A HIS AND HERS GUIDE TO
infertility - PREGNANCY - PARENTING
Sophie the Giraffe, a teether made from 100% chewable rubber, has been around since 1965.
Sophie is large (easy to find), squeezable (good for their fine motor skills), chewable everywhere (great for teeth pain) and squeaks when squeezed (fun). Sabrina loved it. And slobbered all over it.
Sophie is pricey (retail $22, $18 on Amazon), but Sabrina would tell you it's worth it. Now the company, Vulli, makes many more options, like an adorable little fawn...
Sydney Miller - Age 2.5
When Sydney was a two-year-old, I went to a talk at her preschool with Suzanne Duncan Ph.D., a local Austin parent consultant. She had many wonderful suggestions for parenting, but one tip turned out to be a critical addition to our repertoire.
Special time is the first thing Suzanne suggests to parents to help curb the typical toddler issues, like temper tantrums and general misbehavior. Harvey Karp also talks about special time in his book, The Happiest Toddler on the Block: How to Eliminate Tantrums and Raise a Patient, Respectful, and Cooperative One-to Four-Year-Old.
What defines special time? It’s 15 minutes that you’ve initiated and named – “Sydney, do you want our 15 minutes of special time now?” – that is uninterrupted and where the child gets to direct the play. And it’s ideally as interactive as possible, like a tea party versus reading books. You are not teaching or molding or directing. They get to pick what they want to do and you are their sous chef - the assistant who does what they're told.
Sydney and I played all the time, so I was skeptical how this approach could change anything. But one of my New Year’s Resolutions that year was to carve out 15 minutes every day for special time with her (I found that initiating it or labeling it was the hardest part to remember). After a month, I noticed some big differences, the most important one to me being less meltdowns. She also seemed generally happier. It definitely brought us closer together. Sometimes she asks for more special time, which according to the expert, means she needs it.
It got much harder to do consistently once Sabrina was old enough for special time, and even harder still when Luke got old enough. It wasn't necessarily because of time, although that was a factor some days. It was more the competition for Mommy's attention - nobody wanted to be left out while someone else was getting their special time. We finally figured out a good schedule - Sabrina gets her special time in the morning after I drop Sydney off at school, Luke has special time after Sabrina gets dropped off and Sydney has special time when she gets home from Kindergarten (and usually lets Sabrina sit in to watch). Another option that works great is to have Daddy do special time with one while you're doing special time with the other.
Give it a try and let us know if special time has an impact on your kids!
I just finished reading The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D. It's now in my Top 5 list for child development books.
The idea is to turn everyday interactions into brain-shaping opportunities. There's what most of us usually do as parents - for example, dismiss and deny. And then there's what we should do to help develop their brains.
There are 12 Whole-Brain Strategies in the book. The first strategy I tried - "Name It to Tame It" - worked immediately for all three of our kids. Now I tell everyone my new trick to stop the tears after a fall. You simply get them to talk about it, or for younger kids like Luke, repeat what's happened. "Ouch! You were running really fast and tripped on that rock!" That turns on their upper brain (thinking and reason), so that they're no longer stuck in their lower brain (fight or flight/tears).
The Whole-Brain Child talks about the science of our brains, but never speaks over your head. The content is fascinating. The examples and illustrations are simple and smart. The strategies are easy to implement.
The book is geared toward parents and kids alike. Both of our girls sat down with me for over an hour looking at the pictures and having me read the examples. Sydney loved it so much, she has asked to see it again several times over the last few weeks. And when I find myself in a challenging situation, like Sydney crying because she suddenly doesn't want to go to school when last week she begged the doctor to let her go back, I've referred to a similar example from the book to help get us through the crisis.
Two other brain books I also recommend are Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten, by Dr. David Perlmutter and Einstein Never Used Flash Cards by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff. The overall theme is that spending time with our children - talking, singing, interacting and playing - is the most important step we can take to help them learn.
I’ve decided pacifiers are good and bad. Good – that they can help comfort your little one to sleep. Bad – that she doesn’t put it back in her mouth when she wakes up, so sometimes she has trouble getting herself back to sleep (or worse, that when she has a stuffy nose, it’s impossible for her to keep it in her mouth and breathe at the same time).
But if you’re going to go the pacifier route, I love the Wubbanubs. Janis, our great night nanny, told us about the Wubbanubs before Sydney was born, and I bought several to bring to the hospital with me. They’re the only pacifiers Sydney or Sabrina ever used. (Luke never took to one.)
