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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Baby Shower Advice

As part of a virtual baby shower, I am writing a post on the best advice and the best ass-vice I got. Let's start with the good advice.

When I first had my older son (OS), my husband, the Big Giraffe, took two weeks of vacation and then telecommuted part-time for two weeks. My shower schedule was all over the place, but I was able to shower every day. It might have taken until 3 in the afternoon, but I was able to do it.

Once the Big Giraffe went back to work, taking a shower wasn't as easy. I believe that OS was about 5 weeks old, when I "came clean" to my mother and a good friend who had just had her second baby, about how hard I found it to take a shower. They looked at me quizzically. I described the challenges involved in dragging the bouncy chair into the bathroom and then poking my head out of the shower every couple of minutes to check on OS. I like long showers, but not when they are stressful and constantly interrupted. Since neither responded, I of course assumed that they agreed with me. I sauntered (or since it was 5 weeks after a c-section, perhaps staggered) upstairs to get something. When I returned, their "intervention" was like getting hit with a cold shower.

My mom and friend told me to time my bathing rituals so that they occurred right after OS was fed and changed. I should then just put him in his crib and take a quick shower. I was horrified, but they were persistent, so I eventually tried their advice. They were right - OS was fine. No one can be alert for 24 hours straight, and no one judges a parent for being a little less attentive to a baby while the whole family, including parents, are sleeping. The situation is the same when showering while a baby is sleeping. I won't lie; these weren't the longest and most luxurious showers of my life, but in the end I was clean. More importantly, I had found a way to carve some alone time for myself every day. Each person may have a different activity that is most important. Maybe it's spending 10 minutes eating lunch by yourself or actually reading a few pages of a book that doesn't involve a room with a moon and a big red balloon. On the other hand, there is one great advantage to using a shower to occupy your alone time. As one of my friends says "when you've got the water going, particularly if you have an air conditioner going, you can't hear any crying!"

A lot of you are probably not going to like what I consider to be the worst advice I ever got. However, it was truly bad advice for me, and I have found a correlation among my mom friends between the number of children they have and the extent to which they share my disdain for this advice. As many of you know, I desperately wanted to breastfeed. As such I went to a breastfeeding class when I was pregnant. Breastfeeding information was also delivered at my childbirth classes. There was a lot of emphasis on the importance of keeping the baby in the room with you at all times. The hospital did say that you could put your baby in the nursery at night, and they were absolutely willing to deliver the baby back to the room for a breastfeeding. However, there was a strong consensus that the best (and most convenient) approach was not to use the nursery at all.

Since I wanted to be a successful at breastfeeding, I decided that OS was going to stay in the room with me no matter what. To me, no matter what meant despite the fact that I was recovering from my water breaking in the middle of the night, followed by 39 hours of labor, including two hours of pushing, followed by an emergency c-section. To me, my commitment to keeping him with me in my room despite my physical situation was the best way to prove my love for him (definitely weird, but I was so tired I was almost delusional). The nurses commented on each of the first 2 nights that I looked exhausted and that I really should let OS go to the nursery. I held strong! The third night the nurse informed me that she was going to take OS to the nursery because I was just too exhausted. I was actually able to sleep, and true to their word, they got me for the feedings. The next morning I woke up and felt so much better. Unfortunately, I only had one more night in the hospital to take advantage of this, since my home does not include a nursery staffed with medical professionals.

I put my younger son (YS) in the nursery at night immediately. I figured I had the next 18 years to spend every night with him (and I still have more than 17 of them to go). I've noticed that with each baby that many of my mom friends have, the more time the baby spends in the hospital nursery at night.

A. Elliot's Lesson Learned: You can leave a changed and fed baby in a crib so that you can spend some alone time doing something like showering. You can certainly leave a baby in the hands of trained medical professionals.

posted by Alex Elliot @ 10:02 PM 3 comments

3 Comments:

At 4/29/2007 1:33 AM, Jessie said…

Interesting. I did the opposite, with my first I used and abused the nursery after having a tough labor (and 2 hours of pushing.) With my second, I had no pain and I was feeling great so he stayed with me, and I left the hospital early. I highly recommend that for those in pain and exhaustion, USE THE NURSERY!!!
At 4/30/2007 8:04 AM, Nancy said…

I definitely had nursery guilt with my second son. After the first one I couldn't sleep at all and so we spent that first night awake together :)

With the second one I wanted to send him to the nursery because I was so tired and because everytime I put him down he wailed ... but I just couldn't say the words when they nurses would come in. It was a rough first night and I wish I had used the nursery.
At 4/30/2007 6:14 PM, Mom101 said…

Thank you for this. I SO agree with the nursery advice. Night one was a nightmare. Night two, when I finally had them take the baby, was a nightmare with at least 2-3 hours of consecutive sleep at a time. I think I'll take that route this time.

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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