For First-Time Parents:Maintaining (or Starting) a Quiet Time

This is Part Five of the First-Time Parents series. Check out the other posts about sleeping, napping, feeding and potty training.

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Becoming a first (or second or third…) time mother can be overwhelming. You likely are tired from frequent feedings and the huge learning curve that is your new baby. Life will never be the same so how are you expected to keep on with your previous life as usual? How are you supposed to find an extra 15/30/60 minutes in your day to spend time with God as you did pre-baby? More than likely, you won’t be able to replicate your previous quiet time schedule. However, if you are willing to be flexible and think outside the “quiet time” box, it is possible to still spend time with God in a meaningful way.

Image by graur razvan ionut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Your day is made up of multiple cycles of feeding, changing, and putting your baby down to sleep. New parents are encouraged to “sleep when the baby sleeps”. If you have older children at home, this isn’t really possible. In this case, you could begin “quiet room time” for your older child/ren during one of the baby’s naps and use that time with God (or to nap initially, because honestly sometimes that’s what has to happen in order to function). Once you are getting better night time sleep you might be able to forgo the nap and turn it in to your time with God.

There’s another way to spend time with God and still get those much needed zzzs. The great thing about prayer is that you can do it anywhere at any time. Newborns eat 8 to 12 times each day. During that time your arms are occupied, but you can spend that time praying. Pray about your current circumstances, your new baby, other mothers, concerns that you know about, your church – essentially anything and everything. I found this was a great way to spend my time when I was up in the middle of the night for a feeding. It helped me to stay somewhat alert and the time passed a little faster. Perhaps God wants to create a new group of prayer warriors through new moms willing to make use of these chunks of time.

For time in God’s word, get a Bible app for your phone. You can then also read the Bible while feeding your baby (assuming you can feed and still have one hand free). If you need a guide for what to read, YouVersion has a variety of devotionals to choose from including several specifically for parents.

If you are someone who journals, you can attempt to type in a document on your phone, but that’s pretty tedious. Either accept that this part of your qt will have to go on the back burner for awhile or make time for it when your child is sleeping.

You will probably be tempted to temporarily suspend time with God in the early weeks. I would recommend attempting some of the above suggestions instead. You will be exhausted, frustrated, overwhelmed, and possibly experience some depression symptoms. You will want and need God’s provision for comfort, strength, endurance, hope, and peace more than ever. Be faithful to God and he will be faithful to you.

Eventually you should be able to get back to time with God that looks more like what you had pre-kids. Now that both of my children sleep all night I have been trying to daily get up thirty to forty-five minutes before my kids to spend time with God before the day takes over. It is a sacrifice for me (I love sleep) but I feel much better when I make God a priority.

Have you thought about how you might continue to meet with God when your current routine changes? Do you already have children and are working this out? Have you figured out a way to carve out time to meet with God each day and have advice to share?

For First-Time Parents: Potty Training

Here's part four of the First-Time Parent series which addresses topics common to all parents. Part One was about night-time sleep, Part Two about napping and Part Three about feeding.

We didn't start BB this young, but she's so cute!

My daughter is three years old and she’s completely potty trained. Hurray! The total process has taken nine months which may sound like a drag, especially with all of those “train your child in one day” books and whatnot, but has been a steady progression without too many bumps and only a couple of public mishaps (which to me sounds pretty good). I thought it’d be nice to share my experience to remind me when it’s LB’s turn.

Last summer, I started thinking more about it. I definitely wanted to be on the no diaper track by the time LB made his appearance. I heard from some of my mom friends with two kids that once the new baby arrives and you are dealing with newborn diapers, you feel like you’re wiping an adult’s rear when  changing your older child. And it makes financial sense to only be buying diapers for one child. (That’s right, we are a disposable diaper family. I spend plenty of time with the washer and dryer as it is. I didn’t feel like quadrupling my time in the laundry room. Not that I didn’t consider it. I know plenty of people who do use reusables and more power to them!)

