A day in the life....... (long)

In article , Sarah Vaughan
writes
(I started making these notes because I'd read Gina Ford's 'Contented
Little Baby Book' and was curious as to what would happen if I tried
waking baby for feeds/putting him down for naps at the times her
routines dictate - would he magically recognise something that fitted
with his internal body clock, or would his day be totally different?
Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but since I was making some notes
anyway of how the day went and how it differed from Gina Ford's plan, I
went ahead and wrote up the whole day so that I'd have a record of life
as a new mum for my diary. Thought I'd post it here in case anyone else
was interested.)

Oh yes. But am I really thinbking of having another in a couple of
years? Are we mad? Had I really forgotten what life with a newborn is
like? :-)


This record is of Thursday 16th December going on into Friday 17th, when
Jamie was three weeks and five days old.

My experience was that life was quite hellish, well, very sleep-deprived
and unsettled at least, until DD was 3 months or so. By 4 months I would
say we were very content with the routines we had settled into, but the
first few months were definitely - shocking. Wonderful, highly
emotionally charged, topsy-turvy.


6.30 - gave up, just got dressed & ready for the day. Took baby out to
bathroom & changed him, then downstairs for feed.

This time of the day was actually often the point where DD would just
conk, finally sated, and sleep for about 4 hours. We would dive into
bed, burrow under the pillows and quake in fear in case she woke again!


8.30 - baby has fallen asleep in car seat. Wonder whether Gina Ford
would say I ought to put him back on the towel (which I've put away as
DH would probably object to me leaving it on the study floor) but a) I
need my breakfast and b) GF says babies are meant to have a wind-down
before the nap anyway, so I'm not sure if having him too active would be
right. Decide I might as well leave him to sleep.

I'd agree with that - I think we worked on the principle of 'never wake
a sleeping baby!' Two of my aunts came to visit us when DD was less than
a month old, and one of them bought us a bouncy chair. It was great, a
safe place to put DD, a lot of the time she preferred it to her Moses
basket and though she loved her car seat, I felt better alternating
where she sat


2.35 - wonder what will happen if I try the afternoon routine (wake for
feed, two hours awake, one hour nap, wake for feed, bath, further feed,
bedtime). Figure I might as well give it a go, in hopes that it'll
settle him for the night. Baby quite slow to wake and feed & needs
coaxing at first, but then wakes up properly, becomes a lot more
enthusiastic, and feeds well until 3.50.

I think we were too frightened to wake DD when she finally slept We
tried to work on the principle that she'd get herself sorted after a few
weeks, and to be honest, she did. I know we tried waking her a few times
when she was having long naps during the day, but we quickly discovered
that the tireder/more overtired DD got, the longer she would stay awake
as she worked herself up.


3.50 - put baby on folded towel on the floor to kick and go get some
food, as I didn't get much lunch.

4.30 - baby starts crying. I feed him.

4.40 - baby has settled down, which, surprisingly, puts us back on track
for the nap, since it's now 2 hours since he last woke up. However,
fusses when put in big cot. Decide I really don't care that much
whether he's already developing good sleep associations or not, take
pillows and duvet off our bed, and nap there, holding him. Since he
still can't latch himself on from lying down, I get woken intermittently
by his fussing, and make vague attempts to poke a nipple at his mouth
before falling promptly back to sleep again, but do manage an hour of
broken sleep in this way.

Like others have said, as he gets older he'll find that much easier. And
you'll soon be able to latch him on in your sleep, almost.


9.50 - baby wants feeding again within a couple of minutes of me
finishing dinner. (This is unusually impeccable timing for him.
Normally, he manages to time his more vociferous demands to coincide
with dinner. Of course, since he's been feeding non-stop during the
evening, this is hardly surprising.)

We used to find that if ever we turned the TV one to watch something,
the screaming would start. Timing, oh, babies certainly have it ;-)

10.20 - baby finished feed. I seize chance to go and brush teeth.
Remember that while putting away his laundry earlier (don't ask me when
I found time for this, it's all a blur) I noticed he only had one clean
Babygro left. DH tells me that there's a load of baby's laundry waiting
to be dried, but he has nowhere to put the stuff that's currently in the
drier as the bag is still full of the clean laundry that hasn't been put
away yet. I go to start putting my share of this away.

