Do you remember those first holidays you celebrated with your partner before you had a baby? Valentine’s Day dates with romantic dinners & alone time. When holidays like St. Patrick’s Day was about getting green beer and not leprechauns and pots of gold. Christmas was about finding your partner that perfect gift and celebrating as a couple.
The holidays change for us as we grow up. Some of the magic slowly leaves and is replaced with an easier adult way of celebrating holidays. Then you have a baby and you have to find your way back to the magic and try to reignite your inner child. With that magic also comes a whole new load of responsibilities. When it comes to celebrating the holidays they are no longer about you and your spouse. You can’t just decide to skip them when you don’t feel like celebrating. It is now your responsibility to create memories for your child. It’s on you to instill in them the magic and traditions that make these times so special.
My Holiday Foundation
My parents divorced when I was very young and remarried very soon after so this always meant that I had a ton of family and lots of holiday celebrations. This was especially true on my mom’s side of the family. Holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving & Christmas were always a huge deal. I remember always having special holiday outfits, special traditions, & celebrating with family gatherings.
During Easter I always remember having to wear my special outfit to church that my grandma almost always picked out and I usually disliked. We would then go back to whichever family member that was selected to host and have a huge family meal. The food kept coming for hours and was followed by Easter egg hunt after Easter egg hunt.
Thanksgiving always started with the Macy’s Day Parade. My mom was always up at the crack of dawn, starting food even though she had been prepping for days. We then would have what we call dinner at lunchtime and second dinner hours later because there was always so much food. The rest of the day was spent enjoying one another, playing games, and complaining about how full we were as we took another bite.
Christmas was always especially memorable. Being from divorced parents, it meant I got two Christmases. They were always spent doing things like seeing the parade of lights, driving around and looking at Christmas light displays, baking, singing carols, & reciting our favorite Christmas movies because we knew them by heart. We had our traditions of Christmas Eve Mass, opening an early Christmas Eve present, and of course big family dinner with lots of food.
New Baby, New Traditions
I knew the minute I had my daughter that I wanted to give her all the same memories that I enjoyed growing up, as well as create our own family traditions. I wanted to share with her the one thing we celebrated most during these holidays – Family, and the love we share for one another. This became a little hard her first year because she was so little and born in the middle of a pandemic. It meant that as a family, we didn’t have the option to have the big gatherings that we’ve had in the past. It meant that my husband and I had to do the best we could to start out her traditions as happy as we could.
The first holiday that we actually celebrated with my daughter was Thanksgiving. This one was a bit of a challenge because this is the one holiday that I have always spent with my family. I have never spent it without them and it made me sad. I knew though that we had to make the most of this day for our daughter. We started the day how I’ve always started the day on Thanksgiving – watching the Macy’s Day Parade. After the parade, we hung out for that day at home while our food cooked. It was just our small little family so we didn’t cook a whole Turkey and kept our menu very small. We still got semi dressed up and took pictures with our daughter commemorating our first Thanksgiving. She was beyond adorable with her cute little turkey onesie and tutu. We then enjoyed our dinner and dessert and spent the rest of the evening enjoying our time together.
Christmas was our next big holiday. I never waste any time preparing for Christmas, as it is my most favorite time of the year, so the weekend after Thanksgiving we set up our tree and began the Christmas season. We showed our daughter all the decorations and even picked out special ornaments to commemorate our first year together. We took fun photos of her by the tree as well as the obligatory, corny photos of mom and dad holding the baby by the tree. The one thing we knew she would love was the lights. I wanted to continue the tradition with her that I always spent time doing as a child. So on a very cold and icy night, we packed into the car and drove around town looking at various light displays, ending our night at an epic light display complete with music that you could tune into from your car. We also knew how much she loved music so Christmas carols were a no brainer. I would play them often and find her often rocking back and forth and dancing to the songs. We of course as first time parents, and feeling a little bit of COVID parent guilt went overboard when it came to Christmas presents. Knowing that it would be a lot for her to process in one day, we did what we call the 12 Days of Christmas. She got to open a present every day, up until Christmas for 12 days. This Started with the smallest gift and ended with the biggest. On Christmas morning, she woke up to find a ball pit and tent in the living room as well as one last present to open. We spent the rest of the day prepping our Christmas dinner and binging on Christmas movies. Even though we somehow ruined our ham and turned it into mush, it was still a good day. The one thing I will always remember is how the night ended. I remember so clearly watching my daughter under Christmas lights, fixated on the Polar Express with her cute Christmas pajamas, knowing that this was the beginning of so many Christmases to come.
