Breastfeeding in PUBLIC
The term “breastfeeding in public” almost implies an audience. But, depending upon the venue, it can be done discreetly. Department stores have dressing rooms, movie theaters are dark, bookstores have a philosophy section. But other places, particularly restaurants, offer few viable options, meaning your partner can either feed at the table or trundle over to the rustic ambience of the restroom. By the way, a mother’s right to nurse anywhere she pleases is protected by law.
If you are at all nervous about other men ogling your partner’s breasts in public, don’t be. The vast majority of men are not turned on by nursing moms. If anything, it makes them uncomfortable. And having a conversation with someone who’s feeding is almost impossible. No one knows where to focus their eyes. Which is why, if you are ever dining with friends and your partner starts nursing, it’s your job to take over the conversation. Talk about sports, movies, the weather, anything. Well, not anything. You should probably avoid mentioning the succulent chicken breast or your trip to Naples. And for God’s sake don’t order the melon.
To ensure your partner’s privacy, you can drape your jacket over her shoulder while she feeds, shielding her breast, and the baby from view. Make sure the jacket isn’t too close to the baby’s face or so heavy that he becomes overheated.
STARTING Solid Foods
New fatherhood is full of memorable moments, but perhaps none will surpass watching your baby’s face as he takes his first spoonful of solid food. You can almost guarantee that no matter how bland the offering may be, your baby will react as if you have just given him a double shot of Jagermeister. This moment, is too precious to squint at through a video monitor. So if you decide to tape it (and you should), set the camera on a tripod or stack of books so that your eyes are free to witness the quivering, horrified expression firsthand.
Ironically, this is pretty much the same expression you’ll exhibit upon opening up the first solid-food diaper. Now that the baby is starting to eat like one of us, he’ll be evacuating like one of us as well. Suddenly you’ll realize how good you had it those first few months.
Before introducing solids, read the following:
Wait until your baby is at least four months old. Very young babies have a tongue-thrust reflex that prevents them from choking, but also makes it almost impossible to get solid food to the back of the throat. Also, young babies’ intestines aren’t able to properly hold in nutrients and filter out harmful substances.
If your baby is able to sit up in a high chair, lunges for your French fries, or pretends to chew when he sees you chewing, he’s probably ready to start on solid foods.
To make sure he doesn’t have food allergies, introduce one food for three consecutive days before moving on to the next one. If your baby has a reaction, you’ll know which food is the culprit.
Useful tips for successful solid-food delivery:
No-Slip the Seat. If your baby is slipping around in the high chair, cut a square piece of a bath mat and suction it onto the seat.
A bath mat on the high chair will prevent sliding.
Contain the Mess. If you don’t have a dog, you’ll need to find a way to clean up the splatter pattern your baby will leave on the floor. Cut a shower curtain in half and place one half of it under the high chair before meals.
Never Force It. For the first few months, these feedings are more about the mealtime ritual than actually getting food down. His nutrition and calories are still coming from milk or formula. So if your baby’s not interested, try again tomorrow. The worst thing you can do is teach him to dread feeding time.
Plan a Strategy. Some people start with vegetables, because they figure that once the baby tastes the sugars in fruit, he won’t settle for anything else. Others feel that it’s best to start off with a food that has a high likelihood of success. You make the call.
Try a Naked Lunch. Strip the baby down to his diaper before meals, and let him get as messy as he wants. When he’s finished, just put him in the tub. Or better yet, feed him in the tub. Let him make his own soup.
Open Sesame. There are many ways to coerce your baby to open his mouth. Try making him smile by singing, making faces, or by feeding him with the other end of the spoon clenched between your teeth. Also, if you open your mouth as you bring the spoon to his lips, he may imitate you. (Many dads start to do this unconsciously and continue through toddlerhood.)
Choose Your Spoon Wisely. A baby spoon with a shallow trough is easier to use as a spackling tool, which is what you’ll need as you continuously scrape the food from his chin back into his mouth. And always have an extra spoon on hand to give the baby in case he tries to commandeer yours. There is a wide variety of spoons in the shape of airplanes, cartoon characters, sports teams, and there are even spoons that change color when the food is too hot.
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Some good choices for first foods are:
Rice cereal
Barley cereal
Oat cereal
Squash
Sweet potato
Carrots
Green beans
Peas
Sweet peas
Avocado
Yogurt
Applesauce
Bananas
Prunes
Apricots
Peaches
Pears
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Serve an Appetizer. Time solid foods when the baby is not too hungry or too full. If he’s too hungry, he may have no tolerance, and if he’s too full, he may be disinterested or sleepy. Offer a small amount of milk right before a round of solids.
When serving fruits, aim for the front of the tongue, where the tastebuds for sweetness are located. When serving vegetables, aim for the middle of the tongue, where the tastebuds are neutral.
