I am so angry I'm shaking right now.

I was driving into work this morning and I had WPDH on the radio during the Coop and Kricket show. They were discussing the mother breastfeeding a 3 year old on the cover of Time Magazine. Coop went into this rant where he called the mother a whore and went on to say:

"What I blame is the husband-or should I say domestic partner since they're in California. But I blame the man. He should keep better control of his woman and get his boy to grow some hair down there. If that wouldn't fly. If that was my wife, they'd find her in a suitcase in my basement."

I'm so filled with shock and anger and rage right now. It goes without saying I won't listen to that station again. I'm going to write a letter and boycott advertisers too.

ETA: This accidentally got posted twice. As both posts have a number of comments, I hesitate to have one deleted. Please accept my apologies for the double-post.

So. My biggest problem as a parent has been sleep. We've coslept since birth and she still nurses to sleep. My daughter sleeps long and hard- she always has been a good sleeper. She was one of those babies who slept 6 hours a night from a month old, and aside from bouts of gas or teething, has always been like that. The problem is that, much like her mother, she sleeps a LOT, and she hates waking up earlier than she naturally would. She's two and a half now, and this has been going on for probably the last year. I haven't honestly tried that hard to fix it, because I like to stay up late and sleep in as well, and I'm a SAHM, so who gave a crap if we woke up at noon? But now I'm trying to get more involved in my community and going to LLL meetings and birth doula stuff, and this is seriously interfering with my ability to get things done.

What we seem to be stuck in right now is this perpetual cycle of going to sleep an hour or two later every night and waking up later every morning. Trying to get her to wake up earlier -I can MAYBE swing half an hour to an hour at a time- is a complete horror. She screams and cries like you're shoving bamboo shoots up her fingernails. It's not a tantrum cry, it's a distress cry. If I get her up anyway and take her somewhere- to the park, to a playgroup- she will tantrum until I nurse her, and then she's OUT like a light. If I refuse to nurse her, she will lie down and fall asleep herself. ANYWHERE. She has lain down in the middle of a park and crashed out. She fell asleep during 4th of July fireworks this way. She can and will sleep anywhere.

She also falls asleep easily in the car, so I have to be very careful about where and when I go out during the day and how long the drive is, so she doesn't nap too long and gets off schedule that way. Even a 20 minute nap after three PM throws her off, and makes it harder to get to sleep that night.

My real problem is that I have yet to find a way to ease her into sleep. Our bedtime routine works fine, up until the "lie down and go to sleep" part. If she's not already THISCLOSE to sleep, she will nurse for a bit, but then she wants to get up and leave the bedroom or she'll try and crawl off the bed and find things to play with there.

I've tried locking us both into the bedroom and just keep hauling her back into bed, but it's SO stressful on both of us- she freaks out and I have to physically pick her 25 pounds of kicking, screaming toddler up and put her back in bed every 20 seconds. I just cannot listen to that kind of screaming for that long, and I have never, ever gotten it to work before I was literally shaking and crying right there with her. Leaving her there by herself to scream isn't an option- I tried that last night, because I was really starting to lose it because it was two AM and I was so tired from waking up at nine that day and volunteering for World Breastfeeding Month. I went to go take a shower in the back bathroom so I couldn't hear her and maybe 10 minutes later, she was absolutely hysterical. She was hyperventilating, shaking, she couldn't even walk to me. She couldn't even nurse for almost five minutes until she calmed down. So, needless to say, we will NOT be repeating that experience.

This is basically what I have to work with:
1. Waking her up earlier in the day doesn't help, because she is a MAJOR CRANKYPANTS all day, and she will fall asleep the first minute she can
2. If she skips a nap, she WILL make up for it as soon as she can, even at 6, 7, 8, 9 o'clock at night, then she wakes up two hours later ready to go for another six hours. Even in a busy place with lots of fun stuff going on, she'll crash out somewhere. Waking her up is impossible unless I sit there and poke her awake every two minutes, which is needlessly torturesome for both of us.
3. She can fall asleep without nursing fairly well IF she's already tired, and she can sleep by herself without me in bed IF she's ready to go to sleep
4. Bathtime and massage stimulate her more, so we do that in the morning.
5. Brushing her teeth is also a freakshow, because she hates it with the fire of a thousand suns, and will throw up because I have to hold her down to do it (her teeth are really bad, she's going under general in a few weeks to have crowns put on her front teeth, so this is NOT optional) and then her saliva and toothpaste run down her throat and gag her. This doesn't help bedtime routine, obviously.

So what do I do when it's bedtime, and she won't fall asleep?
What do I do when she doesn't nap, and then she wants to fall asleep too late?
What do I do to keep her from falling asleep in the car?

I would welcome any suggestions about how to gently get her to wake up earlier, how to keep a nap schedule, and what to do at bedtime. Thanks.

