Every mom gets criticized for something

I recently read an article called The Mom-Judging Olympics: A competition nobody meant to enter. It goes through results from their survey asking moms what kinds of behavior would make them judge another mom. 26 000 moms were surveyed and 90% of them would judge another mom. I hate to admit it but I would be one of them.

Have a bratty kid? 66% of moms will judge you. It depends on the circumstance but if you brought a bratty kid to fine dining, I would sure judge you. Tristan is mostly well behaved, which is why we can travel with him and dine out with him. If he were different, we would definitely stay home. Ruining it for others would only ruin it for us even more.

Breast-feeding your 3 year old? 43% would judge you. I don't think I would judge you. I breastfed Tristan and can now understand why some people can be attached to this. I have no problem with breastfeeding as a way to provide milk for thirst but if it were used simply to soothe a bratty child, I would judge you.

Have an overweight child? 37% would judge you and yup, I would too.

Give your kid junk food? 34% would judge you. I wouldn't if I saw this for the first time. We're even beginning to give Tristan a bit of junk food tastings here and there. Even though, there are a lot of things he has not tried and I hope he doesn't eat any time soon like cheezies, flavored chips, McDonald burgers, and pop. If I knew that you were feeding your kid junk food daily, I would totally judge you. If you were feeding your 6 month old junk food, I would totally judge you. But these are sort of different questions, aren't they? I make my own healthy meals so of course I would judge you.

Let your kid watch TV/play video games too much? 32% will judge you. I would judge you. There is no reason your child should be doing this too much.

Co-sleep with your child? 23% would judge you. I would judge you but not harshly. I remember bringing Tristan into bed with us maybe for a few hours a couple of times when he was a baby. We were super tired and just couldn't handle it. We felt guilty every time since we didn't want to develop a habit and have him not sleep in his own bed. It was part of us being scared of too much attachment. Lucky for us the few hours of bed sharing had no effect on his sleeping habits. He sleeps great in his own bed and has been there since day one :)

You work too much? 20% would judge you. I wouldn't judge you, assuming you have proper childcare arranged for your child. I am a work-at-home-mom but I do most, if not all of my work while Tristan is in daycare. Having said that, I really don't over work. If anything, I would love to work more!

Didn't try to breast-feed? 18% would judge you. I would judge you. Not breastfeeding because you find out you can't or it's not your thing is cool. If you don't even try and I mean really try, that's uncool. Breastmilk is the best thing for your baby. Everyone knows it. You got to at least give it a good try.

There is something that didn't make it on their top 9 list, which surprised me. It's something I know I would be judged harshly for. Do you let your child cry it out for sleep training? I did this and was criticized for it. I made the mistake of commenting on an attached parenting site about the issue and then I got bashed over here on my own blog. I was totally outnumbered over there! What was I thinking?

No matter what you do as a parent, there will always be something for someone to criticize. I feel like Jean-Louis and I are pretty solid good parents. We are strict, yet loving, and gentle with Tristan. He is well behaved, polite, average sized, and sleeps well on his own in his own bed. He was breastfed for just over a year but I would have gone longer if he wanted me to. I love to cook and bake so most of what Tristan consumes is healthy and balanced foods. He only drinks water and milk. We rarely give him junky foods and we have no TV so he doesn't watch at all. We do let him play on the iPad maybe 5 to 10 mins a week, which is really nothing. He can play with his toys alone and he loves to read with us. We receive compliments about him a lot and it always makes us proud :)


Overall, it seems like we have it really great here. Ah, wrong. We let him cry it out when we sleep trained him. He didn't end up crying much but we were dying inside when it happened. We yell at him. Sometimes we lose our temper in front of him. We sometimes remove all his food if he refuses to eat or try to eat. That means no food at all until the next meal, which could be more than 12 hours later. We bribe him a lot with things like sweets or a DVD movie if he eats all his main meal. And so on. Basically, there are a lot of things you can criticize me for about parenting. It doesn't bother me as much now that Tristan is 2 1/2 years old. It bothered me back then when he was still a baby and parenting was so new to me. I know what kind of parent I am now and I'm pretty happy about it and that's all that really matters.