CONSTIPATION
Once he starts on solids, stool production goes down but the density of each stool goes way up. Although it’s best to have him making daily deposits, it’s not uncommon for some babies to go three or four days without an offering. And as long as your baby seems comfortable, that’s not a problem. But if you see that he is straining really hard, is in obvious discomfort, or is passing dry, hard stools, then chances are he’s constipated.
Here are three ways to rectify the situation:
The Four Ps Giving your baby prunes, plums, pears, and peaches, in either fruit or juice form, can have a laxative effect.
Filling the Tub Place the baby in a warm bath. Make sure the water is up to around chest level. Now, while holding him steady with one hand, gently massage his abdomen with the other. In most cases, it won’t take more than a minute or two for the baby to uncork, but it will take you much longer to clean him off and decontaminate the area.
The Exersaucer Not only is the exersaucer a favorite toy for babies this age, but the apparatus gives the baby a unique position from which to push, allowing his feet to be planted on the ground and his hands to brace against the rim. Although it doesn’t have the same effect, on every baby, many dads have noted the magical poop-inducing effects of the exersaucer.
If constipation persists, consult your pediatrician for more options.
Effective Diaper Disposal
A couple of years ago, if someone had told you that you would be collecting and storing human waste in your house for days at a time without dumping it outside, you may have thought them insane. Granted, it’s nearly impossible to run outside every time the baby fills a diaper; so many people rely on diaper disposal units. But the most popular brands are bulky, expensive, and may require special refills. And emptying the pail is a grisly process reminiscent of that scene in Jaws where they slice open the dead shark’s belly and remove its innards.
And because plastic is gas permeable, they don’t hold in the smell. Like air slowly leaking out of a balloon, odor will eventually seep out into the atmosphere and create that distinctive “house-with-a-new-baby smell”—a combination of dirty diapers and a bunch of scents trying in vain to mask them.<
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As your baby gets older, and the waste becomes solid, you can dump it in the toilet, but until then, try implementing the process we call “Bag and Drop.” You’ll be using plain old plastic grocery bags, so you’ll be recycling. And you’ll be saving the dump from another unwieldy diaper pail and all those refills. This should make you feel a little less guilty about using disposables.
Step #1
Fold the scat diaper into a ball and secure with the tabs.
Step #2
Put your hand all the way inside the bag and use it to grab the diaper.
Step #3
Pull your hand back through, so the diaper is now inside the bag.
Step #4
Squeeze the air out of the bag, cinch it right above the diaper, and twist it around one rotation.
Step #5
Now put your hand inside the remaining length of the bag, grab the diaper front within, and pull your hand back through.
Step #6
Repeat step #4.
Step #7
Tie a knot in the bag. You now have two-ply odor protection. But remember, plastic is gas permeable, so we proceed to …
THE DROP
Place one of your large outdoor trash cans under the window of the baby’s room. (If you live in a city, you can hang a bag from the rail of your fire escape.) Each time you get a dirty diaper, simply open the window and throw down a long-range jumper. Once a day, you can go out and collect the air balls, but you’ll be surprised how fast you’ll get your rhythm down. At the end of the week when you take out the garbage, just bring the diaper can with it.
And if you use cloth diapers, more power to you, but you’ve got your own waste disposal issues to deal with.
Skill Builders 4-6 Months
THE CLAW
A Variation on the Arcade Crane Game
Babies at 4-6 months are starting to grasp objects, and here’s a fun way to sharpen their skills. Place a bunch of toys on the floor, and hold your tyke facedown on your forearm (see illustration). Make robot, noises as you move him into position over the pile. When he’s hovering directly above the toys, lower him onto the pile (bending from the knees), wait five seconds, and then slowly lift him up again. If he comes up with anything, shout “We have a winner!”
This exercise builds eye-hand coordination, depth perception, and fine motor skills.
FLASHLIGHT ANIMAL THEATER
Lie down with the baby in the crook of your arm and turn out the lights. Shine a flashlight on the wall. That alone will get the baby’s attention. Then, assuming you’re not adept at animal shadows, get some flat animal shapes—pop-outs from the little foam books, the sticky bathtub shapes, refrigerator magnets, etc.—and put them in front of the flashlight. Move them closer and the projected image becomes larger, further away and it gets smaller. Name each creature and make appropriate animal sounds.
This exercise builds visual discrimination, depth perception, and helps with language development.
If you’re having trouble finding animal shapes, you can print out cut-outs from www.beprepared.net.
BABY BALLOONIST
Tie a Mylar balloon loosely to the baby’s ankle. The baby will stare at the balloon intently for a while, and probably get excited. Excitement will lead to kicking, which, in turn, will cause the balloon to bob and jerk. Sooner or later, the baby will begin to understand and appreciate this cause-and-effect relationship.
This exercise builds eye-foot coordination, reasoning skills, and body awareness.
Always supervise the baby during this exercise. And never use rubber or latex balloons, because if they pop, the little bits of rubber can be choking hazards.