We have been cosleeping with our daughter since birth. For naptime, I used to nurse her down and leave her once she was asleep.
Now she's 19 months old and is really starting to fight naps. She managed to keep from taking one all day yesterday. I have gone back to work, but my husband used to be able to put her to sleep by giving her a bottle and laying down with her. Even on the weekends when she's with me, she fights it so hard that sometimes I have to keep laying her back down, telling her it's naptime, and letting her scream and fight against me until she gets upset, nurses, and passes out. Yesterday, my husband just wasn't able to get anything to work, so she didn't have any naps at all (and was a grumpy little thing from 2 pm on as a result).

We're to the point of considering depositing her in her crib and walking away. She's not an infant anymore, but I still worry that this counts as CIO and is bad for her. The only thing is, I'm not sure what to do when nothing else is working.

I don't have time to read books, but I was wondering if anyone on here could help out.

Hi everyone... I'm due to have a baby in the next month and I'm having trouble deciding on a sleeping arrangement. I want to have the baby in the room with us and very close to me for at least six months, but probably much longer than that. I would really, really like to co-sleep but my husband and I are both sleepwalkers and talkers and I won't feel comfortable putting him in bed with us till he's big enough to defend himself.

Here are the options I've investigated:

I have a Baby Delight Snuggle Nest, which I bought it so we could nap separately with him but I don't think I'll feel comfortable with him in it all night. Plus he will outgrow it quickly.

I have a Graco Pack and Play travel crib that someone gave us and it sags badly in the middle. It looks super uncomfortable. That apparently is a popular complaint with the model I have. My other problem with Pack and Plays is that the bassinets seem to only accommodate a baby up to 15 pounds and we're going to want him in the room with us for longer than that.

I looked into the Arm's Reach Co-sleeper, which seemed to be the perfect option, but people were complaining about the thin mattress. When I looked at it at BRU, it seemed pretty crappy, like a piece of cardboard with a little padding, but at least it accommodates babies 20-30 pounds.

I can't sidecar a crib due to space.

I don't really have the money for a portable crib and it seems wasteful to have more than one crib since we have a full-sized one for when he's much older.

Is there some other bassinet/contraption out there that I'm missing that will accommodate an average-sized kid up to about six months in age or probably even older? I'm willing to revisit bedsharing when he can hold his head up and roll over, but I don't want to get him home the first night and find that the crib, which is in another room, is the only safe and comfortable option. :(

My 18-month-old has a tendency to not pay attention to where she's going and she's always tripping over things in her path -- toys, books, our limbs, even her potty. If there's a clear path, she won't walk through it, preferring instead to step on everything around it. Sometimes, it's a matter of her running, rather than taking her time, but more often than not, it's just her stepping on stuff. As a result, she's bumped her head and knees a few times from tripping. We try to keep her play area neat, but it's crazy to have to keep putting everything back on the shelf every few minutes. We try to tell her to step on the floor, or walk on the clear path, but she soon forgets and it's back to stepping on the plastic lid of the crayon box. I'm wondering if this -- not paying attention to where they're going -- is normal for toddlers?

Oh, and while I'm wondering about what's normal for toddlers, are they also a little neurotic about where things belong? My kid is very specific about where certain things, who sits where, who's supposed to wear what. It's worse when she's in a bit of a mood and she starts tantruming because I'm not wearing the right shirt or something like that. I know kids are all about routine and regularity, but this just seems a bit much.

Maybe it's the heat or teething or just a plain bad mood or something, but my 17-month-old has been throwing quite a few tantrums lately, often because she wants something she can't have. Other times, the cause is simply a mystery to us.

During her tantrum, she arches her back and refuses to be held, so we put her down on the carpeted floor, where she keeps arching her back and screaming bloody murder, tears and all. We've noticed that if we're talking to her and telling her it's okay, or that we understand why she's frustrated, she screams ever louder, arches her back even more and ends up being a tearful baby wiggling all over the floor. You'd think we were trying to slay her like a dragon. However, if we don't say anything directly to her (kinda-sorta ignoring her, I suppose), she quietens down. At which point, we'd ask her if she's okay, she'd start freaking out again. This goes back and forth until she's ready to be held and nursed.

The Dr Sears' Discipline Book recommends holding a tantruming child under the age of two. I want to hold her, but with the back-arching, she clearly doesn't want to be held during a tantrum. I don't feel right ignoring her either (a suggestion Dr Sears gives for tantrumming older kids), but talking to her while she's on the floor screaming just seems to make things worse in her world.

How do you guys cope with a tantrumming toddler of this age? Thanks in advance!

Our angel is now 6.5 months old. She's started on solids — baby-led, she only eats what she can grab and shove into her mouth and she loves it. We're having a tough time trying to work out how this fits in with her day, like when to breastfeed and so on. Some books say just beforehand, some say an hour before. She's refluxing a lot less than she did when she was only on breastmilk, but still occasionally if she drinks too much too fast. She's definitely fartier now!

