Enrolling Julia into daycare for a few days was my idea. My parents and mother-in-law have been watching her ever since I returned to work and they happily do so without a problem. But it's hard not to be worried about her during the day especially since my parents live in Long Island and I work in Queens. The daycare that I enrolled her at is literally across the street from my job. What could be a better situation than that?
So I talked and talked with Carl about enrolling her there and finally convinced him it was a good idea when Julia started craving interaction with other children. We planned when and how we would afford it financially - something Mariann-type people just don't do very often.
When we registered her, she walked right into the classroom without a problem and played with all the kids while we filled out paperwork. Panic started to set in as I realized that we were actually doing this and I wondered to myself over and over, "what's wrong with having her stay with my parents all day five days a week?' My mom didn't help matters when she hugged her tighter than usually and whispered to her to be a good girl and don't forget to ask for the potty -as if she was sending her away forever.
I knew socialization was the biggest reason why I was enrolling her, but also giving my parents a break during the week and really giving me a break from traveling from Queens to Long Island at an ungodly hour then to Queens again and back to Long Island to pick her up and back home to Queens again. This would also allow me to spend a little extra time with her and check in on her on some days. I knew all this while I was filling out the paperwork and I knew all of this this morning when I was dropping her off, yet I still continued to question "Why am I doing this again?".
So I dropped her off not expecting a problem other than problems with myself and coping. I said goodbye to her and the teacher took her, picked out a toy with her and ushered her into the classroom. As she was tentatively heading towards the table to sit with her toy, a little boy went up to her, grabbed the toy out of her hands and said "Hey, that's mine", in which she proceeded to have a complete melt down for AT LEAST 45 MINUTES (that was about as long as I could stay and witness)!!!
I hid for the first 20 minutes hoping she would calm down and get distracted. I opened the door for incoming parents and their little babies whom were not melting down by the way and got the expected winks and nods from experienced parents who knew what this moment was like for me. Some even offered some sympathetic remarks as they noticed my eyes welling up with tears as I played doorman. "Awww don't worry, it'll get easier".
It was difficult for me to decide whether or not I should rush in there and reinforce this behavior or continue to stand outside until she or I felt better, whichever came first. As a teacher whose been in this exact situation a million times before, I know I would prefer the parent just stay out of my way. So I reluctantly stayed out of the way until the teacher made the decision to bring her to me. I was relieved but my behavior analyst side of me was like "Come on, now you just made things hardier on yourself lady! You just totally reinforced her meltdown" but what can I say? I'm a mommy first....
I brought her back in the classroom and tried to distract her with toys. When she seemed calm, I started with the goodbyes and she began crying again. I calmed her down with strawberries (I'M A MOMMY FIRST!!) and then began my goodbyes again. (I am a firm believer in not racing out the door while they're not looking, I really think that's a terrible thing to do.) She seemed a bit calmer but the moment she saw I was outside of the classroom, she began crying pitifully again. This time I couldn't take it and I left. Just like that. I think somewhere in the midst of that, I even had promised ice cream if she was good. Sigh.
I went to work, cried in the bathroom and then allowed myself to be distracted with the day. I called twice and found out she pooped in her pants, they put her in a pull up (sigh) and she was playing with toys. When I went to pick her up she was not crying and standing in the middle of the room staring at a boy (uh oh! My genes are kicking in!). The moment she saw me she began whimpering as if we were still going on from this morning and I quickly picked her up and said "Oh you're ok", knowing I was really talking to myself.
I drove her home, thinking I surely brought home an emotionally traumatized child and when she said "Call Daddy?", I was convinced I was right - I mean, when does she EVER want to call Daddy when she's in distressed? She must be REALLY upset! But the moment we walked in the house, she spotted her Wonder Pets bookbag, threw it on her head and said "Come on, Zoe!" and started singing and giggling maniacally. Zoe happens to be a little girl that was in her classroom watching in awe as Julia had her meltdown. I don't know how the bag on her head and Zoe connect, but I guess Julia might've had a good time after all....
On why we co-sleep and how I can't get her out of the bed....
Around 6 months pregnant, I finally decided that Carl was allowed to keep his version of "the man cave" - his studio with all his audio equipment, guitars, speakers, microphones...etc. Because he worked so hard to put it together, because he needed a space that I didn't touch, I gave very little argument when it was decided that Julia's room would be downstairs from our bedroom. In fact, once everyone gasped when they realized where the baby's room would be, I was determine to justify it by saying "But I have a baby monitor that sees and hears!". It didn't really matter too much during the time anyway, because Julia was going to initially sleep in her bassinet in our room for the first couple of months.....
