There was a time when I did not carry or even own an appointment calendar. Any contacts I wanted to keep were simply written down on a piece of paper. Of course, then life was simpler too. I was in college and other than family, friends and school there wasn’t anyone else in my world.
My first Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) was Palm Zire and I don’t remember why I bought it. My guess would be that after marriage and kids life got a little more complex – doctor’s appointments, school dates etc and there was no way I could carry all that around in my head. Paper seemed too retro, so electronic it was. I liked my Palm Zire, it was only Black-and-White, but did the job. One of the best things I liked about it was the 2 way sync with the Palm’s Desktop Manager. Since the syncing was with software developed by Palm themselves, it was quite smooth. No duplicates. Best of all, I could enter major information, use cut and paste on the desktop and just update my handheld, instead of slowly entering with a stylus.
After a while, I thought to get myself upgraded and got Palm Life Drive. I was already a fan of Palm, so decided to simply go with them. I have to say, I didn’t spend any time researching other than to go to the store and check out their Palm products and choose one of them. Why Life Drive you ask?
First, it was Palm. Second, it was now colored. So I could have a different color of each of us in the family and I managed all our appointments. By now our contact lists had also grown. The simple fact that my husband and I merged our contacts, and then add on various jobs, internships and friendships along the way, and our contact list was growing too. My original paper system may have continued to work, but when I could have it all in my fingertips why not.
Third, it still synched with a Palm Desktop Manager. And what’s more transferring all my information from the Zire to the Life Drive was a snap. A fourth cool thing about the Life Drive was that you could actually use your stylus and write notes as you would on paper.
The Life Drive came with a huge memory capacity and I thought it might be nice to use as a backup device too. And it worked great.
The down side to the Life Drive was that it was a chunky thing to carry around, and the mode of entry using stylus had changed. So I didn’t even bother to learn the new stylus entry system and simply used the keyboard on the PDA to enter data.
But then sometime last year, my computer crashed. After I had it fixed, I tried synching my Life Drive and nothing. I took it in to the Geeks and they didn’t have any answer. Then I learnt that Palm would no longer support the Desktop Manager programs. The drop deadline was sometime February of this month. So I thought it might be time to look for something else in the market. If the Life Drive wasn’t going to be functional, then I needed something else.
So off to the store I went. I learnt that nobody makes simple old PDAs anymore. Everything is a Smart Phone - an oxymoron if I ever heard one. Well that threw a wrench in my plans. I wanted to stay with Palm if possible. But if I had to combine it with a phone, I wanted to stay with Verizon. Palm had just introduced the Palm Pre with AT&T. But I gave priority to the phone company. Now I wonder why, considering the fact that I have the smallest calling plan on my phone and it works just fine for me. So obviously I am not using my phone a lot.
After a very brief consideration, the choices were iPhone or Blackberry according to my Facebook poll. Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple products and I think they work great together. It’s when you mix the Apple and PC worlds I feel things go wrong. But this is from experience several years ago. For all I know things are markedly different now.
As you can probably tell, this is leading to the Blackberry. I figured, it has been around a long time and they know what they are doing. Blackberry was one of the first names I recall hearing things like “I can’t live without my Blackberry.” “People who have Blackberry’s just love them.”
So again without any further ado, I purchased a Blackberry Storm 2. I was eligible to get a phone upgrade from Verizon and yet, I paid for the phone. The sales agent told me I will get a rebate in the mail. Nope, didn’t happen. So now I have a phone that I paid for. Who does that anymore?
Now begins the great adventure. First, we had to find a way to transfer data to the Blackberry. Turns out if I used MS Outlook, this would be a snap. Now MS Outlook is only available with the Professional Version of Office and is quite expensive. So obviously Blackberry was not meant for the Mom market. Then it turned out if I used a Google calendar I could sync it to my Blackberry. But I could not transfer from my Palm to Google calendar. So I just decided to simply start using Google calendar going forward and synch with my Blackberry. The Google calendar itself is quite sophisticated and allowed me the same color coordinated entries as Palm did. Unfortunately when it synchs with the Blackberry, everything is black.
This was the easy part. Let go of the past and look forward regarding appointments. What to do with the contacts? Again, apparently it would sync great with MS Outlook. I can’t say because I never went that route. Blackberry claims they can synch with the Google contacts. But if you look at the data entry modes in the Blackberry and Google contacts they do not match, so if you synch with Google contacts, it shows up as one continuous line of information on the Blackberry. But that wasn’t even a problem yet. I simply did not keep contacts on Google, except to save email addresses. It was not my address book.
I tried to do some research. I am sorry I won’t be able to tell you the whole miserable experience, but just let me say, I had to export files from my Palm in a certain format, go to Yahoo and convert them to another format and then try to import them into the Blackberry. Didn’t work. So I took my Blackberry back to the agent and asked for his help. He had this neat device where he could copy from one of those files from Yahoo or whatever and transfer them onto my Blackberry. It worked. Sort of.
