Bringing Monster Home...

I had my first baby in 2004 and like many new mothers, I had great expectations of what motherhood would be like. I figured, naively, I would nurse my baby for at least a year, feed her organic pureed baby food at exactly 6 months, and have her sleep on her own in her crib every night by just putting her down. Even though my husband and I were both terrible sleepers as children, I still thought life would be different for our little angel.

Our little angel is now 3.5 years old and if you turn your computer off and listen very carefully, you should be able to hear her screaming. Even if you live in outer Mongolia. She's done brushing her teeth and is getting ready for bed. Bedtime has been a challenge since she came out of the womb. Even the nurses at the hospital knew something was different about this little, dare I say, monster. They kept referring to her as an "alert" baby. We didn't know what that meant until a few days after we brought her home. Alert = screams her head off

No, she didn't have colic. She had something worse. It's called "curiosity". We realized something was up with her when she was a couple months old and she was screaming her head off in her crib one night. It had just snowed and the snow plows were clearing up our street. We thought maybe the noise woke her up and it did but that's not why she was crying. She wanted to SEE what was making the noise. And from that day on we realized it was easier to show her what was making the noise instead of trying to put her back to sleep for several hours (while enduring the aforementioned screaming).

Needless to say, we've made some mistakes along the way. Sometimes I wish we could have kidnapped our midwife and forced her to live with us. No judge with kids would have put us away for that one. At least not one that heard the screaming. I stumbled upon a little gem a few months ago that would have helped us greatly. It's like having a midwife in your own home (except without the kidnapping charges). It's a parenting DVD called "Bringing Baby Home". Notice how they use the word "baby" and not "monster". Anyways, it's from a production company (read: two moms with 6 kids between them) called "Liandrea". It's like a prenatal class that never stops giving (if you put it in constant loop on your DVD player). Try it, you may end up slightly better off, if not much better off, than me.