Ask Moxie

Baby carriers and back pain

Baby carriers do not need to hurt your back. If you're wearing them correctly, you'll feel the weight of the baby, but it shouldn't be so painful that you need to take pain meds. If you are feeling that much pain, you can Google the name of the carrier you have and the word "instructions" and someone somewhere will have posted photos of the correct way to wear that carrier. Or else try a different kind of carrier, because there is no perfect one, and maybe there's a better one for your body.

In general, the closer to you and higher up you can put your baby, the less pain and movement you'll have. If you're using a Bjorn or Bjorn-style carrier (which I don't actually recommend because I think other styles are far less painful, notably the Ergo if you like a constructed carrier or a wrap carrier if you like less construction), make sure the cross in the back crosses below your shoulder blades. It should be where your bra strap goes. Here's a really old post on different kinds of carriers.

Also, wearing your baby should be something you do because you want to. Not because it's "in fashion" or because Dr. Sears tells you to. Do it because babies who are worn tend to cry less, or because you like having your little one snuggled against you, or because your baby won't stop !@#$%-ing screaming if you put her down, or because your best friend walked all the baby weight off by wearing her baby, or because you can't deal with your stroller, or whatever. But let it be because you want to. Not because the lady at the grocery store or the women on the message board or the misogynist ad-writers at Motrin tell you you have to and then make fun of you for it.

You are the parent. You get to decide.

Also, seriously--Lucky Magazine? I read you because I want to get away from the "moms should do this and that" crap that bombards me every effing day in this country. All I want from you is to know whether ruching is in this fall and how to wear suede booties with a sweater dress and why shea butter is the miracle that's going to solve all my hair problems. I do not want misogynistic mommy drive-by ads in your pages. If you want to take ads from the hacks at Motrin (who apparently have never heard of a focus group), force them to give you ads about pain and *actual* fashion. They could have done a heck of an ad about stilettos and other painful shoes, but they chose the easy, inaccurate, bottom-feeding low-hanging fruit. Don't participate in the proliferation of mom-guilt on the hardworking women of the world. We get enough of it every day from people wearing Christmas sweaters. We want your magazine to be a safe space.

I think I'm going out to buy a big bottle of Advil tomorrow.

(Hey--if you're feeling carpal tunnel-type pain from lifting or carrying a baby or toddler, before you despair or get cortizone shots or dope yourself up on a pain reliver that starts with M that I'll never buy again, try homeopathy. Go to a health food store and plunk down $6 for a tube of pellets of Rhus Toxicodendron. Get 30x if they have them--if not get whatever dose they have. Take one under your tongue three times a day. If it's the proper remedy for your kind of pain, you should feel less inflammation and pain within three to four days. Keep taking until the pain is gone. If it isn't doing anything after four days, then it's the wrong remedy for you, so you can stop. Safe for breastfeeding, and no interactions with anything else! I had debilitating carpal tunnel from lifting my horse of a firstborn, and his pediatrician, who is also a homeopath, prescribed Rhus toxicodendron for me, and it worked like a charm. So I'm passing it on to you, the pain sufferers of the internet.)

More unformed thoughts on those rough times (3 1/2-year-olds)

So I've been thinking a lot about this 3 1/2-year-old thing. And how it really seems to me like all the "difficult" stages seem to be at times that double: 4 months, 9 months, 18 months, 3 1/2 years, 7 years, 14 years. I don't know if that means anything, except that if you're 28 maybe you're having a tough time, too. And 56 might also be rough...

Anyway, it seems like the difficulties start out more weighted toward the physical but become progressively more emotional as the people get older. So that first rough stage at 4 months is mostly about being fussy and not being able to sleep. Then at 9 months it's not sleeping but more generalized crankiness. 1 months seems to be a tie between physical and emotional distress, and then by 3 1/2 it really seems to be mostly emotional (even if all of this is caused by some physical process of development in the brain).