So now I had a bunch of contacts on my Blackberry, most of the information was intact, but it was in a mess. For example, the address would show up as one long line – 800 Washington St,New York,NY. Considering we have a lot of international contacts and some of those addresses appeared thus – 14 International St,near tall pillar,behind well,City,Country,Zip.
But I was not ready to give up hope. I figured I had reached as far as I could with the trying to upload data business. So I went through each contact and painfully corrected each one. The frustrating part was that some of these contacts would randomly return to their original mess. Finally, I would simply delete that record and create a new one. That seemed to work better.
Since I had to take care of synching etc, I downloaded Google Sync for Mobile and synced stuff. Voila my calendar appeared albeit all black text. But then I realized that my contacts were messed up again. Why, because it had downloaded every single email from my Google account as contact and managed to mess up several of my other contacts.
Well this was the learning part, so I don’t mind so much. I realized I could go in and choose not to synch my contacts with anything, just synch the calendar. This worked quite well for sometime. Until one day, I turned on the phone and it said, would you like to upgrade to system whatever. I said yes. It went through its song and dance and when all was done, my calendar looked fine, but my contacts were a disaster. Now I had multiple entries for several people. Now I can understand if Mary Smith is copied from my Facebook contact, Gmail contact, etc. But why duplicate even the ones I already had on the phone. So now I could have as many as 6 Marys. Mary, Mary Smith (only email address), Mary Smith (all contact), Mary Smith (again). How do I know it copied its own self too?
See the wonderful thing about Palm contacts was that you could create categories, and I am not sure how executives do it, but as a Mom, my people categories were simple. Family, Friends, Neighbors, Work, Doctor, etc. You get the point. Well in the Blackberry too you could create categories, but if you created Home and selected Mary Smith, it would ask which phone number do you want to add. It would not include the whole information. Basically, I had to divide Mary Smith into Home, Work, etc. Who operates like that? Even in the business world, I would imagine if you know someone and have their contact information, both personal and professional, you are likely to categorize them in the category you are most likely to look for them. If they are personal friends, maybe FRIENDS works and if you need to call them at work, you just look up your friend’s work number. If they are business contacts, maybe BUSINESS works. But wouldn’t you want to have all of Mary Smith’s information in that one category you went to? And the whole point of categories is to break down your contacts into manageable lists. For example, if I am looking my doctor’s number, if I simply chose the category DOCTOR, there it would be within just a handful of names. At least, that is how Palm did it.
So I soon realized that categories in Blackberry are a dud. If I am wrong, please tell me. But now I had this long list of people in my contact list. And no matter how many contacts you have in your list, you don’t use more than a dozen on a regular basis. It was a pain to scroll through so many names. So the top 10 names became A Mary Smith, A John Doe. You get the idea, since they now started with A they would jump to the top of the list and voila no more scrolling, there they were in the screen.
Now going back to my story about duplicating records, I knew it duplicated my own records because I had 2 A Mary Smith, 2 A John Doe, etc. But I wondered why did this happen anyway, just because I upgraded the software on the phone.
Turns out that upgrading reverts all the settings to some default and it synched calendar and contacts (from various sources such as Facebook, email accounts and apparently itself). So I had to go back and deselect the option to synch contacts yet again. And once again I had to scroll through the contact list and delete the duplicates and unwanted contacts. This took me a whole hour. Since I had already done this once before, you can imagine I was not pleased.
How long have I had the phone? Barely 6 months and in this time, I had trouble finding a smooth way to transfer data from Palm to Blackberry. Now Blackberry has its own Desktop Manager. But all this does is let you use your Blackberry phone as a USB drive and copy files into it – the obsession seems to be media files. And create backup files of the data on your phone. Which I can see will be useful, if I need to reinstall that in my phone or a new phone sometime. But there is no desktop program where I can view what is on my Smart Phone. So any information I enter is typed in awkwardly and without copy and paste, is quite slow going. Now I know people text a lot these days and probably find this funny. But I do not text. I prefer a voice at the end of my phone or an email.
It is nice to be able to check my email and Facebook accounts on my Blackberry. But really they weren’t essential to my being. What I really wanted was a reliable phone, color coordinated calendar and contact list. I have the phone part, but the rest is sadly lacking.
Now I hear Palm has released a phone with Verizon and they do not have a Desktop Manager for it and suggest using Google calendar too. However, there are 3rd party software that will synch Palm to a Desktop Manager similar to the one Palm had or to Palm’s own Desktop Manager. Or so they claim. I am waiting to hear more on that. As an aside, did you hear they had a phone contest and the Palm Pre won - http://blog.laptopmag.com/march-smart-phone-madness-game-13-palm-pre-plus-vs-htc-hd2
Another feature I have not been able to understand is the Silent mode. When I chose my phone to be silent, not vibrate, not low, but SILENT, it won’t ring if I get a call, but every time a Facebook or email pops in, it beeps. Silence means silence, not beep sometimes.
