by Nate Dallas
Recognize and appreciate the difference in when he is just tired and when you need to check on him. Babies have different tones, volumes, pitches, and breathing patterns that will let you know what they are thinking and feeling. In time, you will learn to differentiate between his cries. As long as everything is OK on the monitor, you will be able to give him a few extra minutes to settle down by himself. My advice is to give a child up to 15 minutes to stop crying and fall asleep on his own. (You should probably start with 10. Ask your doctor.) After 15 minutes, go in and soothe the unsettled baby if you need to. You will find that most of them will get tired (remember, crying is a form of exercise for them) and fall asleep in much less than fifteen minutes, and your services will not be necessary. You make the judgment call. Maybe you can start with ten minutes. Even that long can seem like an eternity for new parents. It’s really hard, so be ready for it. Many times, he will fall asleep when you are on your way to the room to rescue him at the ten minute mark. Sometimes he just needs 20 more seconds.
When the feeding and resting schedule is established, it must be sacred. Everyone must respect and follow it. That includes babysitters, caregivers, and grandparents. Enforcing the schedule with them can be tough. Grandmothers may have their opinions and not like your schedule. Other caregivers may be careless and flippant about it. Do what you can to guard and preserve the schedule. It matters. When that child is six months old and finishes every bottle, plays happily, goes down for a nap without a single fuss, and sleeps for ten hours every night, you will realize that your hard work and diligence has provided sweet success.
Happy Nappy Time
“I’ll be right back, y’all, I’m just going to put the baby down.” Three minutes pass… “OK, I’m back.” The couple that is over for dinner is stunned, and the guest wife says, “That’s it? The baby is down? Dang! That must be nice.” You give a confident nod, saying nothing, but think to yourself, “Yep! It sure is.”
The bedtime routine is not all that different from nap time. There are just a few other cues that will let your baby know that it’s nighttime, not just nap time. Soon enough, that means sleeping all night. That will be a huge win when it’s achieved. Hopefully, it won’t take too long to get there.
One powerful cue for babies to realize that it’s almost bedtime is a warm bath. After getting the last meal of the evening, it’s time for a bath. I am going to recommend that you do bath time every night at the same time, instead of some random time during the day. Sure, you will need a supplemental bath from time to time from a diaper that exploded, a messy meal, or a spit-up bomb. I am talking about the elective evening bath here, not an emergency cleanup. Let part of the last wake time of the day be bath time. Just like the other conditioning methods we have been discussing, you will see that after getting into the groove with this routine, the bath will be a tool to calm and relax the baby. He will start to get heavy eyes when he feels the warm water.
I recommend a baby bath that has a soft hammock type sling in the center. They keep the baby from sliding on a hard, wet surface. The cloth part is removable and washable. They are superior to the ones that have a permanent foam pad which tends to get moldy over time. Get one that has a reservoir under it that has enough room to scoop water out with a cup to gently pour on the baby. If it has a basin, you don’t have to use the bathtub and do the uncomfortable bend over the side position. One that fits into the kitchen sink is very handy too. Just make sure that once the baby is big enough to reach the faucet handles, that they are out of reach. Otherwise, in a split second, he could move the handle and change the temperature to a dangerous level. Put the baby bath in the sink, shower, tub, on the floor, or wherever works for you. Always keep a hand on him, just like when changing clothes or diapers. Gather everything that you could possibly need beforehand because you absolutely, under no circumstances, may leave his side during a bath.
After the warm bath is complete and PJ’s go on, follow with your usual pre-rest ritual with swaddles, sways, rocks, reads, or songs. This time, we need to make the room a little darker. If you have windows in the room, this will happen naturally, and he can distinguish between bedtime and naptime. Otherwise, you need to have a different, more dim nightlight for the evenings than the one you use during the day. For evenings, have just enough light so that you can come in to feed and change safely without needing to turn on anything else. The goal is to keep the environment the same, even during feeding or changing. For night feedings, you stay in the room for everything. Feed and change in the darker room and skip the standard wake time. In time, you will be able to change and feed without even waking him up.
I must now trudge into a topic that is sure to get me in trouble. Co-sleeping (bed sharing) with the baby is a habit that many parents get into, and I think it’s a horrible practice. I am talking about allowing the baby to sleep with one or both of you in the same bed. Some parents do it out of fear and paranoia, some do it to make breastfeeding easier during the night, and some do it out of their desire to snuggle with their infant. I know many parents that have children ranging from 6 months to age 11 that can’t get their child to sleep in their own bed alone. You want to talk about a strain on your rest, your peace of mind, and your love life? Allowing a temperamental baby to permanently sleep in your bed will wreak havoc on all three. To protect against this unending dependency of bed sharing, it’s best just to forbid it from the get go. I have plenty of logical reasons to have boycotted it in my home. We have never allowed it, and everyone has been just fine. You may think I’m a monster, but hear me out.
