Keeping littlies busy can be a hard task, especially when they are tired from a busy morning at kindy. A big hit in our household is always baking.
Here is my delicious chocolate chippie recipe - modified from my own Grandma's, she was an awesome baker!
The girls help measure and pour the ingredients, push the buttons on the microwave and roll and flatten the cookies.
Dana's Chocolate Chip Cookies
225g Soft Butter
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1/2 Cup White Sugar
1 Egg
1t Vanilla
1t Salt
2t Baking Powder
2 1/2 Cups of Flour
250g Chocolate chips/drops
Preheat your oven to 180 Celsius.
Cream together butter and sugars. Add egg, vanilla and salt and beat a little longer.
Mix in baking powder, flour and chocolate chips.
Roll into balls about the size of a golf ball, place on a lined tray. Flatten lightly with a fork.
Bake for 13 - 20 minutes. 13 minutes gives you a soft chewy cookie, 20 minutes gives you a dark golden crispy one.
For super-duper amazing-ness add 2T of cocoa with the flour. AAAMMMMAAAZZING!
Makes aprox. 28 cookies (minus the dough you eat first...)
My baby number two was a terrible sleeper, in the midst of it all I turned to my dear mother. Her loving, motherly advice was a simple "hahaha you were just like that too". Thanks mum. Getting a baby to sleep can be one of the most difficult and frustrating pastimes. If you have an easy sleeper, count yourself very lucky! Many parents struggle with sleepless children. From my personal experience, while you are in the middle of getting up to a crying baby for the 8th time that night please do try to relax, it will eventually work itself out, it really really will. In the mean time here are some tricks that may help.
For the first few months we recommend you go with the flow with sleep and settling, and do almost what ever it takes to get baby to sleep. It is not recommended to expect a baby to follow a routine before 3 or 4 months of age. It's far more important in the early days that you and your baby are well rested. Being a new parent is exhausting, and you need to be able to rest when your baby is sleeping. There are some babies who will only ever sleep for one sleep cycle (20-45minutes), regardless of what you do!
A key parenting skill is learning to recognise your baby's tired signs early. This will, in theory, help avoid your baby getting over-tired. Tired babies may yawn, get twitchy legs and arm movements or get a glazed/staring look, after two kids of my own, I still don't notice the twitchy limbs. If these cues are missed they will begin to grizzle, by this stage they are getting too tired to settle easily.
Sidenote: Newborn babies often root around and act the same as they would if they were hungry when they are tired. This can be very confusing for new parents. I really struggled with this aspect as I also had very little milk supply, so I always presumed the baby was hungry, which lead to short little snack feeds.
Babies can also make a lot of noise winding down to sleep, unless they are howling, feel free to let them be, they may well just be heading off to sleep. If they need help to get off to sleep, try one (or more) of the techniques below.
- Use the Feed, Awake Time, Sleep pattern if possible. This reduces the confusion, you know baby is well fed, so it is likely he is tired rather than hungry again. Start looking for tired signs when a newborn has been awake for only 45 minutes, an hour awake is usually plenty at this age.
- A baby that sleeps plenty in the day will sleep better at night. It is not recommended to limit baby's days sleeps until they are closer to two years of age. Prior to that age, limiting their sleep is counter-productive. Your baby will be over tired and very difficult to settle or keep asleep.
Replicating the womb environment works wonders as it triggers a powerful response inside babies’ brains that turns off their crying.
- Swaddling - this is simply wrapping a baby securely. This is the cornerstone to settling a newborn. Get a large, good quality wrap, at least 120x120cm (50 in) anything smaller than this is practically useless. See Swaddling Page for techniques.
- White noise - either 'shhhhh' very loudly, play a white noise CD on repeat, a fan, vacuum or shower. Try this YouTube track for white noise. In the womb babies are exposed to a constant noise of 80-90 decibels - equivalent to the sound of a vacuum, so turn it up loud.
- Swinging/jiggling - this can be achieved by a dancing/jiggling cuddle, sling carrier or hammock, a pushchair or car ride. I found the Moby Wrap a life saver when I had my second baby as I had a 20 month old to run around after as well, and this allowed me to have both hands free. The settling movement should be a gentle, repetitive movement. Never ever shake your baby.
- Sucking - breastfeed, thumb/finger or pacifier. This technique is very effective for colicky babies.
See Colic page.
- Side/Stomach position - either in your arms, on your lap, on your chest or in their bed while being patted. Side/stomach is never for sleeping so ensure you roll them back to their back once they are calm. DO NOT PLACE SWADDLED BABY ON THEIR STOMACH LYING DOWN!
- Dark room - bright lights are stimulating for a babies brain, dim the lights to settle, and let them sleep in the dark, this includes for their day sleeps - most rooms when you pull the curtains you can still see quite well during the day and not well at night, baby will learn the difference. Keep the room as dark as possible during night feeds, and avoid eye contact or talking with them at this time, it will help them recognise night time is for sleeping rather than being social.
A combination of all of the above worked best for me: I would swaddle baby tightly, stick a dummy in her mouth, pop her into the Moby wrap and then proceed to vacuum the floor. Usually worked a treat, plus then the floor was clean!
Ensure your baby is sleeping safely for EVERY sleep. This includes each nap in your arms, in the car or when they fall asleep playing or on the couch.
