Dr. Sears is a well-known author and advocate of attachment parenting. I used to think attachment parents were crazy people who insisted on breastfeeding their kids well into the college years, but I read one of Dr. Sears books (The Baby Sleep book) and it really made me feel like AP has a wide range on interpretations. Some of the things he advocates, like letting a mom hold her baby for an hour after its born and breastfeeding, are things we just naturally did on accident because they sounded like good ideas, I didn't know they were cornerstones of AP. I really liked The Baby Sleep Book because of its impressive arsenal of healthy baby sleep strategies... it's definitely not a "one size fits all" approach, it gives you all kinds of things to try. I posted a full review of it on my livejournal.
And while we're on books, I should probably bring up Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp. It's a must-know-about, because if you complain about your little baby crying a lot, the world will ask you if you've tried the 5 Ss. I read the book and have a big old review in my livejournal. I generally liked it, it's a quick read, I'd recommend it.
The technique kinda mostly works! Baby Jo had some serious anger management issues between 2 and 6 weeks, which is the normal "colic" age. My husband became a grand master ninja at swaddling her, and when she was wrapped up tight we'd sometimes get that instant obvious calm everyone needed.
Of course, that was sometimes. There were also times when I was walking the halls of my house at 3am with a perfectly swaddled baby, on her side, playing white noise, bouncing her up and down, listening to her SCREAM HER FOOL HEAD OFF. And at those times all you can say to yourself is "fucking... Harvey... Karp...". Oh for the record my daughter never would take any kind of pacifier, she seemed confused by the whole concept. So around that 4-week mark there were a lot of these conversations:
Me: The baby screamed from midnight to 4am last night for no reason.
Someone else: Did you try swaddling her and holding her on her side and going "shhhhh..."? I guess there's this book out all about that, you should check it out!
Then I'd punch them in the face. Which leads to another bit of advice I have for the world... do not try to give any advice to a parent who's going on 30 minutes of sleep. We're just not in a great shape to take it.
Back to being pregnant... body news! This was the week I noticed a freaky dark ring around my belly button. My belly button was there, sticking out awkwardly so I had to wear all these layers of clothes to keep it tamed, then there's .5" of pale normal skin all around it, then this ring. then my pale skin around it again. The day after I noticed it I had this conversation with my husband:
"Do you see this? Is it darker or is it just me?"
"It's darker."
"Well has it been like that?"
(pause) "Yeah."
"Was it like that when I wasn't pregnant?"
"No."
"Well WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?!"
"It just... has."
By the way, my husband is the chattiest guy ever. Until it comes to telling me about my body changes... then suddenly it's like he's treading on the edge of a volcano.
Later on that dark ring developed into a part of a dark line all down the middle of my stomach: linea Nigra. And it was like that for a LONG TIME. Like, months after pregnancy! Weird. And then it went away. They say it took nine months for your body to get that way, give it nine months to get back... they are not kidding.
This week's articles
Month Week Day Article 6 27W,0D 189 Neonatal intensive-care unit 6 27W,1D 190 Linea nigra 6 27W,2D 191 Hypnotherapy in childbirth 6 27W,3D 192 Labor and Delivery 6 27W,4D 193 Lithotomy position 6 27W,5D 194 Progesterone 6 27W,6D 195 Cervical effacement
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