It feels to me, from being on the outside of it, that the developmental spurt that's happening somehow seems to remove the protective emotional layers somehow, so that all the person's emotions are right there, waiting to bubble over at any second. The person on the inside can't process or deal with or control them. Which is why they get stuck in a "Pick me up!! Put me down!!" loop. It's like they have an exposed nerve, and any time anything brushes against it they just go off from the overload.

I've noticed that when I'm feeling emotionally fried, my child being in one of these emotional wack-out times just sets me off, too. But when I'm on an even keel, my response just instinctively seems to be more one of "Oh you poor sweet little thing. Let me give you a hug."

Does this resonate with anyone? About any of the stages? About yourself? Or do you think there's something different or more going on?

Q&A: The one where I feel like a shitty parent

Alisha (who clearly needs her own podcast, just for her email subject alone) writes:

Is there some fussy-farting-limits-testing-booshity thing that happens around the 7 month mark? Because the boy and I have been going ten rounds lately and he's kicking my parental ass. I don't know if it's the teething (it looks like his bottom eye teeth are coming in. I thought the top ones came before the sides?) or some sort of developmental thing (he's 32 weeks but he was 2 weeks late so developmentally that's 34 weeks? He's starting to sit unassisted for a few seconds and crawling is imminent, although I've been saying that for weeks) or if I'm just being punished for being smug, but my son is back to non-sleeping. It started a few days ago - a little extra rocking here, another round of Lullabye there. Small stuff that was easy to dismiss. Clearly a month of cushy snoozing (five minutes of rocking and he was out until 5 am; easy breezy naps) made us soft. Now he's taking forever to settle and once he is asleep it doesn't last. The minute his head hits the mattress he flips onto his back, grabs his blankie, and shoots us a self-satisfied grin.

FOOLS!!!

That's what the grin says, I swear it. You can practically count the exclamation points in his eyes. Lather, rinse, repeat (two to four more times) and you've got yourself one pissed off mama.

It's the joy - the exalation! - that makes me so crazy. It feels like a giant F- you to my parenting skills. We did CIO at 4.5 months and after 16 miserable, worthless days ended up with a baby who was terrified to go to sleep. Then we instigated a rock/jiggle/hum routine that worked wonders - until now. I've tried leaving him to cry again which sends him to Shitsville in a large, wailing basket. I've said fuck it and gotten him up which leads to a grouchy, bleary eyed babe and a difficult day. According to the books (here we go...) he'll nap better if he sleeps longer at night so I should ignore him until 6 am. (Actually they say he should be sleeping until 6 am which makes me want to punch them in the nose.) There's no way: his diaper is practically deteriorating by 4:30 (the outside actually squishes, it's so full) and I defy anyone to get a baby back to sleep after an early morning wipe down.

I'm trying to convince myself that this is just a phase (maybe he's transitioning from 3 naps to 2?) but there's an awful lot of You're Not The Boss Of Me happening lately, which is great developmentally but panty-twisting, mommy-wise. (We've introduced solids and he's starting to refuse the bottle. Sure, the nipple is good for chewin' and have you ever just opened your mouth and let the liquid spill out all over yourself? Apparently it's awesome. Awesome enough to do over and over and over and over.)

Excuse me while I take a moment.

Is this crap normal?

Oh, this sucks. I'm so sorry, although your email was super-funny and I thank you for that.

It sounds like a whole bunch of developmental, movement, and teething stuff all combined into a big ball of suck, plus the 37-week wonder week. Also, it sounds like your son may be really smart, and that's leading him to testing his independence a little bit earlier than usual. (Just like in that movie with L.L. Cool J in which they're training the sharks and then the sharks get smarter than the human are and attack.) It's tough with the smart kids, because lots of times they don't sleep as much or as well as the norm, and they get frustrated when they're aware of things but can't make their needs or will known.

At this age, he's probably too young even for sign language (you could start with the signs and he might understand at this point but probably doesn't have the physical skills to make them himself yet). And sign language likely won't help with the sleep. But talking him through every single thing that's going on all day might. Verbalizing feelings for him, like saying "You're angry!" when he's clearly mad, and stuff like that. I know people think a 7-month-old is too young to communicate, but their receptive language kids in so early, and you might as well err on the side of attributing more maturity to your kid than less.