I read a few books about potty training. The ones that mentioned training in 1, 2, and 3 days seemed quite appealing. I asked my mom what she used. She managed to find a copy of the book and mailed it to me. It was the one I ended up using as a reference: Toilet Training in Less Than a Day by Nathan Azrin. (I just used Amazon to find the title and also found Potty Training Boys the Easy Way which is intriguing and may be read before we start the process with LB in a few years.)

I picked a start date when BB was close to 2 ½ years, one when we could be at home all day for a few days to get the hang of things. I then spent the days leading up to that day dreading its arrival. I don’t know whether it was from hearing others’ experiences, but I imagined it being very tedious and requiring large amounts of time cleaning someone else’s urine off of the floor. Like most other unknown experiences, it’s really not as bad as you imagine it to be. The fear of the unknown is nearly always worse than the actual experience.

The day finally arrived and I had all of my materials – a week’s worth of panties, washcloths, a potty, a training doll (in our case, BB’s favorite stuffed monster, Elmo), juice, water, snacks and rewards. After breakfast I took Elmo through the motions of using the potty, praised him and gave him a reward (M&M) which BB was able to eat since Elmo can’t. We did it several times to get used to the what all is involved. As instructed in the book, Elmo then had an accident. We talked about important people (mommy, daddy, Grammy, Grandaddy, etc) liking dry panties and had Elmo practice using the potty and change his panties. (Humorous side note: for months after the potty training week, BB would refer to her plain white panties as Elmo’s panties because they were what we had used on him.) I asked often if BB had dry panties (the book suggested praising dry, clean pants instead of the act of using the potty as staying dry and clean is the true goal). She would receive a reward when the answer was yes. I had her sit on the potty every so often (I had a chart I followed that had me write in times of various commands/activities to chart progress and spot patterns). Eventually she had an accident. She was not very happy about being wet but I had her clean it up with a washcloth (I helped make sure it all got cleaned), we practiced using the potty, and then I had her change her panties. We did this most of the day, me giving her salty snacks and juice, practicing with Elmo a few more times and playing mostly in the kitchen where the floor is easy to clean. It was kind of boring, but it was nice to know that it was only for a short duration. I still had her nap and sleep in a diaper.

The next couple of days we stayed home to practice getting used to recognizing the sensation of having to use the bathroom and then going. Still plenty of rewards for dry, clean panties. More teaching her to be careful when emptying the small potty into the big potty and flushing. No bowel movements into the potty, but I had heard that it takes more time to get used to doing that on a potty.

On day four I decided to venture out for a short trip. I put a towel in the car seat, had her sit on the potty right before we left, and off to the library we went. We were only gone about twenty minutes but I gave BB lots of praise and a reward for staying dry and clean while we were out. As the weeks went on, I got braver and braver. BB got better at recognizing the need to go and we both gained confidence in her abilities. Eventually she started pooping in the potty. The first time, she received major praise and an extra special reward. For a while all bowel movements into the potty received a special reward. When BB had fully grasped using the potty, we phased out the rewards by letting whatever treat run out of stock in the pantry and then announced that she was a big girl and the treats were all gone.

We still put her in diapers for nap and bedtime. As she started staying completely dry through nap time we let her stay in panties (which was what she wanted). It has taken a lot longer for her to stay dry through the night but I am attributing that to maturity of her body. The past month we have been tracking her dry nights. BB went nearly a week two months back with dry diapers at night so we put her in panties and she woke up wet the next morning. We tried two more nights with the same results so she went into a pull up. We thought perhaps she could still get up and use the bathroom if she needed. A few weeks after that BB announced that she wanted to sleep in panties. We told her she had to have a week of dry diapers to be able to sleep in panties. She achieved that so we put her in panties and started a sticker chart to track her dry nights. In the past four weeks she only had one slightly wet night (only the panties and pjs were damp, not her sheets) and that was day four. We told her when she went a whole month with dry panties she could pick out a special toy or have a special cupcake. She chose the cupcake.

Nine months sounds long, but it was really just the first few weeks that I was most cautious and then a day or so after the occasional accident. Now that we’re finally at this point, everything before doesn’t seem all that bad. It’s been so much better than dealing with two children in diapers.

