Raising babies must be tiring, but if the situation is so bad that people feel that [the quality of life has plummeted] [the negative emotions are very heavy], then I think the top priority is not self-enlightenment, but to find ways to improve the quality of life.
As a human being born to covet enjoyment, I have been studying how to raise babies easily and happily since I was pregnant. At present, my son is 15 months old, healthy, lively and good-tempered, eats more than me, sleeps better than pigs, and runs faster than rabbits. My aunts in the family lament that they have never seen such a good baby.
My personal feeling is that the first three months are the most tiring, and then I get better and better. Although the content of my life is very different from that when I was single, the quality of my life has definitely not [plummeted]. My psychological experience is very good, and I have already begun to look forward to having a second child.
The negative impact of raising babies is mainly that it takes up a lot of time and energy, so it should be improved from two aspects:
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Re-planning daily activities and using limited time and energy on the cutting edge;
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Reduce the difficulty of raising babies.
First, minimize unnecessary housework burden
People have so much energy that adding a baby to the family is equivalent to taking an extra job. If you want to catch your breath, you have to try to cut off the housework other than taking the baby.
Of course, if you can afford 10,000 + monthly spouse or child-rearing spouse for a long time, let’s take it as if I didn’t say anything about what.
1. [Outsourcing] housework
My family’s method is to hire part-time workers, buy vegetables, cook, wash clothes and clean up for 3 hours a day, and the family only takes care of the children. Three hours of free time may not be what for families without children, but oasis in the desert for families with children, which I think is very worth it.
If it is not convenient to hire people at home, you can use various black technologies. Fresh e-commerce, take-out App, clothes dryers, sweeping/mopping robots, as well as full-automatic electric rice cookers, electric stews and air fryers are all good helpers that save time and labor.
2. Reasonable [layout]
Another suggestion is to tidy up your home and make sure all your daily necessities are within reach.
At my house:
- Eva’s bedside will always be equipped with clean clothes and large towels, and the situation will be controlled within three seconds in case of emergencies such as spitting milk, wetting the bed and overturning the cup. Diapers, hip cream and massage oil for touching are placed under the diaper table. Vaccine books, medical records and carry-on cups are put in special backpacks for going to the hospital. Adults’ daily necessities are placed according to the same principle (but make sure that EVA cannot get them) and put back in their original place after use.
Don’t underestimate these details. The chaos in the home not only seriously affects the psychological feelings, but also wastes a lot of time looking for things.
Second, the team [combat], unified thinking
The first few months of raising babies were a war.
Newborns sleep most of the time except for breast milk, which is not difficult to take care of, but the frequency is high and they are fed milk every two hours and diapers every four hours. If the mother takes care of them alone, she has almost no sleep time, and maternal love cannot hold on even if it is great.
The ideal configuration is: 2-3 adults work together, but not more than 4 people (including the monthly spouse), otherwise the communication cost is too high.
1. My [team] composition
My son lived in the Yuezi Club in the first month of his birth, and the whole family learned the skills of taking babies with nurses.
After the full moon, I, my father and my mother will take shifts. My mother and I will take charge of the day shift from 8: 00 a.m. to 12: 00 p.m. and change shifts every 4 hours. The father of the child is on night shift, and his duties include putting the baby into my arms to nurse on time without waking me up. After feeding, he burps and holds it vertically for half an hour to prevent spitting. When the baby is baby, he immediately takes it to the toilet to change diapers and coax him to sleep. He makes a noise to disturb other team members (that is, my mother and I) to rest. Even if the task fails, he will deduct pocket money.
This scheme can ensure the rest time of everyone in the family and greatly improve the experience of taking babies.
If father can’t work night shift during the day, he can give it to his wife. However, during the day, time should be set aside for the monthly sister-in-law to rest. After all, the family is also a human being.
2. What if the concepts are inconsistent?
The key points of team operations are that team members must be united in heart, clear in strategy and unified in tactics.
When my son was just born, my mother-in-law came to help her. She had to use cotton diapers, feed sugar water, sleep in her arms, and cover the quilt at 25 degrees room temperature. However, I insisted on using paper diapers, not feeding water, and sleeping on a small bed covered with a thin blanket. After several communication failures, I resolutely expelled my mother-in-law from taking her baby. The whole world was quiet.
Inconsistent parenting concepts among team members will lead to children’s inability to establish good work and rest habits, adults’ negative emotions and team morale decline. Therefore, comrades must be carefully selected and trained in a unified way.
