How the Smart Phone Revolutionized Midnight Feedings

Long, long ago, before humans had smart phones, when a mom got up in the middle of the night to feed her hungry newborn, she sat there...

in the dark...

alone (except for the baby, of course). 

It was really exhausting.

Like, REALLY exhausting.

I speak from experience. I didn’t have a smart phone when I had my first baby. At the time, my friend with newborn twins told me about a baby sleep book she was reading. My biggest questions for her had nothing to do with sleep; they were a) How in the world do you have time to read? and b) How do you hold the book?! Her answers for both? She had a smart phone. 

You can bet that when I had my second baby, I made sure I had one of those suckers, too.

Here are some of the ways that the smart phone has made middle of the night feedings almost tolerable (for a little while, anyway…)

Alarm clocks

With my first baby, it got to the point that I barely got him latched on for a midnight feeding before I completely zonked out (not safe, I know, but I truly couldn't help it). I’d wake up 90 minutes later, cursing, and not knowing if I had ever switched sides, or how much he ate. He usually woke up hungry again 20 minutes later. After a few nights of that I gave up even trying to put him in the crib when I awoke and I just started nursing him all over again. Three hours after the initial wake-up I climbed back into my bed. It was the worst. Now, I do my best to stay awake long enough to set three alarms on my phone when I start: one to wake me after each side, and one called “Go to bed!” for after I hold him upright to keep his stupid reflux in check....

Baby Care Apps

I stressed sooo much in my first newborn’s early weeks using a paper and pen--in the dark--to log all his stupid feeding stuff. How many times did he nurse? How long? Which side? Did he pee? Poop? What color? Now, apps do the work for me. Thank you, Genius App Creator People.

Total Baby = Totally Awesome App

Celebrity Gossip Sites

I’ve downloaded a couple of high-quality literary novels and I do read some parenting articles on my phone, but nothing keeps me awake better than my repertoire of People.com, USmagazine.com, and (when I’m really desperate) TMZ.com. At 1 a.m., my brain can’t process much more than those sites. The only thinking I need to do is to try to figure out which celebrities (if any) are ones that I've actually heard of...

Um... I only know Tom Brady and Bobby Flay here. Wait--Harry Potter, too!!

Email

Wanna know when you had time to type emails when you had a newborn before smart phones came along? Never.

Flashlight

No more tripping over swings and bouncey seats.

Google

Now you can use some of the time you’re just sitting there to find the answers to your most burning questions: Will my baby ever sleep? Will my baby ever go more than two hours without eating? How much do overnight nannies charge???

            

Nighttime Selfies

Is this a thing? I have no idea if this is a thing. As you can gather from the fact that I had a baby before I had a smart phone, I am old, and I don’t get the whole “selfie” thing. But according to People.com, USmagazine.com, and TMZ.com, a lot of people take selfies. So I’m throwing this in here as something else you younger moms might find fun.

Texting with Other Moms

The best part about having a smart phone is that it takes some of the isolation out of being up multiple times a night for weeks (months…) on end to feed your baby. This is what I used to think to myself when I’d be sitting there, alone, without a smart phone:

I'm so tired. I can’t stand this. I love my baby, and this was kind of exciting the first few nights, but now, I can’t stand it. And I can’t stand my husband. Because he’s sleeping. And snoring.

Now, this is the kind of text exchange that I can have with my sister at 4 a.m. because she has a newborn, too:

Nevertheless, at the end of the day night, it doesn’t matter how smart your phone is… It could be the defending Jeopardy champion, but sleep deprivation would eventually prevail. When you find yourself waking up 2 hours after you started nursing with a crick in your neck, three alarms going off, and this unfinished text to your sister...

...you know it’s time to start downloading some articles from OMGSleepThroughTheNightAlready.com. Until then, rest assured (ha ha... rest...) that middle of the night feedings are at least a little bit less torturous than they used to be.

The Familiar Evening Routine | Mamalode

Here's a little poem I wrote that Mamalode published today. If you're so inclined, take a look around the site--it's a nice one with stories, etc. about parenting, all written by parents (and some grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.) 