We’ve had a few road trips throughout this adventure. We would put BB in a pull up just in case, but she’d tell us she had to go and we’d stop so she could. I’ll admit that we did consider having her just go into the pull up once or twice so that we didn’t have to stop but we did stop in order to continue to encourage her progress.

It’ll be quite a while before I get to go through this process with LB (and I wonder whether it’ll be distinctly different with a boy or just because it’s a different child) but at least I’ve been through it once now. I’m sure I’ll still feel a little dread when the day approaches, but I now have experience on my side and the knowledge that accidents are temporary but being out of diapers is forever (I hope).

Experienced parents, how did your potty training experience/s go? For those who have potty trained boys and girls, are there any stark differences you noticed? Any advice to share on what to do (or what NOT to do)?

For First-Time Parents: Feeding

Here's part three of the First-Time Parent series which addresses topics common to all parents. Part One was about night-time sleep and Part Two was about napping.

LB loves fruit!

It's amazing to witness the many transitions in the first year of life. People start out as helpless, squirming infants and by their birthday they are on the move, able to get themselves where they want to go. They enter the world crying and are saying actual words by one year of age. They begin with a liquid diet of one substance and are consuming a variety of liquids and solids at year's end.

In this section I will share my family's experiences with feeding during a baby's first year. Yours will probably vary in some form from ours. I do not intend for this to be all-encompassing.

Both of our kiddos started out receiving breast milk. BB was born early so I was instructed to begin pumping right away to get my milk supply flowing. BB and I struggled a bit with latching. Breastfeeding hurt A LOT for me. Some nights in the first few weeks we would feed her formula through a syringe. Other than that, it was all breast milk all the time (not to say that we wouldn't have supplemented again if the need had arisen). With both kids breastfeeding hurt or was uncomfortable for the first six weeks. After that my body seemed to have gotten used to the process and toughened up. I have heard that it shouldn't hurt at all and it means you're doing something wrong if it does. I disagree. I have not yet met a mother who had a peachy keen time from the beginning (if you did, I'd love to hear about it). Breastfeeding is what I wanted to do and I toughed it out. It wasn't as bad enduring the initial six weeks the second time since I knew it would get better. I was able to breastfeed BB for her first year. I'm striving to do the same with LB. So far so good.

In the beginning I fed the kids every two hours, day and night. It stretched out to two and a half and then three hours. After the first two to four weeks I let the kids sleep as long as they would during the night and fed them whenever they woke up. During the day we were on a regular time interval feeding schedule. BB started going without night feedings at eight weeks. LB didn't achieve this until about six months. They ate every three hours during the day for a while, then stretched to three and a half and finally four. It stayed this way through the first year as far as I can recall.

One thing I wish I would have done with both of them was to give them a bottle regularly (such as once per day or once every other day) starting at around four weeks of age. We gave each of them one bottle about this time. They took it without issue so we assumed they would always be that way. Failing to continue to offer it meant that five weeks later (or whenever we tried to give another one) they wouldn't take it. This was not a huge issue as I was home with each of them. But if I had needed to go back to work it would have been a rough transition. As it was, we struggled to have a relaxing date night for the first few months of our babies' lives. They did both accept bottles better after having received solid foods for awhile. I guess something about receiving nourishment from spoons and their own fingers helped them accept milk from a different source.

We started introducing solid food to both kids at six months. We started with cereal and then moved on to pureed fruits and vegetables. I started giving LB small pieces of mushy fruit earlier than BB (maybe at about 7 or 8 months). I had read about Baby-Led Weaning and thought I might give it a try. I can't say that I've stuck closely to it. I try to offer cut up soft foods but he isn't all that interested if it isn't a Cheerio, puff or piece of fruit. Vegetables he tends to snub so I have continued with some purees to help get the nutrients and tastes in there. LB wasn't eating much cereal from six to nine months which decreased his iron levels. I couldn't remember how we got BB to eat it well. PB reminded me that we alternated and/or combined cereal and yogurt (because BB loved yogurt) so we tried that with LB and it worked like a charm.

We offer water through a sippy cup and a straw cup during the second six months. Both kids did better with a straw cup because they don't have to tip it up to get liquid. Not receiving lots of bottles prevented them from learning how to hold a cup and tipping it up to drink. (I'm guessing. Perhaps bottle fed babies also use straw cups better at first.)