Well the bassinet ended up being a diaper, wipes, clothes holder within a week and she has yet to sleep a night in her own room.
Initially, she found her way into the bed because of breastfeeding at night. Something I now highly recommend to everyone. If you plan to breastfeed, then co-sleep, because that's the only way you're going to get some sleep. And if you had a C-section, it's the only way you won't hurt from the constant sitting up and lying down in the middle of the night. My life was made easier by co-sleeping and it got better when I was able to just barely open my eyes, find her nursing away on her own, and be able to fall back asleep.
We've always said that we would put her in her own bed when she was weaned. She is now nursing every other night and she's still happily sleeping in our bed. We went through an initial phase of her kicking us in the head for a while there but otherwise, we really enjoy it. I also have this extreme anxiety of someone breaking in the house and nabbing her - something my trusty baby monitor won't stop just witness. They never tell you how incredibly over protective and anxiety ridden you become once you become a mommy. And although I know my fears are irrational, I can't help wanting to protect her from the unknown.
But this has made her really dependent on sleeping with SOMEONE rather than on her own. A MAJOR PROBLEM especially when it's time to bring her to her own bed. I did for quite some time, try to ensure that everyone that was watching her, including myself, worked on getting her to sleep in the crib during the daytime. But one by one, all the people I depended on to help me do this gave up and I was the last one to just finally say screw it. At some point, Julia learned how to scream bloody murder for long durations of time when she realized she was being left in the crib.
And this is where my professional training has a hard time kicking in. Although there was a point we were able to get her to sleep in the crib, it was through pure exhaustion from crying. I tried a modified Ferber method - where I would leave her room door open and so she was able to see me. But she just stood there and pointed at me crying. Eventually, I moved to going in, placing her down on the crib each time she stood up and leaving my hand on her back. I gradually reduced the amount of time I placed on her back until it was a light pat and I always made it a point to walk out of the room even though I knew I was going to be coming back in. This sometimes took me an hour to accomplish but it eventually worked. Unfortunately, consistency is key and the grandparents were not at all too happy to perform this process and I stopped trying to convince them. There are just some battles you choose to fight and some you don't.
So, here she is at almost 21 months sleeping blissfully away on our bed - good thing we have a King size bed. We've trained her not to kick us in the head (or really trained ourselves to not get kicked), we deal with the less room to spread out and we wake up each morning to "Mama? Dada? Dada sleeping, shhhhhh!". Carl has justified this by saying "When she's ready, we'll know"and I've tried to justify this by saying "Many families co-sleep till 6 or 7 and it's perfectly healthy". Many will call this learned helplessness but I call it one of the few moments we have together as a family in the day.
Eventually I will get back to it but at least I have till she's 6 or 7, right?
Well the bassinet ended up being a diaper, wipes, clothes holder within a week and she has yet to sleep a night in her own room.
Initially, she found her way into the bed because of breastfeeding at night. Something I now highly recommend to everyone. If you plan to breastfeed, then co-sleep, because that's the only way you're going to get some sleep. And if you had a C-section, it's the only way you won't hurt from the constant sitting up and lying down in the middle of the night. My life was made easier by co-sleeping and it got better when I was able to just barely open my eyes, find her nursing away on her own, and be able to fall back asleep.
We've always said that we would put her in her own bed when she was weaned. She is now nursing every other night and she's still happily sleeping in our bed. We went through an initial phase of her kicking us in the head for a while there but otherwise, we really enjoy it. I also have this extreme anxiety of someone breaking in the house and nabbing her - something my trusty baby monitor won't stop just witness. They never tell you how incredibly over protective and anxiety ridden you become once you become a mommy. And although I know my fears are irrational, I can't help wanting to protect her from the unknown.
But this has made her really dependent on sleeping with SOMEONE rather than on her own. A MAJOR PROBLEM especially when it's time to bring her to her own bed. I did for quite some time, try to ensure that everyone that was watching her, including myself, worked on getting her to sleep in the crib during the daytime. But one by one, all the people I depended on to help me do this gave up and I was the last one to just finally say screw it. At some point, Julia learned how to scream bloody murder for long durations of time when she realized she was being left in the crib.
