When Rachel named her baby Emma on Friends, my friend Sarah screamed at the TV. You see, she had loved the name Emma since she was 16 and knew that just as she was reaching a child-bearing phase of her life, it would suddenly be everyone’s favorite name. My other friend Sarah reserved Leo and Lily years ago, letting her family and friends know that they were off limits.

I didn’t have names picked out ahead of time, unless you count when I was 7 or so…I was fascinated by Bill being a nickname for William since it didn’t start with the same letter, and likewise Bob for Robert. I wanted to have twins named Robert Bill and William Bob. For further comparison to my 7-year old mindset, when I grew up, I wanted to be a waitress and play professional basketball on the weekends.

Fast-forward to 30-year old Kara, trying to choose baby names for her unborn child. Admittedly, I overanalyze things, but a name is a big deal. I love that my name is unique, but people constantly mispronounce it as “care-a” instead of “car-a”, including both my high school and college graduation ceremonies. So we were hoping for something that had an obvious pronounciation. Then there’s the meaning of the name, the initials, what it rhymes with and possible nicknames.  

Given those constraints, I went through the entire 20,001 Baby Names book without finding anything that both my husband and I liked, for a boy OR a girl. Nothing! Then came studying a family geneology book, listing everyone on our high school basketball and track teams, and brainstorming every Bible name we could think of. Still nothing. I had always thought picking names would be fun, not stressful!

Getting a little desperate, I started scanning everything that had names: movie credits, football game programs, even tombstones at the cemetary. I made myself take a break for a couple of months and then slowly went through the 20,001 book again, considering whether any of them could possibly work. For a boy, I liked Tate. After a few weeks of subtle convincing, my husband also liked Tate. We chose Allen for a middle name, the same as my husband and his father. (Our girl name is still a secret in case we have a girl someday.)

Even with all of our efforts, when we called our family to announce Tate’s birth, most people thought we said “Kate”. Proud Dad quickly adjusted his message to “It’s a boy, his name is T-A-T-E, Tate”. We also didn’t think of the nickname Tater-Tot ahead of time, but that was applied by his uncles within the first 24 hours- fortunately, I think it’s cute! Overall, I think we made a good choice and I hope our son will like it too!

How did you choose names for your children? Are you in the name-choosing process right now? Share your story!

P.S. Just found a great post at Belly to Belly-Button with links to lots of baby name sites!

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Any of you have a similar experience to this? You’re with a group of people, some parents, some not, and your conversation is locked onto a disgusting topic - maybe diaper explosions or vomit. Or maybe not necessarily disgusting, but just mundane- which kind of sippy cup works the best or how many times are you up with the baby each night? And suddenly you’re a little embarrassed, seeing the glazed-over looks in the non-parents’ eyes. Okay, to be honest, I’ve seen that same look in my husband’s eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, I think sharing parenting experiences (with anyone who’s willing to listen!) is crucial to my health and sanity. But there’s a time and a place. If I can’t ever come up with any other topics of conversation, I will eventually have the same aforementioned sanity breakdown.

Yes, the majority of my day is spent with someone unable to speak (actual words, that is). Can I, a stay-at-home mom, still be an interesting person, with knowledge of the world outside my nursery? I think so…

I try to read at least the headlines of the newspaper, and on a good day get through actual articles in several sections. Tip: Use your frequent flier miles, especially for an airline you rarely fly, to purchase magazine subscriptions. Reading Time keeps me on top of timely issues. I’ve found that a magazine is easier to throw into the diaper bag and to keep out of baby’s reach. 

I’ve also always wanted to be in a book club, and suddenly was invited to join two of them this past year. I wasn’t sure how I’d fit in time to read, but somehow it’s worked out. These monthly get-togethers have been a great time to get out of the house, enjoy good conversation with other women, and use the non-mom part of my brain.

What do the rest of you do to stay “interesting”?

Photo Courtesy:
KellyK

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When I was little, my parents started a family tradition of a Christmas sleepover. On one night in the weeks preceding Christmas, we would all bring our sleeping bags into the living room and camp out around the tree. By the time we were in high school, Christmas Eve was the only night someone didn’t have a basketball game or some other activity, so that was our sleepover night. I think we only stopped doing them when my parents’ snoring became too loud for us to sleep through. My point is not to embarass them (sorry!) but to recognize that it was a pretty great tradition to have endured so many years.

As a married couple, the only holiday tradition that my husband and I seem to have established is severe procrastion in buying gifts. Now that our son is here, I hope we can do a little better than that…

My younger sister laid the pressure on thick, saying “this is Tate’s first Christmas, you have to start traditions NOW and have them for the rest of his life!” Yikes! Then coincidentally, while she was helping me decorate, we found one of those tiny books (the kind Barnes & Noble has out on the countertops, as if to say “would you like fries with that?”) called Life’s Little Treasure Book of Christmas Traditions.