Habits are easy to adopt but hard to break

What am I talking about? What we view as bad habits and dependencies seem easy to acquire but are so hard to break. As you know, for the past few weeks we have been standing in Tristan's room until he pretty much falls asleep. We didn't think it was so bad since we didn't have to do anything but just stand there by the door. Sometimes we found ourselves standing for 20 minutes though. We thought it was going to be temporary but it's been going long enough that we feel he is developing a new dependency over it. We actually weren't going to do anything about it because we're going away soon and everything is going to be messed up anyway. After talking about it some more we decided we should since there still is a couple more weeks before we leave. This is so bad. We are usually very cautious about these things. It's completely our fault for allowing it to happen for this long. Now, to break the dependency we have to go back to some sleep training. Sadly, yes :( Tonight was the first night.

Some of you who may not be familiar with our sleep patterns in the past may wonder what is so terrible about just standing in the room. I mean we all sleep through the night still and get 7-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Plus, when Tristan wakes up at night, he puts himself to sleep almost right away. It seems like just getting Tristan to sleep initially is the only problem, which is sort of strange. Am I annoying you yet? ;) As far as I know, he sleeps fine at daycare so nothing has changed there. It's worst there too because they all cry it out in the same room, whether you like it or not. Okay, so here is why we see it as a problem. It takes longer for Tristan to fall asleep because he is paranoid and checks on us every so often to make sure one of us is still there. We can't just go up, put him down, and walk away immediately, which is what we have been doing pretty much for the past year. I agree this is not a big dependency but compared to what we were used to it feels like it is and it could lead to something worst in the long term.

Still not convinced why we feel a need to solve this problem? Like I said earlier, we're very cautious people. We are also very strict. We were careful not to let Tristan suck on the pacifier too much and although we did depend on it for awhile, he just stopped using it without anyone noticing. We didn't have to wean him from it. We encourage him to play on his own and as a result, he doesn't constantly cling to us and want us to hold him all the time. He can also play happily on his own in the playpen. We allowed and helped him to eat on his own at an early age so now that is what he wants to do. We had him sleep in his crib since day 1 but we did let him sleep with us for an hour here and there when it got so frustrating in the first month or when he was sick. When we did sleep with him we felt tremendous guilt and was so scared that a bad habit was going to form. We don't have a TV and we won't allow him to watch it at daycare either until he is at least 2 years old. Same with sweets. He can't have cakes, cookies, candy etc. until his second birthday. The sweetest things he eats is fruit and vegetables. We will likely let him try cake at his next birthday but he will only have a thin sliver. When he tries chocolate for the first time, it will likely be dark chocolate with at least 72% cocoa. He doesn't drink anything but water and milk. Do you get the picture yet? We're very strict and independent ourselves.

So word of warning for those who have sleep trained their babies, don't cave into anything for too long and be consistent all the time. A few weeks of disturbance like this and we're back to sleep training.

Sudden sleep changes at night

For the past week, it has been a bit more difficult to get Tristan to sleep at night. He still sleeps around 9PM every night and sleeps through the night. The problem is that he relies on us more in putting him to sleep now. In the past, Jean-Louis would take him upstairs and put him down and leave right away. Tristan doesn't fuss at all and if he doesn't sleep right away, he will minutes after. It really has been more or less that easy for us since he was sleep trained at 6 months old. Lately, when Jean-Louis steps away to leave, he freaks out. Jean-Louis has to come back and stay for him to calm down and lie back down. He doesn't pick Tristan up, he just stands at the end of the crib. That is enough to make Tristan happy.

Tonight, it was my turn to put Tristan down and watch him sleep. Yeah, we take turns now too. We want Tristan to get used to us both putting him down at night. We have both learned quickly in the past week that Tristan will not cry at all if we just put him down and stand nearby for a few minutes until he is super sleepy or asleep. It's a bit of a dependency but it's not too demanding on us and it sure beats him crying hysterically. I have forgotten how much his crying bothered me :(

When I put him down earlier tonight, I slowly walked away just to see what would happen. He sat up and started to protest so I stopped and turned back. He then laid back down and tried to sleep. After a few minutes, I tried again and got to the door and out of view. There was no response for a few minutes but when I was about to leave, he whined a bit so I walked a bit closer. He then tried to sleep again. I made another attempt to leave and he actually stood up and tried to peak around the corner to find me so I made myself visible. He didn't fuss at all. He just wanted to know that I was still there. He laid himself back down right away and tried to sleep. Then I started to hear him breathe. There was actually the sound of him breathing and I took that as a sign that he was finally asleep. I was right :)

I was in the room with him for 7-8 minutes. He didn't cry at all but I had to be there. He's obviously scared if I'm not. One night, Jean-Louis stood in the room for around 15 minutes. Another night, it was just 1-2 minutes for me. It all depends on how tired he is too.