Then the phone comes loaded with all these features, which just seem so redundant. Different programs seem to do the same thing. I am sure people have their favorites and don’t use all of them. Wouldn’t it make sense to only get the ones you use and make them work well rather than have a dozen programs that work somewhat inadequately.
Take voice activation, the button is on the side, very convenient. All you have to do is say, call Mary and voila. Now I will admit I may have a slight accent, but not enough to stump the phone. So I say, call Mary, it asks do you mean John? Whaaa? Oh, and I have even asked my born and bred American friends to try it, same results. Meanwhile, my husband has a Droid and the voice feature on it works just fine when we talk into it. So it is not my accent, it is the program.
I like that I can record a voice memo, I am sorry to lose the ability to scribble a note (no stylus).
As a first time owner of a Blackberry Smart Phone, I must say I am not impressed.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Baby Care - 5
Pacifiers
I don’t believe in them. If they are going to self soothe, I much rather they learn to use their fingers or thumb. For one thing, when they learn use their fingers, you don’t have to keep searching for a pacifier and making sure it’s clean. Just wash their hands a few times in the day and no searching. Next, when they start crawling around they have to use their hands to crawl and pick up things etc, so they can’t have their fingers in their mouth at the same time and so without really doing anything about it, they will quit putting their fingers/thumb in their mouth or at least reduce their dependence on it significantly. Stats say most kids like over 95% stop thumb-sucking by 1 year of age on their own without any assistance.
With a pacifier you are stuck and you actually have to do something about having them break that habit. For one thing they can have it in their mouth and crawl around and pick up toys etc. Second, if they use it to fall asleep (most common use) then you have to get up and put in their mouth till they are old enough to do it themselves. How many wakings is that? The average person supposedly wakes up 3 or 4 times in the night. So with a baby (even when she has finally learned to sleep through the night) you could be waking up to put a pacifier in. What a pain. I say, go natural. Let her find her thumb herself. D2 was using his thumb since he was 3 months old, as soon as he could get his fingers in his mouth. Before then he would randomly suck on his hands. It’s a great help, he soothes himself to sleep so well. I don’t have to look for pacifiers, or boil them or anything.
Many parents talk about the pacifier soothing their baby. This is somewhat true, since at such a young age, nursing or feeding is such a comforting time for the kid. But in another way, everytime the kid talks (cries at this age), we shut them up with the pacifier. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem nice.
I know many parents swear by it. I still say, go with what you think feels better. I choose to differ, but that is just me.
Solid Foods
Regarding solids, I started with rice cereal first. I used Earth's Best Organic Rice cereal. It has a bit of texture (looks like tiny rice flakes) rather than the Gerber one which looks like rice powder.
But first you have to watch for signs of readiness. Our doctor said you can start solids anytime between 4 and 6 months. You don’t want to start too early if they are not capable of swallowing well they can choke more and also there is danger of allergies developing later in life or so some studies say, and is it really worth it, if it only means waiting a month or two to feed your baby solids. Many parents believe feeding solids makes your baby sleep through the night. I say, one is not related to the other. If your baby’s brain development is at the point to sleep through the night, then she will, otherwise she won’t.
You also don’t want to wait too long because there is a window of opportunity to introduce solids and if your miss this they can get hung up on textures and refuse to eat. As babies grow older they start having opinions, imagine that, and the older they get the stronger their opinions. Babies see everything in black and white. Yes, they want it, or no, you can forget about it.
Signs of Readiness
So what are these signs of readiness to eat solids. Both D1 and D2 ate well almost from the start. I like to believe because I really waited until all the signs of readiness were there.
First – They must at least double their birth weight. This is an easy one.
Second - Around 4 months babies also start drooling more (teething etc), when they start drooling lesser (this is really a question of their ability to swallow and a little tricky, because when the teeth come closer to erupting the drooling really increases a lot). You see, when babies are drinking milk, they are not swallowing, the milk is simply squirting down their throats.
Watch for signs like when the baby burps does it always drip out of her mouth or does she swallow up small burps. If she is swallowing well, that is a good sign she is getting ready to start eating.
Third sign - Does she like to watch you eat. D1 will stop anything he is doing as soon as someone is eating near him. He watches very intently. And even works his mouth sometimes like he is chewing.
Finally - Is she drinking tons more milk (I guess the official word is more than 32 oz – D1 never got close to that number so I think that number is way too high) suddenly and remains hungry or needs more feeds for more than a week. Start solids. Most important, she should be able to hold her head steady. Its not necessary for her to be able to sit by herself, but should be able to hold her head steady when picked up.
