Finn Instruction Manual

Hi Vanessa Finnie,

I’m in the car on the way to Ontario for our weekend visit. Finn is sleeping, so I’m going to write a few notes you can refer to when you step in to take care of him in the next little bit. Of course, Arne will be around to give a hand wherever needed, and there is so much that is just plain evident. So I’ll try to pick the less obvious, more interesting aspects of being with Finn.

Let me get the basics covered off the top:

We have a diaper service that picks up dirty cloth diapers every Thursday. Finn wears cloth diapers all day, but we find the only way we don’t have to get up to change him in the middle of the night is for him to wear a disposable.  I’ll show you how to fold the diapers inside the covers, which snap on snugly. It seems to work pretty well. The only time he leaks is if we didn’t change him soon enough. I find every two hours is fine, but not much longer. Sometimes shorter when he does his business, which he makes quite a production out of, so you’ll know when that’s happening. You can wet one of the diapers (piles of them on the dryer) to use as a wipe, or there are disposable wipes on the change table if he is too wriggly or whatever.  If it’s a wet diaper, we’ve been in the habit of wetting a cloth (found in the upper right hand drawer) with warm water, wiping it, then throwing it straight into the washing machine). If he needs it (redness/ chafing), I put a teeney bit of diaper cream, it’s the Burts Bees stuff. He often likes to hold that tube while I’m changing him. If he is very wriggley and trying to roll over on the change table, you can distract him with the tube, or by batting the mobiles so that they swing around, or singing him a song. But sometimes I just have to let him roll over, and sometimes we give him some naked time (often before getting dressed in the morning, or before pyjamas in the evening) on the yoga mats. You likely won’t be ‘on duty’ then. But feel free to let him roam free. Just follow him with diapers. And once he really gets crawling around, watch him on those carpets…J The more Finn can make sensory connections with peeing then the more straightforward potty training will be. So naked time always has a pee or two. It’s kind of funny. There is this whole approach where parents train tiny babies to use toilets by making sounds that the babies associate with pee/ poo. I don’t know how any of this works, but I feel like the more this happens where he has us make a big to-do about cleaning him up after he makes a mess, he’ll start understanding the feeling of soiling and feeling clean, and then slowly make the toilet connection. When he’s bigger, and able, I read that it’s good to start having a toddler help with their own diaper changing, to do it standing up, and to do it in the bathroom, again, to get closer to how it works for the trained; but that’s a ways off.

Clothes are plentiful. You’ll get the general [dis]organization of the drawers. If something doesn’t fit him anymore, it gets put in a bag hanging beside the washing machine (if its clean) and I’ll put it into storage. The chest of drawers goes something like this:

Onsies                                    carriers                        diaper stuff           
trousers/ sweaters            hats/bibs                        trousers /sweaters
pyjamas                        socks/shoes                        trousers / sweaters

Milk Feeds:

So, I told you of our whole breastfeeding drama. Basically, I can’t breastfeed, no one can tell me why.  I pumped until I felt like a cow, took tons of medication, and we did all these really laborious feeding procedures for the first couple of months before it became abundantly clear that I don’t produce more than a few drops of milk and so bottle feeding it is.

As I also told you, we had angels come and give us milk: the first one, Marlene, had a baby really, really early and had to pump while she sat beside her tiny, tiny baby all day and all night in the ICU. She only used a couple of table spoons a day for the baby until she got stronger. So for six or seven weeks, we picked up all the milk she pumped in the days prior and fed it to Finn. I have to write Marlene, and I’ll get you to help me because I am terrible at writing en français. Finn gained a pound a week for the entire time he drank Marlene’s milk, which was calibrated to her preemie.  Hale and hearty he is.

The next angel was Emily who pumped and labeled loads and loads of milk for her little baby to drink when she had to go to daycare at a very early age (the family lives in the states where there is practically no maternity leave). The baby developed tons of allergies at the daycare and couldn’t tolerate her mother’s milk. It took them a long time to figure out what to do, and in the meantime, Emily had pumped and frozen months worth of milk.  She came to a nursing café/shop in Montreal, Melons et Clementines, and mentioned she had milk to give. I had been in there earlier and had told the first part of the story. I had left my card in case such a thing happened. It turned out that Emily lives one town over from Arne’s parents in Massachusetts, and he was heading there already. So he came back with four massive coolers full of milk that we shared with another family in the same situation as we were.

There is one more angel, Heidi, who just gave us another big batch which is in the freezer right now. We mix it with the formula (you won’t have to do this, we’ll get the bottles ready) because it’s hard for Finn to adjust from breastmilk to formula to breastmilk, so mixing it keeps it familiar.

We’re going to switch formulas too. I had no idea what to give him, and this stuff is all so industrial (not to mention all the scandals so many of us associate with big corporations pushing formula over the perfection of breastmilk for profit to the detriment of so many, many millions of babies in poor countries). But I’ve found some organic formula on line, so we’ll start ordering that soon.

Anyway, Heidi, the third angel, had the opposite problem to me in that she produced too much milk. So she gave Finn the overflow and then pumped more for him besides. So Finn has been fed by the world over, not just his mommy. And all through this, like I told you the other day, Finn has demonstrated his loyalty by nursing at my breast all the same.

He’ll take a bottle every 3 or 4 hours, of about 7 or 8 ounces. If he took more like 9 it would be good because he would surely go a three or four hour block before the next one. Sometimes he’ll take half the bottle, have a little play, and then take more in ten or fifteen minutes.

Food.

