Car trips are always a nightmare

I here all the time that most babies love a car trip. Some people even go for a drive just to make their baby fall asleep. Well, my son is an exception, because he hates car trips, even if it's just two minutes. I seat him in his car seat and everything is fine. A few seconds later, he starts complaining and after a few minutes he SCREAMS as much as possible. It helps if I'm seated next to him, but he still complains a lot. If I drive and he is alone in his car seat, then the trip is simply a nightmare. When I arrive at the destination, usually around 20 minutes later, my son is still screaming, full of tears and shaking all over the place. I hold him and he immediately calms down. This also happens in long trips. He managed to scream for 1.5 hours and he probably would continue, but in the meanwhile we arrived at our destination.

We never had a car accident, so I have no idea why he hates the car trips so much. If I hold him while someone is driving, he still screams. Singing, showing videos or giving him toys doesn't help much. I'll have to wait until he gets over this. I want to believe it's just a phase, but it has been a very long one. He is now 9 months.

If your baby doesn't like car trips, you are not alone! If you have any tips for this problem, please share!

First baby soup

Once my son started eating, when he was 5 months, his first meal was a vegetable soup. For my surprise, he really enjoyed it!

Here is the recipe for a first soup that will serve around 3 meals.

Ingredients:

• 3 medium potatoes
• 1 small carrot
• butternut squash (around the same amount as 2 potatoes)
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

Instructions:

Boil water in a pan. Peel all the vegetables, cut them in chunks and add them to the boiling water. Leave it boiling for around 30 minutes.

After the 30 minutes, make sure there is little water in the pan. If the vegetables are floating, there is too much water, so it should be removed with a soup ladle, for example. Mash everything with the food processor. If it's too thick, add a bit of hot water or the water you removed and mix with the food processor.

Finally add the olive oil and mix it with a spoon, but don't cook the soup any further. The olive oil will loose some of its nutrients, if you boil it.

The consistency of the soup is very important. If it's too liquid, your baby will probably not be happy, but if it's the first soup, it shouldn't be too thick either.

Drinking water

Once solids are introduced, it is important that the baby drinks water, specially during hot weather, to avoid constipation. My son started solids during Summer, so drinking water was a must. The problem was that he wasn't a big fan of water. I didn't want to give him a drink with added sugar, preservatives or anything artificial.

I frequently boiled apples and pears to my son, as a dessert. Instead of wasting the water where the fruit was boiled, I put it in a bottle and he really enjoyed it. The juice is almost only water and it lasts around 24 hours outside the fridge. This juice was a great solution as an alternative to pure water.

Alternative to cry it out: lots of patience and time

I never felt attracted to cry it out methods and I decided I would not apply these methods with my son. My son is like most babies: he struggled to fall asleep on his own. My approach to encourage him to fall asleep alone was spending hours and hours with him. I held him until he was drowsy and then I put him down. He would start crying and the cycle of holding/lying down/start crying would be repeated as many times as necessary until he fall asleep. Of course sometimes I would let him fall asleep in my arms, either because I was too tired or because I lost the drowsy moment.

Another important step to help my son fall asleep is to do it when he is tired enough, but not too tired! If if isn't tired enough, he will be playful and smiley while I hold him in my arms. If he is too tired, he is hyper-active. In either cases, it's a nightmare to get him to sleep. In the ideal scenario, he is calm and he doesn't look at anything in particular. As my son grows, he gives me more and more tips that it's bed time. He now rubs his face and his eyes.

It took me around 3 months until I had real results, so a lot of persistency and time was required. Anyway, I don't regret it, it was definitely worth it.

Holding my son didn't spoil him

"Be careful, he will be addicted to your lap", I was often hearing. Still, I decided to keep holding my son very frequently until he was around 5 months. I had the time to do it and it felt the right thing to do. I was afraid the advice was valid and my son would actually be addicted to being held. He didn't. I gradually reduced the time I was holding him and he adapted very easily. He spends large periods of time on his own, he sleeps very well in his cot and he is an extremely smiley baby. Of course he still enjoys being held, specially when he is tired in the evening, but he certainly doesn't ask to be held all the time.

