Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Sticking to a Schedule. It makes life easier

So yeah, I've let my stay-at-home-dad blog slide a little. Sometimes I have to make a choice: write the blog, write a book, practice piano, or chase my little baby girl around the living room. Time has passed since my last entry. Quite lot of time, apparently. She's 8 months old now. She's "talking." She's crawling. She keeps me quite busy during the day.

But those subjects are fodder for other blog entries.

If you're reading this, then you might still be interested in the early months of raising your little baby, say the first six months of life.

So today, I'd like to talk about maintaining a schedule.

One of the mistakes I made during the second/third month, this was after my wife returned to work, was that I wasn't putting little Baby Snooks (that's what we call her) on a nap schedule. I was just doing my daily thing while she just laid in her bassinette doing her daily thing. I fed her when I thought was necessary, let her catnap when she thought was necessary, and strangely, when her mother got home from work, she was cranky and fussy and generally somewhat unpleasant. This went on for two or three weeks or so.

Until my wife finally said, "How long did she nap today?"

And I said, with a duh expression on my face, "Nap?" (She nodded off a few times in her bassinette. Wasn't that good enough?)

It turned out that babies require actual naps. And I hadn't been enforcing it. These naps can be worked in around her feeding schedule.

When you get released from the hospital with your new baby, they give you a little chart that lists how much you need to feed her per day. This is adjusted accordingly as time passes. I was feeding her every four hours, since that was the longest she could go without getting hungry. At first, it was four ounces of breast milk every four hours. Later it was adjusted to six ounces, then even later, eight ounces.

What do do in between? Naptime.

Here is the daily schedule I created, which solved all of my problems of naps and feedings:

6:00. She wakes up, mommy feeds her, then back to bed. She wakes again around 7:30 to 8. Stays active for morning.

10:00. Gets fed morning bottle.

10:30 or 11. Takes morning nap.

12:00 (or 1, depending on day). Wakes up.

2:00. Gets fed afternoon bottle.

3:00 (or whatever time she seems ready). Afternoon nap. Hopefully for two hours.

5:00 (or when she wakes up). Awake and active.

6:00. Mommy comes home to happy baby.


And that's what I've been doing for the past six months or so. Since that time, we've introduced jars of baby food which I've inserted into the schedule, and it all seems to work out fine.

These two sources talk more about creating schedules: The Baby Whisperer Book, and What to Expect the First Year.

Let's talk first about Baby Whisperer. The author of this is very opinionated on just about everything. For instance, she doesn't like pacifiers. Hate to say this, but babies love pacifiers, and I don't think you can persuade any parent from using them. But I digress. Although Baby Whisperer suggests a schedule, she feels it's too rigid and is more demanding on a parent's time than on baby's. Instead, she prescribes her incomprehensible "EASY" schedule, which I've re-read several times and still don't quite get. So, I stuck to my own aforementioned schedule, and all is well.

What to Expect the First Year maintains that babies want and need predictability in their lives, so it's best to do things every day at roughly the same time, which is what I've been trying to do. Needless to say, it works for me.

What this all boils down to is this: if you put your baby on a specific daily schedule as early as you can, that is, at two or three months, it makes life easier for both you and your baby. It's great to have a couple of hours to yourself during the day while your baby naps, and she'll feel better for it, too. Plus, when her mother takes her when she gets home from work, baby will be rested and happy.

Meanwhile, in the real world, as of early November, 2009, the national unemployment rate is at 10%. Given these numbers, and my continued inability to land a job (after being unemployed for over ten months), it looks like I could be a stay-at-home dad for a long, long time.

As long as Congress keeps the extended unemployment benefits going, I should be okay past December and into 2010. After then, either I sell a book, or I go to work at Wal Mart. Assuming they have any openings.