Babies and toddlers who have a bath and a massage before bed, fall asleep faster than those
who are only read a story. So break out the baby-safe oil and rub them down using soft strokes and moderate pressure.
Babies who are usually good sleepers go through phases of not settling as well. This may just be a growth spurt in which they need to feed more frequently. These only last 1 - 2 days.
If the child/baby has been unwell with a cold in the last week it might be good to get their ears and throat checked by a doctor. As these are often more painful with the increase in pressure when they lie down and makes babies very difficult to settle.
If a baby's crying is getting too much for you, put them down somewhere safe and go outside for 2-3 minutes to take a few deep breaths. Go back to the baby and try to resettle them calmly. Remember - it is just a phase!
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| My First Little Monkey |
The moment is here, all the excitement and anticipation in the last 9 or months has led you to this point: you are finally handed your squirming bundle of love, yours and yours alone and yours to keep.
I don't know what I expected to feel but I certainly didn't feel that "instant mother bond" that everyone speaks of. My response was more of a "thank God that is over" and a "whose baby is this and when are they coming to take it" sort of thing.
Don't get me wrong, she was beautiful and amazing (and LOUD) but the thought that she was mine and that I should love her was quite foreign to me. As it turns out this is a very common response, especially for first time mothers. All the preparation that had gone on was around the labour and the birth, handling the pain and the unexpected turns of events. Nothing at all on how you were supposed to feel about this squirming pink bundle that you are handed or what you are meant to do next.
Babies really don't come with a manual, as it turns out there is no manual for a reason - each baby is so different that what works for one will not likely work for your next child. So you find a book or method that works so beautifully for your first baby, so well that you then recommend it to all your new mummy friends. Some of them love it, others try hard and feel like they must be doing something wrong because it works so well for someone else. Or worse, a good friend of yours appears to have that magical "perfect" baby and they kindly (though misguidedly) attribute it all to this wonderful book/method that they are following. You pay far too much for said book (and express delivery), read it cover to cover in a matter of days (thanks to not sleeping any more anyway) and then you dutifully implement it all. Right to the tiniest detail. Only then you find baby is not the angel baby you were promised but a howling over tired and or hungry little mess that is worse then when you started. You figure you must have missed something or are doing some part wrong. Dutifully you re-read the chapter on newborns and sleep, discover actually you were doing it all. Then you give up on "the stupid book" and do what comes so naturally - you pick up your little bundle, snuggle them in to a blanket, hold them tight, rock them swiftly, walk around 'shhhh-ing' them loudly. Would you believe it, it worked! They fall asleep and you very slowly, carefully and cautiously collapse on to the bed, daring not to move once there for fear of waking them. You do however feel like a bit like a failure because you couldn't get the fancy book technique to work, but really now you are too tired to care and you fall asleep too.
The reality is even very experienced mothers can be baffled by a new human, it takes time to get to know them, their likes, dislikes and their own funny ways of being. Reading a book is very very different than learning to read your baby! Babies take time to settle in to their new environment, this world is so very different from the womb they came from. In there they were constantly warm, fed and moved. It was constantly noisier than a vacuum cleaner running under their cot. It was calm, safe and warm. Out in our world there is bright lights, sharp noises, silence, freedom to move, cold air, hot air, smells, weird bowel feelings like hunger, gas and poop; dog slobber, toddler slobber and pokes and prods from people all around. It is any wonder life takes a bit of getting used to.
In the next post I will look further at replicating the womb environment to help with settling for a newly earth-side baby.
I thought we had better attach a blog to our site. This is partly so my site works better on Google Search, but also to give me a chance to share my experience, knowledge and to look at some products in better detail.
What is Iti Baby? Why is Iti Baby? Who am I to give advice?
Iti Baby came out of struggling with my number two daughters sleep, or lack thereof. To say she was a terrible sleeper was being too kind. She would only sleep swaddled, and while being rocked or jiggled for the first 12 weeks of her life, and she didn't get much easier after that.
At 6 months she was still waking every 30-45 minutes day and night. Aaaarrgggg would you just sleep already?? She was a good sized baby and we (like many parents) struggled to find a swaddle big enough to keep her tightly wrapped all night. Even the 'generously sized' swaddles available just weren't big enough. And so a concept was born. A swaddle needs to be big enough to wrap a 9 month old, soft enough to use on a new born and made of natural fiber that doesn't make the baby sweat.
Iti Baby - the Maori word iti (said ee-tee) is the concept of being small or tiny, and I think it sounds quite cute :-)
Who am I? I graduated from nursing in 2004 and worked for several years in the hospital, my passion however was to work with mums and babies. Before I had my baby number one I started working at our local Maori Well-child provider and gained a lot of experience from listening to mothers and their stories. I completed my post-grad training to become a Well-child nurse (Plunket) and continued to love my job working with the families. Once I had my second baby I chose to stay home and did home based care for a couple of years, and have since returned to working just the weekends in the hospital and enjoy being a mummy during the week.
I also love food, cooking and all things arty, I love to paint, sew and garden.
I have a lot of tips, tricks and advice in my kete bag of knowledge, please feel free to ask anything, I can't promise I can fix it, but I can help arm you with some strategies and ideas!
Please have a nosey around the website: www.itibaby.co.nz