Going Forward
Although COVID affected our daughter’s first holidays. What was important was the time that we got to spend as our little family, just the three of us. That’s what made those first few holidays magical for us. I do look forward to introducing my daughter to our bigger family gatherings and traditions. I look forward to fostering her innocence with stories of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Most important though, I will continue to instill with her the love that we all share around those times and the traditions that make those times so special.
From my family to yours I hope you have a very Happy Holiday season!
Of all the baggage that motherhood came with, “mom guilt” has to be the worst. As moms we endure the weight of the world on our shoulders. We are always trying to make sure that our children grow up healthy, happy, and safe. Now this sounds simple and basic enough, right? I mean it should be. That is until that stupid little voice in our head gets going.
I never expected to feel like I am never doing enough as a mom as I do some days. I mean don’t get me wrong there are days that I am down-right winning at the mom game. But so many days I beat myself up for falling short and experience some form of mom guilt daily.
SuperMom Guilt
Even before I became a mom, I knew I wanted to be that mom that was home with her kids playing, doing activities, and crafts. I wanted to have the perfect looking house with all the home cooked meals. You can all laugh with me right now. The naïve, childless version of myself did not know what I was in for. In turn this picture I painted for myself has been my kryptonite. “How can I do it all and be it all?” Is the question I ask myself constantly.
The days when I get it right are the days I am most fulfilled and guilt free. But those days happen once or twice a week if I am lucky. I could clean the entire house and feel so good that it’s clean but feel terrible as a mom because I did not do enough with my kid that day. The balancing act to keep the guilt at bay is endless.
Mom voice guilt
We all know we love our kids to the moon and back. We love them in that borderline unhealthy, want to kiss them and squeeze them until they push us away kind of love. Most days that overwhelming feeling of love is all we have for them. That is until our dearest child decides to be on a roll of misbehaving all day. While we still feel love, our love guides us to take care of the bad behaviors, so we raise well-behaved children. My daughter tests this one regularly by trying to do something she knows she’s not supposed to do all the while smiling at me (to be honest her devious wit is going to be the death of me one of these days). During these times, sometimes the only thing I can do to get her attention and to stop the behavior is to use my mom voice. Almost immediately I am shrouded in guilt that tugs on every last piece of my heart for even having to use my mom voice with her. God, forbid she starts crying because that feeds my guilt more, and breaks my heart in two. I know it is the right thing to do but damn, the guilt sometimes is overwhelming.
Mom shame guilt
This one is every mom’s worst enemy at some point or another. It’s everywhere and we all tend to do it to one another whether we intend to or not. You can find mom shaming in groups online. A mom can simply share something about her child in a group. Next thing you know there are 10 other moms jumping in to say how they would have done it differently, or they can’t believe that she does it that way. It can even be present in our very own circles. While most times it is unintentional it can come with something as simple as a question like: “Why don’t you breastfeed? Breastmilk is better than formula for the baby.” I have felt this a lot with Covid because my husband and myself have chosen to limit the things my daughter does. I get a lot of opposition from other mothers I know who think that I am harming my daughter’s development by not allowing her to interact with others all the time. While they don’t intend to be hurtful these opinions tend to come off shameful and I have experienced a lot of guilt over this. We even tend to shame ourselves sometimes by comparing ourselves to other mothers and what they do for their kids and where we fall short. A lot of times we don’t know the full story of what goes on behind closed doors with these moms. Most times we only see the Instagram stories or the portions of their lives they let us see, but not their true lives. The mom shaming can lead us to feel guilty about the things we do for our kids. Mom shaming is a not so classy thing we do to one another. It ultimately adds onto another mom’s current load of mom guilt that could otherwise be lightened with a little bit of empathy toward one another.
Covid mom guilt
This one is a tough one and I find myself struggling with it the most. My daughter was born at the beginning of a pandemic and needless to say there were a lot of things that she missed out on, and we were not able to do with her for so long. My husband and I have felt so frustrated that our daughter couldn’t have come when things were more normal.
With vaccinations under our belt, and everything beginning to open this summer we took our daughter on a lot of outings and treat days. We wanted to provide our daughter with all the experiences she missed out on. We have even found ourselves overcompensating with gifts. Even though she is so little, and hopefully will not remember it, it does not change the fact that we hoped for more. We can’t help but have the sadness and guilt that she deserved to be born into a time where she could have more experiences and more interactions with people than she’s gotten up to this point.