Meals with Finn are hilarious. We’ve opted to give him whole foods and let him work out how to eat things. Especially with the whole breast feeding fiasco I wanted to bring lots of variety of real tastes and textures as soon as he was ready to try solid food so that he wouldn’t be a picky eater. Babies that have formula have the totally unnatural experience of the same taste all the time (of course Finn has had even more variety than even most bf babies with all the milk he was given).

Anyway, it always struck me as strange that we say ‘solid food’ about stuff that is mashed up into a puree. And Finn wouldn’t have any of it anyway. The first time I gave him mashed up sweet potatoes he grabbed the spoon with his strongman grip and refused it entry.

So it turns out it makes more sense to just give him his bowl full of spaghetti and sauce and meatballs and he has a riot sucking up the noodles and grabbing things and poking around and making a massive mess.

This approach has been monikered “Baby led weaning”. There are loads of sites and blogs and stuff on it, and a book that I got from the library. But this really can’t be that interesting to anybody but new parents, so here is the low down:

First, we’re not to give him any of the following:

·      Nuts

·      Sugar

·      salt/ salty foods (olives, parmesan, and things like bread or cheese you want to limit to once a day)

·      cows milk (until after he is weaned)

·      egg whites            (common allergen)

·      strawberries (common allergen)

And I’m going to really try to stick to organic .

From there, the sky is the limit!

Generally, we’ll have stuff ready you can give him for lunch, you’ll witness the hilarity of mealtime when it is not you that has to clean up afterwards, and you’ll see how independently he eats.

So the key is, never force, never put food in a baby’s mouth (a rule we break with soup and cereal, but he seems to want that). The aim is a baby independently feeding themselves by about ten months on. Even with a spoon, which Finn is trying to figure out. And in the longterm, he’ll hopefully always be someone who can trust that he knows what he needs to eat to stay healthy, and who loves the social and sensual aspects of eating.

I’ve given him meat a handful of times to see if he shows preferences. Too early yet. He’ll be mostly veg, like me.

Okay, I’ve talked diapers, dress, milk, food. There are a few other things I’ve really enjoyed with Finn that we mentioned to you already. One is that he’s still small enough to really enjoy spending a few hours a day in a carrier. He’ll nap in there, and happily watch whatever you’re doing while he’s awake. The carrier we have can go on your front or your back, I’ll show you, and you can adjust it to fit you. I have the manual for it in the top drawer of the cabinet in the front hallway.

Another nice thing we’ve happened upon is sign language for babies. We watched a DVD that gives the basics, and we have a little chart with the twenty or thirty signs we’ll work up to. But for now it is milk, more, and water. Arne is also working on “all done” and “toilet.” We’ll wait until he uses a sign on his own to start building up the vocab further. It’s amazing, babies will use a sign six months or more before they are able to speak a word. The only trick is remembering to use the sign when you say the word to him.

If you’re interested in the psychology/ development of all this, I have some good stuff to read. The language piece in NurtureShock by **** is a good list of tricks for facilitating language in babies. And the earlier babies speak, the faster comes literacy, and the easier is school, and then life, and… well, don’t I sound like the overachiever.

Sleep.

This piece is   both for when you’re caring for Finn, and when you’re (hopefully not) awoken by him at night when you’re not at all on duty. He still wakes at night for milk. We’re leaving it until 10 months before we start trying to train him to sleep through the night. He whines a bit, then drinks a bottle, then is back asleep. Usually he awakes around midnight and then in the wee hours, like four.

One of the important things we learned about his sleep habits, is that the more he naps, the better he sleeps at night. Currently, he’ll have a nap in the morning, around ten, then another mid afternoon, around two (though Arne finds it happens more at around three or four, he can add in here). One of these naps should be substantial, like two hours, and the other at least an hour.

You may get to know when, if he wakes up, he’ll go back to sleep. But essentially, despite still waking at night, he’s a good little sleeper. He’ll catch up when he needs to, he can sleep in different environments, and actually seems to sleep better when it’s not too quiet. He can skip a nap here and there too, so it’s not like you have to plan your day around his naps.

You won’t have to worry about bedtime. So for naps, you’re putting him to bed as soon as you see an eye rub, or a yawn, or if he’s whiney. You probably know this part well from the other family you worked for. We put him in the crib, or in the middle of the bed. I’ve been coddling him by helping him off to sleep before I leave the room, but I’ve also seen him drift off on his own, which is good for him to do.

I’ll look forward to seeing what your instincts are around any of this stuff: the sleeping, the eating, whatever. Tell me if anything feels counterintuitive.

There are a few little easy escapes you can do with Finnie to get out, which I try to do with him almost every day: the lower level of the Mile End Library (Park/St-Viateur) is great, he likes the fish tank and watching other kids play. La Tasse Gamine (Parc / between Bernard and St. V) is a cute place to meet up with other moms and babies.  Same thing minus the café part at La Maison Buisonniere (Parc / s of St-Viateur). He likes walks in the carrier or the stroller. Y’know, he still needs to get to know the sky, and the trees, and has never seen the spring.  So he’s easy to please. He is so smiley, and that’s the sign that he’s feeling fine. If you can get him to laugh, you have to tell us what got him going. Right now he thinks its funny when you throw things in the air and catch them. And he thinks puppets are hilarious.

No teeth yet, so he’ll be teething, or maybe is right now.

Eight and a half months, that’s all! So wee!

He is officially crawling now. So your work is cut out for you. Like I said, we really need to babyproof the apartment more. Will do next weekend. Ah!

This is all much too much information so I’ll stop.  I wanted to give you enough to gage the kind of

It’s meant to get you feeling comfortable so that amidst all the changing and feeding and sleeping  and going out and coming home you have some fun!