Game Day Dad

This one is a tough one because there’s no cut and dry answer to it.    There’ll be times when your baby is cranky, tired and just won’t go to sleep.   They’ll just continue to play and/or squirm about with no real reason crying the whole time.   Most of us as guys are fixers and we’re going to sit there with our baby like some sort of screaming rubik cube.   The only problem is this puzzle can’t be solved by holding it and moving it around.

As you’ve had your child for a while you’ll know what their cries and attitudes mean.   You’ll be able to hear the difference between hurt, hungry and being a brat in their voice.     This experience will allow you to know when you can do what I’m saying next.

Let your baby cry themself to sleep in their crib.

My daughter fights her sleep terribly so we’ve had to become masters of this quick.   She doesn’t want to sleep as if she’s scared she’ll miss something.    So sometimes when we’ve tried it all we just let her cry until she goes to sleep.   We monitor her of course and many times we bend and go pick her up but you’ve got to know that option has to be used for your sanity and for your babies growth.

What Doctors Say About Crying

They’ll always say it depends however I’ll tell you what the on call nurse told us when we called about crying.   Our baby had never cried longer than 10 minutes and one night she was just fussing badly for over 30 minutes.   The nurse told us if there wasn’t anything obviously wrong they won’t even worry about it until the baby had cried for over 2 hours continuously.    At around the 1 hour 15 minute mark our little pumpkin went to sleep and stayed down all night.   We attributed it to gas but we’ll never really know because it didn’t happen again.

When your baby starts teething

From around 5-7 months(guessing) you’ll notice your baby starting to get a little fussy.   As a dad you’re always looking to fix problems if you’re anything like me.   I’ll pick her up, run through the make me cozy checklist and one day it started to not be enough.   She was really grumpy and just all over the place like she was possessed.   So my wife being on top of things as always proposed it’s teething time.  We tried everything and trust me moms and dads you want to be ready to handle this.  Here are some things that worked a little:

Baby Teething tablets – They melt in her mouth and seem to help a little but not really.  I think it just distracts her.

Baby Teething rings – Little plastic rings that you can cool in the refrigerator. Seems to work best and helps out.

Sophie the Giraffe – I call this one a gamble because it’s a $20 all natural rubber giraffe that’s world famous as a toy infants love and it’s great for teething because they can grab it by the neck and chew on the head. Our baby uses it a little but doesn’t seem to have developed any favoritism towards it. She likes her $1 rings just as much. When I picked it up I was willing to try anything and I think that’s the basis for their sales model. If you check out Youtube or Amazon reviews you’ll see a lot of happy customers. I’m satisfied but not 100% sold that it’s any better than cold plastic teethers.