One that totally cracked us up was “Create a gag gift that is passed on to different family members every Christmas. A complimentary hotel shower cap always brings lots of laughs.” What?! I’m all for gag gifts, but don’t they have to develop organically? I don’t think you can just throw in a random toiletry item and get laughs. But maybe that family is a little more wacky and fun than ours…

One that I definitely want to use as soon as Tate is old enough is “Let the youngest child in the family who’s old enough read the Christmas story on Christmas Eve. Record it on tape and save it for them when they are grown.”

Some other good ones:

• Volunteer as a family to work in a soup kitchen or homeless shelter during the holidays.
• Instead of the usual bedtime stories, read to your children about the Christmas customs in other countries.
• Display prominently the Christmas artwork your child brings home from school. (Wouldn’t it be fun to frame the best ones and replace some of your usual artwork over the holidays?)

What are your favorite family traditions?

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…continued from Our Sleep Journey and Our Sleep Journey, Part 2

Okay, so to recap, eight is enough! Eight months without good sleep, that is… My husband and I had tried the advice of 2 different books and our own strategy too, attempting to train Tate to sleep through the night. Instead of getting better, things were getting worse. I’d read enough and heard enough stories from friends to know that he probably wouldn’t outgrow this, and I really didn’t want to be working on this when he’s in a real bed. At least in the crib, we have a small element of control.

Then my former boss, a father of four, loaned me a copy of Sleeping Through The Night, by Jodi Mindell. By this time, I could skip past the parts explaining sleep cycles (everyone wakes up during the night; babies just don’t know how to get back to sleep like we do), and recommending a consistent nighttime routine (we were already doing that). Chapter 6 held the key for me…I realized that we had just replaced one sleep association (nursing) with another (pacifier and comfort). We still hadn’t allowed Tate to learn how to get himself to sleep! Mindell instructs parents to put the child to bed (after completing the normal bedtime routine) and simply leave. Then you return to the room for a quick “check”- pat on the back, verbal reassurance, but no picking up or cuddling. The checks get further apart (e.g. 5 minutes, 5, 10, 10, 15, etc.) until the child falls asleep. She suggests that on average, it takes 45 minutes of tears on the first night, an hour on the second night (they’re testing to see if you’re serious about this new system), then 20 minutes or less on the third night.

Mindell advises starting at nighttime, but I decided to try it during a nap instead, when I had more energy and resolve. Indeed, it took about 45 minutes for Tate to fall asleep. That night, however, it was less than 10 minutes, and he slept from 8pm to 5:30 am, then I nursed him and he slept until 7. We thought maybe it was a fluke, but he’s been sleeping consistently ever since. He falls asleep after five minutes or so of crying, but sometimes none, occasionally wakes up during the night, but is able to settle himself back to sleep without intervention from mom or dad. It feels like a miracle, after 8 months of struggle, to be getting full nights of rest.

A side bonus: before we went to the cry-it-out method, Tate began to associate the pacifier with being put down to bed and vigorously refused it when offered. This held true at other non sleep-times as well; he just has no interest in it. Now we won’t have to worry about weaning him off of it at some future point- hurray!

My husband and I still go back and forth on how we’ll approach sleep with our next child. I feel like I’ve learned so much that I’d never make the same mistakes again. Yet something tells me that a different child, with a different temperament, will present a whole new set of issues. Not to mention that there will be a big brother with his own sleep schedule to work around.

And honestly, I couldn’t have started off at the point that I’ve ended up. I still hate hearing him cry, but I’ve gotten to the point where a few tears are worth the reward of good sleep, both for him and for his dad and me. While I feel that we’ve given our son a valuable skill in getting himself to sleep, re-reading the no-cry books makes me feel guilty all over again. So I guess I’ll still be losing sleep, as I worry about the sleep I’ve gained…aaargh!

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…continued from Our Sleep Journey

By the time Tate was about 5 months old, I decided to try something else. A friend said they’d had success with the Baby Whisperer system, so I checked it out at the library. The official, very promising title, is The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems by Tracy Hogg. A former nurse, Hogg advocates the EASY system, putting children into a routine of Eat-Sleep-Activity-time for You. I was finally ready to concede that my habitual nursing him to sleep wasn’t helping the larger goal of consistent sleep, so this made sense to me. If changing to the EASY routine isn’t successful on its own, Hogg details the “Pick Up-Put Down” method, in which you pick your child up as needed to comfort him, but then lay him right back down into bed.“The idea behind this is that you’re giving him comfort and security and letting him have the emotion.” (p. 222)

Again, I was sold, excited to have found another method that didn’t make me feel like I was abandoning my child, ignoring his needs. I appreciated her perspective, which approaches issues from the child’s point of view. Her wisdom was acquired by personally helping thousands of parents work through their childrens’ sleep and other problems, right in their homes. I secretly hoped that she’d come to Minnesota to “solve all my problems”, and was crushed to find out that she had actually passed away in 2004.

In implementing the technique, I realized very quickly that picking up my nearly 20-pound son repeatedly was way too hard on my back. During the training period, Hogg says that the average is 20 rounds of pick up-put down, but that she had sometimes done as many as a hundred! 