Overcoming mom guilt
In a perfect world, it would be great to say that we should let go of all the things that make us feel guilty as mom’s and embrace the imperfection. Some days the mom guilt beats me down and I do let it get the best of me. While I don’t think I will ever overcome the mom guilt, I also know that it comes from a place of wanting the best for my daughter. In a way the guilt gives me drive, pushing me to be a better mom all the time. The guilt guides me to set a different example for my daughter. To teach her to have confidence in all that she does, to be understanding of other people, and be one fierce woman.
We recently sat down Santiago Ongay to talk about going back to work after having a new baby. He offered his perspective as a dad going through the process. You can listen to the interview or read it below.
Sonal Patel
Hi, guys. And welcome back to the NayaCare family. Today we’re doing our blogs again with our mom and dad, and again with us. We have Santi, our dad and Meagan. And so I’m going to take a minute for them to introduce themselves again.
Meagan D.
Meagan, I am the administrator for NayaCare. I came to NayaCare first with my daughter as a patient at the beginning of Covid and quickly believed in what they were doing. And so I came on as the administrator.
Santiago (Santi)
And I am Santi. I am a new patient of Dr Patel because Dr Patel does have multiple patients, the babies and the parents, and our baby boy was born over two months ago now. So we’ve been working with Dr Patel for some time and got to benefit from a lot of our services. So I’m happy to be able to come on and discuss those with everyone.
Sonal Patel
And I just honestly, I say this so many times that I’m just so honored that when people go through the services, they believe so much in the mission and the vision and that they come on and support. So being that being said, today, we’re going to talk about a fun topic and going back to work after you have a baby. And since Santis and the dads usually go back to work much earlier than the moms do, we’re going to have Santi kick off of how he felt going back to work.
Sonal Patel
Go ahead.
Santiago (Santi)
So I had a very interesting case. I actually quit my job one month before the baby was born and became self employed full time, which is nice and also a blessing and a curse, right? The blessing is well, I’m self employed so I can control my own schedule. But the curse is I’m therefore no longer have the paternity leave because again, I have unlimited vacation with unlimited work now, so you can only choose one. So it was definitely a nice balance. I figured if I wanted to take this step in my life, it was kind of now or never, right?
Santiago (Santi)
Once the baby comes and I’m comfortable receiving that paycheck and have that security blanket per se, then I thought I might not take that step in my career. So it was definitely a challenging step to take, but obviously it would support from my wife. I did that. And so going back to work was never really going back. It was just maintaining the bare necessities while spending more time with my baby and then little by little, ramping up more of the work hours. So it was again, an interesting balance, right?
Santiago (Santi)
It was definitely not a nine to five type of work schedule. Sometimes I would be up at two three in the morning and feel like I have the energy to get a little bit of work done, answer some emails, do some administrative stuff, then maybe the rest of the day would just spend with baby. So I was working kind of out of pocket from my phone, just replying to a few emails or phone calls like that, and then come bedtime or nap time, I would go back to work.
Santiago (Santi)
So again, the benefit of working from home, I think one of the biggest challenges there was mentally and physically, all I could think about and all I wanted to do was spend time with my baby. So it was actually very difficult being inside the house to be able to just close the door and focus on nothing but work. So what I found is a few days I would go to the coffee shop, and that way I would be there for one or 2 hours, and it would be nothing but productive time.
Santiago (Santi)
And then when I leave the coffee shop, I feel a little better, at least mentally, to spend time with the baby. Right. Because it’s also not how much time I might spend. So not the quality, not the quantity, but the quality of the time that I was spending with a baby. Right. If I was multitasking and working off my phone or thinking about something else, I realized it really wasn’t worth it wasn’t quality time. So that balance and finding again, the right routine, which the routine changed on a daily basis until I could find that right balance of getting a little bit of work done in certain apps hours of the day.
Santiago (Santi)
When mom needed a break, I had the flexibility to be at home and be able to help with that. And I’d say right now, we’re two months and change into having our baby. And I’m still trying to figure out that balance in that routine. So it’s definitely nothing that came naturally, but it’s been the best adventure of my life so far. So good.
