Ancestral Parenting

Anna Tennis wrote:Ours started signing and talking around the same time, but we weren't very assiduous about using signs in the first place. I've heard of babies of deaf or hearing impaired parents starting to sign around 4 months old.

Stephanie Ladd wrote:The ones who did do it, the parents were also doing it, but like I said, it was right when they started talking. And then it actually delayed their speech because they could just sign it.

Stephanie Ladd wrote:Thank you for your story, I really enjoyed reading it.

What an inspiration! At Thanksgiving with my very mainstream family, home birth came up. Man, people come up with horror stories! I mean, I know bad things can happen. It's the way of the world. But our culture is so so so fear based, it's a wonder we are able to make any decisions at all!

Stephanie Ladd wrote:

For the first couple days, have something to feed your baby, in case your milk is slow in producing. Me and baby were bawling on the floor at 2 am. Not enough milk. My body caught up and all was good.

I wonder, ancestrally, if other women nursed infants if mama's milk was slow to come in. Or did they never have that problem at all?

They definitely did have that problem sometimes, too, probably the same as us for individual hiccups and difficult starts. But definitely in extreme situations: starving mothers generally lose their milk, and often lose the baby. Our ancestors did endure that at many times. February is sometimes called "the hungry month."

My milk didn't come in until day 4, and when it did, my breasts were so engorged my son couldn't even latch. It was painful, and we just cried and cried. My husband had to help. We ended up expressing a small amount into a cup, and my husband fed him with a syringe at my breast to encourage him to latch. When he finally did, the pain was excruciating, but after a week or so, it subsided.

Stephanie Ladd wrote:

I have a dream at least once a week that I have a baby and I can't breastfeed. They are very vivid dreams and it's always me trying to nurse and nothing is coming out and I just keep saying to myself "keep trying, don't give up".

Oh don't even worry! Seriously, I think it's something like 97% of women can physically nurse, but the majority that fail just get bad information, supplement too early, or are just overwhelmed with the process (which is completely understandable, it is without a doubt the most exhaustive part of parenting).

I don't understand the not birthing over winter thing at all. I'm not sure about seasonal mating cycles, but babies are incredibly resilient - I've read that in European countries like Iceland children actually nap outdoors. And my son never really got sick or anything. If anything, it was awesome not being hugely pregnant during the hottest time of the year. I'm going to plan every future pregnancy the same way if I can.

(Yes, breast fed babies too. Breast feeding is hugely helpful, but it's not a guarantee of perfect health.)

I think one thing that helps if you do end up with a fall or winter baby (mine was October) is to limit their exposure to germs. Don't take them shopping or to daycare/babygroups, and make sure to change your clothes when you come home from work where people have been coughing (my husband is a phlebotomist in a big hospital, so we had to do a lot of quarantining).

I worked in preschool for six years before I had my little one, and was only took a sick day once a year. I think this really helped keep my son healthy. He only had one actual sickness in his whole first year. He actually got sick LESS two years ago when he was 4 months old, than he does now at 2 years! Now he isn't getting nearly as much breast milk as he did back then, and so is more reliant on his immune system than mine. My husband has also been more lax about changing out of his work clothes, and our son plays with other kids. These things really do play a big role!

Steven Kovacs wrote:Stephanie,

Congratulations on your pregnancy! "Morning" (ha ha) sickness can be terrible, though there is apparently some evidence that it is one indicator of a healthy pregnancy. Don't beat yourself up for your diet - the hit to your energy, plus the weird effects you may be seeing in terms of what food you crave or are repulsed from, will screw up even the best intentions for a diet plan. My wife found that keeping bland starches (saltines, etc.) by the bedside table helped a lot with the nausea.

Congratulations too on finding a midwife and managing to reduce your hours at work. Don't expect to get much done in the first 3 months after the baby is born, though. Some people do, and certainly the baby in the "fourth trimester" is very portable and sleeps a lot, but it can be a particularly exhausting period for everyone in the family.

Mick Fisch wrote:Stephanie,

Each person is different, so what I suggest may not work for you. My wife dealt with this through 9 pregnancies. What we found worked for her was that she had to nibble on a little bit of cheese before she raised her head off the pillow in the morning headed it off. If she raised her head up first, it was too late and she was making offerings to the porcelain god. If cheese doesn't work for you, then try something else. You need something on your stomach before you get up.

My wife would kick me out of bed to get her whatever she felt like she needed to eat an hour or so before she had to get up. I found with practice I could hold onto the sleep mode enough to get her what she needed and drop right back to sleep. This served me well when I was the baby burper in the middle of the night later on.

We did both standard hospital deliveries and midwife. My wife quickly decided that midwife was the only way to go and after that we only used midwives. We opted for a midwife in the hospital.

Don't beat yourself up about your activity level, etc. Your body is busy just growing a baby.

Stephanie Ladd wrote:
I have heard about the saltines thing, but they repulse me so I haven't tried them. I notice if I don't throw up in the morning, I have a much harder day. Like I'll be sick all day until I go to sleep. But if I do throw up in the morning, it seems to be an easier day. So that's been a weird thing.

Stephanie Ladd wrote:
Im quite upset that I haven't been able to eat liver and minimal veggies. I chose not to take prenatal vitamins or folic acid before I got pregnant and even now. And I'm always a little nervous about that decision. I know the window for neural tube defects is very early on, like first month of pregnancy. I ate lots of healthy greens, beets, and liver in the time period. But at 6 weeks when the sickness hit, all that went away. I'm bad at remember pills so I didn't take the folate. so I'm feeling very paranoid about my choices. And people haven't been shy about telling me about how stupid my decision was.

Nicole Alderman wrote:
A month or more before you give birth, start making and freezing dinners and get as many easy, healthy meals as you can ready.

Amazingly enough, even without folate pills, the vast majority of kids all over the world and throughout history come out fine. I'm sure it pisses off the pill companies, but that's the facts.

Pregnancy is so exhausting, I couldn't believe how tired I was, especially during that first trimester.

I chose to take prenatals because my diet was absurdly lacking in nutrients much of the time, and I just ate whatever didn't make me want to puke, which was usually just crackers and cupcakes up until I was around 4 or 5 months pregnant.

And, it barely lessened in my second and third trimester.

Another suggestion for the nausea is rice toast/crackers and ginger. Those really helped with my more nauseous moments and helped prevent me from barfing. I also second not going long without food. Keep snacking, on whatever is healthy that you can keep down. It really helps a lot!

never did eat the placenta, though (maybe it would have helped!).

A month or more before you give birth, start making and freezing dinners and get as many easy, healthy meals as you can ready. Get people to help you, even if you have to beg (I would have had to beg, because every time I called my parents about what was going on, they just said my Mom did it by herself, and therefore so could I). Get your husband to take time off if he can, and don't let him work overtime unless it's absolutely necessary!

Just a little nutrition note. When we lived in Alaska a friend of ours was pregnant and severely anemic. Her doctor told her she was going to need iron shots, which I hear are really painful. She asked if there was anything she could do to avoid it and he said, "Yes, if you eat moose a couple of times a week you'll be fine". I mention this because all meat isn't the same (Capt. Obvious strikes again). Moose are browsers and really like willows, which are incredibly mineral rich (They grow a huge rack of mostly calcium in a few months). Since deer are also browsers I would guess their meat would be similar (except here in Indiana with our corn fed deer population. We aren't what we eat, we are what we eat eats. Better soil = better vegies, better graze or browse = better meat.