We finally decided to compromise by allowing Tate to cry, but my husband or I would stay in the room with him until he fell asleep, picking him up for comfort periodically. Then one day, while I was sitting with him before naptime, Tate suddenly pulled himself up to standing in the crib! He was so proud (and so was I) that it was hard not to cheer along with him every time. But he obviously wasn’t going to fall asleep in a standing position. And because he was already tired, and new to the skill, he’d fall down a lot and get even more upset.

I also wondered whether our presence was comforting or confusing to him. It seemed like it was almost more for me than for him- I didn’t feel as guilty about him crying if I was there in the same room. His look, though, said, “you’re right there, you must see me and hear me, why aren’t you picking me up?!”

After a few weeks, we decided to leave the room after putting him down. He would jump up to stand and there would be tears for a few minutes, then I would lay him back down, put his pacifier in, and rub his back or head. After a few rounds of this, he’d be asleep. He was still waking up once at 10 or 11, and once at around 3, and would need the laydown/pacifier/backrub repeated. 

Then he began to refuse the pacifier, and screamed even louder when I tried to put it in. He would only be comforted by my nursing or holding him, and was waking up every couple of hours. Unfortunately for me, this happened during a 2-week period when my husband was out of town and we were at grandma’s. I hoped that being back in his own crib, or maybe having dad act as the enforcer, would help him return to his old ways. Alas, this was not the case…

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I’ll let you know up front that this story has a happy ending…Tate is finally sleeping through the night! I wish I could say that even though it took 8 months to reach this point, it’s been a gradual process of forward progress. Actually, it’s been up and down, better, then worse, with me instilling bad habits in my son and being inconsistent in my methods for getting him to sleep. But I hope that at least others can learn from our experience!

Looking back, one of the things that made me most nervous about becoming a parent was the lack of sleep. I’ve always been a big lover of sleep, and maybe that’s partly why I made some of the mistakes that I did. I vividly recall the first night we were home with Tate, sitting in the glider holding him, and asking my husband “how are we supposed to get him to sleep!?” The crib seemed so huge for his tiny body, so foreign from the cozy warm womb from which he’d so recently emerged.

Over the next weeks and months, we’d get him to sleep by whatever means possible- walking and bouncing, rocking, the swing, the bouncy chair, driving, nursing, etc. Our old house has very creaky wood floors, but I found the one spot in the nursery with quiet boards, and we spent a lot of time swaying back and forth there. His sleep was a means to an end (my sleep), and I think I thought we’d have plenty of time to fix any bad habits.

The first book I read on the topic was The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley, a gift from my sister- and brother-in-law who’ve had their own struggles with getting kids to sleep. In order to change a baby’s poor sleeping habits, the author says you can choose “crying or time.” Holding my tiny, precious newborn in my arms, I thought, “well, of course I’ll take as much time as needed to avoid tears!”  I appreciated the fact that Pantley had developed her system in the process of getting her own son to sleep; she had been in the trenches like me! 

After reviewing safety issues (a great reminder when you’re sleep-deprived and desperate), the reader is instructed to keep sleep logs for both the day/naptime and nighttime. After analyzing the logs, you get to choose from a menu of sleep solutions. They’re broken down by age (birth-4 months and 4 months-2 years), and include ideas for changing your baby’s sleep associations and developing sleep cues. Then you implement your custom plan, and review your progress after 10 days. The success of other “test mommies” is encouraging- 42% had babies sleeping through the night after day 10, and 92% were doing so after sixty days.

This feels a little like the concluding sentence to a 4th-grade book report…”I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories with adventure and strong friendship.” But seriously, if you’re not interested in a cry-it-out scenario for getting your baby to sleep, try Pantley’s book. You’ll need a big dose of patience, but it clearly works for many people.

My husband and me, unfortunately, not so much. Whether this was due to our own incomplete efforts or our son’s temperament, I don’t know. Probably a combination of the two. In those early months, I guess I felt that minimal sleep was par for the course. Stay tuned for the next phase of our journey…

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When my little brother was young, I read Are You My Mother? to him so many times that we had it memorized. It’s the story of a baby bird on a mission to find his mother. (She left the nest briefly to find food since the egg was about to hatch.) He comes earlier than expected, jumps out of the nest, and questions everyone from a kitten to a tugboat, “Are you my mother?”. (Stop reading now if you don’t want to know the ending.) An obliging bulldozer returns the birdie to its nest just in time for the mother’s return. He immediately realizes who she is, snuggling under her wing and announcing, “You are my mother!”

Tate has finally reached the stage where we can read together, meaning that he doesn’t try to eat the book as soon as I open it up. I still have to go pretty quickly to match his short attention span, but it’s great! So sweet to have my active little guy sitting on my lap, listening to my voice and looking at the pictures, and of course this book is one of our favorites.

He’s been experiencing separation anxiety for the last couple of months, right on schedule according to all the parenting books. It’s frustrating when he’s so clingy, but there’s also part of me that feels a little honored by his devotion. I realized that it really makes me feel like a mom. Not that all the other parts of motherhood haven’t been significant, or that I haven’t already felt bonded to my child. But somehow, the fact that he wants me, only me, makes it seem more real. My baby bird knows that I am his mother!

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