Don't know if it was Anne who said it, but after the day you had had,
I'd have been ignoring the laundry, and if needs be would just buy some
more babygros in the morning.

So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??

I read it an awful lot here when DD was young - 'this too will pass'. It
was what got us through, just doing what the baby prompted, i.e. letting
her sleep when she wanted, feed when she wanted ( I read a mountain of
books, drank gallons of water and unlatched her when I wanted the loo)
and when I needed a break taking her out walking as she loved it, even
as a tiny little thing. And knowing that she wouldn't be that young and
needy for all that long a time.

I read lots of baby books, baby care books, child development books and
so on, and most of it I decided to studiously ignore after
consideration/trial. TBH, I threw Gina Ford across the room one night at
2am and returned it to the library as soon as it opened
--
Whirligig Witch

"Sarah Vaughan" wrote

This record is of Thursday 16th December going on into Friday 17th, when
Jamie was three weeks and five days old.

2.10 a.m. - get to sleep, baby having settled down from his latest nursing
marathon.

(snipped a whole lot of eating and cat-napping on baby's part ) 1.45
a.m. - bed.


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??


All the best,

Sarah

You're doing great I've had 2 like that, out of 7. One of the others was
almost a textbook baby, the kind that naps on a regular schedule and silly
things like that. Quite a nice change!

My first was like your Jamie, he started settling into a much nicer schedule
around 3.5 or 4 months of age. My husband was working extremely long hours
at the time, being in the military, so that certainly didn't help any! My
parents didn't think we would have any more after him, they hadn't had one
quite as demanding and fussy as him. If it helps any, he was one of the
best-behaved toddlers (and older child) I've ever seen and recently turned
18 without ever being a troublemaker

My 5th was also like that, I can't remember if I posted much here when she
was that little though. The only thing that saved my sanity during the first
4 months or so during her infancy was that my husband was able to have a
regular schedule for the most part and some of my older kids were willing
and responsible enough to help out with chores and other kids.

It's not easy, it feels like you are going completely insane and should
never have had kids some days. You read about all these other babies who eat
every 2-3 hours, sleep nicely for naps and bedtime, play happioly by
themselves so Mom can take a shower or do chores and you wonder why you seem
to be the most rotten parent in the world, not even able to go the the
bathroom for 41 seconds without the baby screamingG

It gets better, and it really is worth it. Getting a good 4 or 5 hour chunk
of sleep once or twice a week helps immensely. If you have any family within
a hour or so, it is worth it to get through the travel time and go visit for
a few hours, let someone else at least hold him for a few minutes. My mom
was able to get my oldest calm for at least 20 minutes when we visited, I
could use that time to cook in her kitchen, use the bathroom, help with her
laudry, talk to my baby sister - something to give me a mental break.

Best of lucj.
I would ditch the books, ditch the schedule tracking. In a couple months he
will be much more settled into his skin and be more likely to make a
schedule for himself you can live with. Even if it's backwards, it will be
better than it is right now! Take baths with him if you have a tub. A nice
lotion for him might help, the gentle massage can really help with the more
irratable kids. Be aware for allergies, of course - there was only one
lotion I could use on my #5 otherwise she broke out in awful rashes.

Hang in there and don't hesitate to get help if you really start feeling
badly towards yourself or Jamie okay?

S
mom to 7 - 18, 16, 13, 9, 6, 4 and 19 months

A book I had when the twins were little, which I've now lost and forgotten
the
name of to boot, recommended writing down what the baby actually did for a
few
days in a row, and then trying to work out if there were any patterns
going on
(if the baby actually was "napping" at somewhat predictable times, rather
than
"going to sleep whenever and wherever").
I did this for about a month with Bonnie when she was 4 months old.. She
STILL did not have a patern.. Xavier has one for the most part and he is
only 7 weeks!

Tori

--
Bonnie 3/20/02
Xavier 10/27/04

Sling. Now. :-)

DS was like that. He didn't necessarily want to nurse; he wanted to be
held. If I put him in a sling and started walking, he'd settle
instantly. This was great if I wanted to, say, pee. It also meant I
could put him in a sling on Daddy to get a shower, or to get a break.
The bad news is that DS is *still* like that, only a more toddler
version, with one catnap a day and 8-10 nursings a day/ night. I write
it off to genetics as we have a lot of poor sleepers on both sides.