In conclusion, if you feel like holding your baby and you have the time to do it, my experience tells me that you shouldn't feel bad about it, simply enjoy it. Before you notice, he will be crawling, super excited to explore the world and too busy to be on your lap! Of course you should ensure your baby has tummy-time and moments alone, but you don't have to count the minutes you have your baby on your lap to avoid dependency.

Mother's diet and breastfeeding

Some people say what we eat will affect our baby's digestion and other people say it's a myth. I was on the side that it was a myth. My son was having colics everyday. One day, when he was at the end of two months, I decided to stop drinking orange juice. I used to squeeze and drink one orange every morning. The day after I stopped, my son stopped having colics. I thought it was a coincidence, so a few days later I tried drinking again. The colics came back. I kept doing a few more experiments by drinking orange juice and stopping and I confirmed he was in fact reacting negatively to the orange juice.

If your baby is having trouble with digestion, try to stop any suspicious food for a few days and see how he reacts. You might save your baby and yourself from painful screaming hours.

Baby manicure

A newborn is really tiny: tiny legs, tiny arms, tiny fingernails… but the fingernails grow fast and the baby quickly starts scratching himself. We have no other option, but often cut the fingernails. Besides being tiny, the baby doesn’t stay still, which makes this task even harder. Here is how I managed to get hold of this task:

• Cut the fingernails when the baby is asleep. If he wakes up, stop unless he is really still.
• The fingers have to be facing you, meaning that he is pointing at you and not pointing to whatever is in front of you.
• Hold his finger strongly enough, in case he moves. If necessary, get someone’s help. One person holds the baby’s finger and the other one cuts the fingernail.
• Hold his nail on top of your nail to help positioning the baby scissor correctly.

If you lightly clip his skin by accident, don’t panic or feel guilty. A midwife told me that it happens to lots of new parents.

Once the baby grows and with experience, baby manicure becomes much easier.

He finally sleeps in his cot!

The first two weeks my son was born were easy times to get him to sleep. He would simply fall asleep on his own in no time.

After two weeks, tough times came. He was able to sleep perfectly fine in my lap, but the moment I tried to put him down, he started screaming. I tried to sooth him in many different ways: singing, tapping, soft gestures, swaddling, swaddling again in a different way, waited and doing nearly nothing, etc. Swaddling helped a little, but a few days later he wasn’t happy with swaddling as well. I would eventually manage to lie him down, but a few minutes later he would wake up screaming. I tried for hours and hours to get him to sleep on his own cot, but nothing was working, except holding him again and letting him sleep on top of me. I still remember one day he was sleeping on his cot and he started moving his arms up. He opened his eyes, changed to an extremely scared face and screamed as much as he could. I suppose he had a very strong moro reflex (helpful tips on this link).

Until one day! I suddenly thought that the way he was sleeping on my lap was similar to sleeping on his stomach. This goes against all the recommendations of safety, but I decided to try it out. When I was born, every baby were sleeping on their stomach, because it was considered safer, at least in the country where I was. When my parents were born, every baby were side sleeping, because it was considered safer. Now the same doctors who said 30 years ago that it was safer for babies to sleep on their stomach are now saying that it is safer to sleep on their back. Well, I’m happy to follow these recommendations, but my son was two months and the safety rules weren’t working for him. Obviously a baby sleeping on top of me isn’t safe as well. I was very tired, so I could fall asleep (it happened occasionally) and an accident could happen. Taking all this into consideration, I lied my baby on his stomach and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He slept during hours and hours! I finally managed to rest.

Six months later, I still have to put my son on his stomach, or otherwise he wakes up.

Hello World!

One year ago, I had absolutely no experience with babies. However, I was utterly excited because I was going to have my first baby in January 2015. I wasn't worried about my lack of experience, the mother instinct is in our blood, so everything would work just perfectly, right?

Well, I have to say that knowing a bit more than I knew about taking care of babies would have helped me a lot. My son is now nearly 8 months and I decided to start sharing my self-taught lessons, hoping to help other new moms around the world. Enjoy the reading and you are very welcome to leave any comments!