3. Make sure Dad becomes an ally.
It is very important for the father to participate in bringing up the baby. On the one hand, it helps to reduce the burden on the mother and maintain the relationship between husband and wife. On the other hand, it can greatly enhance the relationship between the father and the child
The father has not experienced the process of pregnancy and childbirth, and often cannot feel friendly to the baby like the mother. He even thinks that the child has affected his position in the family. This kind of problem can only be treated by taking the baby in person-the more tired the baby is, the deeper the feelings are. People are so cheap that it is not enough to talk about life without coaxing the baby’s father who wept bitterly late at night.
Three, adhere to scientific parenting, establish work and rest rules
A set of scientific and reasonable work and rest rules that take into account the needs of the whole family are the basis for children’s health, the protection of husband and wife’s feelings, and the source of family peace. Gambling on the dignity of being a parent, one must also protect it!
As soon as the baby was born, she began to consciously cultivate his/her work and rest rules. She did not turn on the light or dimmed the light at night, feeding more and less times. During the day, open the window to bask in the sun and nurse a small number of times, so that if you stick to it for about a month, the baby will sleep sink at night and become more active during the day.
2-4 months is the key period to develop a regular work and rest. We should carefully observe the time when the baby sleeps, eats milk, moves and defecates every day, gradually form a regular pattern, and analyze the causes in time if there are abnormalities.
At that time, my family set up a whiteboard of one meter by one meter and one meter by one meter in the living room to record in detail the activities of each hour in a week. For example, eating more than 20 milliliters of milk at 10: 30 a.m. On Monday delayed the next meal by 15 minutes, which was obvious at a glance.
This schedule should not only meet the needs of the baby’s development (for example, the baby of about 3 months old should sleep 14-16 hours a day), but also meet the needs of other family members-if the baby is used to waking up at 5 o’clock in the morning but the adults are still sleepy to death, then try to adjust the wake-up time of the baby back.
For specific operation methods, please refer to foreign scientific parenting classics and personal recommendations:
- < < Sears Encyclopedia of Intimate Parenting > >; Matsuda Daoxiong < < Finalized Parenting Encyclopedia > >; Mykoff < < Heidi Parenting Encyclopedia (0 ~ 1 years old) > >.
Very detailed, There are clear instructions for breast-feeding posture that never hurts the waist, intestinal flatulence massage and contraception during lactation. Read at least two books, Comparative reading, repeated reading, taking notes, and continuous improvement in practice. Parenting experts on social platforms should pay careful attention to it. It is more reliable to study the small soil and big oranges for infants to sleep and the small Suti riding for infants to supplement food. If you are ill, you still need to go to the hospital.
There are endless benefits of baby’s regular work and rest, such as falling asleep fast at night, not waking up at night, not crying during the day, not eating incense, and not smelling so bad. Baba with irregular work and rest is simply not a creature. Parents also don’t need to turn around the baby 24 hours a day. When the baby sleeps or entertains themselves, they can do whatever they like.
Once the baby forms a stable routine, His/her schedule is the highest and fundamental law in your family. All family activities should be arranged around this schedule, Otherwise, you will experience what’s name [a thousand-mile dike breaks in an ant nest]: infants and young children have weak self-regulation ability. If they postpone their nap for half an hour, they may not be able to sleep. If they cannot sleep, they will be agitated. If they are agitated, they will not be able to eat. If they cannot eat, they will be even more agitated. Then they will cry and make a lot of noise. It is not easy for anyone to coax them. The beautiful day will be over.
All the couriers and takeout workers within one kilometer of my house dare not come to my son’s door during his nap, otherwise there will be extremely bloody violence.
Four, don’t fight with children
After the baby was half a year old, she began to have her own will and could not play with it casually. At this time, the focus of her work gradually shifted from [feeding] to [upbringing].
The upbringing methods of the older generation often tend to two extremes, either laissez-faire or severe suppression. My personal experience is that both methods are very tiring:
- Although laissez-faire is easy for a while, it will give children bad habits, such as chasing and feeding when eating, holding and coaxing when sleeping, and eventually adults will suffer. The suppression method is not only laborious, but also causes children to have a bad temper and oppose adults.
The most efficient way is to guide.