For their first solid feed (just like with bottle introduction) start when they are not full of milk but not quite hungry for their next meal. Because it is a lot of work to eat and a slow process if the baby is hungry she will not have the patience to eat it and will get frustrated and associate that feeling with solids. So between meals is the best time.
For a few days D2 ate a small amount of cereal between meals. But it was soon obvious he could eat well, so I would feed him at his feed time but before he asked for it. That is I waited till about 2 to 3 hours (depending on when the naps fell in between) and then fed him cereal before he cried for a meal.
Anyhow, I started with some rice cereal mixed with breast milk (since D2 hadn’t had formula yet). You can also use water and formula of course. With D1 I used formula since he was mixed fed with breast milk and formula. The more nutrition the better I feel. But all baby cereals are fortified with iron so she might get constipated right away. Don’t feed too much rice cereal even if she is good at eating it, rice is binding and doesn’t help with constipation. I still mixed only about enough in 1 to 2 oz of milk, even if D2 could eat up more. Too much iron is constipating. Besides let their bodies adjust to the new food and learn to digest it slowly.
Most importantly, introduce foods one at a time. I usually wait a week for each new food introduced. I started the boys on their cereal at about 4.5 months. They both ate well almost from the start. The reason for at least a week or more between new foods is simple, if your baby develops rashes or other symptoms, you know right away which foods are doing this. D1 didn’t do well with peaches and that fruit family when he was little. It was a standing joke in his daycare, that he was an exotic kid, because I had to hunt up fruits like mango, papaya, etc for him.
The second week I started with yellow vegetables - squash. After he took that well ( a couple of days) I let him eat as much as he wanted to (so it would take the place of a nursing or bottle at daycare. The vegetables have enough fiber in them to counter the constipation of the iron in the cereal. I tried to keep the proportion of vegetables and cereal about 50-50 and maybe a little more vegetables than cereal.
Until they are 6 months old they are still supposed to be primarily on milk. So even though D2 was doing so well and would love to eat all day long, I waited till he was 6 months before adding another solids meal time in the day. But I continued to introduce one new food at a time.
With D1 I started with Rice cereal, Banana (really ripe one squashed up), apple sauce ( you can do regular apple sauce by the time they are 9 months or so), yellow vegetable, sweet potato, then green vegetables - beans, peas. Then other fruits - pears etc. D1 had a reaction to the pears, peaches, apricots - all fruits of that family. So I quit and started guava, mango, papaya (I guess he wanted to be an exotic baby).
Bananas are constipating too and D2 became constipated with his cereal in the beginning so instead of fruit I started with vegetables. Rice cereal, squash, carrots, oatmeal cereal, sweet potatoes and then fruits - banana, apple, pears etc., then peas, beans. You don’t want to start your baby with fruits, they might like the sweet fruit taste and reject plain veggies. But you also don’t want to introduce green vegetables since they are harder to digest, so the sweeter vegetables seem the way to go, squash, sweet potatoes etc. By the time they have tried through all these foods, they are ready for the pre-made baby pastas or really your own food, make sure it is very soft and mashed up.
I tried to buy organic foods as often as possible. Other than the cereals, I did use Gerber foods too. They don’t have preservatives so they are probably fine too. Now they have an organic line as well. The organic brand we got was Earth's Best and I don’t know if there are others, doesn’t have many food choices and seems to me they offer mixed foods (mixed vegetables or lasagna) etc more. And since babies are supposed to start eating one food at a time the organic ones didn’t always work out. (I am talking about 6 years ago, by now I am sure things have already changed and there are more choices and more readily available).
Self Feeding
No matter how good they are about eating, it is still messy. Those cute bibs - useless. In my opinion you have 2 options - feed them naked easy to wash the whole baby off and you don’t have to take food stains out of their clothes or get one of those long bibs that covers almost their whole body. I used cotton diapers, the ones that are not pre-folded. Works great. It just drapes over D2's whole body. They stay messy eaters for a really long time.
They have to start feeding themselves at some point. And if you don’t use a bib much they will resist it later. Although 6 months is still early, you can go the naked route in the beginning and try the bib when she is ready to sit on the high chair by herself.
D2 loved to grab the spoon and feed himself. He hindered more than helped at this point. So I offered him his own spoon to wave around. This was a really good idea. Because pretty soon after he sat on his own and ate, he would want to feed himself (couldn’t do it, but try telling him that). So with D1 I would give him his own bowl and a spoon with a little food in it and then my bowl and feed him from that. He loved to try and feed himself (couldn’t get anything in for a long time, but loved trying) and only then would be let me feed him (they do want to survive). And I say, when they want to feed themselves go with it. It gets truly messy, but if you don’t encourage that phase they will come to believe only you can feed them and then you are stuck for a long time. Feeding themselves is not really a concept many Indian families have, and I have seen many an Indian kid who won’t feed themselves even at 3 and 4 years old!!!! So this is a real danger.