I say to forget folding laundry. Dump a pile on the clean bit of the
floor and worry about it in a few months. You've enough to do.

--
C, mama to two year old nursling
about to go fold a pile of laundry, actually

12.10 - finish showering, go back to the last of the laundry. Baby has
been persuaded, after some dissent, that, yes, he does like dummies. DH
and I have a reprise of our dummy vs. thumb debate (DH doesn't want him to
be the child who gets bullied for still thumbsucking at school & thinks
it'll be easier to wean him off a dummy - I've heard too many horror
stories of parents having to get out of bed several times a night because
their babies keep losing their dummies while sleeping and can't get back
to sleep without them).

You don't necessarily have to do either. If he's not sucking on a fist or
thumb or finger on his own, I really might not make the effort to encourage
it. My DD was a very sucky sort of baby (in the sense of wanting to suck a
lot, of course), but aside from a couple of random "huh, this is kind of
interesting" attempts at sucking on her fist or thumb, she never did do
that. And I wasn't thrilled with the idea of a binky/dummy at all, so I
just let her comfort suck at the breast a lot. When she was really little,
like your son's age, she'd suck on DH's pinky for a few minutes while I went
to the bathroom or something, or my pinky in the car if we really weren't in
a place where we could stop for a nursing break, but basically, if she
wanted to suck, I just nursed her. I wanted her to rely on nursing for
comfort, personally, and at 2.75 years old she still does nurse for comfort;
that's a personal choice, though, and it may or may not be right for every
mother and child. She was the kind of baby who'd finish nursing for food
fairly quickly, but then she'd comfort nurse for a long time if I let her.
I remember spending a lot of time in her first several months just lying in
bed, or sitting in my chair at the computer or my rocking chair, just
resting and holding her and letting her nurse and sleep in cycles. If I
wanted to do something like shower, I'd nurse her to sleep and then pop her
in her bouncy seat in the bathroom, or she'd lie on a blanket with some
toys. I didn't have a schedule for a long time, though certain things, like
her bedtime and night waking/nursing times became pretty predictable on her
own after a month or so. Actually, tbh, I'm still not big on a rigid
routine. Until she was about 15 months old and was down to just one nap a
day consistently, things were fairly random, though her bedtime and bedtime
routine have been pretty consistent since very early on. I've been making
more of an effort over the past several months to have meals more at the
same times every day, to do things in a specific order, etc., and that seems
to work well now, whereas loose and random worked just fine when she was a
small baby. All that to say that you don't necessarily have to use a
binky/dummy or thumb at all, nor do you necessarily have to have a rigid
schedule.

So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??

Ask me again in a couple of months. Lol. Seriously, though, it was easy
to be really flexible with just one baby. I was a SAHM with very limited
outside commitments, so I could nap when she napped if I wanted, and my DH
wasn't too hung up on the laundry being folded or the house being cleaned.
And he was flexible about dinnertime too, plus he pitched in a lot, either
around the house or holding the baby. It's because of our toddler, though,
that I've been trying to be more consistent about a routine, so that she has
some predictability (and so I do as well) when the new baby arrives. I
don't expect quite the same leisure that I had with her though -- that time
as a new mom with the first baby is a precious gift.


--
-Sara
Mommy to DD, 2 3/4
And Someone Due 2/05

Well, your schedule sounds very confusing and not all that natural for a
baby. (hesitantly) sorry....

So, to answer your question about what we do when there is more than one
little around.....

The baby gets used to naps on the go, there is almost constant entertainment
around, the baby adapts to waiting "just a second" for mama or someone else
to come, the baby sleeps pretty good because they are in a front pack or car
seat, or watching the swirl of activity However, sometimes the little
one wants some alone time or to play when the rest of us want to sleep!
hehehe.

Hang in there, I find that most babies make their own schedule when you kind
of go with the flow. Usually when I get kind of frustrated at the lack of a
schedule, one magically forms.

Kelly
#4 2/12/05

"Sarah Vaughan" wrote in message
...
(I started making these notes because I'd read Gina Ford's 'Contented
Little Baby Book' and was curious as to what would happen if I tried
waking baby for feeds/putting him down for naps at the times her
routines dictate - would he magically recognise something that fitted
with his internal body clock, or would his day be totally different?
Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but since I was making some notes
anyway of how the day went and how it differed from Gina Ford's plan, I
went ahead and wrote up the whole day so that I'd have a record of life
as a new mum for my diary. Thought I'd post it here in case anyone else
was interested.)