Take changing diapers as an example. After my son climbed, he would never lie down and change diapers honestly. He immediately got up and ran around the bed. Only when the two adults held down and howled like a pig could they kill. Later, I tried Sears’ suggestion and put the clean diaper in front of the baby to make a treasure-like gesture before changing diapers: [Look! A new diaper! How clean and fragrant! [Then sang Gotta Eva’s trousers: [The lower legs drill into the cave ~ the small feet drill out ~ the small buttocks are rolling ~ Tie on a new diaper! ] After tying it, I felt overjoyed and clapped, and it was done. Now just tell her [diaper] and she will lie flat and look at me expectantly.
It is also a good way to teach her to read picture books.
When my son first started adding supplements, In order to feed her quickly, my mother let her feed her toys while playing with them. As a result, Eva ate more and more slowly. She had to eat for more than an hour at a meal and went on hunger strike without toys. His favorite Pu Pulan Painting Hall < < Baby Bear > > series happened to have a volume < < Lunch > >, and I used it as a demonstration every time I ate: [Do you see Baby Bear taking a spoon and eating a big meal? Do you want the baby to eat a big meal? In a few times, he got rid of his slow eating and was very relaxed.
Two points should be paid attention to when communicating with children:
- One is to control your emotions. Children feel your emotions first and then your language. You are anxious and your children are anxious. You are calm and your children are calm. The problem is solved happily. The second is to communicate in a way that children can understand. A child of one or two years old cannot fully understand the language of adults. With simple sentence patterns + gestures + exaggerated facial expressions, children may understand it at once.
Take good care of yourself and persist in keeping fit.
It doesn’t matter how people who don’t have babies like to smoke, drink, stay up late and play games. It will take decades to get retribution anyway, but once they become parents, they must take care of their bodies to a strategic level.
Chronic sub-health state is very annoying, such as waist muscle strain caused by improper posture of milk baby, [mother’s hand] caused by holding baby too much, and cliff makes your quality of life drop to the bottom.
There are many measures to prevent physical strain, such as using breast-feeding pillows or lying down for breast-feeding, holding babies with arms instead of wrists, relaxing muscles with massage balls and hot compress bags, and equipped with modern equipment such as braces, waist stools and baby carriages. The fundamental way is to actively exercise, maintain muscle strength, especially the core strength, and walk easily after practice.
When I was pregnant with my cubs, I had a very good appetite. I felt five nights and six meals a day and especially loved meat. I gained 20kg (covering my face) during my pregnancy. My abdominal muscles completely disappeared. I stood in a pile and lay down in a lump. I had to be pulled by others when I sat up from the bed.
After unloading, I began to resume training:
- After 20 days, take a walk indoors and do simple stretching exercises. After 42 days of puerperium, I began to do aerobic exercises and strength yoga. Starting from three months, challenge high-intensity aerobic exercises.
Four months after delivery, the body shape and physical strength basically recovered. Show a photo of about four months:
Several Points to Pay Attention to in Postpartum Fitness:
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Step by step, do what you can;
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Avoid high impact movements such as Burpee. The joints are relaxed and easy to be injured within half a year after delivery.
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Wear appropriate sports lingerie, especially breast-feeding mothers, who really knows who uses it;
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Choose simple and easy sports.
It is basically impossible to spend two or three hours in the gym when there are babies waiting to be fed at home. You can choose a training program with high efficiency and low threshold. It only takes 10 to 20 minutes a day, and you will take on a new look in a month.
Practice your strength well, not only will it be easier to hold your baby, but your self-confidence will also be greatly improved. You will be proud to take your baby out for a walk.
Set aside the whole time to do what you love to do.
Raising babies is a protracted war. Every soldier needs a little adjustment, comfort and spiritual sustenance.
Make full use of your spare time to do what you need to do and set aside the whole time to do what you love to do. Whether reading, writing or playing games, your quality of life can rise to a higher level.
In the past year, I have read more than a dozen books on parenting, time management and psychological treatment, all of which I read while nursing, squatting in the pit and taking the subway. The whole spare time is reserved for reading novels, watching videos and brushing scientific and technological news. I go to the cinema at least once a month, do my nails regularly, and do an ultrasonic scalpel.
In front of bottles and diapers, also want to maintain a single dog’s elegance.
A very successful girl and a lovely friend once told me that it takes a lot of perseverance to continue to fight for a career after having children, because the satisfaction brought by children is too strong. These days I taught my son how to count. When he put up a little finger and said clearly [1 ~ ~ ~], I felt more excited than when I wrote the cover manuscript for the first time.
Every child is unique. It is a very wonderful and wonderful thing in life to meet this little life and spend decades together. I hope every day you are together is happy.