With D1 and D2 I didn’t use a high chair. When they were ready to sit well on their own, I had a tiny table and stool (backed up to a corner) so he wouldn’t tip over and have support to sit him on. D1 loved the independence of sitting down himself and getting up. Instead of being strapped in. Do you realize how often we strap up our kids like prisoners, in the car, in the stroller, and in the high chair? In fact, they spend a very small part of their early childhood being free.
They will try to get up between meals sometimes, but you keep reminding them and holding their hands to bring them back to sit down. And so long as you don’t offer them any food anywhere other than at the table, they soon figure out they have to sit and eat. This is a really good idea, because they do understand they have to eat at the table. In a high chair they are strapped in, it isn’t something they learn, it is something that happens to them. So when they outgrow it they don’t always know to sit down and you have to teach them that whole idea anyway. Teaching them limits is more effective then tying them up I believe. With D1 we didn’t even baby proof our house other than some basic precautions, we just set limits (we did use visual or other apparent barriers), but not exactly physical barriers for everything and never had trouble with D1 playing with wires or things like that. It really works. It seems like more work because strapping them is so easy. But one time or the other you have to do it and it is easier when they are younger and more malleable and get the idea than when they are older and stronger and faster.
I don’t believe in them. If they are going to self soothe, I much rather they learn to use their fingers or thumb. For one thing, when they learn use their fingers, you don’t have to keep searching for a pacifier and making sure it’s clean. Just wash their hands a few times in the day and no searching. Next, when they start crawling around they have to use their hands to crawl and pick up things etc, so they can’t have their fingers in their mouth at the same time and so without really doing anything about it, they will quit putting their fingers/thumb in their mouth or at least reduce their dependence on it significantly. Stats say most kids like over 95% stop thumb-sucking by 1 year of age on their own without any assistance.
With a pacifier you are stuck and you actually have to do something about having them break that habit. For one thing they can have it in their mouth and crawl around and pick up toys etc. Second, if they use it to fall asleep (most common use) then you have to get up and put in their mouth till they are old enough to do it themselves. How many wakings is that? The average person supposedly wakes up 3 or 4 times in the night. So with a baby (even when she has finally learned to sleep through the night) you could be waking up to put a pacifier in. What a pain. I say, go natural. Let her find her thumb herself. D2 was using his thumb since he was 3 months old, as soon as he could get his fingers in his mouth. Before then he would randomly suck on his hands. It’s a great help, he soothes himself to sleep so well. I don’t have to look for pacifiers, or boil them or anything.
Many parents talk about the pacifier soothing their baby. This is somewhat true, since at such a young age, nursing or feeding is such a comforting time for the kid. But in another way, everytime the kid talks (cries at this age), we shut them up with the pacifier. I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem nice.
I know many parents swear by it. I still say, go with what you think feels better. I choose to differ, but that is just me.
Solid Foods
Regarding solids, I started with rice cereal first. I used Earth's Best Organic Rice cereal. It has a bit of texture (looks like tiny rice flakes) rather than the Gerber one which looks like rice powder.
But first you have to watch for signs of readiness. Our doctor said you can start solids anytime between 4 and 6 months. You don’t want to start too early if they are not capable of swallowing well they can choke more and also there is danger of allergies developing later in life or so some studies say, and is it really worth it, if it only means waiting a month or two to feed your baby solids. Many parents believe feeding solids makes your baby sleep through the night. I say, one is not related to the other. If your baby’s brain development is at the point to sleep through the night, then she will, otherwise she won’t.
You also don’t want to wait too long because there is a window of opportunity to introduce solids and if your miss this they can get hung up on textures and refuse to eat. As babies grow older they start having opinions, imagine that, and the older they get the stronger their opinions. Babies see everything in black and white. Yes, they want it, or no, you can forget about it.
Signs of Readiness
So what are these signs of readiness to eat solids. Both D1 and D2 ate well almost from the start. I like to believe because I really waited until all the signs of readiness were there.
First – They must at least double their birth weight. This is an easy one.
Second - Around 4 months babies also start drooling more (teething etc), when they start drooling lesser (this is really a question of their ability to swallow and a little tricky, because when the teeth come closer to erupting the drooling really increases a lot). You see, when babies are drinking milk, they are not swallowing, the milk is simply squirting down their throats.
Watch for signs like when the baby burps does it always drip out of her mouth or does she swallow up small burps. If she is swallowing well, that is a good sign she is getting ready to start eating.
Third sign - Does she like to watch you eat. D1 will stop anything he is doing as soon as someone is eating near him. He watches very intently. And even works his mouth sometimes like he is chewing.
Finally - Is she drinking tons more milk (I guess the official word is more than 32 oz – D1 never got close to that number so I think that number is way too high) suddenly and remains hungry or needs more feeds for more than a week. Start solids. Most important, she should be able to hold her head steady. Its not necessary for her to be able to sit by herself, but should be able to hold her head steady when picked up.