But back to the main point, which is that the books are full of crap. OK, not necessarily pure crap, but the stuff in those books works for a certain subset of kids. And it's not working for your son, so for your purposes, the books are crap.

If it makes you feel any better, I got 6 emails since Wednesday about naps, so there's something going around. And there isn't anything in your email that's jumping out at me as obvious that you could fix. If you've checked the usual things (propping the head of the crib, cutting out solid for a few hours before bed in case it's indigestion, temperature check noises check, etc.), then it's just time to open it up to sympathy. You're doing a great job.

Readers, it's Friday. And yet none of us will have a weekend because our kids will be up at the same freaking time as usual on Saturday morning. Sympathy for Alisha, primal scream for yourself, or pie recipes all appreciated in the comments.

Q&A: early rising again and again and again and again

Remember back when waking up was like this every morning? (work safe, but put on your headphones)

Yeah, that was before you had kids. Five (5!) emails in the past two weeks from people whose kids are waking up between 4:30 (shoot me now) and 5:30 every day. I know this is not a new problem, and we've tossed at around a bunch of times in the past, but it does seem to me that it goes in cycles. Three of the five emails I got were from parents of 7-month-olds. And we're having wacky weather all across North America at least (torrential rains, snow in June, or blazing heat waves, depending on where you are on the continent).

I'm going to hypothesize that it's the combo of age (and where your kid is at in the timeline of developmental spurts, growth spurts, physical milestones, and teething), personality, and the change of seasons/weather.

I think there are all sorts of things you can try to stop the early waking. One of them might work*. Or none of them will work.

I think, like anything else having to do with sleep, that one of two things is true:

a) It's a phase, and like all other annoying phases, it'll pass. So you need to figure out how to deal with it until it passes.

b) Your kid is hard-wired to wake up early. In that case, you need to figure out some way to work around that until your kid is old enough that they can wake up early and amuse him/herself and it won't be dangerous.

I think a) is far more likely, although I know some adults who can't seem to sleep past 5:30 no matter what, so it's probably just a personality thing for a certain segment of the population. In any case, it's time-delineated in that you won't have to deal with it forever.

Take some deep breaths, talk to your partner about working out some sort of schedule so neither of you takes the hit all the time (and both of you never take the early-rising hit together), assess exactly how much your kid needs from you in the morning (if your kid wakes up but it just happy playing alone in the crib or bed you don't actually need to be awake for that), and know that the day will come when you'll have to pry your child out of bed in the morning with a crowbar. I hear.

Oh, and just so you know I'm feeling it, too, I was wakened at 5:35 and then 5:50 this week by my younger one. After the second time, I told my older son that they weren't allowed to come out of their room until 7 am except to go to the bathroom. It worked once. I'll keep you posted about any future success.

* The top-rated things readers recommend: black-out shades (that you buy or make from black-out fabric you can buy at fabric stores, or cardboard over the windows at night), changing the temperature of the room, checking to see if there's some sort of noise that happens at that time of day (neighbor starting a car to go to work, loud dog, etc.) that's causing the waking, and bumping bedtime earlier by 30-60 minutes (yes, it's counterintuitive).

Passover realization

I went to my first Passover seder on Saturday night (thanks, Num-Num!). It was a very reform seder (we skipped some longer chunks) but annotated extremely well for the gentiles in the group. I was impressed both with how similar so many of the prayers are to the prayers I know from my Christian background, and how different the flow and pacing was from the Christian ceremonies I've been to that involve so much intense prayer.

Anyway, I want to apologize to those of you who have little kids who go to long, formal seders each year. I'd heard/read the complaints about how to deal with kids at seder before, but hadn't understood the full implication of that. I'd thought it was just like a longer, religious Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, no. Starting a 2-6-hour serious religious ceremony at sundown in a recipe for meltdown, so my heart goes out to those of you who are judged by family and friends for having cranky kids at seder.