This record is of Thursday 16th December going on into Friday 17th, when
Jamie was three weeks and five days old.

2.10 a.m. - get to sleep, baby having settled down from his latest
nursing marathon.

3.45 - baby woke up. Changed his nappy, fed him, fed him, fed him, fed
him.

6 a.m. - had reached 'make your mind up' stage of pulling off breast
looking absolutely sated & refusing to take any more, then fussing as
soon as he went back in the cot, taking a bit more when he was picked
up, pulling off breast looking absolutely sated etc., lather, rinse,
repeat. (Burping didn't seem to be getting anything up, either.)

6.30 - gave up, just got dressed & ready for the day. Took baby out to
bathroom & changed him, then downstairs for feed.

7.00 - 7.45 - baby feeding. (This is how GF's routine for 2 - 4 week
olds is meant to start. From here on, for those who aren't familiar
with her, baby is meant to stay awake until 9, then nap until 10, then
feed again.)

7.45 - put baby on a folded towel on the floor to kick and keep himself
awake, while I make oatmeal.

8.00 - baby fussing and rooting. I feed him.

8.20 - put baby in car seat and go get my oatmeal.

8.30 - baby has fallen asleep in car seat. Wonder whether Gina Ford
would say I ought to put him back on the towel (which I've put away as
DH would probably object to me leaving it on the study floor) but a) I
need my breakfast and b) GF says babies are meant to have a wind-down
before the nap anyway, so I'm not sure if having him too active would be
right. Decide I might as well leave him to sleep.

9.00 - baby awake, fussing and rooting. I feed him, take him upstairs
to change him, and feed him more as he's still obviously hungry. This
goes on until 9.50.

9.50 - put him down in cot & lie down on camp bed in hopes of getting
some rest myself (since I don't plan to follow the bit of GF's routine
where you leave the baby on his own for naps). He's a bit fussy, but I
wait to see whether he settles. After 10 mins is obviously getting more
upset, and also does not seem too impressed by my attempt at swaddling
him. Since I have no intention of following GF's advice about letting
the baby cry for up to 20 minutes, I get him up.

10.00 - change his nappy. He starts rooting again and I feed him again.

10.25 - he stops feeding. I put him down in the cot, but he's still not
happy. Since he appears to have convincingly voted 'No' to the routine,
I give up on that and pick him up to take him downstairs and make tea
for DH.

10.30 - he quietens down at last (I think he probably managed to get a
burp up somewhere along the way) and so I take him upstairs and put him
back in the cot, figuring I might as well take this chance to work on
getting him used to it. This time, he goes to sleep quite happily. I
take DH his tea and then, out of curiosity, leaf through GF's book to
see what she says about babies who don't go to sleep for their morning
naps. She says that if the baby's been wakeful in the morning, try
giving him a catnap of 15 minutes before 11 a.m., then putting him down
for his lunchtime nap around 12.15 - 12.30 instead of 11.30 - 12.00 as
recommended in the normal routine. Since it's now 11, I figure I might
as well try this.

11.00 - have a go at waking baby up. He's out for the count, however.
So much for Gina Ford. Put him in his car seat and go get some food,
since DH wants to set out shortly for the shops, and read my newsgroups.

12.00 - baby decides he wants feeding again. I change him as well in
hopes that he'll be quiet during our shopping trip. Takes half an hour
before he's settled in his car seat again, which delays our departure
somewhat.

12.45 - finally make it out the door. Trip to the post office and the
supermarket, which is the sort of thing that somehow doesn't really seem
to get scheduled in to Gina's routine (you're meant to fit all trips for
the first eight weeks into the third nap of the day). Baby sleeps in
his car seat during all this. I nap in my car seat.

2.20 - arrive back home, start putting shopping away.

2.35 - wonder what will happen if I try the afternoon routine (wake for
feed, two hours awake, one hour nap, wake for feed, bath, further feed,
bedtime). Figure I might as well give it a go, in hopes that it'll
settle him for the night. Baby quite slow to wake and feed & needs
coaxing at first, but then wakes up properly, becomes a lot more
enthusiastic, and feeds well until 3.50.