And this is where my professional training has a hard time kicking in. Although there was a point we were able to get her to sleep in the crib, it was through pure exhaustion from crying. I tried a modified Ferber method - where I would leave her room door open and so she was able to see me. But she just stood there and pointed at me crying. Eventually, I moved to going in, placing her down on the crib each time she stood up and leaving my hand on her back. I gradually reduced the amount of time I placed on her back until it was a light pat and I always made it a point to walk out of the room even though I knew I was going to be coming back in. This sometimes took me an hour to accomplish but it eventually worked. Unfortunately, consistency is key and the grandparents were not at all too happy to perform this process and I stopped trying to convince them. There are just some battles you choose to fight and some you don't.
So, here she is at almost 21 months sleeping blissfully away on our bed - good thing we have a King size bed. We've trained her not to kick us in the head (or really trained ourselves to not get kicked), we deal with the less room to spread out and we wake up each morning to "Mama? Dada? Dada sleeping, shhhhhh!". Carl has justified this by saying "When she's ready, we'll know"and I've tried to justify this by saying "Many families co-sleep till 6 or 7 and it's perfectly healthy". Many will call this learned helplessness but I call it one of the few moments we have together as a family in the day.
Eventually I will get back to it but at least I have till she's 6 or 7, right?
On my adventures in potty training and why I started at 15 months...
I started exposing Julia to the potty at 15 months. I would've started aggressively then, but Carl was just not into it and when the other parent is not into it, there's just no point. But at about 18 months I talked him into participating and he either gave up in the sorta "Jon" in the "Jon and Kate" kinda way or Julia convinced him that she was ready by looking at him, grabbing her crotch and saying "poo poo?".
People constantly looked at me funny when I said I was potty training Julia. Constantly. I also heard many a story about how kids will just do it when "it's the right time" or I potty trained lil Johnny boy too early and it backfired....yada, yada. Some just looked at me like I was crazy. Carl was one of them. He tried to convince me, weakly, that she was just too young to be potty trained. You can't convince a headstrong mama who also happens to work in the special education field where potty training is one of the major things I am involved with.
Truth be told, Carl had told me about potty training newborns by using an audible cue when Julia was around 3months old. Although I don't think he was completely serious about doing it, he did mention maybe "I" would want to do that - with the key word being "me" of course. During the time my attitude was more of "Are you effin' kidding me? You want me to add potty training to the every 2 hour boob feeding schedule too?". I didn't know exactly when I planned on potty training, I just figured I would do it when the time was right. The time came when my best friend was changing her 18 month old's poop filled diaper. I remember asking her "Is that the size of her typical poop?". After a heavy sigh and a defeated sounding "Yup", I was determined there was no way I was going to be doing that.
So there you have it, the cat's outta the bag. I potty trained Julia early because I didn't want to deal with the bigger and smellier poop as she got older. I wish I could say it was because I knew statistically that the rest of the world potty train their kids early on or because there isn't any supporting evidence that states early potty training is damaging to the kid's psyche or that I'm an expert on potty training or that daycare would reduce their tuition by 110 bucks a month just because she was potty trained! Nope, it was out of pure selfishness but everyone else hears the statistics and lack of research justifications.
So Julia was poop trained by 18 months.
I say I began aggressively potty training at 18 months but that's not completely true. I left out one crucial step in all of this that despite my training, despite what I've told hundreds of parents in the past, despite how much I advocate for it, despite what I've told hundreds of teachers...instead of underwear, I USED PULL UPS. I'm so ashamed.
It has been this significant event in my life that I have regretted all the times I have tsk'd tsk'd a parent when they told me they were still using pull ups and decided that despite my 14 years in the field, I didn't know SHIT until I became a parent and began experiencing it all myself. I tried underwear one day, she peed all over my floor, I was disgusted when I was cleaning it up, I said "pull ups it is!" and that was that. The exact excuse every parent who came my way soliciting potty training advice said to me. Sigh.
I did also try the "bare bottom" method where I stripped her naked and allowed her to roam free in carpet free zones one afternoon. In fact, that method is what got her poop trained. She pooped on the floor, I, the professional, freaked out and reprimanded her. And the next day, she was telling us when she needed to poop. I don't know why so many people outside of my field think that I've got the whole child raising thing wrapped around my little finger. What most people don't know is that professionals in the field have a huge delay time when it comes to dealing with our own children. It lasts anywhere from 1 day to 6 months, when finally all that specialized training kicks in and we say "oh right, we should be doing this". And most of the time, it's usually our colleagues that are telling us what to do because we go to them seeking help. And that's what happened to me to a degree. Even though I dilly dallied with the underwear thing here and there, it was one of my teachers who said to me "She needs to be in underwear 24-7".
