Christmas is in two days? What!? The weeks leading up to the holidays can be filled with more sugar, more parties, and more excitement for your children, and that can lead to some serious holiday stress, not just for them, but for you, too! The challenge to keep from ruining your little one’s sleep, while still managing to have an enjoyable time celebrating is a big one, but don’t worry–it’s possible.
Here are a few tips to make sure your child is sleeping when Santa comes down the chimney:
As a midwife who has delivered over 1000 beautiful babies to incredible women across the world, I’m sure it would come as no surprise that I had a very clear vision for my own births.
That vision looked something like this: music from our favourite pianist providing soothing tones during contractions, candle lighting, supported by the people I love the most, breathing my way through the contractions in water with a roaring log fire in one corner of the room at my parent’s family home.
Ok, perhaps I was asking a little too much. In truth, I knew that absolute perfection in birth is rarely a reality.
The other day I walked into a local baby furniture store and admired the children’s furniture. My son is three and a half years old and next year and will be transitioning to a big boy's bed. When the owner of the store asked how old my son was, he was shocked to learn that he is still in a crib. I happily explained why it is completely fine and that we’ll switch him over when he is ready. So when should you switch your children out of the crib? Is there an age that is too early or too late? I promised my husband that our son would not go to Junior Kindergarten still sleeping in a crib!
I was nearing the due date of my second pregnancy when I decided to hire a doula. I had spent much of this pregnancy worrying that this labour and delivery would be a repeat of the first: A long 30+ hours of labour, a cervix that wouldn’t dilate, another c-section. I would once again fail to truly “give birth” and rather, have my baby taken from me, surgically. Getting over the trauma of a c-section with my first child still hadn’t occurred, I still could not tell the birth story without tears coming to my eyes. I wasn’t over it.
Having a newborn is tough work. When you give birth, someone hands you a helpless human and says 'make sure your baby eats every three hours, keep track of all the diaper changes, how often they sleep, eat, which side they ate from, for how long and if you pump when you pumped and how long'....the list never ends! You are totally exhausted and overwhelmed and there is so much to keep track of!