3.50 - put baby on folded towel on the floor to kick and go get some
food, as I didn't get much lunch.

4.30 - baby starts crying. I feed him.

4.40 - baby has settled down, which, surprisingly, puts us back on track
for the nap, since it's now 2 hours since he last woke up. However,
fusses when put in big cot. Decide I really don't care that much
whether he's already developing good sleep associations or not, take
pillows and duvet off our bed, and nap there, holding him. Since he
still can't latch himself on from lying down, I get woken intermittently
by his fussing, and make vague attempts to poke a nipple at his mouth
before falling promptly back to sleep again, but do manage an hour of
broken sleep in this way.

5.50 - get up, feed baby.

6.35 - put baby down in cot for two minutes to use the loo, during which
time he starts screaming. Get stuff ready for bath as quickly as
possible. Baby calms down a lot once wet nappy is off and seems to enjoy
his bath a lot.

7.20 - Feed baby again in hopes of getting him to settle for a bit.

8.00 - Try settling baby in big cot. He still isn't too happy about
this. Since I see no need to push the issue at his age, I pick him up
and take him downstairs to put in his carseat while DH does dinner and I
empty the dishwasher.

8.45 - take my chance to go pump some milk for the freezer stash I'm
trying to build up.

8.55 - DH comes through to say baby's hungry again. I put the ounce
I've so far managed to pump in the fridge, hoping optimistically to be
able to add more to it later on, and feed baby.

9.15 - baby finishes feeding. Only a few minutes before dinner will be
ready, so I don't bother restarting the pumping.

9.50 - baby wants feeding again within a couple of minutes of me
finishing dinner. (This is unusually impeccable timing for him.
Normally, he manages to time his more vociferous demands to coincide
with dinner. Of course, since he's been feeding non-stop during the
evening, this is hardly surprising.)

10.20 - baby finished feed. I seize chance to go and brush teeth.
Remember that while putting away his laundry earlier (don't ask me when
I found time for this, it's all a blur) I noticed he only had one clean
Babygro left. DH tells me that there's a load of baby's laundry waiting
to be dried, but he has nowhere to put the stuff that's currently in the
drier as the bag is still full of the clean laundry that hasn't been put
away yet. I go to start putting my share of this away.

10.50 - DH comes upstairs with baby, who's hungry.

11.50 - baby finishes feeding. I go back to folding laundry.

11.55 - realise that if I want a shower that day, which I certainly do,
I'd better grab the chance to take it while baby is between feeds and DH
is available to keep him going if he suddenly decides he's starving
again. Dash to do this. Baby is fussing a bit, so I suggest to DH that
he could try the dummy (pacifier) just in case at least some of this is
comfort sucking.

12.10 - finish showering, go back to the last of the laundry. Baby has
been persuaded, after some dissent, that, yes, he does like dummies. DH
and I have a reprise of our dummy vs. thumb debate (DH doesn't want him
to be the child who gets bullied for still thumbsucking at school &
thinks it'll be easier to wean him off a dummy - I've heard too many
horror stories of parents having to get out of bed several times a night
because their babies keep losing their dummies while sleeping and can't
get back to sleep without them).

12.20 - finish laundry, leave DH to put baby in cot while I run
downstairs to put the dishes in the dishwasher and the milk I pumped
earlier in the fridge (having given up on previous plan to pump more to
add to it).

12.30 - back upstairs again to find that baby is screaming after being
left alone for less than ten minutes. Feed him.

1.00 a.m. - baby still fusses when put down in cot, so I try the dummy
again. After an initial reluctance on his part, he actually takes it
and seems happy with it. Unfortunately, it's of limited use as far as
me getting sleep is concerned, since it falls out of his mouth every
couple of minutes. Also, for reasons given above, I don't really want
him to grow dependent on it to get to sleep. However, after twenty
minutes of replacing his dummy, followed by a further short breastfeed,
he has actually quietened down enough that he drifts off to sleep.

1.45 a.m. - bed.


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??


All the best,

Sarah

--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become
depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley

In article ,
Sarah Vaughan wrote:

snip day in life of 3wo

So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??

