive any emails alerting me to the dangers of this, I read all the research. I was terrified of putting him on his stomach but couldn't survive on an hour of combined sleep a night. I purchased the special breathing monitor and he's still sleeping on it and we are able to get some rest every night.
Rule #2..Drew is a thumb sucker. Gasp. I'm not a big fan of thumb sucking and would much prefer the pacifier. He sucked his thumb in utero and tried immediately to suck it as soon as he was born. I tried soooo hard to keep his hands covered or swaddled and hoped he would lose interest. He most certainly did not. I introduced the pacifier, he gagged and spit it out. He loves his thumb. He likes to eat a bottle and suck his thumb at the same time. His own special version of double fisted. Literally. Do I think it's fantastic and beneficial to his orthodontic hygiene? No, but he's 7 months old. There's not really a whole lot I can do to break the thumb sucking at 7 months old. I'll just have to deal with it later.
Rule #3..cereal and baby food. Drew cannot stand the stuff. Take note of the pictures below. He's not closing his eyes or blinking from the flash. He is shuddering, sputtering, gagging and shaking side to side. And it's fruit. He hates the food that much. He refused to eat cereal and wouldn't even take his thumb out of his mouth for it. If it touched his tongue he just gagged and spit it out. Total mess. Now we are moving on to baby food per the doctors request (more like orders) and he despises it all. Except for bananas. I had a little chat with him (like that's going to work) and told him he can't drink cereal out of a bottle until the end of time. He needs to eat some food. Doesn't he look like he's thoroughly enjoying himself?





**note** Drew's hemangioma is still fine. For some reason my camera flash turned it black in these photos.

1 comment:

Simon and Molly said...

Ohh Erin, he will figure it out. They all just like to test us.