Health

Nine ways to make tummy time more tolerable

Photo by Alpine Rose Photography

Tummy time sucks. There, I said it. Max and every baby I’ve ever met hates tummy time. The doctors and articles all say it’s required for numerous reasons, but there’s something a bit unnerving about letting your screaming baby lay on their belly hating every minute of it. For me, Max’s tummy time cry is like nails on a chalk board. He’s also rolling over now and when he finally gets himself off of his tummy, just for me to flip him back over, it almost feels like I’m betraying him! So I’ve been looking for just about any tip or trick to make tummy time even remotely more manageable. I decided to do a bit of research to find out why tummy time is so important, and see if there were any ways that we could make tummy time a little more tolerable. Read on to find out what I found!

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A sleep update: how to deal with sleep changes

A few weeks ago I posted about how I got Max to sleep through the night at only four months old. I was pretty proud of myself and really thought I had it all figured out! A few of my mom friends texted me asking if it was true- and it really was! Up to that day, Max had been sleeping through the night because I was following the Moms on Call schedule and doing things I had posted about in that blog post. But as soon as I pushed publish on that post, Max stopped sleeping through the night. I felt so silly! I had just told all of my readers and friends that I had all these methods of getting Max to sleep, and suddenly in one night they all failed me. I feel like it’s important to post this though because motherhood is not linear. What works one day is not going to work the next every time, and as a new mom, that’s something it’s taken me a while to learn. I’m not used to things being so up and down, but Max has other plans, and that’s okay! Being a new mama is a learning experience every day.

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How we got our baby to sleep through the night

When you’re pregnant, one thing so many people will say to you is “enjoy your sleep while you can!” Totally terrifying. You mean I’m not going to sleep ever again like a normal person? When does that end? How are other parents doing it? I still have to go to work on no sleep?? That sounds AWFUL. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not totally true. There will be some nights you don’t sleep as much as you would have before you were a mom, but your nights of sleeping are not over.

I was walking with one of my new mom friends when Max was about a month old, and we were comparing notes about how our babies sleep. She told me about how her baby slept almost all the way through the night from the beginning, but since I was struggling a little bit she told me that one of her friends had told her about this book called “Moms on Call“. She told me it was a pretty strict regimen, with rules about everything from how long babies can eat, to what they have in their room, to how long their naps can be. I decided to look into it just to see what the schedule might look like since so many people told me that I should get Max on a schedule anyway, and I didn’t really know what a schedule for a baby should look like.

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Bringing home a newborn in a pandemic

Disclaimer- I am not a medical professional in any way; the things that I talk about in this post are simply what I’ve learned from my own research and doctors and how we’ve taken the information and used it during this time. Please consult your pediatrician and physician to find out what is best for you and your baby as far as Covid guidelines.

Pandemic newborn sign
Photo by LOGAN WEAVERon Unsplash

Bringing a newborn home is scary. I remember driving home from the hospital in the back seat kind of panicking that now we were responsible for this baby. It’s a crazy feeling. When we got home I sat in the car for a while before I went into the house, just sort of processing what was going to be our new life of caring for a child. And on top of the regular anxiety of caring for a newborn, new parents are dealing with a whole other level of responsibility, because now we have to try to keep our babies safe, and figure out how to bring home a newborn in a pandemic.

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