Ask for Help With Your Baby

One mistake I made when my baby was born was to turn into a control freak. I just would not let others help me with my problems. It's because I felt like I had to be hands on all the time. I was particularly mean to my partner that way. He felt like I did not trust him.
The truth is that I made a mistake by not letting the father of my child help me more. I did not give him the chance to help me with the baby. I treated him like he was clueless and therefore he acted like he was. It was not that I deliberately set him up to fail but I did not encourage him to help me as much as I should have. I also felt like I was going to have to teach him everything.
I regret that attitude especially as I see how great he is with the children now. I realize that he could have learned by trial and error how to take care of the kids just like I did. I was just as clueless as him when I took home our very first child.
Very few husbands walk away from helping. However there are that few that go 'You are much better than me than that stuff.' Don't let your husband get away with this. He is just as responsible as you for the post labor predicaments that take place. If you don't give them an opportunity to practice their parenting skills they will never learn them at all.
I found too that I had great success with simply turning to other women for help. I had many neighbours take me under their wings. As I was new when I first moved here they helped me find everything from a paediatrician to a yoga class to a preschool. They also kept me sane after the baby was born. I really do think that the wisdom and compassion of other women is absolutely essential after you give birth. It seems that only another mother can truly understand how excited, overwhelmed and scared we feel when we first have a baby. Let's face it! It is just too hard to talk to a man about things like nipple latching' or nipple cream.
Yet another good reason for bonding with women in your neighbourhood simply to help each other with things likes babysitting. I shared a sitter twice a week with one neighbour just to give my other kids some play time together and to keep the total costs of my babysitting down.
You might also have to eliminate friends who are just not that helpful or critical of your mothering skills. Some of us have friends that are giant children in themselves. They are like grown up little girls and expect you to mother them even after you have had a child of your own. Needy girlfriends may no longer be able to get the attention that they seek from you.

Parenting Tips
, , , , , , , , ,

Hands Free Tech for Moms

If you are a busy mommy you might want to investigate one of the handsfree headsets that are available. You can connect them to your cell phone so you can move around and talk to anyone you want while wrangling your babies and toddler. It also allows you to be in close proximity to your hubby.
It is not such a bad idea to go handsfree anyway mostly because it is now against the law in most countries to drive while holding a cell phone. You may now only use a handsfree device like a Bluetooth headset in order to drive a car. Add screaming children in the back seat to the equation and you get the idea.
You can expect to pay about forty five bucks or more for a really good Bluetooth handset. These are also become more technologically sophisticated every day.
My kids are always screaming so I got a Jawbone II. The Jawbone II is a noise elimination technology that has been developed to block out unwanted sounds. It is a very stylish looking Bluetooth headset with sensors in it that actually allows you to distinguish your voice from background noise. It is stylish black rubber and was created with athletes in mind as it is both water and sweat resistant. Perhaps that is why it works so well for me. It prevents me from being covered with too many bodily fluids.
Another stylish black headset is the JayBird JB-200 which does more than just make phone calls. It is designed for music lovers and Bluetooth cell phones and when you play it you can listen to streaming stereo music at the same time. It too is water and sweat resistant but a little bit expensive at $130.00.
Setting up a Bluetooth Headset with cell phone is pretty easy. The procedure is called pairing and there is always a salesman around to give you advice about this. The pairing steps often differ from phone to phone so you need to consult the set up guides that came with your phone to verify that your steps will work. All in all it should only take about five minutes or less to pair up your phone with the exactly right type of headset.
Before pairing you should make sure that you have a Bluetooth compatible phone in the first place. Most phones are as it is considered a standard feature but if you are using an older phone this may not be the case.
You should also make sure that your phone is charged before you try pairing it with a Bluetooth device or the pairing with the headset will not work. Usually it is simply a matter of turning on your phone's Bluetooth feature by setting up the connection between headset and phone. This typically means navigating to a screen where you can adjust the settings right on the cell phone menu. It is not a big deal at all and even as a busy mommy I was able to do it all by myself.

Parenting Tips
, , , , , , , , ,