The Familiar Evening Routine | Mamalode

Living in Your Starter Home with a Baby Vs. Living in Your Starter Home with Three Kids

Everyone says that your years with little kids go by quickly. It’s true; before you know it, you can go from bringing your first baby home from the hospital to squeezing a third into the same house. Even though it’s the same structure, it’s a totally different place. I realized this the other day when we visited our friends and their one baby in their chic condo and thought, “We used to live like this.” We’ll probably always be in our starter home, which is just fine with us because we love it, but as we drove back that day to our 1,450 square feet of heaven, I couldn’t help but think of all the ways our home has changed in just a few short years.

Here are some differences between your starter home with one baby vs. your starter home with three little kids.

One Baby: Everything has its place.

Three Kids: The computer is in the kitchen, the pop-up fire truck tent is in the living room, the pack n’ play is in the hallway.

One Baby: When you want to open a cupboard door, you open it. When you want to lift the toilet seat cover, you lift it. When you want to get some toilet paper, just unroll.

Three Kids: Simple tasks now take 2.7 times longer to accomplish because everything is childproofed. The additional time gets deducted from your sleeping time. Combined with the fact that you now have three kids, you are down to sleeping an average of 43 minutes within a 24-hour period (52 minutes on weekends).

One Baby: Glass wine bottles rest on a funky rack mounted on the kitchen island, directly at a toddler’s eye level.

Three Kids: No bottles on display, for obvious reasons--if you buy a bottle of wine, it doesn’t hang around long enough to get put on a rack.

One Baby: Your dining room built-ins provide the perfect place to display your fragile wedding gifts.

Three Kids: Oh, that all got stored away a looooong time ago. You now understand why your mother unwrapped her china pieces like they were old friends when you cleaned out the attic during summer break from college. Currently, you have a large collection of pump and bottle parts on display where your porcelain cake stand used to be.

One Baby: You have a lovely wrought iron and glass-top coffee table.

Three Kids: Your coffee table is a train table. Sometimes you mix it up and switch in the dress-up clothes chest instead.

One Baby: If you need to use the bathroom, you walk through the door to the toilet.

Three Kids: Don’t waste anytime getting to your (one) bathroom because you’ll need to go through an obstacle course of step stools and potty seats before you make it to the toilet.

One Baby: You take uninterrupted showers in your (one) bathroom.

Three Kids: Bwahahahahaha.

One Baby: Cleaning is a chore to do while the baby naps, and/or it impedes on family time and “me-time” on the weekends.

Three Kids: You shoo your kids outside with Dad at 8:15 every Saturday morning so you can clean. Whatever it takes to get some time ALONE. On rainy days, you “accidentally” wax yourself into the far corner of your 9X7 kitchen and threaten everyone to within an inch of their lives if they walk on the wet floor. Then you turn to face the wall and drink your coffee in solitude while it dries.

One Baby: You put your baby’s soiled clothes in a personalized wicker hamper. You wash onesies, receiving blankets and such in separate loads so as to avoid contamination from other household dirt.

Three Kids: The laundry area is a total free-for-all. If you push through the mounds of clothes in various stages of laundering, you’ll manage to reach the washer and dryer. There is just too much of it to do separate loads, so spit-on sleep suits, applesauce-smeared t-shirts, grass-stained jeans, nursing bras and Dad’s underwear all go in together.

One Baby: Potential babysitters’ phone numbers are posted on the fridge.

Three Kids: No babysitters at the moment. You’re not convinced anyone else could handle this. To be honest, you’re not really sure how you do it yourselves.

One Baby: At the end of each “play session,” you tuck your baby’s toys away in the fabric-covered bins labeled “Toys” in the living room and his bedroom.

Three Kids: You wave the white flag as you reluctantly allow your five-year old to carry his plastic bucket of Legos into your bedroom which had, up until that point, remained the sole toy-free zone in the house. He will spend his “quiet time” in there. This is the sacrifice you make to keep him from waking nappers and disturbing you on the main level. Nobody needs quiet time more than Mom does.

Despite all this, it’s still kind of fun to live in your starter home after your family has expanded. There’s less square footage to clean, which is awesome, and a lot of times you can squeeze in some Facebook/email/blog-reading while the Hubs is outside with the kiddos during “housework” time. Your living room may be full of toys, but at least you can relax each night knowing that you don’t need to figure out how to pack for a move when a toddler would just find ways to unpack everything as you went. Best of all, you really can’t beat knowing that every day you, your husband, and your kids live surrounded by all the wonderful memories your family has created in the one place you all call home.