Let’s get wet and wild!

Hee hee, bet THAT got your attention in your feed reader, didn’t it? This is a very special post that I am doing at the request of two of the nicest ladies in the blogosphere, Catherine and Julie. Three of our mutual Mommyblogger friends, Christina, Liz and Tammie, are either due to give birth in a few weeks or having their babies as we speak (go, Tammie!) Catherine and Julie organized a virtual Baby Shower with games, and prizes, and links to posts where we can tell the three of them what the dumbest piece of advice was that we ever got before we had our kids, and what the best advice was.

For Christina and Liz, who are each having their second child, I would say that what people always said to me was “oh, your first child is going to be SO jealous. Your first child will feel JEALOUS of the baby. Your first child will try to SMOTHER THE NEW BABY IN HIS SLEEP.” Okay, not that last one, but you know what I mean. I don’t know what prompted multiple co-workers and friends of my Mother’s to tell me this, it was far from supportive and just made me worry unnecessarily. I realize all children are different, but when Nathan was born, Ryan was not at all jealous. They were 26 months apart, so Ryan was still in diapers, drinking out of a sippy cup and all that, but when Nathan cried, Ryan ran to get pacifiers, blankets, toys, whatever he thought would help. They slept in the same room, Ryan in a regular twin bed and Nathan in the crib, and they have grown to be each other’s best friend! If your daughters are jealous of the baby, you’ll know it, and you’ll deal with it. But please don’t worry about it. And if someone says that to you, I suggest ignoring them.

As for the best advice I ever got regarding having my second child, it would have to be  to remember to treat them like individuals. It is soooo tempting to compare, to say “well gee, the first one never did that, why is the second one doing it, why, why?”  Every child is different. Even if you parent them exactly the same, there are going to be differences in how they eat, how they cry, how they nap, how they sleep through the night. Be prepared to roll with the punches, so to speak, and embrace the differences that is this new member of your family.

For Tammie, I would first like to ask everyone to visit her blog and leave her a comment for her husband to pass on to her. She is having a hard time with childbirth, and it’s a little scary, and I’m sure some comforting words would help.  Sweetie,  I’m not even going to tell you about bad advice, because you have enough to worry about. I want to share with you the BEST ADVICE I ever received, and it’s the same advice I give to every woman I meet having her first child, and it’s really simple:

TAKE TURNS STAYING UP WITH THE BABY AT NIGHT!!!!!

For the first, oh, two weeks at LEAST, your baby will not have what you will think of as a normal sleeping schedule. They pretty much sleep all the time, but there will be moments of wakefulness, and they often occur around midnight, and again at two a.m.  Someone is going to have to stay up, and even if you are breastfeeding, you should take turns being on baby duty. When it’s Jeff’s turn, each time Myles cries, it will be Jeff who will get him up, change his diaper, bring him to you to nurse (which you will soon learn to do WHILE you sleep!), burp him, possibly change his diaper again, and then get him back to sleep. That way, if you got in bed at 10:00 p.m., you could sleep a solid four or five hours before having to completely wake up. You will not BELIEVE how rested you will feel after only four hours of sleep! And yes, your husband will go back to work tired. People expect new Dads to be tired. But I really believe that this taking turns thing absolutely helps keep the sleep deprivation to a minimum.

I am SO EXCITED for all of you! I hope you have enjoyed your baby shower, and I will be keeping you all in my thoughts these next few weeks. There is nothing more amazing and miraculous to me than the birth of a baby. Rock on, sister Mamas!!

Love, your Mommyblogger friend,

Elizabeth

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