Another sick day at home from daycare

Today is day 2 of staying home with Tristan. He came down with a mild fever over the weekend and was just not himself so we decided to keep him home. Yesterday, he vomited his morning milk. It was the first time he ever vomited because of a cold. His fever has been gone since last night and he is starting to eat more so I think we are still on track to go back to daycare tomorrow. He is still not all there but I just can't keep him home all the time until he is 100% better. As long as he wants to play, can eat, and has no fever, then he can still go to daycare. It is only the second month and I have already kept him home for 5 days. At this rate, there is no way I could handle a full time job. You are only allowed to have a few days of family leave a year without pay so if I was working, I would be putting my job in jeopardy.

Tristan is getting sick every 2-3 weeks, which is what I heard would happen when you first start daycare. When he gets sick, we sometimes catch it too. On the upside however, my doctor says that he is building immunity faster than other kids who don't attend daycare. When he is of school age, he won't get sick as often. School age here is 5 years and I think that is way too long to look forward to!

For the first time last night since he was sleep trained, I had to help put Tristan back asleep. He actually woke up several times but the 2:30AM wake up was bad so I had to help out. Holding him, rocking him, humming to him etc. I haven't had to do that for almost a year now and it sucked. Part of the reason he couldn't go back to sleep was because we were a bit disruptive. We gave him water, we took turns holding him and going to the bathroom, and then we gave him Tylenol. His throat really hurts but that is all we can give him :( He was really tired and he didn't want to be held. He just wanted to sleep.

Our first year experience with a baby

The first 3 months following the arrival of our first baby was the hardest. The first week was absolutely crazy. We had anywhere from 0-2 hours of sleep in the first few days and mid week we actually started to act a bit delusional. It's amazing what you can turn into with so little sleep. Emotions were also very high and I think the baby blues kicked in for both of us. When the beginning of the third week came along and Jean-Louis had to go back to work, I was scared and nervous to be alone with the baby. Then came all the crying. That lasted until at least 3 months. I can say with certainty that the first 3 months was absolutely the hardest.

We knew we were blessed with a new baby and we did our best to step up to the challenge but it was no fun. Without family or friends to count on, we were alone and it was scary. Taking care of the baby was not the only challenge. We were hardly able to take care of ourselves. We were sleep deprived and hardly had time to eat and also eat well. After we exhausted all of my frozen cooked food I had stocked up on prior to the birth, we ended up ordering pizza, or buying frozen food and canned food. We had to. We had no choice because we had to eat. Me especially because I was breastfeeding so much.

Things started to improve a lot into the 4th and 5th months. The baby got used to his routine and pretty much slept through the night (at least 5 hours straight), if we used the pacifier on him. He also became more responsive and started to smile and look and strike at toys. This feedback was really important and rewarding for us to see. At last!

At 6 months, things got even better. We introduced solid foods so Jean-Louis was able to help with the feedings. We decided to sleep train the baby and after just 2 weeks, we got him sleeping by himself. He slept through the night without any nursing, rocking, pacifier - nothing at all. Needless to say since then, we have been enjoying life a lot more :)

As the months went by, things improved even more. Tristan started to sit up, crawl, stand up, dance, and walk. Now, I find we are really starting to enjoy each others company. He laughs, he plays, he interacts with us, he is signing back and understands certain things that we say, even though he can't speak yet. He is sleeping for even longer periods during the night and that allows for us to stay up late again. But of course at this age, there are new things that we are finding frustrating such as feeding.

