A Puke-y Update

The dates are off from when I'm writing and when I'm posting this because of the time changes. It is currently 2:10 AM on Friday morning. So "today" means Thursday.

Well, things went pretty well today. The girls slept until 7:00 around the time Aba came back from Netz at the Kotel. Then we had a light breakfast and tidied up. We were thinking all was well with Batya when she threw up twice. So Aba called our pedeatrician. The call back came when Batya was sleeping with me on the sofa. She said to basically do what we were doing and not to worry about food because when she was hungry she would eat.

Chaya and Shira were going stir crazy so I got them dressed and we walked a bit and stopped at Super-Pharm (drugstore) and at this cool little herb/vitamin store where I picked up some probiotics for Batya and some (kosher!) Rescue Remedy. We ended up coming back home about two hours later and Batya had slept the whole time.

I made lunch and she wanted some spaghetti and chicken and was adamant about getting some sauce, too. It stayed down for the most part. The only time anything came up what when she was screeching after Chaya kicked her in the stomach. (Nice and sisterly, huh?) I had a nice migraine by then but a Coke Zero, two Acamol and a nap killed it.

Batya and Chaya decided they wanted to sleep with me so we moved to their bed and Aba was supposed to make sure I was up in an hour...but he fell asleep on the sofa with Shira so we all slept for about five hours.

So everyone gets up and we have some light snacks, water and juice, play, tidy and fold some laundry. Then Chaya vomits. Three times. But (baruch Ha-Shem!) not as badly as Batya and she didn't get to the dry heaves. So, it is 1:45 AM here and I have a puking toddler in my arms, an ex-puking toddler asleep on the sofa with her bear and a toddler worried about her towel.

I managed to get Chaya and Batya into bed together and left Aba and Shira on the sofa. I gave Shira some probiotics preemptivly and watered her milk down.

But it is 2:05 AM and I don't think I can sleep. I guess I'll work on my hat or my sock.

Aba and I Have Decided

that we need a vacation do-over. I'm thinking late April/May-ish.

Mini Israel, Vomit in My Hand and Monsters in the House

Today we attempted to get the girls a bit back on schedule by visiting Mini Israel. It is about a 45 minute drive so we left at 10:00 AM as the girls were heading into meltdown. Shira and Chaya napped in the car but Batya stayed awake. Aba, Batya and I snacked on some crackers while we let the other two sleep a bit more. (The plan was an hour nap there and to take a little driving tour on the way back so that they could get 60-90 minutes more and then they would be ready to sleep in the evening.)

We wandered around the exhibit a bit and it was fun. It was a bit warmer than we expected (The car's thermestat said 30 degrees celsius!) and soon Batya was asking for the carrier. I popped her onto my back and continued on our journey.

Soon, Shira starts crying that she needs a diaper. Being in the middle of an amusement park, warm and not wanting to hike to the bathroom and back again I did what any self-respecting ima would do: I lifted her dress and stripped off her diaper. I was just finishing attaching the second tab when the sound came from Batya.

My back was covered with warm, sticky and sour liquid and Batya was screeching. We got her clamed down and staning in the stroller after another bought of vomit. Aba took Shira and Chaya and I grabbed the stroller and we headed to the exit. On the way out, Aba purchased shirts for Batya and I and some cold beverages. I got her cleaned up and changed my shirt. I gave her some water and about 10 minutes later that came up, too. It was mostly water since she had gotten the crackers and cheese out in the park. We decided to risk it and headed to the car.

I put her in the seat behind me so that, if need be, I could jut open the doors and get to her. I could also easily uninstall the seat. And yes, I did need to. Once I got her out and the road and she had a bit more cheese to get rid of. That emptied her tummy as the other two times it was pretty much dry heaves and some drool into my hand. (Does allowing your daughter to puke into your hand make you an official mommy?)

Aba was so worried he kept looking back and missed two turns that would have gotten us home quickly. So we took a little detour through Mea Shearim.

We got home and Batya and I took a shower and got into pjs. I tossed the clothing into the washer and also got the carseat cover washed. We ended up napping for about five hours. I had planned on getting her asleep and then taking the other two for a walk, but Chaya joined us in bed and Shira and Aba napped on the sofa. She had a couple more dry heaves between 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM. She woke around 8:45 asking for chalav. We gave her a bit of water and that stayed down so she had some milk. The she wanted a banana and that has stayed down, too.

It is now 4:00 AM and she is asleep again with no repeats. She has a very mild fever but she is teething (last two molars!). I suspect it was a combination of the flight, food changes, sleep changes, the sudden warm weather at Mini Israel, the preassure on her tummy from when I knelt down and the excess drool she swallows when she teethes.