7-9 MONTHS
SLEEPING Through the Night
Now that your baby’s stomach capacity is larger she no longer needs night feedings, which was the principal reason she woke in the first place. So you and your partner will finally be able to get a full night’s sleep, right?
Wrong. Most babies still wake up several times during the night. A recent survey by the National Sleep Foundation found that 76% of parents reported frequent sleep problems. So if you are among the 76%, remember that you’re not alone, and if you’re among the 24%, don’t gloat about it, or you’ll incite the wrath of the cranky majority.
Here you’ll find four tactics for helping your little insomniac get to sleep and stay asleep.
1. Become a Drill Sergeant.
If you work during the day and your partner stays home, chances are you’ll be in charge of bedtime routine. Many dads find this annoying, because after eight hours away from her, your natural instinct is to rile her up with some impromptu baby wrestling.
But the bedtime shift can be fun, in a mellow, Mr. Rogers—like sense. It doesn’t really matter what activities you choose for your nightly routine, as long as they meet these three criteria:
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They are soothing.
You stick with the same activities in the same order every night.
You save the most sleep-inducing activities such as giving the bottle, for last.
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Remember that babies, like senior citizens, thrive on routine. They take comfort in repetitive daily patterns, and will usually put up less resistance if they know what’s expected of them.
2. Create a Field of Pacifiers.
If your baby uses a pacifier to fall asleep, odds are it falls out in the middle of the night and she wakes up trying to find it. To solve this problem, liberally sprinkle pacifiers around the perimeter of the crib. Don’t put them right next to her, because she may roll over on one and awaken. But if you place them around the outside, she’ll eventually realize that she can always reach over to the edge and find one.
And if you have less than a dozen pacifiers in your home, you are asking for trouble. Pacifiers rival socks and umbrellas for the title of “Items That Vanish into Thin Air Most Often.” If you can buy them in bulk, do so. You won’t regret it.
3. Load Her Up.
Right before bed, it’s a good idea to load up the baby with as much milk as she can hold. If she gets drowsy mid-feed, don’t be afraid to gently jostle her to see if you can top her off. Those extra few ounces may just buy you a couple of extra hours of slumber. But try to follow it up with a quick tooth cleaning or a sip of water to rinse out the milk before she falls off.
This feeding is important because babies this age spend a lot of their time learning and honing new skills, and may not be as interested in feeding during the day.
4. Encourage Her Obsessions.
Your may start to form an emotional attachment to an inanimate object—a blanket, stuffed animal, or one of your or your partner’s T-shirts (because of the smell) or underwear (despite the smell), especially if they are silk. (If the baby chooses a T-shirt, tie it in a knot so it won’t wrap around her head.)
Her obsession with “transitional object” is generally regarded as a healthy one, and provides fringe benefits for the whole family. Because holding her new pal gives her comfort, it becomes easier to put her into her crib at night or leave her sight for three seconds.
Some things to keep in mind:
Steer her toward something that is easily replaceable, like an Elmo doll, rather than a hard-to-find item, like a 1986 Boston Sox American League Champs felt pennant.
Try leaving the object, in her crib, and when bedtime rolls around, say, “I think I hear Mr. Boxer Shorts calling you.”
If her object of choice is mass produced, go out and buy five of them, just so you don’t end up driving around all night searching the streets for Tinky Winky.
If she gets attached to any object, try to buy extras.
GOING COLD TURKEY
The cold turkey method of sleep inducement is not for the faint of heart. It involves letting the baby cry in her crib for extended periods of time while you wait out in the hallway biting on a piece of rawhide.
If it didn’t work, no one would do it. But many parents swear by this met
hod, claiming that their baby now sleeps through the night. These parents are also quick to point out that the self-inflicted trauma was almost unbearable.
Once your baby is six months old, you can give this method the good old college try. Here’s what you have to do:
Put your baby in the crib when she is drowsy but not yet asleep.
Leave the room.
No matter how hard she cries, wait five minutes.
Enter the room, but don’t pick her up. You can put a hand on her chest or talk softly to her for thirty seconds. Reassure her that you’re not Dad’s evil twin.
Leave the room.
Wait five minutes.
Repeat this pattern until she has fallen asleep.
The next night do the same thing, but add another five minutes to your response time.
Within 3-5 days your baby should be able to fall asleep by herself and get herself back to sleep when she wakes up in the middle of the night.
Some things to keep in mind before trying this approach:
Chances are that you’ll be elected the torturer of your household, especially if your partner is breastfeeding, as the crying can trigger her milk flow. So she may retire to the basement, Walkman cranked up, while you’re upstairs getting your game face on.
Although your baby will cry harder than you ever thought possible (sometimes so hard that they vomit), pediatricians will assure you that no long-term emotional harm will be done to your baby. You, however, may experience flashbacks.
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