Sonal Patel
You’ve highlighted so many amazing things just to kind of unpack. One of the things is you actually made this decision in Cove in the pandemic to go from being employed to self employed. That is best before we go into us, women going back to work, spend a little bit of time in this space when the desk go back to work. I actually was jealous of my husband when he went back to work and the opportunity to step away for a couple of hours. I think when going into it, I mean, I initially I was like, okay, yes, I have to breastfeed.
Sonal Patel
I have to do all of those things. But three, four weeks into it, when I was feeling a little bit better and I’m only drowning in breastfeeding and diapers, I’m like, wait a minute. I mean, you get to go and leave. And the flipping was it that yes, of course, when he comes back, he’s tired and he’s trying to balance both of it. But just speaking from a mom’s perspective, I was like, wow, you get to step out of this.
Santiago (Santi)
That is a great point. I actually work related, but I went to play golf. I’m not good at golf, but I at least enjoy it. And it felt like a vacation not in a bad way, right? Obviously, I missed my baby and wanted to be with a baby, but it definitely felt like a mini vacation. And the first thing I did when I got home is I told my wife, Let me stay with him and you go out, whether it be to the grocery store, Target, just to drive around whatever you want to do.
Santiago (Santi)
Because now I realize is stepping away. Is that a little bit of a break or mini vacation to just kind of rejuvenate yourself and be able to come back in into really the 24/7 job, which is taking care of a baby? Yes. And it’s challenging because like you mentioned, doctor would tell you you come back from work and you’re tired and taking care of a baby is very tiresome, but at least acknowledging and appreciating the fact that I got to step away and I just got a change of scenery and wanting to give that to my wife so she could also get a little break and just recharge the batteries and then come back and we can both be a team raising our baby.
Santiago (Santi)
So absolutely. I think definitely you step away to work, but you still step away. That change scenery. That a lot of times mom just can’t do.
Sonal Patel
Megan, what did you feel and your husband went back to work?
Meagan D.
I actually felt the opposite. I felt kind of bad for him, especially because he had to go back so quickly. I I felt bad that he had to I felt bad that he didn’t get that leave with the job I was at at the time. I had 13 weeks of maternity leave paid. He had no time, he had his vacation time, he had his sick time and with COVID his schedule was modified, so that did give us some extra time that he wouldn’t initially had. But I felt bad that he had to go back so quickly and had to miss those first few weeks.
Santiago (Santi)
It is definitely different, I would say in my experience, not having to go back to an office or some of my friends are contractors, so they have to go to job sites. So not having the choice and having to go back to work, I could definitely see what a man saying that a lot of times you don’t get to choose, you just have to go back to work, and now you’re missing watching your baby from nine to five or eight to six or whatever that might be.
Santiago (Santi)
So it’s definitely I think everybody has a different perspective.
Meagan D.
But it’s interesting to share what you offered paternity leave before you left.
Santiago (Santi)
I would have had, I believe, those two weeks of paternity leave, which is also not enough. But I would have had at least two weeks where you at least disconnect and not worry about anything. So that’s what one of the things I gave up, I guess, switching to selfemployed. But instead of having those two weeks to disconnect being self employed, I was able to have two months of a flexible schedule. So that’s another nice thing. After the two weeks of being completely disconnected, I didn’t have to go back to a nine to five.
Santiago (Santi)
I was able to more so balance that out and spread out the flexible schedule for now, going on more than two months.
Sonal Patel
Again, did your husband have how long did he have?
Meagan D.
So he didn’t have any opportunity to leave at all. His schedule had been modified from a Monday through Friday schedule to I think it was Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Then he was working because it’s COVID because they were trying to separate all the shifts and stay busy and not ultimately lay them off. So he did have a modified schedule. So he took about a week and a half off. It just so happened that Reddit we went into labor was right into the start of his first set of shifts.
Meagan D.
And so he took those few days off and then had ultimately, like another week and a half off. So that was pretty nice. But after that, he did have to go back. But like I said, he was on a modified schedule. So we got lucky there where he did have a lot more time home. Then he would have initially had. But still, I think it’s definitely a big gap. I had 13 weeks paid, and I know still, a lot of moms don’t get that, but most dads don’t have any kind of leave and they have to use their sick time and vacation time.
Meagan D.
And for him, his thought was, well, do I want to use that? All right. Now what if she gets sick? What is something you need my help? What about the holiday times? Do I want to take off time around the holiday times to be with her? So he asked to factor taking that time, too, make it all work together.