Between nine and twelve months we started to drift toward a three-meal feeding schedule with snacks as needed. I don't remember how we did this with BB. I'm currently nearing the 10 month mark with LB and he nurses four times each day (around 7:30, 11:30, 3:30 and 7:30) and eats breakfast, lunch and dinner with BB, PB and myself. I'm sure by 12 months the nursing schedule will be stretched more to 7:30, 12, 5, and bedtime so that they can be replaced by cow's milk and the bedtime one eventually dropped. I will probably get more adventurous with offering pieces of food around the year mark, especially when his molars come in.

When I try to think about the end of the first year and how we transitioned from breast milk to cow's milk I get a little fuzzy. I know that we made sure BB would drink cow's milk out of a cup. Then I dropped one feeding every three or four days until she was only drinking cow's milk from a cup. I didn't experience any engorgement or pain weaning this way. I don't remember when she stopped having food and drink after dinner. I guess whenever we felt like it wasn't nutritionally necessary and we were ready to test whether she would still sleep until her normal wake up time.

That is most of my experience. I cannot share any experiential information about formula feeding. I would assume it's similar in the regular interval feedings. I hear formula is digested slowly so the feedings are spaced out earlier. I'm sure being able to see how much the baby is eating at a feeding (by reading bottle measurements) can be helpful and comforting. I used the number of wet and dirty diapers as my gauge to whether my kids were receiving enough milk.


Did I forget any other useful information about feeding during the first year? Do you have any helpful tips for new parents? Anything specific to formula feeding that others can use?

For First-Time Parents: Sleeping Through the Night

[Every parent has things they’d like to share with other parents, especially those just starting out on the journey. We have been through the trenches and have success and failures that we believe can help others. I do know, however, that no matter how wise or useful advice may be, sometimes it can only truly be appreciated standing on the other side. So, if you’re a first-time parent, I completely understand if you choose to ignore what others (including myself) are trying to tell you. However, perhaps this will help you to remember that you’re not alone in your struggle.]

LB, swaddled and sleeping

Once you become a parent, you truly appreciate (and miss) all of that good sleep you got before your beautiful newest member of the family arrived. You are now willing to do just about anything it takes to get some more precious slumber. There are mountains of books you could read about helping your child sleep. I think having a consistent routine and schedule could help, but I also think that it also depends on your child.

Our first child “slept through the night” at eight weeks. To me, this means sleeping for a decent stretch of time without needing milk. In our house, this meant that she nursed at 10 pm and then slept until 6 am when she wanted to nurse again. She probably didn’t get put down into her crib until closer to 11 and I think she still woke up a couple of times, but I didn’t have to feed her, just soothe her to sleep. The time interval slowly increased until it was 7:30 p.m. for the last feeding and then sleeping until about 7 a.m.

We would still get up once or twice per night to soothe BB when she’d wake up. I hated hearing her cry so we tended to rock her until she fell asleep again and then lay her back down. One night, sometime in the ninth or tenth month, my husband and I had both taken turns in the middle of the night trying to soothe our daughter. Nothing worked. Finally we were both so tired that we just let her cry and laid in our bed listening to her. The only other thing I remember is waking up the next morning and realizing that she had finally soothed herself to sleep and we had gotten some sleep as well. After that, she became proficient at soothing herself back to sleep when she woke up at night and we finally got real, unbroken sleep.

With our second child I had high hopes of him following in his sister’s footsteps and “sleeping” early on. This time around, I decided that I wanted to put him down for bed at the same time as his sister and risk waking up for an early morning feeding so that my husband and I could get some down time in the evening. [Otherwise we’d be dealing with kids until our bedtime and then as soon as we got up and that sounded too overwhelming for me.]

For a while LB would wake up as we were heading to bed so I thought that perhaps we could kind of do the same schedule we had with BB. Not quite. The overnight pattern with LB was soooo unpredictable. He’d have several weeks with two feedings and then a night with only one feeding followed by a night with three. There were a couple of sporadic no-feeding nights which were awesome (followed by complete disappointment when he went back to multiple feedings the following night).

