Tip #43: Time medications if they have sugar

I have just learned if you are giving your child a medication that is suspended in a sugary syrup that you should not give it to them just before bed. We just started a course of antibiotics and we have gone from a sleepy baby to a jacked-up-on-sugar baby.

Tip #32: Diapering a supersoaker overnight

Our son has been soaking through every diaper we've tried on him overnight, from several kinds of cloth to several kinds of disposables. I hit up the Arlington Parent's e-mail list for some advice and had lots of great responses. Here's the summary:

Disposables

• Huggies overnight were the preferred brand by far
• Tip: Add a disposable diaper liner (they are similar to maxi pads). Buy plastic-free, biodegradable liners from gDiapers
  
• Tip: Tuck in the top of the diaper to stop overflow
• Tip: Buy a larger diaper (one mom pointed out with variation in lengths, they may grow out of a size before the upper end of the weight limit is met).
• Tip: Put a pull up diaper over a disposable.
  

Cloth

• The general thought was to add a doubler.
• Favorite disposable doubler: gDiapers
• Favorite place to look for cloth doublers: Diaper Lab
• Tip: Choose a fleece lined doubler for next to baby's skin, it will feel dryer longer.
• Tip: Use more than one doubler.
  

Tip #26: Make that a replacable lovey

There's lots of advice out there that suggests (when babies are old enough ~6months) to introduce a 'transition object'. This lovey is an object of some kind that your infant will become attached to and when you put them down to bed, will help soothe them to sleep in place of you. The best advice I've heard, whatever you introduce as a lovey, make sure you can buy another (and in fact, buy a couple up front if they do get attached to it).

Source: Multiple books, newsletters, and advice of other moms (heck, I even noticed at Isis Maternity, they are selling packs of three Angel Dear lovies).

Resource: Track your baby's patterns

I've been using Trixie Tracker to monitor our baby's sleep patterns. You can also keep track of nursing, bottles, pumping, and diapers. It's fantastic if you have a daycare provider (like a Grandparent or a nanny) who will use it too. It gives me my fix of knowing what's going on in my little guy's day and how much milk he's drinking (and if I'm balancing that by pumping).

Here's an example of a sleep report, the hope is we would be able to pick up on patterns of napping. You can see our little one wakes up pretty consistently at the same time and then takes a morning nap an hour-and-a-half after he wakes up (this is oriented with midnight on the far left and right and 6am is that very solid line). Of course then it's hard to say if there's any pattern for the rest of the day.
They have a 14 day free trial that will help you decide if you want to keep using it.

Source: Friend

Poll Results: Favorite Swaddling Blanket

Thanks everyone who voted for a favorite swaddling blanket (there were 11 voters). I learned a little something about polls, I should have labeled this one "What swaddling blanket works for you?" Since, clearly, who ever tries something new when something is already working? Here are the results:

Kiddopatomus SwaddleMe	4
Miracle Blanket	3
The Woombie	2
Aden and Anais Blankets	1
Receiving Blanket	1
Halo Sleep Sack	0

Tip #6 - Don't be dooped when buying a crib

One tip we picked up from Baby Bargains, was to check how well a store had put a crib together. The authors heard from one reader (who worked in a furniture store) that stores would try and trick buyers into thinking the cheaper cribs were less sturdy by not fully screwing everything together well. We were disgusted to find this put into use at Jordan's furniture store. Their lowest end model had a lower, corner screw completely unscrewed (we were able to pluck it out!).

Source: Baby Bargains, Denise and Alan Fields, 7th edition, Windsor Peak Press.