If anyone wants to share ideas for making seder easier on kids and parents, please post them here.

Wow

Do you know what is NOT a good idea?

To have had about 30 g of fiber by lunchtime, and then to absentmindedly eat all the dried figs that are sitting on your desk during the afternoon. (They're just so nice and chewy and sweet.) Approximate dried fig count: 15. Approximate grams of fiber that was: 30.

You can do the math there. Not pleasant. I think I'm having flashbacks to Lord of the Flies.

Cheryl, do you know why too much fiber makes a person stink? Because I definitely noticed that a few hours after Figgate I started to smell like I was two weeks postpartum (sweaty, unshowered, a little sour milk-y) and it lasted for a few hours.

Fascinating. And unpleasant. Fortunately my only plans for the evening were watching my DVR'd episode of The Biggest Loser. (Does anyone else watch? I've been rooting for Kelly the whole time, and love how she's blossomed and gotten so much self-confidence during the course of the show.)

Q&A: toddler afraid of baths

Here's a classic from Donna that never loses its frustration factor:

My son used to love taking baths, and he loves being in the water in the summertime. But a few months ago, he started not enjoying the bath experience and wouldn't sit in the bath anymore. For months, I've had to wash him while he's standing in the tub. Sometimes he lets me get in with him and he'll sit on my lap, but that's not always possible and seems to be more and more inappropriate as he gets older (he's 2 years+ 4 months old). He seemed okay with the standing-up baths for a while and even played with all of his bath toys, but now he doesn't even like to get in the water at all, even with toys. I've changed the temperature of the water, thinking it was too hot for his little bottom, but that didn't help. For a while, he was okay if I let him put the soap on his hands and let him put it on himself , but now that's not even working. My husband has tried, too, but no luck. I now just give him a quick wash every few days, and shampoo his hair maybe twice a week, but he's crying the whole time. We've reduced the number of baths he gets a week so it won't stress us all out so much,  but nothing seems to help. I've exhausted all of my ideas. Any suggestions would be helpful."

Classic wisdom is that at a certain age kids get afraid of being sucked down the drain. I think sometimes thats it, but not always. We went through this same stage in which a 2 1/2-year-old wouldn't sit down in the tub. I just didn't think much about it, since Ï was too busy trying to get him to let me wash his hair, and trying to keep the two boys from splashing all the water out of the tub.

But now that I think of it, yeah, this stage was a big pain in the butt. And it was the first time around with my older son, too. I don't think I ever came up with any solution for it. I tried a bunch of different things, from cajoling, to playing games, to just muscling through the bath and hair-washing while he screamed. I think what fixed it, though, was that he grew out of it. And his younger brother is now sitting back down, and can be talked into letting me wash his hair, too (he'll be 3 in May).

So is this a universal, that they go through a phase of not liking baths, even if they'll play endlessly with other water? If your kid went through an anti-bath phase, when was it and when did s/he grow out of it? How did you cope during it?

Talk about the 9-month sleep regression

I had a request to put up a post where you guys could talk about how you're dealing with or not dealing well with the 9-month sleep regression.

To recap, this is the period encompassing the developmental leap at week 37 and the one at week 46. Very very often there's also some teething mixed in there, and learning to crawl and/or pull up and/or cruise and/or walk.

Which means you've got a brain working on developmental stuff that won't let the kid sleep, a brain and body working on movement that won't let the kid sleep, and maybe some random shooting or throbbing gum and jaw pain in there, too.

In other words, you're going to have to accept that the kid just can't sleep straight through until some of this is over with.

(We haven't even mentioned how this sleep regression can affect other stuff, too, like naps and mood and clinginess and what they'll eat and won't eat. Some kids who keep sleeping at night just wig out during the day--that's their particular reaction to the developmental spurts.)