As it turns out, our baby is a typical baby. I wouldn't have it any other way but it's so interesting to see how much of a textbook baby he is. For example, now that he is a toddler, he is starting to show signs of throwing tantrums. Oh boy! But, whatever challenges are thrown our way moving forward, I honestly believe we can handle it because not only have we survived the first 3 months but we have also made it this far doing more or less what we were set out to do :)

Progress on standing and sleeping

Tristan is more or less back to his old sleeping routine. It was a frustrating week since he would constantly stand or sit in his crib. For some time, he was visibly scared to let go after standing up and holding onto the bars. That was last week. This week we gave him plenty of practice getting up and down on his own on various objects in the house. He bumped himself a few times here and there and is still healing from a bruise on his cheek. It is hard to let him hurt himself but we are trying our best to be less protective of him in order for him to progress in his motor skills.

Because he is able to confidently get back down and lie down, he can put himself to sleep again. We don't have to worry as much either since he doesn't fall as much or slam his face on the bars of the crib. Now when he is awake though, he is always standing up holding the bars and crying :)

We aren't in the clear yet since it still takes him a bit longer to sleep now and some times we still find ourselves aborting the nap altogether. We had to do that this morning actually. We tried putting him down again for his nap an hour later and by this time he was super tired and fell asleep within 2 minutes. Yeah, getting a baby to sleep, even a trained sleeper, is difficult. Luckily, things are looking brighter and I actually never had to give Tristan Tylenol. I kept resisting and now I don't think we need it. His second tooth is still coming out and he uses this teeth a bit to bite food. I noticed that yesterday when I gave him some of my watermelon.

New developmental changes leads to sleeping problems

Since Tristan has learned to crawl and stand up last week, it has been a struggle to get him to lie down and go to sleep. He cries more and does not sleep as long anymore. As a result, he is a cranky baby most of the day. For the first time in at least 2 months, he woke up at 4:30AM last night and would not sleep again. We had to throw everything at him, including nursing, just so he would sleep another 30 minutes to a hour. All the sleep problems are compounded by the fact that he is teething too of course. Maybe I will give in and just give him some Tylenol. I'm starting to lose my patience :(

We're going to have to start to sleep train him again and let him cry even more, even if he stands while doing it. I'm so not looking forward to it. We already let him cry but not until he passes out. We usually abort after around 30 minutes of crying. In the past, it would normally just take him 2-3 minutes to fall asleep on his own. I'm stressing out because he is very clingy when he is tired. When will this phase pass?

Our experience with sleep training

It has been over 2 weeks now since Tristan started sleep training. It was very difficult for all of us initially but now it has just become part of our routine. The results? Tristan will still cry most of the time when we put him down but then 5-10 minutes later, he will settle down and sleep. When he is interrupted and wakes up, he puts himself back asleep almost right away. He sleeps from 9:45PM until 6:45AM. He naps twice a day for 1-2 hour at a time. He usually takes longer to fall asleep for his second nap. There was even a time when he didn't cry at all and slept almost instantly. The worst was near the beginning when he was interrupted during his sleep and he cried for 52 minutes.

Before sleep training:
Tristan depended on nursing to fall asleep. If that didn't work, we used the pacifier. We also rocked him and played music. In the middle of the night, we used the pacifier and rocked him. In most cases, it didn't take long but in the worst case it took hours. It was not good practice but he did sleep through the night and he napped well in the day too.

After sleep training:
Tristan sleeps just as much as before but probably sleeps better now since he can put himself back to sleep. He does not depend on milk, the pacifier, music or rocking to fall asleep.

Here's our night routine:

6-6:30PM - solid food for dinner
7-7:30PM - bath time (if it's a bath night), change into PJs
8PM - last milk feeding
8:25PM - teeth brushing, followed by cuddles and a little play time with us
9PM - dim lights and quiet chit chat
9:20PM - last diaper change
9:30-9:45PM - put Tristan down in crib

We kept a record of the sleep training for 2 weeks. The following is a graph of the results. There were 2 sleep interruptions which resulted in him waking up and were not plotted on the graph. As you can see below, Tristan will cry more on certain days but most of the time, he would spend no more than 15 minutes crying. Crying time is plotted but some of that time is spent fussing or whining and sometimes even a bit of cooing and playing. He never cries at the top of his lungs the whole time. He cries less for his first nap and sleeps longer compared to his second nap. Since we stopped recording data, he has actually been crying even less now.