Santiago (Santi)
There’s so much that goes into these decisions. And another interesting perspective as a dad, right? You go back to work. And as new parents, you’re learning so much on a daily basis. You’re not only communication cues with the baby of his hunger signs and his tired signs and how to hold them when you’re feeding him. So there’s so many lesson learning lessons on a daily basis that as a dad, when you step away from work, you come back and you feel like you missed a lot of that.
Santiago (Santi)
Right now, mom is telling you how to do things because of her experience on a day to day basis. And now dad might feel like he’s missing out or mom is teaching him how to be a dad. And then, personally, I would get defensive because I don’t want my wife to teach me how to be a dad if we’re both together. But at the same time, if I am working for 5 hours during the day, I did miss out on some learning lessons there. So it is a very interesting balance to try to continue to bond with your baby while at the same time not being able to spend so much time with the baby.
Santiago (Santi)
It becomes difficult. And the worst thing I would say they get it for dads to avoid is to have that separate you and your baby. Right. I think I’ve seen this with some friends where the moms spending all day with a baby. The dad comes home from work. Mom is kind of telling him how to do XYZ. And then the dad gets defensive and says, Well, here’s the baby back then. You know how to do it. I don’t know how to do it. So you take care of the baby.
Santiago (Santi)
So there’s a lot of interesting dynamics there to work through.
Sonal Patel
When I had my first, I was a resident, so meaning my husband is also a physician. So we were both in the grind of residency, and I didn’t have that leisure in the sense of allowing myself to be like, dad, you do. I need you to do it a certain way, because I was putting in the same hours and I was like, I can’t plan for every little step that you do. You’re the dad. Keep him alive. I’ll be back. But that insight allowed me for my other ones to step away, to be like, okay, you might not be doing the way that I’m doing it because I’ve been with them the longest or however, but going back to work in residency allowed me to be like, okay, yeah, you’re the dad.
Sonal Patel
You’re going to do it. You’re going to do what it takes to keep your baby happy, alive, healthy. It might not be what I want or how I do it, but that was a really very valuable lesson, because this allows me to not only continue my career because there were some times where you’re on call and we’re a call in opposite day to go do a Fellowship gave me a little bit more freedom to kind of figure out what I needed to do and how I wanted to do it as well.
Sonal Patel
But I think that’s a very valuable lesson for dad.
Santiago (Santi)
No.
Sonal Patel
So sorry for moms to hear that you just step back with dad be death unless they’re doing something stupid. But still, absolutely, they can peed on a couple of times they’ll figure it out. That’s how you figured it out.
Santiago (Santi)
That’s a good perspective. A lot of times there’s not one right way to do things right. A lot of times there’s different ways to accomplish the same thing. That’s nice to hear.
Sonal Patel
So just kind of leading into it. Like I said, going back to work for me was very different. It was grueling hours in residency and fellowship, I had a little bit. So as an attending, after all my training was done, I knew I wanted I had to go back to sorry. I knew I wanted to go back to work. And I think that’s the difference, right? It’s what I wanted to do and how I wanted to accomplish. Versus I was very fortunate that I didn’t have to be forced to go back to work because of a financial reason.
Sonal Patel
Like, this was my identity. I wanted to do this. And I have an amazing, amazing, supportive husband. But being that said, I just remember we were dropping my son to daycare. It was like, like, my whole life, like, fell apart in front of me. You know, one of my friends had actually had a baby six months early. And she said, you know, when you drop them, make sure that you allow an hour just for yourself. Because it was this transition from I’m having had this baby in me for ten months.
Sonal Patel
I’ve been taking care of him for two months, and all of a sudden was leave him with a stranger. And it’s okay.
Santiago (Santi)
So your baby was two months old when you dropped off a daycare, actually.
Sonal Patel
Nine weeks. Yeah. Yup. Nine weeks.
Santiago (Santi)
I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t imagine.
Sonal Patel
Yeah, you had because we were in training. So it was just like, you have to finish it, right. Otherwise, of course, all what you worked up for. And I think that’s the thing that mom’s. I mean, the hormones don’t help either. I think dads deal with it, too. And I like the fact that we’re recognizing more stay home dad, in that case, as well, because they come to this this pathway, they have to make a choice. And neither choice seems very, I don’t know, just doesn’t seem right.