The reasons to avoid co-sleeping are numerous and easy to understand. Here they are:
#1 - It’s a safety issue. Having a small person sleeping next to one or two adults on a soft bed with fluffy pillows and blankets is dangerous. If someone rolls over, the baby can be injured, smothered, or pushed off the bed. Newborns are not supposed to have any blankets, bumpers, or pillows because they lack the strength and cognitive ability to move away from the item if it’s covering their face and restricting breathing. Many people jerk, kick, or flinch during sleep. Your sweet little nugget of perfect DNA doesn’t need to withstand a knee to the back of the head while you are dreaming of wrestling blue alligators with George Bush on an airplane. A fall off the bed could be devastating as well. It’s just risky and unnecessary. Sharing the bed with a new baby increases the incidence of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) by 5x in the first three months.
#2 - You are not getting good sleep. If the most valuable thing in the world, which also happens to be quite fragile, is sleeping next to you, you aren’t ever totally relaxed. The people that defend their bed sharing habits will say that they always know where the baby is, can hear everything, and can respond to his needs immediately. They say this to defend the safety argument I made in point one, but in doing so, solidify my second point. They aren’t sleeping well. You all need rest. We are all hyper-attentive in the beginning because it’s daunting to think about caring for a helpless human all night long. Whether he is in the bed or not, this will be the case. Decrease the risk of something bad happening, and increase your chances of getting sleep.
#3 - You are creating dependency. As I have said numerous times, you must deliberately train your children. They are adaptable and will learn the systems if you consistently and diligently stick with the plan. He needs to learn to self-soothe and fall back asleep on his own. If he learns to depend on you to snuggle him every time he passes gas or whimpers, you both lose. There are plenty of things that he legitimately and desperately needs you to provide. There is no need to add more unnecessary things to that enormous list.
#4 - Your bedroom needs to be a sacred domain. You need a haven to escape to sometimes, and hey, one day you may want to practice the art of making babies again. Let’s face it, you and the Mrs. desire and need to maintain a healthy, intimate relationship. If your three-year-old is in your bed for 10 hours a night, it tends to mess up the plan. Putting a child to bed,
in his room, two hours before you plan to hit the hay can provide for some awesome opportunities. Having time for foreplay is good. I recommend “fiveplay” or “sixplay” whenever possible. Give yourselves the time, freedom, and opportunity to enjoy yourselves. Your marriage needs this. After returning home with a newborn, there will certainly be a necessary sexual hiatus to allow for mom’s complete healing. Her doctor will let her know when normal sexual activity can be resumed. We do not, by any means, want the lack of that healthy activity to be prolonged or to become a permanent change because of a resident trespasser in the room.
#5 - The wedge effect. Many couples who allow co-sleeping end up sleeping in separate beds. The child prefers one or the other parent, who obliges the child’s incessant need to be in their bed. As the child gets older and bigger (or as the parents get older and bigger), one parent decides to take one for the team, and they start sleeping separately. Sleeping separately isn’t helping the marriage. Every parent needs a break from their kids and relaxing time to talk and be together. Don’t let the thing that should function as marriage glue be the thing that separates you.
So, where should the newest member of the family sleep? I never said that he couldn’t be in the room, just not in the same bed. The first week or two, let him sleep in a bassinet or crib in the same room just a few feet away. The goal and expectation need to be to move him to another room within the month. Some people purchase a “co-sleeper” bed that is a sort of three-walled bassinet that fits right up against your big bed, open side facing you, so you can reach in and out if the baby needs you without getting out of bed. If you like that, then fine. I think it’s better to have a full bassinet or crib a little further away. If you need to change a diaper or feed the little guy, you have to get up anyway. No one will be hitting deep REM sleep for a while. You will get up to look, listen, and feel many times. You will relax more and more as time goes on, and that’s a good thing because you would certainly crash if not.
The Hunt for the Missing Z’s
It’s still hard to fully comprehend that there is a tiny version of you now living in the house. It doesn’t seem real, but you know it’s not a dream because you haven’t slept in days.
You will quickly find out that Mom and Dad are both totally drained. Like, the most sleep-deprived you have ever been in your life, insanely tired. The difference between now and those long and late nights before a child is that before, you had a chance to recover. The problem now is that the new gig never stops. You can’t both sleep until noon tomorrow. So, what the heck are you supposed to do?
I have a hack for the common problem of early parental exhaustion. Most couples spend the first few nights together with the baby in the room, which helps you both learn and get comfortable with the new routine. It also means that you are both feeding and changing through the night, and both of you will be totally out of gas. No one gets any quality sleep. Constantly being interrupted all night long and expecting to perform well the next day is not sustainable.
You can survive doing this for a week or so, but a new plan will be a necessity of growing importance. You will need to take turns with the baby duties and take turns getting better rest. If you don’t have an additional bed, cot, or sleeping bag in another room large enough for an adult human, you should probably make some arrangements to find one. If there isn’t another bedroom, use the kitchen or the hallway. With the baby and one parent in one room, and the other parent having a temporary escape option, you both alternate turns enjoying better rest for longer periods of time. Instead of taking turns every three hours during the night and everyone waking every time in the same room, try separate rooms for longer, better rest. This is not a permanent plan and might not be necessary every night, but when you know you need it, use it. One of you takes the shift all night in the room with the baby, while the other parent sleeps all night in a room alone. If it’s a bad night, and you just can’t make it through, you can tap out and switch places. At least the other person had some quality rest. Breastfeeding can complicate this or render it impossible in some cases. If you have breast milk pumped or use formula, you will probably both love the idea of taking full night shifts. The benefit summary for this hack is simple. My wife and I luckily discovered it long ago. That is that one block of quality sleep plus one block of poor sleep is exponentially better than two blocks of inadequate sleep. Trading shifts gives you some time to recover so that you can perform at a higher level, instead of maintaining a compromised state forever.
