Our childbirth class came with a free newborn care class. Because free knowledge is good, we dragged our tired, swollen selves to the hospital. The instructor was the same quirky one from our fear factor childbirth class.
The first hour was a repeat except for some horrific pictures of a newborn getting ointment slathered on his poor little eyeballs after birth. And a description of circumcision. And pictures of different kinds of baby poop. Newborns are so much fun!
The second half of the class, though, shifted to hands-on learning - burping, holding, (disposable) diapering and swaddling. Shea, having the spatial skills in this parenting team, was a successful swaddler of our very large baby with unbendable legs.
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| He's adopted. |
Very proud of himself, Shea demonstrated his skills at home.
Luckily our baby won't be born with a healthy set of claws and incisors.
Seeing Shea swaddle Mac made me literally laugh out loud. I can only imagine he then peed on the blanket shortly after.
ReplyDeleteMac handled it well! And no, surprisingly, he didn't pee!
ReplyDeleteI'm curious - what did your class say about swaddling? I had always heard/assumed that that was the thing to do, but when we met with a potential pediatrician, he didn't recommend doing it outside of the hospital. Like, no swaddling when sleeping at night either. But LOVE the swaddling of the dog. I wonder if my cat will let me practice on him... I'm thinking, no! Haha!
ReplyDeleteOur class was a little weak on official advice but seemed to recommend swaddling at night for baby's feeling of security. We have our pediatrician meet and greet appointment tomorrow so I will make sure to ask and let you know!
ReplyDeleteI laughed out loud at Mac being swaddled as well.
ReplyDeleteSeth was the master-swaddler in our house. We didn't ask the pediatrician or the hospital about swaddling. Instead we generally did this crazy dance that went like this:
1. Ryle screams.
2. Edie feeds, burps, changes and rocks him.
3. Ryle screams more.
4. Edie repeats those steps.
5. Ryle screams more and Edie hands off to Seth.
6. Seth swaddles Ryle and puts him in his boppy on the dryer.
7. Ryle a. falls asleep and the dance ends or b. keeps screaming and Edie unswaddles him and tries everything over again.
eeds: That process sounds exhausting...
ReplyDeleteSarah & Shea- we bought "SwaddleMe" blankets and used them for quite some time in the crib. They're much safer than blankets (if you're a freak like me and don't put any blankets, pillows or bumpers in the crib for fear of suffocation) and it helped Shaun settle down to be tightly swaddled. You can buy them at Babies R Us or Target. Check em out if you want!
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