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For those of you who know who he is you’ll know his name, for those who think he sounds familiar, that’s because he should, he wrote The happiest baby on the block.

He was in Winnipeg for a conference and had a community night at the local art gallery where he spoke about his two books and DVD’s. He mentioned that for the baby part of his techniques, the video is better as it shows you exactly how to do the techniques. I’d watched the video’s and my husband and I were both very big on his methods, despite the crazy looks we got from people. By the way, he demonstrated these methods on babies in the speaking session. and they worked, so it’s not just me promoting this.

On thing the baby whisperer emphasises is that baby should NOT fall asleep at the breast. God, I was obsessed with following these baby pro’s advice. It drove me to madness. But if you use what works for you, it’s good advice, you just have to find what works for you and not feel bad about not doing everything the book tells you.

I’m convinced that kids don’t come with manuals because they’re not machines. There is no right answer. The easier you accept that the better.

One thing my husband and I didn’t do, that he suggested you start at any age is play white noise all night long. My son is a pretty good sleeper (though he has his moments) and he was not always that way. I exhausted myself trying to get him to learn to fall asleep by himself by putting him awake in his crib. It all comes down to, “easy now, hard later.” 

I’m excited about watching the happiest toddler on the block, although people are more inclined to do the steps for the happiest baby, people are more reluctant to do the toddler one because it compares children to Neanderthal’s . many people like to think of kids as little adults.

VS.

He maintains that that we are their ambassador’s trying to teach them our cultures values and manners. Trying to civilize them. I’ll write back once i’ve watched the video’s but if you have a child who has tantrums you’re going to want to watch this!

But on a side note, he was such a wonderful speaker. Very easy to listen to and funny. As a parent, I didn’t feel judged but heard. I got to meet him and was able to thank him for saving my sanity when my son was young. He took concern when I told him i wanted to jump off a bridge, and i quickly explained to him that it wasn’t PPD but a figure of speech. I promote his method’s to new parents and old ones, they truly work. He mentioned that in ten years many babies will sleep with white noise in their room, which will accompany the back to sleep program (kids sleeping on their back). If any parents have any questions about the baby methods please email me!

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I received this from a friend of mine, it’s totally cute!  It’s a video about how I’m the best mother of the year, even Obama congratulates me!

You can customize it for your wife, sister, mom, daughter! So go on, make someone laugh and make them Mother of the year for 2009!

Click here to make your own!

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I keep coming across this on my friends (who are mom’s) profile on Facebook so I thought I’d share it with all of you. I find more and more now then when my son was young that I don’t have "time" to go out with friends anymore.  We also don’t have 10 different babysitter’s to rely on.  We have my IL’s that look after my son during the week, so I feel badly asking them to look after him on the weekend. But what I wouldn’t give for a morning off.  Anyway, enjoy! I hope all of the non mom’s learn something from this :) 

**not that all non parents feel this way

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So I sit here tonight on Easter Sunday, child in bed, supper eaten (at my in laws so thankfully no dishes) and I have an RFP to work on. So what do I do? What I do best!… I procrastinate. I’m the best at procrastinating, and coming online is like sending my husband into Fry’s (for those of you in Canada who don’t know what Fry’s is.. it’s a computer super center.)

My life has been really hectic since coming back to work. It’s been two months since I’ve been back at work.  I’m finding it difficult to keep up with the laundry, dishes and having quality time with my son. My husband has also been putting in a lot (and I mean a lot) of over time at work, so he hasn’t been getting home most nights until right before my son get’s his bottle and passes out.  This is hard on all of us. If I had it my way, I’d have Tony from “who’s the boss?“ Come in and be my housekeeper. It’d be so nice to come home to a clean house, laundry done AND put away and supper on the stove.

Ahh loveable Tony:

Or today’s version of the hot boy toy:

This is a few years back while he (Jesse Metcalf) was on Desperate housewives, and now he’s all grown up:

(can you say yummy?-Some how this post has become about hot house pets, I mean men lol)

But yes it’d be wonderful to have that help, but the house has to be relatively clean before someone can come in and clean it properly. My poor baseboards are so dusty!

But we are in the process of finishing our basement and that should help with the litter clutter of children’s toys everywhere.

So back to what I should be doing, working on my RFP, ahh what a nice break I had, sat and chatted with myself (via blogging, I only talk aloud to myself when I “think” I’m by myself) and looked at hot men online. Ok, now back to work!

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Food or entertainment?

While pregnant I wondered, just how would I feel about breastfeeding. I mean I know  that it’s “frowned” upon nowadays to not breastfeed, but just how would I feel.