It didn't matter how many stickers I gave her or during moments of Mama desparation, how many ice cream cones I promised her (although they help reinforce eliminating in the potty, they don't really teach the consequences of being wet)...eventually, I made it to the final step in the process which should've been my first step all along. I said goodbye to all things diaper like and put her in underwear. In fact, even the occasional pull up during long trips in the car is a no-no because it only served to confuse her. I cleaned the mess up over and over again, gave her the light reprimand, praised her for staying dry intermittently throughout the day and she finally got it. We've had some setbacks here and there (especially when we're dragging her around from place to place and can't get to a bathroom) but she pretty much has it and now I save 110 bucks a month in daycare fees!
Sometimes my "issues" are my best friends....
People constantly looked at me funny when I said I was potty training Julia. Constantly. I also heard many a story about how kids will just do it when "it's the right time" or I potty trained lil Johnny boy too early and it backfired....yada, yada. Some just looked at me like I was crazy. Carl was one of them. He tried to convince me, weakly, that she was just too young to be potty trained. You can't convince a headstrong mama who also happens to work in the special education field where potty training is one of the major things I am involved with.
Truth be told, Carl had told me about potty training newborns by using an audible cue when Julia was around 3months old. Although I don't think he was completely serious about doing it, he did mention maybe "I" would want to do that - with the key word being "me" of course. During the time my attitude was more of "Are you effin' kidding me? You want me to add potty training to the every 2 hour boob feeding schedule too?". I didn't know exactly when I planned on potty training, I just figured I would do it when the time was right. The time came when my best friend was changing her 18 month old's poop filled diaper. I remember asking her "Is that the size of her typical poop?". After a heavy sigh and a defeated sounding "Yup", I was determined there was no way I was going to be doing that.
So there you have it, the cat's outta the bag. I potty trained Julia early because I didn't want to deal with the bigger and smellier poop as she got older. I wish I could say it was because I knew statistically that the rest of the world potty train their kids early on or because there isn't any supporting evidence that states early potty training is damaging to the kid's psyche or that I'm an expert on potty training or that daycare would reduce their tuition by 110 bucks a month just because she was potty trained! Nope, it was out of pure selfishness but everyone else hears the statistics and lack of research justifications.
So Julia was poop trained by 18 months.
I say I began aggressively potty training at 18 months but that's not completely true. I left out one crucial step in all of this that despite my training, despite what I've told hundreds of parents in the past, despite how much I advocate for it, despite what I've told hundreds of teachers...instead of underwear, I USED PULL UPS. I'm so ashamed.
It has been this significant event in my life that I have regretted all the times I have tsk'd tsk'd a parent when they told me they were still using pull ups and decided that despite my 14 years in the field, I didn't know SHIT until I became a parent and began experiencing it all myself. I tried underwear one day, she peed all over my floor, I was disgusted when I was cleaning it up, I said "pull ups it is!" and that was that. The exact excuse every parent who came my way soliciting potty training advice said to me. Sigh.
I did also try the "bare bottom" method where I stripped her naked and allowed her to roam free in carpet free zones one afternoon. In fact, that method is what got her poop trained. She pooped on the floor, I, the professional, freaked out and reprimanded her. And the next day, she was telling us when she needed to poop. I don't know why so many people outside of my field think that I've got the whole child raising thing wrapped around my little finger. What most people don't know is that professionals in the field have a huge delay time when it comes to dealing with our own children. It lasts anywhere from 1 day to 6 months, when finally all that specialized training kicks in and we say "oh right, we should be doing this". And most of the time, it's usually our colleagues that are telling us what to do because we go to them seeking help. And that's what happened to me to a degree. Even though I dilly dallied with the underwear thing here and there, it was one of my teachers who said to me "She needs to be in underwear 24-7".
It didn't matter how many stickers I gave her or during moments of Mama desparation, how many ice cream cones I promised her (although they help reinforce eliminating in the potty, they don't really teach the consequences of being wet)...eventually, I made it to the final step in the process which should've been my first step all along. I said goodbye to all things diaper like and put her in underwear. In fact, even the occasional pull up during long trips in the car is a no-no because it only served to confuse her. I cleaned the mess up over and over again, gave her the light reprimand, praised her for staying dry intermittently throughout the day and she finally got it. We've had some setbacks here and there (especially when we're dragging her around from place to place and can't get to a bathroom) but she pretty much has it and now I save 110 bucks a month in daycare fees!
Sometimes my "issues" are my best friends....
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