Sleeping separately is temporary. Remember, I want you in bed with your spouse as much as possible, as soon as possible. As the feeding and sleeping schedule improves, you will get more and more time back with your spouse. The baby will begin to wake every six hours instead of every three. At that point, which will take several weeks, try to transition to him sleeping in another room, and use the baby monitor. Leave both bedroom doors open if it makes you feel better. When he starts sleeping eight hours, you will be elated and energized. Ten hours will be surreal and will make you feel like you are getting away with something. Until then, you may discover the value of power napping. Seize every opportunity to nap that comes along. Most grandmothers will gladly watch the baby for an hour or two while you both can rest.
1 WEEK AD
Beating the System and Saving Your Wallet
Hooray! There is a baby at home, and everyone is happy. You don’t want to be a buzzkill, but waiting for the bills to come is building major anxiety. How does the rest of the world do this? This is going to cost a TON of money.
NOTICE: DO NOT pay any medical bills (in any category, for any family member) until you read this chapter.
If you have doubted the value of this book and your time investment up to this point, you can set your mind at ease. This chapter alone is worth thousands of dollars. I am certain that the following few paragraphs will produce a 100x return on your investment of purchasing this book.
Many times in life, we look around us and wonder how the rest of the world does it. What’s the catch? What are we missing? When I got my first set of bills for maternity services and childbirth, I wondered just that. We had catastrophic health coverage insurance but no maternity coverage. As a self-employed person trying to get a career started, with no company policy, I had to scratch my head and wonder how people like me could afford to pay the $3,500 OB tab, the $1,500 for lab services, and the $6,000 in hospital fees. I was making a good living and making responsible fiscal decisions, but come on, how many people your age have $11,000 in cash lying around?
The answer to the, “How do people afford it?” question is simple. They usually don’t! It’s all a big, nasty game. Many people get their debt pardoned in full, some get sizeable discounts, others work out a feasible long-term plan to pay it off, and only a select few can write a check and pay for it.
Here’s how it all works. Medical offices, labs, hospitals, and collection agencies all play an involved poker game with your healthcare and billing. Please forgive me for making generalizations and lumping all healthcare together, but for the most part, it’s accurate and fair to do so at this point. Let’s say that Bob needs a diagnostic procedure. The doctors’ office needs to charge $100 for this procedure. Bob’s insurance says that it covers 50% of this procedure. So, in order for the office to collect the $100 that they need to cover overhead and make a profit, they raise the fee to $200 and send the claim to the insurance company, who hopefully pays 50% of it. If Bob says that he has no insurance, they would just charge him $100 directly. If he has insurance, they set the fee higher and get the insurance company to pay a portion of it. The uncovered balance at the end is what is in question. In this case, it’s the $100 not covered on the $200 bill. The office has a decision to make: Option A - Charge Bob the leftover $100? Option B - Offer him a discount on the remaining balance? Option C - Write the whole thing off and zero Bob’s balance?
In Option A, after paying the deductible, a $40 copay, and filing insurance, Bob would h
ave been better off having no insurance (or withholding the information that he is covered) and just paying $100 cash. Option B is common, but every office has a different method for determining what’s left. Option C happens the most often, but you may not be the recipient of such handouts. Our example was for $100, but as you know, we are missing a few zeroes if we are talking about hospital and specialized services.
Our first child came when I was a grad student. At the time, we had a great insurance plan through my wife’s workplace. Awesome! I never even received a final bill. We payed a few copays, and everything else was covered by the premium policy. When we had our second child, I was making a nice income and my wife no longer had the work policy because she was staying home. I had a high-deductible medical insurance plan, but to my unfortunate surprise, and contrary to what the agent said when she sold me that policy, I did not have maternity coverage on the plan. Everything was fairly routine for prenatal, delivery, and postnatal care for baby number two. I received the bills after everything was completed, and I owed about $9,000. Then, I did the most idiotic thing in the world. I actually PAID the bills—IN FULL. I thought that was what responsible, honest people did. I was grateful for a healthy child, and I had, in fact, saved the money ahead of time for the procedure. I was proud that I could pay for it, and my wife was impressed too. That “honest” and “responsible” decision cost me about $4,000. I’ll explain. Just know this: you should NEVER pay the balance on the bill without negotiating. You should also NEVER agree to a payment plan based on their terms. Let me be clear, I am not saying that you should skirt any bills that you owe. I think you should absolutely pay for everything that you owe. You should just reduce that amount as much as possible, and do it on terms that won’t jeopardize the financial security of your family.
