Parenting - Babies

I'm trying to not be anxious with our 5-month old. So far, so good. I've done a great job with the babysitting. I generally trust the people who watch her not to kill her or abuse her. 

Last night, while trying some different finger foods for her to gum on, I suggested we try a dill pickle spear. I thought, ah, so they are little bit salty, so what? She's just sucking on an end, not actually eating the whole thing. No big deal. 

Then started the panic as I tried to determine if we were overloading her with salt, if her kidneys would fail, if I'd ruin her for life, constantly craving salty food or having kidney issues. I even called the on-call nurse just to make sure. 

Alas, sucking on 1" of a single pickle is probably less sodium than her 5oz bottle of formula, but man what a whirlwind. 

Anybody else have these freakouts with their kids where they thought they'd scar them for life, but the kid turn completely fine, normal, with no last effects? 

None of my grand kids have suffered from eating pickles or olives ( called lollies). 

Welcome to your new reality. I consider myself a pretty laid back guy for the most part, and yet now with two kids there's this undercurrent of screaming insanity that wants to tell me how dangerous the world is at every turn. It gets better over time. We still haven't had anyone but grandma baby sit the kids though we did send the 3 year old to a 3-hour, 3x/week, 2-week "play camp" this summer and she loved it. So now she's all grown up and doesn't need me any more. Great.

See, maybe it doesn't get better.

When Ian was little we gave him a shrimp, he chewed on it like a chicken leg and had a good time.   Then the dots came ........

Looked a lot like chicken pox, pediatrician said little bodies cannot process the iodine.  Who knew? 

pheller said:

Anybody else have these freakouts with their kids where they thought they'd scar them for life, but the kid turn completely fine, normal, with no last effects? 

We've definitely had the freakouts about things we thought would scar them for life, plenty of times in fact, but whether or not they'll be fine and normal with no lasting effects has yet to be determined. 

First kid, huh?

Yep, we were like that with the first one too.  It gets better.

With our first, any noise (or lack of noise) at night meant waking up in a panic and checking on her (going to her room and putting a hand on her to make sure she was breathing even though we had a kick butt monitor with sound, infrared, etc...).

Now, Im like ehhh, she'll go back to sleep in a minute....

Just stay away from known allergy foods unless you are prepared to react.  Dont give the kid peanuts while camping a hundred miles from a hospital....

I used to remind the ex that if cavemen could raise kids then we could also. Amazingly they're actually pretty hard to break. 

When my now 16 year old was about 6 months old I made it a point to hand him to anyone who showed an interest.  My thinking was that I wanted him to be brave and used to strangers and not one of those super fearful kids who refuse to let go of their mothers apron.

One day at an outlet mall a heavyset girl comes up and looks at him and says gently: “baby?”

Here we go I think, and say “would you like to hold him?”

She nods vigorously so I hand him over.

She clutches my son to her ample bosom and declares “BABY!”.......and takes off!

I realize (late) that she is pretty seriously “developmentally delayed” and clearly thinks that I have just given her a baby to keep.  Chase her down in about 100 feet (I was laughing too hard at the absurdity) and gently extricate my child from her clutches.  The now ex wife was not amused.

Son suffered no ill effects of his adventure but now hates when I tell the story.

short of anything that could cause an allergy, my son gets to try anything and everything we eat.  thankfully, he didn't have any allergic reactions to anything.  that's the only thing that worries me.

but my wife takes him to swimming class, where he started out for the first year or so with her there, holding him (at 6 months through almost 2yo).  now, he's advanced enough that he's in class with other kids sans parents.  watching him jump in the water and having to count (to my wife) to 5 makes my heart stop every time.  i love the water, he loves the water, he's really good at swimming and generally not dying, and yet, it still terrifies the E36 M3 out of me.  probably means i'm normal?  if i'm normal, what is my wife? :-P

wvumtnbkr said:

First kid, huh?

 

Yep, we were like that with the first one too.  It gets better.

 

With our first, any noise (or lack of noise) at night meant waking up in a panic and checking on her (going to her room and putting a hand on her to make sure she was breathing even though we had a kick butt monitor with sound, infrared, etc...).

 

Now, Im like ehhh, she'll go back to sleep in a minute....

Just stay away from known allergy foods unless you are prepared to react.  Dont give the kid peanuts while camping a hundred miles from a hospital....

 

 

Yeah, BTDT.  Absolutely terrified that she would stop breathing.  Always checking if noises stopped, etc.

I never really worried about what she was eating, unless it was excessively spicy or a potential choking hazard.  We tried to have her try nearly anything we were eating (of course now at 2, she steals food off our plates, heh).

Then there's my younger brother who had spinal meningitis and has had developmental issues due to my parents not taking him to the hospital soon enough.  So whenever she would get a fever, etc. I was beside myself with worry.  I can't imagine the guilt my parents still feel over that decision to this day.  I don't say that to cause worry, but fevers happen and most are ok, but if its like 103 high?  Don't wait and take them in to see a doctor.

