First time mom mistakes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sleep training. DS1 is 4 and still has trouble sleeping but DS2 we sleep trained and is a sleeping CHAMP.

I’ve noticed the parents who never sleep trained or addressed sleep really late have HORRIBLE sleepers.

I don’t know how people are still so ignorant. We (mostly) all know that the parents who say “I didn’t have to sleep train my baby and he just started sleeping through the night naturally when he was ready so all babies must behave this way and training is cruel” are completely nuts. But do you realize that those of you who say, “so and so didn’t sleep train like they should have so they have a 4 year old who can’t sleep” are ALSO nuts?! Have you never met an adult who struggles with insomnia or nightmares or restless, light sleep? Do you really think all those people just had weak parents who failed to train them properly as infants?! Just like some people aren’t great runners and others have sensitive stomachs etc. some people aren’t great at falling instantly asleep and sleeping soundly for 8 hours. They were children too. Some people are going to be shitty sleepers no matter how hard you try to train them as babies. You are being rude and ignorant when you make these comments and try to shame other parents or convince new parents that they just need to keep training their baby and magically they’ll sleep great and if they don’t then they’re failing as parents.

No, I don’t think adult sleep is a result of sleep training.

But I do think you can teach a child that if they aren’t sleeping that certain hours are “quiet time” and you don’t disrupt the entire family.

Once you have a toddler of a certain age and you tell me they are waking you up X times a night, it’s clear you’re allowing this as a parent. The child should have been sleep trained and taught to either sleep or be quiet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sleep training. DS1 is 4 and still has trouble sleeping but DS2 we sleep trained and is a sleeping CHAMP.

I’ve noticed the parents who never sleep trained or addressed sleep really late have HORRIBLE sleepers.

I don’t know how people are still so ignorant. We (mostly) all know that the parents who say “I didn’t have to sleep train my baby and he just started sleeping through the night naturally when he was ready so all babies must behave this way and training is cruel” are completely nuts. But do you realize that those of you who say, “so and so didn’t sleep train like they should have so they have a 4 year old who can’t sleep” are ALSO nuts?! Have you never met an adult who struggles with insomnia or nightmares or restless, light sleep? Do you really think all those people just had weak parents who failed to train them properly as infants?! Just like some people aren’t great runners and others have sensitive stomachs etc. some people aren’t great at falling instantly asleep and sleeping soundly for 8 hours. They were children too. Some people are going to be shitty sleepers no matter how hard you try to train them as babies. You are being rude and ignorant when you make these comments and try to shame other parents or convince new parents that they just need to keep training their baby and magically they’ll sleep great and if they don’t then they’re failing as parents.

It’s easy for us who practice good sleep hygiene to judge. Every parent I know with a bad sleeper is doing things that cause the lack of sleep. For example the mom who has a 2 year old and tells me it took her three hours to “get him down.” What does that even mean? You do the goodnight routine, turn off the lifts, close the door and leave. Don’t go back in. You’ve trained your kid you’ll go back in time and time again. That’s why it takes 3 hrs for him to fall asleep.

[Anonymous]

My wife let our baby fall off of the doctor's table.. bleh

Seems like there is no permanent injury/damage that came of it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sleep training. DS1 is 4 and still has trouble sleeping but DS2 we sleep trained and is a sleeping CHAMP.

I’ve noticed the parents who never sleep trained or addressed sleep really late have HORRIBLE sleepers.

I don’t know how people are still so ignorant. We (mostly) all know that the parents who say “I didn’t have to sleep train my baby and he just started sleeping through the night naturally when he was ready so all babies must behave this way and training is cruel” are completely nuts. But do you realize that those of you who say, “so and so didn’t sleep train like they should have so they have a 4 year old who can’t sleep” are ALSO nuts?! Have you never met an adult who struggles with insomnia or nightmares or restless, light sleep? Do you really think all those people just had weak parents who failed to train them properly as infants?! Just like some people aren’t great runners and others have sensitive stomachs etc. some people aren’t great at falling instantly asleep and sleeping soundly for 8 hours. They were children too. Some people are going to be shitty sleepers no matter how hard you try to train them as babies. You are being rude and ignorant when you make these comments and try to shame other parents or convince new parents that they just need to keep training their baby and magically they’ll sleep great and if they don’t then they’re failing as parents.

It’s easy for us who practice good sleep hygiene to judge. Every parent I know with a bad sleeper is doing things that cause the lack of sleep. For example the mom who has a 2 year old and tells me it took her three hours to “get him down.” What does that even mean? You do the goodnight routine, turn off the lifts, close the door and leave. Don’t go back in. You’ve trained your kid you’ll go back in time and time again. That’s why it takes 3 hrs for him to fall asleep.

Exactly. My SIL literally cajoles and negotiates with her 3yo fir two hours every night. Leave the room, nitwit! Drop the rope.

