I saw this wonderful post on Devoted Parenting about how to reduce the risk of SIDS.
SIDS stands for “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” which is the cause of death listed a lot of the time when babies just stop breathing in their sleep and there is no other way to explain it. It is a horrific thing for any parent to have to go through which is why I feel compelled to share the link here so that nobody has to experience this.
I noticed that one of the things Lynda listed is that if you give your baby pacifier that helps reduce the risk of SIDS in the first year of life. I believe this is a relatively new safety tip. I heard the reason for this is that when a baby is sucking on a pacifier it is giving the brain a reminder to breath at the same time.
I know that many parents don’t want to give a pacifier because they are concerned their baby will not want to give it up when they are older. For us, we did give our DD a pacifier because it helped her to sleep better at night (plus I had heard the info. about SIDS). What we did is it NEVER left the crib, she was only allowed to have while she was sleeping and it was part of our routine that when she woke up she had to drop the paci into her crib. Then when she was around 18 months old I just took it out of her crib one day and put it away and she never cried or asked for it. I’m not trying to brag for those of you who have had a harder time getting rid of it. But this is what seemed to work for us. Luckily little E is just a very adaptable baby and she accepted that it was time to get rid of her paci.

In my last job we always used to ask parents “What is the worst time of day for you and your child.” To get an idea of things we could help them find solutions to.
Recently for me this has been getting ready to go out some where. If little E and I are just staying home all day we have very little conflict. It’s when we have to get ready to leave the house that we clash. She is very uncooperative getting dressed and when I am trying to get ready she insists on getting into something dangerous or messy or following me around crying because I’m not playing with her. I know I could solve a lot of the frustration by getting myself ready before she even wakes up in the morning. But for some reason I just can’t get my act together enough to do that.
Take this morning for example. It took us an hour and a half to leave the house to go the park. All I had to do was put my shoes on and put on enough makeup so that I don’t scare people. All I needed to do for her was get her dressed and find her shoes. This took 90 minutes people! I find myself getting so frusturated and having unrealistic expectations of her during times like this. I say things and expect her to listen or to even understand what I am talking about when I say “If you don’t put your shoes on, then we’re not going to the park.” At 21 months old I know that is too much for her to understand.
If I were one of my clients I probably would have told them to get ready before she wakes up, and stick to a routine in the morning like maybe getting her ready even before I feed her breakfast. It is so much harder to actually take your own advice. *Sigh*
So, anybody have any ideas? What’s your worst time of day?