Preston and I went to a Prep for Parenting seminar at our church this weekend. It continues for the next 4 weeks and I just love it so far. There are 4 other couples in the program that are also expecting twins. One of the girls is due in June also so that is exciting! (I say “also” because I am delivering in June… they won’t even let me go till my due date in July.)
It’s such a great program. It’s all based on the fact that God is a God of order and discipline. Most of the things that have been presented so far are parenting theories Preston and I already agreed with and now we are just learning how to really apply them to our situation. They are such common sense things yet so many parents don’t see it that way… or else they do, but they don’t feel strong enough about it to stick with things when they are not easy.
So far it has been an overview of what will be talked about in more detail the next 4 weeks. One of the main goals of the program is to have your baby on a sleeping and eating schedule where they are sleeping through the night by around 10 weeks of age. So many people have had such amazing success with this. Like I said, it’s really common sense. They talked about “Parent Directed Feeding” which is the medium between “Demand Feeding” and “Clock Feeding”.
Demand Feeding is where the baby is the boss and tells you when it will and will not eat, sleep, etc. and you follow along with their demand, which inevitably leads to a loss of control and authority over the baby/child/teen. This makes it where you are constantly at the beck and call of your demanding baby, always feeding all day long because they refuse to eat till they are full. Or, the most common thing that women do… the baby cries and you feed it every time. So, so, so many women make this mistake and think that if the baby is crying they must be hungry. This type of parenting of your baby can lead to serious problems. Another mistake these types of women usually make is that they just WILL NOT put their baby down. They won’t let it cry for any amount of time, and I could see why because if you are always at the demand of your baby then they will learn that if they cry you better come running or they will make your life a living hell. Then the parents wonder why they have bratty kids and screaming babies all the time. It’s because the baby/child controls you, you don’t control them. And that is definitely NOT how it should be.
The other end is Clock Feeding. This is where the parent will only feed the baby if the clock says it’s time to feed the baby. This takes any common sense out of the picture (as does demand feeding) and the baby suffers dramatically. It’s just as bad as the demand feeding, but it comes from the opposite end of road.
The happy medium is Parent Directed Feeding. What is this? This is where your baby eats every 2.5-3 hours (this schedule of course adjusts as the baby gets older). The baby’s life is based on a schedule of feeding time, wake time, nap time. For example, you start your day at 6am. You wake the baby up if they are not already awake and feed them and you must keep them awake during feeding!. Then you keep them awake for about 10-15 minutes of “wake time” (obviously longer for older babies) and then you put them in their bed awake for them to fall asleep for nap time. You have to put them in their bed (or where ever you want them to sleep) awake as often as you can because they need to learn the valuable skill of being able to fall asleep on their own. You repeat this every 3 hours. Obviously there is flexibility, there has to be. You can’t be extreme on it, you have to use common sense and determine what needs to be done. If the baby is in their crib crying for more than 20-30 minutes, you obviously need to see what is going on. Obviously you can come in if they are crying and comfort them but the key is to not take them out of their crib.
You might not think it but this type of parenting very early on can teach a baby an amazing amount of respect, authority, control, etc. There’s just so many good things that come from controlling your baby and not letting it control you. They will thank you for it later. This isn’t just a nice idea or something… it’s been proven over and over again that parents that take this approach have more respectful, controlled children who don’t have anywhere near as many issues with authority.
Also, the priority in your house should be God, the marriage, then the children. So many people put it as children, marriage, God and that just does not work. It causes huge conflicts in a marriage when the children are put first. If you don’t have a healthy marriage, you can’t really expect to have a healthy time raising your children. Of course single parents can raise children just as well as a married parent, but they also need to put their priorities as God, then children. This is just how it was meant to be.
It was put to us as this “the baby should be a welcome addition to a family that already exists, they should not be the center of the family that started with the birth of the baby”. This is so, so true and I’ve thought that for quite some time already.
Our church has this “Date Your Mate” thing where you can drop your kids off at any age and go on a “Date Night” on Friday nights. They really stress the importance of this in a marriage and I think it makes complete sense. They challenged us at the first part of this seminar to start our regular date nights again after the baby is 6 weeks old. Preston and I do plan on doing this because we see the importance of keeping the marriage “alive”. We already do our own date nights outside the church and I couldn’t imagine not keeping up with them. Obviously you cannot do something such as go on a date with your mate if you are controlled by your baby. Even if you are breastfeeding (and you should be, in my personal opinion) you can still pump a bottle (and you should so you don’t always have a baby attached to your boob) and go on dates… if you’re not controlled by your baby.
Anyway….. I’ve been going on and on about this for a while now! LOL! I just have learned so many great things so far and I could go on and on about it a lot more! I hope nothing I have said will rub anyone the wrong way. These things are just my opinion and what I have learned and it’s not to say that anything you might be doing is wrong, but it might give some of you an insight on something you could be doing better. I don’t know, hopefully over the next 4 weeks I’ll be able to share some information that will help someone else.
Well, Ashton is here this weekend and being the amazing child that she is when she is at our house. She asked me to teach her to sew. She’s learned a little in Girl Scouts already. She worked on a pillow a little bit but I think she got frustrated so she quit. She tends to give up easily on things that are hard. That’s a learned habit that Preston and I really need to try to get her out of. It’s hard in the small amount of time she is here with us but it can be done. She’s a smart girl. She had the cutest dream the other day that she told me about. She said she had a dream that she was in my tummy too with the babies and they were all twins (triplets… is what she meant lol) and that I was her mommy and I had her and she grew up living here with us and the twins. It’s amazing what things you can learn about a kid through hearing what they dream about. Nothing we didn’t already know. It was cute none the less.
So the house is clean and Ashton is taking a nap. I think that sounds pretty good right now. I’m off to take a nap too!

This is entirely TMI but well, that’s what you get when you come to someone’s personal blog, right? I am officially a size 36C. C is the perfect cup size, seriously. Still small enough to be perky, not so big that they sag. I just got 2 new bras today (still Victoria’s Secret because I refuse to become a frumpy pregnant woman). Pre pregnancy I was a small 34B. I’m loving this, really. Pregnancy has been so good to me! Preston’s actually suggesting that I not lose weight after the babies are born. He goes even more nuts over me now than he did before! I’m obviously going to get back in shape after the babies arrive (I’m sure I’ll have no choice with breastfeeding and looking after 2 babies!) but I’m not going to try to do some huge weight loss thing and get back down to my pre pregnancy weight. If it happens, it happens. If not, I won’t stress. As long as I’m fit again, I won’t worry about the numbers on the scale or on the tag of my jeans. Looking back at photos of myself pre pregnancy…. I was SUPER skinny. Funny thing is I always thought I had a little extra meat on my bones. After seeing pictures, I like myself better now, I look more womanly and not so teenage and boney.
I’ve actually gained 20lbs now. I’m a little behind schedule for a twin pregnancy as of right now, but the babies are perfectly sized and my uterus is currently measuring the size of a 31 week singleton pregnancy. CRAZY! I wonder how big it will be by the end of all of this?!