100 Happy Days - Day 2: Creative parenting

Today just turned out to be a difficult day. At one point I nearly ended up in tears of disappointment and frustration. One of the contributing factors, besides only having slept for 4 hours, was that by lunchtime Arnan had not had any food except his "hot choccie" - a bottle of warm milk - and some biscuits he found on the dining room table... And he was whining and tantruming for another bottle of milk, discounting all offers for alternative nutrition. There are days that I let it slide, but for some reason today was not one of those days.

Thankfully Arnan finally gave in to my offer to watch some Daniel Tiger (the birthday episode, since it is Arnan's birthday tomorrow), just as I was about to go make the bottle. On his way to the couch he grabbed an empty egg carton and some cherry tomatoes and started munching. I saw the window of opportunity and surreptitiously filled the remaining egg cups with an assortment of cherry tomatoes, blocks of Gouda and fresh cherries. He also devoured the greater portion of a papaya (the sweetest papaya I have ever tasted! Thank you Woolworths :) ). Arnan was munching something, I received an encouraging response to my message of distress from my supportive husband and just like that my day was happy once more.

naming right

naming a child must be one of the most daunting, challenging tasks a parent is faced with right at the outset of their parenting "career". i believe that your name defines you, it becomes a part of you and who you are, that it reflects who you are to become, or perhaps who you are already - if that makes any sense at all. for this reason, i do not take the naming of my children lightly at all.

and so, as you may imagine, i am in a flat spin, losing sleep, that i am 6 months pregnant and the name of our daughter has not been decided yet. yes, there have been options, and yes, the list has been pretty much narrowed down to what are most likely to be her names... but i have so many doubts, and i'm not sure why... i love the meanings of the names we have come up with. but i guess having gone through this once before i am much more cautious in my approach.
will people be able to pronounce her name correctly? i have struggled with this all my life, and always will. is her name too unique? i love unique names, probably because i have one, but let's face it people do not "get" names they haven't heard before - something my son will have to deal with because of his unique name... will the name suit her? will she love it? is it pretty enough for a girl's name, without boxing her into a stereotype for the rest of her life? are there any acceptable shortenings of the name? ah yes, there are many questions.
i am almost tempted to outsource the whole thing, all that stops me is that this is such a personal thing. not all names are meant for all families, and so we will just have to do this. there is a rapidly approaching end - if not before the birth, at or after the birth of our precious new addition to the family. i really hope, no, i know that we will choose the right name.

if you have any suggestions on how to make this an easier task, or would just like to share how you named your child(ren), please do so in the comments!

the "c" word

it's the word starting and ending in a "c", the word most new parents learn to dread... colic. and it moved in to our home at three weeks, just as nico went back to work. suddenly not only did i have to figure out how to look after a newborn by myself, newly recovered from a complicated labour, but my angel child would unexpectedly start screaming in pain without warning.

the early days are the worst. your child is screaming - not crying - in pain, with tears running down his face. babies don't get tears until much later. you have no idea what to do, no knowledge on what to do with babies in general (no your head does not miraculously fill with the required knowledge at birth) let alone in emergency situations like these. guilt and worry overcome you... what to do?

i can honestly say that i have tried just about everything short of just leaving our baby to cry in his cot. thankfully there are things that help, if even momentarily, and they probably go against everything you vowed you would never do with your child.

1. the chiro. our first stop was the chiropractor, even before our babe got colic, but we went again afterwards. i can't say whether it helped or not. we got some good advice from the second chiro - did you know that gas is a byproduct of milk digestion in breastfed babies? at least we can say we tried it.
   
2. "bouncing" our baby on an exercise ball. yes, rocking and jiggling him will work while he is still tiny, but there comes a time when everything you do unaided is just not enough. and when he is screaming in your ringing ear, writhing in pain, you do just that - bounce with him. it soothes him almost immediately, which means that you are calm enough to deal with the presenting problem.
3. leg maneuvers. these include bicycling his legs and holding them in to his stomach to aid in moving the farts along and out. also effective whilst bouncing on the ball (see above) or singing a silly song, "i like to push it, push it (x2); push it to the left and push it to the right...".
4. baby massage. i read various internet articles on baby massage, we attended a four week baby massage course and the chiro gave us some massage and exercise tips. using a pure cold pressed oil with some dill essential oil in it one may be able to aid in the relief from stuck farts. massaging the "bubbles" (they feel like bubble wrap in his soles) out of our baby's feet seems to calm him whilst helping in getting the farts out at times. massaging in a circular clockwise direction on the tummy is supposed to help but i have found that this is too sensitive a place to go for our little guy. then there's the "i love you" drawing on his tummy, supposed to make him poop but doesn't seem to have the desired effect. what i do sometimes though is just lightly rub the oil over his tummy. i reckon the dill oil helps and is absorbed through the skin.
   
5. lotions and potions. telament gripe water, telament colic drops, bennets colic mixture, mag phos (tissue salts no 8), magen, iberogast... i don't like to admit it, but i do get desperate when the wails start flying in. and everyone has a potion to cure colic. some are more effective than others. i found telament colic drops only work to get the burps out, our problem is with the farts. bennets colic mixture contains too much alcohol. iberogast seemed to work in the beginning but eventually seemed to increase the "bubbles" in our babe's tummy. mag phos helps against cramping but increases flatulence, which doesn't help as our guy seems to have pain when they exit too. right now natura's magen is all that i am giving him, added to a teaspoon of boiling water to evaporate the alcohol. it has an ingredient that is supposed to absorb the winds in the intestines and works within 15 minutes or less.
6. the pacifier. yes we went there, after vowing our child was not going to use one. what were we thinking? we found that although he refused to take it ordinarily, it would help to get him quietly into the car seat on outings... at times. someone would have to travel at the back with him to keep it in though. and then he suffered an episode of epic proportions at church two weeks ago, a sign of things to come. suddenly nothing worked. after troubleshooting every possible solution i stumbled onto the pacifier. it sounds logical, but because he had refused to take it before i never really considered it. that pacifier is never far away now. any sign of discontent and it's shoved into his mouth. i think i've gone over to the other extreme, overusing the thing, but it works and i will find a balance as soon as i've overcome the trauma of the past two weeks :)

our chiro says that the colic is due to an immature digestive system and that he should grow out of it between 12 and 14 weeks. there is hope.