Overall, we are pleased with the outcome and Jean-Louis and I both agree that he has done well enough to graduate from sleep training :) Psychologically, it was difficult and stressful and sometimes it still is. So is it worth it? Yeah, I think so. Wait until your baby is at least 6 months old before you start sleep training, especially if you take the cry it out route. Others have recommended waiting that long as well.

Baby sleep training underway

No more procrastinating - we finally started sleep training Tristan this past weekend. I have to say, it is a lot harder to handle than I thought. I was okay the first 1 or 2 times he cried it out but after that I just felt horrible. I'm just looking at him right now in the exersaucer and his eyes are puffy.

For the sleep training, we are implementing a modified version of the Ferber (or cry it out) method. On Friday night, Daddy placed him down when he was tired and left the room. When he cried for 2 minutes, Daddy went in, picked him up until he was calm again, and then put him back down for 3 minutes. We basically repeated this according to the times we agreed on, which were 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 12, 12..... until he passed out. When it was nap time, I would take over since I'm the one responsible for most naps. Gradually, we removed the picking up and putting down and only went in the room to pat and kiss him. We would do this every time he woke up or when he would sleep or nap. Let's just say over the course of the weekend, he cried a lot. Once this is over, I'll post the outcome of the sleep training.

If I tell you that prior to sleep training, Tristan was already sleeping through the night and naps 1-2 hours straight twice a day, you may wonder why we even need sleep training for him. There are days where he doesn't sleep well or cat naps during the day. It doesn't happen often but it does happen. The real problem is that he still depends on us to fall asleep or fall back asleep. That's our fault since we wanted our sleep badly and got in the habit of helping him to sleep since he was born. In order to remove his dependency on us rocking him, sucking on his pacifier (that is a big one!), or us nursing him, we need to train him to sleep on his own.

I'm actually having trouble sleeping these days. Too many things to think about and now with the sleep training stress, I am having trouble going back to sleep after getting up to pee at night. Maybe after we are done training Tristan, I should work on sleep training myself.

How do you feel about "cry it out" strategies?

Tristan has been very restless in his sleep lately. Some times he's dreaming and our ignoring him for a few minutes seems to work and he drifts back to sleep. Yes, he's still in his crib in our room so we can hear every whimper he makes. The same goes for him - he can hear every noise we make when we turn in bed or when Jean-Louis snores. We still haven't determined when to move him into his own room but it's not that simple. I think the layout of our house sucks for having a baby but all this is another blog post! So, back to restlessness...

It's not that hard to put Tristan to sleep, especially if we use the pacifier. Then, he would sleep 4-6 hours straight and I would feed him sometime between 3 and 5AM and he would sleep another good stretch for around 4 hours. This was the case a month and a half ago. Now, after his night feeding, he would wake up after about 2 hours and on and on it goes until I finally drag the both of us out of bed at around 7 or 8AM. The quickest way to put him back to sleep is to use the pacifier but then he would cry after 10 minutes because he has dropped it. Depending on how tired we are, some times we rock him and then put him back down so we don't have to use the pacifier. If we are lucky, he will sleep 1 hour straight after that. On very bad days, I put him in bed with me, on Jean-Louis' side, and I sleep on my side as far away as I can. Yeah, last night was a tiring one (yawn, yawn...). I feel like our day is totally messed up because of it.

Jean-Louis and I want to sleep through the night. I know that compared to other parents, we actually have it pretty easy. We both have a lot of things to do during the day on top of taking care of Tristan and we just can't afford to be tired all the time. Sleeping through the night will really help. We're thinking of slowly implementing the "no cry method" for sleep training that is described on babycenter. If that doesn't work in 2 months, we'll try the "cry it out" method. I hope it doesn't have to come to that. I have to say subjecting little Tristan to the cry it out method makes me feel unkind and guilty. Jean-Louis on the other hand, has little problem with it. He's a lot more harsh when it comes to discipline. I believe in discipline too but Tristan is only 3 months old. I think I whined about this in the last blog post.

We'll start sleep training on a Friday night (maybe in 2 weeks, when he is 4 months old) since we are bound to lose even more sleep from trying this. Maybe I'll have to start drinking coffee the following week. This weekend, I would like to try to cut down on his pacifier addiction.