Which means your plan shifts from Get Kid To Stay Asleep to Maximize Sleep For Everyone Else. This is not the time to pretend you know what's going on or that you have it all under control. This is not the time to say "your job is this and mine is that." It's the time to divide up the schedule so everyone gets 5 hours at a stretch if possible. If one of you has to go to sleep at 8 pm and take the 8-1 shift so the other has the 1-6 shift, do it.

Here are the important things to remember: Lots of us have been through it. You will get through it. There is nothing inherently wrong with your child--this is normal. Hideous and demoralizing, but normal. You're doing a good job.

Now, commiserators?

Reader call: Car seat rage

The other day I schlepped my cats and both boys almost a mile in the snow to the vet (uphill both ways), and wondered "Why don't I live someplace where I can just have a car??" But then I got this email, and felt like a jerk for my car-free self-pity:

"Please help....my child hates being in a car seat and facing backwards. She's only 7 month old, so turning the seat around is a long wait. She can manage if someone sits in the back with her, but if no one there she throws tantrums. I've tried toys, singing, holding her hand while driving, but nothing seems to work. this winter is extremely cold, and its impossible to walk outside for long periods of time, so the idea is to go to the mall. But with this problem its even harder to drive to the mall than slippery roads and cold wind blowing in our faces. Please suggest something that I can do to make her more content with not having someone next to her for 15min drive."

I can remember a 6-hour drive with a 6-week-old screaming almost the whole time. But that seems to have wiped my car seat rage memory. In previous posts on this topic people have suggested that the baby might be carsick facing backwards, and that that may be contributing a lot to her anger. I'm not sure what the solution would be. You could try the Sea Band wristlets. I'd walk into the health food store and ask if they had anything homeopathic (not herbal) to alleviate motion sickness and try that. You could try a remedy like dramamine, but some kids react badly to it.

Readers? Any other suggestions, either of ways to deal with the screaming or to stop motion sickness if that's contributing to it?

Q&A: fussy baby while nursing

N writes:

"My four month old and I got past the initial difficulty beginning nursing (pain, latch problems, mastitis, the usual suspects) and we were off to a really good start with the whole breastfeeding thing.  She is gaining well and healthy.  But she often does this thing at the breast that drives me crazy.  She kicks, screams and thrashes while nursing.  If I hold her where her feet can hit the back of the chair, she'll kick against it, moving her whole body away from the breast while she's latched on (not pleasant).   If I position her where her feet can't kick against the chair, she'll instead scream and whip her head back and forth while latched on (also not pleasant).  Taking this as a sign she's not really hungry, I'll take her off the breast, which is met with shrieks of protest.  Put her back on the breast, we get a repeat showing of Wrestlemania: Baby Edition.  It doesn't seem to be a low supply issue as it's always easy to express milk when she's doing this, but I don't really believe it's that the let down is too strong for her either. Her older sister did this too when she was nursing, but this one is much worse about it.  I can't quite figure out what's going on here.  Any suggestions?  I've been stretched about as far as I can be - literally!"

Yeah, I remember this. I think it may be some kind of gastrointestinal growth spurt of some sort, but it was perplexing because there were no other symptoms of other gastric distress--no excess farting or crying 20 minutes after a feed (the classic symptom of a lactose intolerance) or anything like that. It sounds like you don't ahve any of this other stuff either, just the donnybrook on the breast. I never did figure out what caused it, and it went away in about a month or so on its own.

In the meantime, what I did was try to put as much pressure on my son's tummy as possible while he was nursing, and for whatever reason that seemed to work enough that he could finish an actual feed without going all Goodfellas on me.

The way I did it was by doing all my nursing (except for the middle-of-the-night nursing, which didn't seem to bug him) reclining on the couch. I'd have him facing down on top of me, stretched across the length of my body, perpendicular to me. So we were a lowercase t, and I was the vertical line, and he was the horizontal line across me.

That meant that he was nursing face down, but he also had all his own body weight on his tummy on top of me.

I have no idea if this will work for your daughter, but it's worth a try. Readers, can you offer up anything else that she can try if my tummy-pressure thing doesn't do the trick?