It’s funny, that 50 years ago, formula was pushed and the breast was suppressed. Now if you do not breastfeed, there are groups (which will remain nameless) that make you feel like you’ve not done enough. That somehow you failed as a mother if you could not breastfeed your child.

The interesting thing is that when we lived in colonies of women and men things were a lot different. Babies were taken care of by groups of women, and more then likely were nursed by more then one woman. We also have the “wet nurse” in history for those  privileged people, who unless you gave birth to a boy, you were not allowed to breastfeed. Nowadays women are expected to do this on their own and not ask for “help” to often, because that means they cannot handle motherhood.

Yes, the breast has come a long way.

No longer did I think of them as a play things for gratification but as a per functionary instrument (gosh, how sexy is that???) to nourish my child.

This really did throw me for a loop.

I remember while I was pregnant, reading on baby center about women who feared breastfeeding. And I thought, who cares, if it works it works, hey it’s cheaper! Then I came across a post that said, she was worried about breastfeeding because someone told her it was sensual. Then the women bickered about it being sensual vs sexual and all that jazz, and by god it freaked the crap out of me.

I didn’t want to think of feeding my baby as sensual. What if I got turned on?

First off, breastfeeding was NOT sensual, not sexual, not intimate for me. It was a way to feed him. To make him stop crying, fussing, entertain him. It was NOT at ALL sexual. It was functional.

When I contemplated giving up breastfeeding at the end of 11 months, I was surprised I felt sad. I enjoyed my time with him in the morning, having him cuddle with me, and all that. But ask me from 0-3 months if I’d have given it up. Yes, in a heart beat. I hated it. I hated being responsible.. solely to feed my child. The fact that he didn’t sleep for more then 2 hours at a time made it darn near impossible to survive, but I did. The fact that no matter how tired I was, my husband worked and I had the boobs, so I HAD to get up. And it does get better. By 6 months, when you feed them solids it’s just so much easier to, “whip out the boob” then to make a bottle.

And ladies, lovemaking. Was. well messy.  I mean not only do you feel like a spare tire has situated across your midsection, you deal with the leaky boobs the dry vagina and the lack of sex drive. At least that’s how most feel.  I didn’t have all those syndromes stated above but I leaked everywhere. I wore breast pads until my son was 8 months old.

I was lucky my husband found my post baby body “sexy.” In turn that really helped me feel “better,” not sexy lol I wasn’t ready to jump back into my thong, those cotton panties are so comfortable lol

Oh and your boobs do NOT look the same and most often get smaller after you stop breastfeeding. This mom is petitioning to have a lift after she’s done having babies!

(I actually think his boob is not to saggy lol-lucky bastard)

My bottom line here is that if you’re freaked out about breastfeeding, I’m here to say it’s ok to be. It’s a new experience, and our society sexualizes the breasts. But It is a natural way to feed you baby. It hurts like hell for the first three weeks (buy lansinoh nipple cream!) but it is easier then carrying a bottle around with you. But with that being said. DO NOT feel like a bad mom or a failure if you stop to breastfeed. There are so many moms out there like you! Most of us were raised on formula not breast milk and i think we turned out just fine!

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So my son had his first birthday, his first cake, and against my “healthy” instincts I gave him sugar filled cake.  You may recall my previous conundrum about giving him cake, well I caved.

Then I thought I’d get creative. Instead of my visions of the “number 1″ cake, last night I envisioned Elmo. That damn loveable creature from sesame street has been playing in my house non stop thanks to media center.  It’s bittersweet, my love hate (more hate) relationship with Elmo. I mean, my son is mesmerized by that stupid loveable creature that always refers to himself in the third person, and honestly it entertains him when I need to get things done, so hence the love part of the relationship.

I swear only a person who watches as much sesame street as I do could hate Elmo. I mean the thing is wonderful if you only hear him for a few minutes, but hour after hour of the same episode (the one where Telly helps Gordon practice golf) you get annoyed of the laughing and the referring to himself in third person. Even as I write this I sing that Elmo’s world song.

And yes, I bought everything Elmo. The plates, the napkins the Balloon, the cups, the hats, the noise makers. everything. I was standing in line and 190$ later (that included a huge box of diapers) some woman asked me when the party was, and then commented, “they didn’t have this at the dollar store?”

OF course they probably had it at the dollar store, and Zellers took me for a lot of money that day, but I wanted to be in and out and not stand in line with a thousand people at the dollar store, but still. it hurts.

So you see the above picture of what Elmo looks like. And this is my version of Elmo:

My niece asked me where his arms and legs were, i told her I wasn’t that ambitious. My nephew said that there was an evil Elmo in the kitchen-and refused to eat any of the head, but ate the body  lol And you all can recall that I’ve never said I was Martha Stewart.