For their first solid feed (just like with bottle introduction) start when they are not full of milk but not quite hungry for their next meal. Because it is a lot of work to eat and a slow process if the baby is hungry she will not have the patience to eat it and will get frustrated and associate that feeling with solids. So between meals is the best time.
For a few days D2 ate a small amount of cereal between meals. But it was soon obvious he could eat well, so I would feed him at his feed time but before he asked for it. That is I waited till about 2 to 3 hours (depending on when the naps fell in between) and then fed him cereal before he cried for a meal.
Anyhow, I started with some rice cereal mixed with breast milk (since D2 hadn’t had formula yet). You can also use water and formula of course. With D1 I used formula since he was mixed fed with breast milk and formula. The more nutrition the better I feel. But all baby cereals are fortified with iron so she might get constipated right away. Don’t feed too much rice cereal even if she is good at eating it, rice is binding and doesn’t help with constipation. I still mixed only about enough in 1 to 2 oz of milk, even if D2 could eat up more. Too much iron is constipating. Besides let their bodies adjust to the new food and learn to digest it slowly.
Most importantly, introduce foods one at a time. I usually wait a week for each new food introduced. I started the boys on their cereal at about 4.5 months. They both ate well almost from the start. The reason for at least a week or more between new foods is simple, if your baby develops rashes or other symptoms, you know right away which foods are doing this. D1 didn’t do well with peaches and that fruit family when he was little. It was a standing joke in his daycare, that he was an exotic kid, because I had to hunt up fruits like mango, papaya, etc for him.
The second week I started with yellow vegetables - squash. After he took that well ( a couple of days) I let him eat as much as he wanted to (so it would take the place of a nursing or bottle at daycare. The vegetables have enough fiber in them to counter the constipation of the iron in the cereal. I tried to keep the proportion of vegetables and cereal about 50-50 and maybe a little more vegetables than cereal.
Until they are 6 months old they are still supposed to be primarily on milk. So even though D2 was doing so well and would love to eat all day long, I waited till he was 6 months before adding another solids meal time in the day. But I continued to introduce one new food at a time.
With D1 I started with Rice cereal, Banana (really ripe one squashed up), apple sauce ( you can do regular apple sauce by the time they are 9 months or so), yellow vegetable, sweet potato, then green vegetables - beans, peas. Then other fruits - pears etc. D1 had a reaction to the pears, peaches, apricots - all fruits of that family. So I quit and started guava, mango, papaya (I guess he wanted to be an exotic baby).
Bananas are constipating too and D2 became constipated with his cereal in the beginning so instead of fruit I started with vegetables. Rice cereal, squash, carrots, oatmeal cereal, sweet potatoes and then fruits - banana, apple, pears etc., then peas, beans. You don’t want to start your baby with fruits, they might like the sweet fruit taste and reject plain veggies. But you also don’t want to introduce green vegetables since they are harder to digest, so the sweeter vegetables seem the way to go, squash, sweet potatoes etc. By the time they have tried through all these foods, they are ready for the pre-made baby pastas or really your own food, make sure it is very soft and mashed up.
I tried to buy organic foods as often as possible. Other than the cereals, I did use Gerber foods too. They don’t have preservatives so they are probably fine too. Now they have an organic line as well. The organic brand we got was Earth's Best and I don’t know if there are others, doesn’t have many food choices and seems to me they offer mixed foods (mixed vegetables or lasagna) etc more. And since babies are supposed to start eating one food at a time the organic ones didn’t always work out. (I am talking about 6 years ago, by now I am sure things have already changed and there are more choices and more readily available).
Self Feeding
No matter how good they are about eating, it is still messy. Those cute bibs - useless. In my opinion you have 2 options - feed them naked easy to wash the whole baby off and you don’t have to take food stains out of their clothes or get one of those long bibs that covers almost their whole body. I used cotton diapers, the ones that are not pre-folded. Works great. It just drapes over D2's whole body. They stay messy eaters for a really long time.
They have to start feeding themselves at some point. And if you don’t use a bib much they will resist it later. Although 6 months is still early, you can go the naked route in the beginning and try the bib when she is ready to sit on the high chair by herself.
D2 loved to grab the spoon and feed himself. He hindered more than helped at this point. So I offered him his own spoon to wave around. This was a really good idea. Because pretty soon after he sat on his own and ate, he would want to feed himself (couldn’t do it, but try telling him that). So with D1 I would give him his own bowl and a spoon with a little food in it and then my bowl and feed him from that. He loved to try and feed himself (couldn’t get anything in for a long time, but loved trying) and only then would be let me feed him (they do want to survive). And I say, when they want to feed themselves go with it. It gets truly messy, but if you don’t encourage that phase they will come to believe only you can feed them and then you are stuck for a long time. Feeding themselves is not really a concept many Indian families have, and I have seen many an Indian kid who won’t feed themselves even at 3 and 4 years old!!!! So this is a real danger.