Anyway, at almost the same time, she's started getting strong enough to wriggle out of her swaddle at night. She's been swaddled one arm out for about a month and doing fine, sleeping in good four-hour chunks. But now she's getting the other arm halfway out and waking up screaming and scared. So we've started trying her completely unswaddled. The first night she had a fabulous time and the day after, she had two one-and-a-half hour naps, unheard of for our little catnapper. We thought we'd found the solution! But since then, she's having a really hard time going down for naps at home — goes to sleep, startles awake a minute later screaming, settles, rinse and repeat. She's sleeping fine in the car seat or in the Ergo carrier, just not in her cradle right now. And she's waking every two hours at night and won't settle to a pat, has to be fed... And the waking at night is whether she's in the sidecarred cradle or in with me, there's no difference.

I'm wondering:

• Has anyone else transitioned out of a swaddle at this age and what are your tips?
• Could it be food-related? She's only eaten potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, carrot, banana and pear (she doesn't like avocado) and we've introduced each one in the morning on its own and watched for allergy signs and haven't seen any related to one particular food. Could it be wind?
• Could it be because she's now getting fed more often in the day that she's wanting to be fed more often at night?
• Could it be that she needs fewer naps? How do you cut out a nap? Which nap? We're still responding when she looks tired (yawning, rubbing her eyes) and that's still about two hours after she wakes up. She then only has a 45 minute nap IF THAT — with the current fussing, she's getting a 10 minute nap sometimes.

Any and all suggestions gratefully accepted...

I know about the sleep regression at 18 months, but I'm almost convinced my 16-month-old is going through it prematurely. Her bedtimes (and sometimes naps) have just been awful the past few weeks. I know she's tired but she's absolutely riled up (despite us trying to be mellow to set the tone for bedtime) and just refuses to sleep. It makes us absolutely crazy and frustrated, to the point where I wanted to throttle her (and sometimes, her daddy, who's sprawls half on the floor and half on the beanbag and tosses out the odd comment to our baby who's playing by herself three feet away, and he considers this "watching the baby"... but that's another story!). And then she finally goes to bed late and does something ridiculous like wake up early. Seriously, child, sleep in! I don't know which is worse -- that, or the constant whiny lawn-mower sounds she makes at 2am, while not in deep sleep and popping on and off the boob. Arggggh. Sleep has become such a battleground. Has anyone else dealt with something like this pre-18-month-sleep regression? Please tell me it gets better. I hate, hate, hate being so frustrated with my otherwise very adorable munchkin. It makes me feel like such an awful parent. [/end rant] Thanks for listening!!

Two questions from a new mom here. Our son is just 2 weeks old, which would be why I'm posting at 3am in between a set of cluster feeding, *sigh*. Neither my husband or I planned on co-sleeping once we had kids, we've just kind of been playing a lot of stuff by ear and going with what feels right, and co-sleeping so far is what feels right for us. (His family is not supportive of co-sleeping, and my family doesn't talk about... anything, so I've been looking online for resources, advice etc.)

Ok, so first, I didn't see anything in the memories on this - my husband snores. Like, a lot and often very loudly. It doesn't seem to bother our son at all, but since he's so little I know when he's actually in deep sleep he can sleep through almost anything. Is the snoring likely to start bothering him at some point, and if so at what age? My husband's snoring still drives me crazy, yes after 5 years, but the baby could probably hear those snores in the womb, so for all I know it may be normal to him.

Second- and this is more of an opinion poll- how do you arrange blankets for you and your infant when co-sleeping? Do you just swaddle him and put him on top of your covers? Do you share your blankets with him? Our son seems a bit weird in that he only sometimes likes to be swaddled. Sometimes he loves it and sometimes he'll scream and kick until his legs are free.

I just want to cry on your shoulder. I don't think anything could be done. But it was unexpected, REI didn't tell us a word about possible custom charges and... oh, I guess I just have to take it like my husband took it - just pay and forget about it and use the carrier... Here is what happened: the postman just came - finally, with a huge box from REI - but he told us that we have to pay $35 of customs dues - the Canada customs decided to pick us "at random", as he said and now we have to pay another surcharge - the carrier itself was $200, +$50 S&H and now another $35 (( I asked the postman to take the parcel back to the post office (it can stay there for 15 days anyway) and quickly typed an e-mail to REI customer service. Nowhere down the purchase process we were warned about possibility of such surcharge. If we knew there is a slight chance to win this "lottery" we won't take risks and won't buy the thing.
So I am awaiting for REIs answer - I asked them to reimburse us and explained why. We are so disappointed, we really wanted this thing, even if it was so expensive. My husband, like many men, just says: Pay the customs and take the thing, but I just can't bear it.
Oh, I am upset...