[Anonymous]

Do not resort to feeding your child with the spoon when they are old enough to eat by themselves. To make it easier in the mornings before preschool, I used to feed the cereal to my child. DC wanted me to do that all the time and it became an annoyance and stressful to boot. After a while I stopped worrying and even if DC did not eat that meal, I let it go. It is still a hassle (DC is extremely slow at eating but at least I do not have to do the spoon feeding - literally)

I know of someone whose child still does not eat well because of all this constant spoon feeding and expectations that mom will do it.

Another one is letting them watch TV or cartoons so they will eat. That was the worst thing I could have done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not sleep training. DS1 is 4 and still has trouble sleeping but DS2 we sleep trained and is a sleeping CHAMP.

I’ve noticed the parents who never sleep trained or addressed sleep really late have HORRIBLE sleepers.

I don’t know how people are still so ignorant. We (mostly) all know that the parents who say “I didn’t have to sleep train my baby and he just started sleeping through the night naturally when he was ready so all babies must behave this way and training is cruel” are completely nuts. But do you realize that those of you who say, “so and so didn’t sleep train like they should have so they have a 4 year old who can’t sleep” are ALSO nuts?! Have you never met an adult who struggles with insomnia or nightmares or restless, light sleep? Do you really think all those people just had weak parents who failed to train them properly as infants?! Just like some people aren’t great runners and others have sensitive stomachs etc. some people aren’t great at falling instantly asleep and sleeping soundly for 8 hours. They were children too. Some people are going to be shitty sleepers no matter how hard you try to train them as babies. You are being rude and ignorant when you make these comments and try to shame other parents or convince new parents that they just need to keep training their baby and magically they’ll sleep great and if they don’t then they’re failing as parents.

It’s easy for us who practice good sleep hygiene to judge. Every parent I know with a bad sleeper is doing things that cause the lack of sleep. For example the mom who has a 2 year old and tells me it took her three hours to “get him down.” What does that even mean? You do the goodnight routine, turn off the lifts, close the door and leave. Don’t go back in. You’ve trained your kid you’ll go back in time and time again. That’s why it takes 3 hrs for him to fall asleep.

Exactly. My SIL literally cajoles and negotiates with her 3yo fir two hours every night. Leave the room, nitwit! Drop the rope.

I am all for sleep training. I used to be really smug (in my own head) about how well my kid slept. Once your kid is out of the crib and old enough to open their door, you might be less sure of your sleep training prowess. My kids are actually both really good sleepers (most of the time), and I like to think that instilling good sleep hygene helped, but you've got to realize that some kids are going to take better to it than others.

But I'll play OP's game: my first time mistake was thinking that if I read enough books I could research the answer to any "problem" (sleeping, toddler behavior, potty training, etc.). I mean, i still read books, but now I realize there is no magic trick to raising kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Be psycho about breastfeeding. Just give the baby a bottle sometimes. It’s so much easier.

ONE MILLION TIME YES.

Except I'll go one further and say "give the baby a bottle of formula sometimes". Don't kill yourself at that pump.

My biggest regret was not giving a bottle at times when the baby was probably hungry or just to get some sleep.

[Anonymous]

There are so many. Let's start with the part where I didn't know bottles have to be sanitized. Then there's was the time a butter knife hit my son in the head. I went to the ER. I had to keep explaining the knife fell off the counter and I did not stab my baby. There's also the oatmeal we added to the bottles to make him sleep longer. It didn't work. We cosleep. Oh and a few days after I got home from the hospital I had no idea what was coming out of my breasts. No one talked to me in detail about breastfeeding at the hospital. I told the nurses I may breastfeed or I may not. I had no idea you kind of need to choose. I didn't know about breast infectious etc. The last thing I can think of is that I thought it would be better for my husband to help me pump manually. I thought it would be less painful? This is all I can think of at the moment. Unfortunately I no longer have my mother. There really wasn't anyone to call for help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are so many. Let's start with the part where I didn't know bottles have to be sanitized. Then there's was the time a butter knife hit my son in the head. I went to the ER. I had to keep explaining the knife fell off the counter and I did not stab my baby. There's also the oatmeal we added to the bottles to make him sleep longer. It didn't work. We cosleep. Oh and a few days after I got home from the hospital I had no idea what was coming out of my breasts. No one talked to me in detail about breastfeeding at the hospital. I told the nurses I may breastfeed or I may not. I had no idea you kind of need to choose. I didn't know about breast infectious etc. The last thing I can think of is that I thought it would be better for my husband to help me pump manually. I thought it would be less painful? This is all I can think of at the moment. Unfortunately I no longer have my mother. There really wasn't anyone to call for help.

You win worse mom award on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Letting toddler choose music to listen to in the car for too long til it became an expectation.

[Anonymous]

Not continuing to breastfeed and traveling a lot when he was little making it much harder. I should have stayed home, established our pattern and not worried so much about what would happen when I would return to work.