There are lots of positives about these – they stay in their mouth, they’re a pacifier and stuffed animal all in one and they’re easier to find in the crib (if you have a child that actually tries to find them) or in the diaper bag. The only downside is that they’re harder to sterilize than your average pacifier and the stuffed animal part needs to be gently cleaned every once in a while.
We love books. At this point, our house could be a children's library. The books are literally spilling off of every bookshelf available.
There are so many great books for the young ones in our lives, but here are our personal Top 10 that we read over and over to Sydney, Luke and Sabrina. Most of these, I know by heart.
I have read many books about parenting. There's always something in every book that ends up working for one of our three kids. So I wanted to write a book encompassing ALL the ideas that worked for our toddlers. But since there are so many parenting books out there already, I figured maybe blogging about it would be best. So here are the ideas that worked for us, one tip at a time...
Parent Tip #1: Getting Your Kids to Stay in Bed
Our 5-year-old and our 3-year-old girls (who share a room) suddenly decided it would be fun to get back out of bed after they were tucked in. Over and over and over again. It became an epidemic. We have a consistent, restful nighttime routine, so that shouldn't have been the issue. They were clearly tired (if they did stay in bed, they fell asleep within 10 minutes), so that wasn't it either. It seemed like they just discovered it was fun to do. And they didn't want to miss anything, like most toddlers.
Read more
The advice came pouring in as soon as everyone knew we were trying to get pregnant. It didn't bother me at first, but the longer we tried to get pregnant with no luck, the more frustrating it became. If you have friends or family trying to conceive, here's what NOT TO SAY to the fertility-challenged:
#1: God has a plan.
#2: Don't stress, it will all work out.
#3: You just need to go on vacation and eat some ice cream.
#4: Oh well, kids can be a pain in the a@@ anyway.
#5: Are you sure you're doing it right?
What is okay to say? I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I’m thinking of you. I’m here for you.
For those of you on the receiving end of the advice, keep in mind that most people are genuinely trying to be helpful, not hurt your feelings.
You'll notice a theme here. Can you guess who the funny one is in this relationship?
#5. Chris playfully pretended to get up on the doctor's table and then freaked out when he realized there were metal stirrups under the colorful striped socks. I've never seen him move so fast or look so sheepish.
#4. Chris and Sydney had left me to be sewn up after the c-section and my OB said, "What was his height again?" Wait, what? His? I asked frantically, "It is a girl, right?" (I did not find this at all funny at the time! Don't mess with a woman who has her entire uterus outside her body!)
#3. Our cats decided to do a high wire act on our bed frame while we were trying to conceive. They definitely did not want us to have children. Now we see why. Cat tails are to toddlers like catnip is to cats.
#2. Chris decided it would be fun to create his own carnival ride on the doctor's chair, spinning round and round and round. He started turning green just as the doctor walked in. He jumped up so fast that he almost fell over. Dr. Vaughn raised his eyebrows, shook his head slightly, sighed (feeling a little worried for me having another child besides Chris?), and then moved on to the business at hand.
#1. And the funniest moment of our saga... While we were waiting for the doctor, Chris turned the lights out, turned on the little flashlight connected to the table facing it toward my eyes, and screamed "WHERE ARE THE PLANS? WHERE ARE THE PLANS?" in his best German accent. I can't imagine what those nurses thought was going on in our room.
What's the funniest moment of your infertility saga?
We took many, many steps before we considered in vitro. We weren't in a big rush. We had no "known" issues. We were still in our mid-30s. We were curious why we couldn't get pregnant and wanted to know "the why." Plus, in vitro is one of the most expensive fertility options out there and $12K isn't a drop in the bucket for us. So we were okay with baby steps when it came to our infertility.
But as Dr. Vaughn, our fertility doctor said, you can choose to figure out what the problem is, or skip all of the that and go straight to in vitro, where no matter what the problem is, your chances for success are pretty high!
Here are the 10 steps we checked off before going down the in vitro route:
The only hiccup we had from any of the ten steps above was a fibroid in my uterine lining (found during the HSG test). My doctor couldn't remove it during the laparoscopy, so we decided to have it removed via an abdominal myomectomy before trying in vitro (since it could cause problems getting pregnant or a miscarriage if I did get pregnant).
There are many situations that warrant trying in vitro right away. Did you skip straight to in vitro? If so, let us know why...
Parenthood. Sometimes it felt like something we'd never get to experience or write about. But after more than three years, numerous fertility drugs, and a miscarriage, we were granted our wish of all wishes. And another. And another.
Share your infertility story in the comments section below or send us an email so we can post your story on the site.