As we stumbled through his fifth and six months of life, the schedule slowly improved and leveled out to one or two feedings at night. Shortly before his half-birthday, he started sleeping from his 7:30 p.m. feeding until about 6:30 a.m. Praise the Lord! We’ve only had a handful of rough nights since then that I can recall and they were due to pain from cutting teeth and/or being in a new sleeping place on vacation. While it took longer to cut out the night feedings, LB was almost six months ahead of his sister on length of night sleep. And we don’t go into his room to soothe him like we did BB as we have laid him down awake and allowed him to soothe himself to sleep from the beginning.

I share my experiences to let you know that it is possible to do many of the same things and still get different results. Both kids were breastfed on set intervals throughout the day. Both kids were swaddled to sleep for at least the first couple of months. Neither child started solids until six months. I think LB has gotten more and better naps than BB did (which may have helped some), but that is out of experience and necessity and is probably a topic for a different day.

How long until your kids slept through the night without feeding? Did you put them down awake? Do you have any tips that worked for your family that might help others?

Two Things Not to Say to a Mom of One

There is a long list of things people, especially strangers, should not say to young mothers (or fathers). Below are two that have bothered me the most.

Me and BB

1. Having one is SOOOOO easy.

Looking back at one child from the view of two or more, it is easy to say that. Not long after my son was born I saw the advantages of having one instead of two (especially one who is much more self-sufficient than her newborn baby brother). It’s much easier to get one dressed, fed, and ready for outings. One is easier to keep track of while on an outing. One is easier to keep entertained. There is more time to do the things I want/need to get done during the day. But, of course, as your family grows, you tend to forget what it was like the first time around.

When my daughter was born, I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. Every experience was new and I had to figure out how to handle each one in a manner that worked for our family.  I read quite a few books to try to help me through various situations – weaning, solid foods, sleep scheduling, potty training. You name it, there are thousands of books to tell you the “right” way to do it. And there are plenty of conflicting ideas, as Ava Neyer pointed out.

All of the helpful advice can be overwhelming and make you feel like you’re doing it wrong and you’re going to screw up your child and you are so not cut out for this and on and on and on. Sometimes you end up trying it all only to find that your child does not fit any of the molds. Sometimes you will do something you swore you’d never do or that many people say is bad for the baby but it works and is saving your sanity so you go with it.

As a first time parent, EVERYTHING is a big deal. It is super important for the baby to follow the schedule to a T every single day. I know that once you find something that works, you try to hold onto it for as long as possible, which doesn’t tend to be that long as babies are always changing things up, especially that first year. By the time you get a good three nap schedule down, they decide to drop one. When you are finally figuring out a good time for errands, the baby will get sick and keep you home for a few days (or a week). It’s one giant guessing game.

It is so tough being a first-time parent. Experience makes the second time around A LOT better.  I still am not getting everything “right” but I know (from experience) that everything is a stage that WILL pass and that really helps get me through. And, of course, I’m still continuing to experience plenty of firsts with our oldest child.

2. So, when are you having another one?

As my journey into relationships with other mothers has progressed, I have learned that there are a lot of reasons families have one child. The simplest reason is that it is what the couple has decided completes their family. But, many times, this is not the case. I have quite a few women in my circle who have had issues with pregnancy. For some, their first child was a miracle. They would love to have more, but they didn’t even think they could have one. Some are in the process of trying to get pregnant a second time, but have had months, or years, of disappointment. Some women have dealt with the sorrow of one or several miscarriages before and/or after their first child. Other women had such a rough first pregnancy and/or delivery that they don’t want to risk having the same, or a worse, experience.

Most of these are issues no one wants to discuss with strangers or even well-meaning friends. The question may hit a sore spot without you ever knowing. I know of one instance when I asked that question to someone who had just suffered their second miscarriage (I didn’t know that until later). Since then, I have chosen to refrain from asking this question. I would caution you to also think hard before using this question as a casual conversation topic.

Do you have any additional suggestions on what not to say to a mom of one? Do you remember inappropriate or insensitive things told to you with your first or only child?