All in all, the cake was pretty good, and my son loved it and had three pieces:

I guess that’s all that matters right? But there is something creepy about cutting up and eating something that’s your favourite thing. Elmo didn’t look the same after my son was finished with him.

As for our family and friends, everyone was very generous and we are so lucky to have them in our lives. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for sharing his birthday with us!

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I was wasting time on twitter today (via tweetdeck) and came across this article on parents who forget a child in their car and the child dies. Lisa Belkin highlights the original article in the Washington post by Gene Weingarten about children who are forgotten in their car seats. Please, read both articles.  It’s a thought that is horribly gut wrenching but a gruesome reality.

I almost didn’t read it because every time I read something like this it breaks my heart. It breaks it for many reasons, mostly because the thought of losing my son kills me. But also because, these people who forget their children, are just like you and me. The “interesting” thing about this article is the fact that there is no demographic that stands out as the “most susceptible” to forget their child.

In the article Gene Weingarten wrote states this:

“What kind of person forgets a baby?

The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.”

I think that is what the scariest thing is. Not one person is more susceptible to forgetting. It’s just as likely to happen to a rocket scientist  as it is to a construction worker, both very different type of jobs and likely lifestyles and they can both have so much on their minds that they’d forget their child.

About a month ago people kept telling me to watch Oprah, ’cause there was this woman who’s child died in the car. My sister namely kept talking to me about this because she said, gosh I could so see that happening to me, and to be honest–I could see it happening to me too.  We get so caught up in our day to day responsibilities. Women often go through laundry lists in their heads while they drive, shop, have sex and eat. Trying to organize everyone and everything is a daunting task that so many of us do on “auto pilot.” Therein lies the problem.  We are so focused on getting things done, rarely do we find time to stop and feel or appreciate.

I know I catch myself driving on auto pilot when I’m trying to figure out a workable schedule. I know that there are times when my son is so quiet in the back, i forget he’s there. I also remember when he was first born, how I’d forget I was now a parent and there was a baby in the back seat.  I had posted this article on my facebook status and one of my friends sent me this message:

“I was very happy to see that article opening ppls eyes to the fact it is a lot of ppl that do it. Its not a “type” of person. I have always felt horrible for people who legitimately forget because I to have forgotten. I had X in the car just after I’d had him and I didn’t share with anyone until right this second because it still terrifies me. I had X in the car a friend had lent me their car so I could do some groceries. He was still really small and rear facing and he only fit behind me in the friends car. 
Well I got out at the grocery store and totally forgot to grab him. I forgot he was there I’m ashamed to say it I literally forgot I had a baby. I got ready to walk away from the car and realized my cell was ringing it was my friend she wanted to know if X had fit okay in the car. I started crying in a panic turned around really quick and opened the back door. There he was all snug and asleep. In a freezing car in the beginning of March. 

I still think about that every time I get in a car or hear a story on the news. I have told no one except my therapist with whom this incident I have had many sessions for! 
I have not droven alone with X EVER again! I probably won’t. It terrifies me. 

But it can happen to anyone! Because it happened to me, thank god only for about 2 minutes!”

She says that she hopes her story will make you all realize that it really can happen to anyone. But I just think back to how sleep deprived I was those first three months… I honestly don’t remember much about the first three months.  I couldn’t imagine having two or more young kids, working full time etc and be sleep deprived and then forgetting one of them in the car while trying to deal with the rest of your life.

And just how does someone get over something like that.  I think you’d forever blame yourself. The article talks about parents (both men and women) wanting to commit suicide even if it’s deemed an “accident.” I just don’t know if I could life with the fact that I killed my baby. The article also touches upon something else, that an “accident” is something that can’t be prevented.  Even if it was an accident to leave the child in the car, does that make it hurt less? No.  The article also touches upon the new safety regulations about rear facing car seats and how it makes it easier to “forget” a sleeping child in the back seat because they’re less visable.  It’s amazing how one thing creates a chain reaction of events, especially one that was designed to help save children’s lives in an “accident.”

So while this article is hard to read, it’s a very real problem. It’s happening more often and to every single type of person on this planet. No one is safe from the “perfect storm” as Weingarten coins these factors: fatigue, distraction, stress, a change in routine.  So hug your children a little longer tonight, know that you’ve made it this far. Continue to make a conscious effort to live somewhat more in the moment.  The summer season will be here before you know it, please be aware of your children in the car. I’ll take this article with me in my heart and continue to try to be a deliberate parent.  

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