With D1 and D2 I didn’t use a high chair. When they were ready to sit well on their own, I had a tiny table and stool (backed up to a corner) so he wouldn’t tip over and have support to sit him on. D1 loved the independence of sitting down himself and getting up. Instead of being strapped in. Do you realize how often we strap up our kids like prisoners, in the car, in the stroller, and in the high chair? In fact, they spend a very small part of their early childhood being free.
They will try to get up between meals sometimes, but you keep reminding them and holding their hands to bring them back to sit down. And so long as you don’t offer them any food anywhere other than at the table, they soon figure out they have to sit and eat. This is a really good idea, because they do understand they have to eat at the table. In a high chair they are strapped in, it isn’t something they learn, it is something that happens to them. So when they outgrow it they don’t always know to sit down and you have to teach them that whole idea anyway. Teaching them limits is more effective then tying them up I believe. With D1 we didn’t even baby proof our house other than some basic precautions, we just set limits (we did use visual or other apparent barriers), but not exactly physical barriers for everything and never had trouble with D1 playing with wires or things like that. It really works. It seems like more work because strapping them is so easy. But one time or the other you have to do it and it is easier when they are younger and more malleable and get the idea than when they are older and stronger and faster.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Baby Care - 4
Nursing
Here is a big stress/worry factor - nursing. After D2 I realized I could have done better with D1.
You know, I really don’t remember much of day 1 for both D1 and D2. They did sleep a lot, and I don’t know how often I tried to nurse them. Then on day 2 they are really vocal. So I had D1 latched on the whole time. This unfortunately set up a vicious cycle, where he nursed and slept and nursed and slept in short intervals and I got no rest and I don’t think I produced enough milk in a 1/2 hour to feed him enough, so he was hungry soon and so on.
With D2, I got lucky, not because I was smarter, but when I was at the hospital, my nurse that day was a lactation consultant and she said, all 2 day old babies are hungry and cry. You just nurse him every 2 hours (meaning start times 10, 12, 2, 4, 6 etc). She said, I could nurse him for upto 40-45 minutes at a time if I wanted to, but I needed to get the rest too. So that is what I did. Trust me there was a lot of crying that 2nd day. But by day 3 my milk was in just fine and we got to nursing every 2 hours. At first I still nursed about 40 minutes each time and this slowly reduced and we are down to 15-20 minutes a nurse now.
D2 tended to fall asleep during nursing a lot during the first few days, so I kept waking him up so he would get a belly full, so we wouldn’t fall into the same cycle as with D1. This worked well for me. Ways to keep the baby awake - try to burp him often, change his diaper in between changing breasts (mid-bottle), tickle his toes, get him naked (they hate that when they are little), tickle his ears, jiggle him gently.
I also had to wake him up a lot during the first couple of weeks to nurse him. Not longer than a 3 hour interval at first. Later I let him sleep as long as he wanted in the night and had a 4 hour limit during the day. If he sleeps longer than that I wake and nurse him. My babies were born on the little side, so no surprise, I was concerned about them gaining as much weight as possible, not to mention the doctor and nurses also made it sound like a positive thing that the more weight the better since they were not so big to begin with. Today, I don’t know if it was necessary to wake him up for a feeding when he was ready to keep on sleeping. It seems their bodies would know when to sleep and eat. And while as parents we want to try and place a pattern to it, I don’t know that we have to be regimental about it.
I know they say feed on demand and I did do that, but there was a 2 hour limit (once in a while I would do 1.5 hours, but no less). Other than that, I nursed round the clock every 2 hours if needed. If he cried before, I would try to soothe him or just let him cry it out and just sit by him and gently stroke him and talk with him. I have done so much better with nursing and he is definitely gaining weight quite well.
Sore Nipples
You will get sore nipples. For one thing the baby nurses for 40 minutes each time about 10 times a day, that’s a lot of nursing. Later on your nipples are not sore, I don’t think it is because they harden or toughen up, but the baby is simply not nursing as long. Also, the first couple of months, your milk will come in copious amounts. Way more than the baby needs and this all overflows. Especially, with the first baby. With D1, I couldn’t keep my clothes dry. With D2 I only leak when I nurse.
When your nipples are leaking constantly and all that nursing is going on, they are never dry it seems and this makes them really sore and even painful to nurse. So much that you might seriously consider quitting. I am not kidding. I tried using pads, not wearing a bra and just changing my shirt, so my nipples were not in a wet bra or pads the whole time. But be careful too much no bra will make your breasts sag because they are so heavy with milk.
Another reason for sore nipples early on is, the babies have such little mouths and they are just able to suck on your nipple, which gets painful and sore easily. Later as they grow, their mouths latch on to the breast and not pull on the nipple. So the soreness goes away.
