Here’s just a piece of advice that I thought I would share bc it just came to my head. So here’s my advice for moms with small children or those of you who are future parents.
Write down the different milestones and how you accomplished them with your first child, that way you remember them when you have more children.
Seems simple enough right? Ennn wrong!!! So many occassions have I been flipping out because I don’t remember what I did with Brianna at that stage. Whether it’s weaning from the bottle, potty training, whatever it is, when you reach any kind of milestone write it down. Whether you keep a journal, or if you are one of the few parents who remember to log everything in the baby book, keep some type of list of how you dealt with all of the things that come up when raising a child. I remember many times of asking the pediatrician a question that, seeing as how I’ve done this before, I should remember, but for some reason with your second child, at least I am more nervous. I don’t know why. I just am.
Here’s a quick example. When Brianna was 8 mos old is when we started The Ferber Method. For those of you who don’t know what that is, google it. I didn’t do the full method, just this little part that is in my Parenting book. It’s a quick reference book that I got when Brianna was a baby…it’s a great book bc everything is listed from A-Z and when u just want a quick reference you go to exactly what you’re looking for instead of having to read a whole chapter. So anyway, when she was 8 mos old and not going to sleep on her own, we did The Ferber Method and the girl learned how to soothe herself to sleep in 3 days. With Jordan?? Not so much. For some reason, even though I know that the earlier you get them to sleep on their own the better and easier the transistion, couldn’t do that with Jordan. And I suffered for a long time for it.
But anyway, idk if any of that last paragraph made sense…the point is, if you know how you dealt with different situations when your first child went thru that phase, you’ll be better prepared to go thru it with your other children. And everything will stay consistent. Like right now I’m wishing that I wrote down at what age and how I weaned Brianna from her nighttime bottle, how we transitioned to the toddler bed, things like that. Because I have no clue!!! Jordan’s 18 month checkup is this week, so I need to make a list of questions. It’s like I have more questions for him than I did with her…which is ass-backwards! In some areas I’m more lax with him and some I’m more strict/concerned…idk why, it doesn’t make much sense but that’s how it is. And at this point I could write down what I do with him, but as most of you know, although we haven’t made a surgical decision…we are done making babies! So I don’t really want to write it down. From time to time, I’ll just write about how they are at the stage they’re in. Like I remember writing a couple of pages about how Brianna was when Jordan was born. How she was reacting to being a big sister and stuff so that I could look back at it…If only I had time to do that regularly…
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