From observation and guesswork (I'll tell you more next May!), the difference
is:

1. They know Baby Boot Camp usually lasts about 6 weeks, and are mentally
prepared for it to some extent -- and they know it will end! (Remember, 12
feeds a day are normal for a little baby like this; they will let go of a few
of them soon.)
2. The freezer is already full of casseroles
3. As they have BTDT they know what to do and what to let go of
4. They already have child-friendly routines in place
5. They have stuff to do, and it gets done irrespective of baby's nap times

Whereas you are probably having trouble with 1, 3 and 4 at least!

After you have conducted a satisfying book-burning, I'd suggest concentrating
on what you really need:

1. Sleep. Is there any reason baby can't be on the bed next to you and you
can both sleep at the same time? They often sleep better close to Mum
(probably the heartbeat and scent is reassuringly familiar). Put bub on a
towel in case of upchucks.
2. Food. Eating poorly will make you feel worse. Cereal is your friend, as
are sandwiches, cheese on toast, eggs and fruit.
3. A shower each day (of course, this is really optional, but most women feel
more human if they get one, lochia being what it is).

Oh, and unless your baby has left something unpleasant on his clothes, you
don't need to change them. The baby doesn't care about night and day wear,
and apart from the aforesaid substances, is likely to be clean. BTW, what do
you mean "your share" of the laundry? If DH has the time to complain about
it, he can deal with it. (But it does help to only have one load on the go at
once -- start the next load when the first has been put away)

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"Life is like a cigarette -- smoke it to the butt." -- Harvie Krumpet

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:04:50 +0000, Sarah Vaughan
wrote:

1.45 a.m. - bed.


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??

Your baby sounds exactly like my babies. What has worked for me is to
wear baby in a sling (I like the maya wrap), and let her breastfeed as
she wants to, usually for 55 minutes every hour in there, all day.
She was either asleep, breastfeeding or screaming, for probably the
first 16 weeks.

Learned to breastfeed lying down, and found myself getting lots more
sleep (and plenty of reading done too).

Made no attempt to schedule anything, but within 12 weeksish she had
me on a reasonably regular schedule re sleep. (2 long naps and a
pretty good night- but when you co sleep it doesn't matter so much).
At 2 (in a few days) she is an independant walking talking madam who
still loves to breastfeed, but only twice or three times a day... Oh
and you can set your watch by the times that she signs "sleep please".
hang in there!!

Hope

"Sarah Vaughan" wrote in message
...


So, what I want to know is - how do parents of more than one child
manage??



We don't keep track Honestly, that's insane. I've never once tried to
put my children on a schedule of any sort and they've all managed to put
themselves into some sort of routine.
Right now DD4 wakes up at about 4 for her last feed of the night, I get up
at 6 and take my shower, DDs 1, 2, and 4 go downstairs with me to get ready
for school. Sometime before 8:15 I manage to get DD1 and DD2 dressed and
fed and I usually end up doing hair while I'm nursing.

Then DD3 wakes up and we all hang out. No schedules If I have errands I
feed the baby and we go and pray we make it home before the busses. If baby
gets hungry while we're running errands, we stop and feed her.

The couple of times I've tried any sort of schedule, I feel like my life is
more harried and insane.

Denise

Well, your schedule sounds very confusing and not all that natural for
a
baby. (hesitantly) sorry....


So, to answer your question about what we do when there is more than
one
little around.....


The baby gets used to naps on the go, there is almost constant
entertainment
around, the baby adapts to waiting "just a second" for mama or
someone else
to come, the baby sleeps pretty good because they are in a front pack
or car
seat, or watching the swirl of activity However, sometimes the
little
one wants some alone time or to play when the rest of us want to
sleep!
hehehe.


Hang in there, I find that most babies make their own schedule when
you kind
of go with the flow. Usually when I get kind of frustrated at the
lack of a
schedule, one magically forms.



Bwahahaha, my second baby was harder than her first, and very much not
like what you described. You are lucky your second had that
temperment. My first had an easy to take care of temperment.

As far as how I handled it, I nursed and held my second child almost
constantly because that was all that made her happy, and my first dd
who was more easy going and easily entertained got alot less of my
attention than before.

Now, I am due with number 3, and I sure hope it is an easier baby than
my second dd was. Maybe then I will agree with your statement above.
KC