Another new thing is Shira's fear of monsters. She has mentioned it a couple times and I was trying to come up with an answer. I finally did and it seems to have worked. I had tried the "Monster Spray" idea but she just wanted to spray and spray and spray and wasn't satisfied. Fail.

Instead I taught her to say "sh'ma" when she even thinks she sees a monster. I told her that monsters don't like to hear the Sh'ma so they will run away if they think she is going to say it. She practicied a few times and didn't mention monsters again so I hope it worked. I'll have to tell Aba about that one so that he knows what to do.

In Which I Talk About Sleep

Yes, I know this will probably upset some people, but it has been grating on my mind for a while and I just need to get it out.

When the girls were born, Aba and I made the concious decision not to cry-it-out, sleep train, Ferebrize, self-soothe or whatever other lingo is used to describe allowing your child to cry themselves to sleep in an attempt to make them able to fall asleep on their own. We made this decision knowing full well that it would be hard on us and we would be spending many nights waking up multiple times. We did this without help other than a few times my aunt or my my mom came up to give us a break. We didn't have a nurse, nanny, housekeeper, maid, doula, or other person there most nights. Why would we do this, you ask?

Simply put, we believe that children are children for a short time and have needs that we aren't able to fully understand. They understand their needs and we simply work to provide for them. By responding to our children's needs in a timely matter we believe that we give them the groundwork to build a healthy and happy life upon.

While the theory of allowing a four, six, twelve-month old child to learn to fend for themselves sounds wonderfully relaxing for the parent, there are many studies and anecdotal experiences that show that it isn't necessarily the best for the child.

One of the most compelling, in my opinion, examples of the potential harm in sleep training comes from the "Kibbutz experiment" where parents volunteered to have their children sleep in communal quareters away from them. Necessity caused the attendants to ignore most cries from these children. Lawrence Kelemen describes the results in his book To Kindle a Soul.

The ill-fated trial produced horrendous results. A barrage of studies found that the graduates of kibbutz children’s facilities suffered disproportionately from a range of psychological disorders, including attachment deprivation traumas, major depression, schizophrenia, low self-esteem, and alcohol and drug problems. By 1994, more than half of all children on Israeli kibbutzim exhibited symptoms and psychopathologies associated with insecure attachment. Professor Carlo Schuengel, an investigator from the University of Leiden, Netherlands, echoed the findings of many earlier researchers when he identified the cause of the psychological disintegration kibbutz children experienced: “Although collective sleeping may allow for sufficient monitoring of children’s safety, it leaves children with only a precarious and limited sense of security.

As data poured in revealing the damage that had been done by children’s sleeping facilities, kibbutz leaders abandoned the experiment. The last of the kibbutzim’s 260 children’s facilities was finally closed in 1998. Professor Ora Aviezer, director of the Laboratory for the Study of Child Development at the University of Haifa, summarized the disaster:

Research results indicate that collective sleeping arrangements for children negatively affect socio-emotional development in the direction of a more anxious and restrained personality. Collective sleeping was abolished as it became clear that it did not serve the emotional needs of most kibbutz members. Its disappearance demonstrates the limits of adaptability of parents and children to inappropriate child-care arrangements.

I often think of Ferberizing as a symptom of the push we give our children to grow up faster and leave the simple joys of childhood behind. We want them to sleep through the night, eat solids, wean from all nursing, get out of diapers, play quietly by themselves, watch TV, read, play video games, use the computer, take a host of classes, rush off to school, load them up with extracurricular activities and homework and dress them in miniature copies of the latest fashions. Then, in their prepubescent years we lament their lack of innocence.

I'm not saying that all sleep training is bad or that we need to ask how high when our child says jump. I am saying that we need to be responsive to our children's needs and add them to the mix when we make our parenting choices. Any parenting method only works if your family can implement and success with it. That said, I am hard-pressed to believe that it is in any child's best interest to have their needs be ignored and that a lot of parents have no problems with Fereberizing.

If you find yourself in a situation where you have to leave the house while your child cries or you sit on the other side of their door weeping along with them can you honestly say that this method "works for us"?

We've Arrived!

Safe and somewhat sound. I'll go into the whole story later. :)

Here are a couple of pictures from hell...err...the plane. And how I carted my carseats through the airport.

We're off to Israel!

Our flight leaves early so we will be leaving the house bright and early. We'll be gone for two weeks and I hope to update a bit from overseas, but who knows what kind of time I'll get. So I've set some posts to go live while we're gone.

I'll be available via email if you need me, but won't be on Twitter or Facebook.