(wrote on September 19th 2011)
Yay for grandma's! Grandma Loni has forever blessed this un-born childs life by giving me the gift of knowledge. :) there are a million books on pregnancy and babies and newborns and sleeping habits and nursing and furniture and blankets and... you get the point. basically every mom or dad, has produced in their eyes "the perfect kid" and has decided to tell the world about it by writing a book, or magazine article, or creating a youtube video, or making a blog or... you get this point too. but, i think i've found one that i hope will work for me. (well technically my mom found it)
The book is called "On Becoming Baby-Wise" and is usually referred to as BW in the blogging world. i've also found a blog that i've been obsessed with. it's written by a girl name Valerie who is mormon, and has three kids and her blog is so CRAMPACKED with knowledge that im sure if you wanted your kid to be an identical twin to one of her kids, if you follow her exact plans and suggestions you could swap babies without her even noticing. (http://www.babywisemom.com) deep down i might just like her so much because we have the same name, OR it might be because she has raised 3 kids -especially her last- sound like angels. her youngest only crying 2 times in her life before going to bed.... yeah. sounds like heaven. but, either way, this book combined with all the online resources, i think im going to be as ready as i can be before this baby comes.
thanks to Jami Hepwoth of howdyhepworths.com she has taught me that i can plan and prepare and envision exactly how my life and my babies life will be before they are born, but... ultimately, they are a child, with their own personality and preferences. i just need to make sure that i still act as the parent and teach them what to do but... if they need their special blanket, or binki, or have to be talked to in a special tone before they go to bed or whatever it is. each child is different and i will NOT be able to predict it, or in some instances, change it.
that being said.... i still have some plans that i hope i will be able to enforce and follow through with once this baby is born. and since i have already noticed that this baby is taking almost all of my brain cells, i need to write them down before i forget.
here's the plan as of late: (adjustments to plan are expected)
-i will not sleep with the baby in my bed when we come home from the hospital
-i will breast feed until it is 6-12 months old
-the outline i hope to use for sleep habits and feeding times comes from BW
-i also want to use the 4S technique from the baby whisperer
-i will let the baby CIO (cry it out) as stated in BW if necessary
-i hope to get my schedule down so well that i can go back to work a few weeks after labor
-garr plans on making a baby video monitor so that we can watch the sleeping baby from our phones
-even as our family expands and gets bigger we will sit next to each other in church, holding hands as always
-i hope to listen to my babies cries for the first three months as suggested by priscilla dunstan and see if that works.
I was going to give you BW, but now I won't. REad it before my first...what a lifesaver. Not easy, but totally worth it. I remember when Noah was a newborn and Zeke was working nights sitting on my bed listening to Noah cry in the other room--night and night. All I could do to keep my sanity was shut the door and grab my scriptures. I've done BW with all four of my kids and your paragraph about personalities says it all--some were easy and some were hard. Because they all come with their own selves. The very first minute I held Adelaide in my arms, I could tell her personality was different than Noah's.
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