When I was nursing with D2 and was home, I would use one of those little ziploc 4oz containers and stick it under my bra and nurse on the other side. This way all the milk leaking collects in the container and I am dry. I don’t know if you can wear these all day or not. But it’s worth a try, if they will keep your nipples drier and out of friction with your shirt. Or you may get lucky and not leak as much.
Finally a note on to nurse or not to nurse. I think sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes you have to work at it. Sometimes, it is simply not meant to be. Despite what lactaction experts tell you, I believe (I don't have any proof of this) that some women do not produce enough milk to feed their babies adequately. Accept where you are and you will reduce so much stress from you life and enjoy your baby more.
Here is a big stress/worry factor - nursing. After D2 I realized I could have done better with D1.
You know, I really don’t remember much of day 1 for both D1 and D2. They did sleep a lot, and I don’t know how often I tried to nurse them. Then on day 2 they are really vocal. So I had D1 latched on the whole time. This unfortunately set up a vicious cycle, where he nursed and slept and nursed and slept in short intervals and I got no rest and I don’t think I produced enough milk in a 1/2 hour to feed him enough, so he was hungry soon and so on.
With D2, I got lucky, not because I was smarter, but when I was at the hospital, my nurse that day was a lactation consultant and she said, all 2 day old babies are hungry and cry. You just nurse him every 2 hours (meaning start times 10, 12, 2, 4, 6 etc). She said, I could nurse him for upto 40-45 minutes at a time if I wanted to, but I needed to get the rest too. So that is what I did. Trust me there was a lot of crying that 2nd day. But by day 3 my milk was in just fine and we got to nursing every 2 hours. At first I still nursed about 40 minutes each time and this slowly reduced and we are down to 15-20 minutes a nurse now.
D2 tended to fall asleep during nursing a lot during the first few days, so I kept waking him up so he would get a belly full, so we wouldn’t fall into the same cycle as with D1. This worked well for me. Ways to keep the baby awake - try to burp him often, change his diaper in between changing breasts (mid-bottle), tickle his toes, get him naked (they hate that when they are little), tickle his ears, jiggle him gently.
I also had to wake him up a lot during the first couple of weeks to nurse him. Not longer than a 3 hour interval at first. Later I let him sleep as long as he wanted in the night and had a 4 hour limit during the day. If he sleeps longer than that I wake and nurse him. My babies were born on the little side, so no surprise, I was concerned about them gaining as much weight as possible, not to mention the doctor and nurses also made it sound like a positive thing that the more weight the better since they were not so big to begin with. Today, I don’t know if it was necessary to wake him up for a feeding when he was ready to keep on sleeping. It seems their bodies would know when to sleep and eat. And while as parents we want to try and place a pattern to it, I don’t know that we have to be regimental about it.
I know they say feed on demand and I did do that, but there was a 2 hour limit (once in a while I would do 1.5 hours, but no less). Other than that, I nursed round the clock every 2 hours if needed. If he cried before, I would try to soothe him or just let him cry it out and just sit by him and gently stroke him and talk with him. I have done so much better with nursing and he is definitely gaining weight quite well.
Sore Nipples
You will get sore nipples. For one thing the baby nurses for 40 minutes each time about 10 times a day, that’s a lot of nursing. Later on your nipples are not sore, I don’t think it is because they harden or toughen up, but the baby is simply not nursing as long. Also, the first couple of months, your milk will come in copious amounts. Way more than the baby needs and this all overflows. Especially, with the first baby. With D1, I couldn’t keep my clothes dry. With D2 I only leak when I nurse.
When your nipples are leaking constantly and all that nursing is going on, they are never dry it seems and this makes them really sore and even painful to nurse. So much that you might seriously consider quitting. I am not kidding. I tried using pads, not wearing a bra and just changing my shirt, so my nipples were not in a wet bra or pads the whole time. But be careful too much no bra will make your breasts sag because they are so heavy with milk.
Another reason for sore nipples early on is, the babies have such little mouths and they are just able to suck on your nipple, which gets painful and sore easily. Later as they grow, their mouths latch on to the breast and not pull on the nipple. So the soreness goes away.
When I was nursing with D2 and was home, I would use one of those little ziploc 4oz containers and stick it under my bra and nurse on the other side. This way all the milk leaking collects in the container and I am dry. I don’t know if you can wear these all day or not. But it’s worth a try, if they will keep your nipples drier and out of friction with your shirt. Or you may get lucky and not leak as much.
Finally a note on to nurse or not to nurse. I think sometimes it works like a charm, sometimes you have to work at it. Sometimes, it is simply not meant to be. Despite what lactaction experts tell you, I believe (I don't have any proof of this) that some women do not produce enough milk to feed their babies adequately. Accept where you are and you will reduce so much stress from you life and enjoy your baby more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