I was fairly lucky in that DW was pretty level-headed when it came to our babies.  She might get very upset if they were cranky or unhappy or in some other distress we just couldn't make go away, but she never really freaked out about what MIGHT happen from every little thing.

People raised babies in caves.  Yours will be fine.  Take reasonable care, but only reasonable.  You'll get over it.

When my daughter first started walking at 10 months we thought we had childproofed the house.  We were ignorant of how far this had to go.

One day she spotted one of my wife's bobby pins on the floor.  She ran to pick it up.  Then she spread it out.  Then she made a bee line to the nearest electrical outlet to stick it in there.   I have no idea how this popped into her head. 

This all happened in about 5 seconds including me jumping up as I read her mind about her intentions, ran across the den, and grabbed the bobby pin out of her hand.  Then we went to the store and bought a whole bunch of plug protectors.  Then we re-evaluated the level of baby proofing we really needed and started over. 

I'm reminded of an anecdote I heard years ago, I think it was told by Arthur Godfrey.

His first child had a nosebleed and they ran to the neighbors for ice and considered whether to take him to the hospital. As he described it, it was total chaos.

He said that he was busy working in his home office when his fifth child walked in announcing that he had a nosebleed. He said his only response was, "Get out of here you'll bleed on the carpet!"

As the father of a two year old I am firmly convinced that nothing is ever truly, truly child proof. 

As the oldest of 5, and the youngest two are 16 and 21 years my juniors, I've dealt with newborns and toddlers and everything else. I know they'll survive almost anything.

Just a month ago my boy decided to stand on his little slide and try to (apparently) touch the ceiling and the wall behind him, in that order, by reaching up and then bending backwards and stretching. Landed on his head (carpet flooring) then got up and tried to do it again. I didn't let him that time. Then when we went to the pool saturday he wanted to jump in, not where I could catch him, but 5 feet in any other direction. I know I was ready and he'll be fine, (and I let him go under a couple times) but it still scares me. All the stuff he does scares me. And he'll have an accomplice in a few months, so it's just going to get worse. It is all scary, even having experience with it, and knowing they'll survive. Terrifying. 

Worth it though.

It's interesting how we became such paranoid people when we become parents. Is it the water or all the fast food we ate  I often wonder if the  The Lost Generation, The Interbellum Generation and  The Greatest Generation,were the same way. I tend to think the baby boomers invented being helicopter parents. It's becoming so prevalent now. In someways we are sheltered from the real world, even though people are open books on TV and the internet. When we had our first child (she is 2 years old now) I was told by a friend that people have survived since the stone age, and cited the young dumb people on 16 and pregnant, that their kids somehow survive and not sweat the small things. With all the rules we have nowadays, I always think about my Grandma and Great Grandma, they lived well into their 90's. Grew up in Pittsburgh in the black fog. They never once ate healthy, no Kale or Quinoa. Never worked out and were around people that chained smoked. Had asbestos tile in all their houses.  I am just wondering if we are evolving into something that powers the matrix lolz or we are trying to cheat Darwinism.

One of the best choices I think that we made was to get both of our children in swimming lessons before they were two. 

It starts with survival training. They're incredibly bouyant, so they first learn how to roll on to their backs and float.

Infant swimming resource

Kids are pretty much indestructible. Even the bobby pin in the socket probably won't kill them. My eldest was sitting on the oyster table eating them as fast as I could shuck them at 1. Now shellfish is supposed to kill them instantly below the age of 2. Pretty much if there is a rule on raising kids, we broke it. They have all survived so far. 

I don't remember worrying about any of them when they were younger. I'm a firm believer in the school of hard knocks. Pain teaches lessons faster than anything I know. You want a kid to learn to be careful on the stairs, let them fall down them. 

I have 5 kids. If I can do it, anyone can. 

You're  not gonna break em. 

In reply to Floating Doc :

Agreed. Getting kids properly introduced to swimming, at least up through safety jumps and back floating, is one of the most important things any parent can do for their infant/toddler.  There is little out there that is less forgiving to kids than water.

In reply to Toyman01 :

Remember too that as of a couple years ago they said no peanuts before age 1. It turns out that not being exposed to peanuts was increasing the number of peanut allergies, so the "no peanuts" rule was making kids less safe and setting them up for a lifetime of a dangerous allergy. I sometimes think they just throw these "rules" out there to see what happens, without actually studying them in depth.

Luckily my wife has been a swim teacher for kiddos and is super excited to get the little one swimmy swimmy. 

pheller said:

Luckily my wife has been a swim teacher for kiddos and is super excited to get the little one swimmy swimmy. 

That's great, accidental drowning is very high on the percentage of mortality in children. 

You give your kids _formula_????  OMG, that's like, the worst thing EVER!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/health/world-health-breastfeeding-ecuador-trump.html

It's not new.  My oldest brother was born on 1939, me 4th kid, in 60.  Mom worried about him endlessly.  I was occasionally left at neighbors farms accidentally, and not noticed until there was an empty seat at supper.  "Who had Jim?"