Sonal Patel
But then you go through it and you go through it. But I see the first time I had to drop them, then I cried. And then the next couple of times, we were a little bit financially better. So I was able to have a nanny. So I didn’t have to actually physically take my kids somewhere to do that. But, yeah, it’s just a heartbreak of taking your kid to daycare and, like, okay. And the struggle that I think moms go through. So Megan jumping in here because I know I know you joined.
Sonal Patel
I care for kind of some similar reasons.
Meagan D.
Well, first, I want to ask you because I want to see if it was similar. How did you feel when you were at work? Did you feel, I mean, more distracted or more torn? Like, you wanted to be with your baby? And I felt like it was harder to focus when I went back to work.
Sonal Patel
So luckily for me, I found a really good we’ve had an in home daycare, and she took care of him, like my friends, six month old. So I had a friend who had was a residency friend. So she had already gone through it, and she was really able to help me transition through it. And that daycare, Lady, Miss Peggy, I will never forget her. She was awesome. She would send me pictures a lot, or I would call and find if everything was okay. We also had, like, a staging things like the first the week before we were going back, I would drop him for 2 hours or drop in for an hour just to get myself comfortable and get comfortable with the situation.
Sonal Patel
And then the first couple of days. And Luckily, I went back into work because we have different rotations where you didn’t have to do patient care right away, where you could also be eased back into work. So I would work, like 5 hours or it would work 6 hours. And then when you did in patient care, we were in the system for about now. It was two months. So now he’s four months old and he was thriving, and we were better with that. So when patient care came, it just worked out in my favor.
Sonal Patel
I think that I was able to manipulate things. But I’ll tell you one thing, as soon as I got comfortable, because I think it’s me getting comfortable also. And we had a great day care. Miss Peggy was amazing. She was awesome. She loved my child as much. Just I did. You could see it. I would take advantage of be like, okay, we’re paying for five. So how many hours we paid for daycare and I’m off of work. I I think I’m going to go to the gym now, and I started becoming okay with that.
Sonal Patel
Be like, okay, I need time to I want to go back and become more healthy, and I’m going to go and do that. But it was definitely a transition. I don’t think, like, I was lucky enough not to kind of just go into patient care. And it was just like an easing myself into it.
Santiago (Santi)
The last piece that you mentioned, they’re going to the gym. I think it’s important. It’s difficult, right? Because sometimes you feel guilty. You’re like, I’m out of work. I should pick them up early or her early. But it’s also important for you to take care of yourself first, to be a better mother, better wife, but her husband. So that’s self care, which is something Doctor Patel always reminded us when she would visit us here at home, is important. If you’re healthy and you’re in a good mental space, then you can be that much better for the baby.
Santiago (Santi)
And then to Megan’s question, one thing to point out for me, what I saw is it depends on what type of work I was doing. Right. So if I’m in a meeting or in something that requires me to be in the moment, I was able to still am able to focus on that. But with the administrative work or things that could be put off or where I can become a purpose crash. Inator. Those are the things that have become very difficult to get done because I just put them off and go see the baby.
Santiago (Santi)
So it’s definitely a balance for me when I need to be somewhere and I have a meeting with someone that’s no problem. But when I need to sit down and get things done, that’s where I started to go to the coffee shop in order to focus, because what I would tell myself is I’m here. I’m away from a baby, whether it be an office or a co working space or a coffee shop, I’m away from the baby anyway, I might as well be productive to make it worth the time away from the baby.
Santiago (Santi)
Then I can go back. It was very difficult to get those administrative tasks done at home because obviously I would just choose the baby over. That okay.
Sonal Patel
I was told Megan, I know from one person too, actually, because I have four kids, and now I’ve been raising them for 15 years. But twice in my life I had been told that your nanny’s raising your kids. You aren’t. And so I think as a working mother, you encounter those kind of statements. It’s like, oh, but you’re taking them to day care for X many hours. How are you raising your child? And you’re just like, oh, my God, I am raising my child, and I’m trying to balance everything for them, but it’s difficult.
Santiago (Santi)
I think people are always going to judge as well and have their own opinion.
Sonal Patel
Megan, what about you? Before we even dive into more of this conversation?
Meagan D.
So I I mean, I obviously had my daughter beginning of covet. And so I had went on leave a little bit early because of covet because potentially being at risk. And I worked at a bank, and so I had closer to I think it was 14 and a half 15 weeks of leave. And by the time I was about, I think two weeks into having the baby, I just really knew that I did not want to go back. I felt like my place was to be home with her and take care of her.
Meagan D.
We had care arrange with my mom, but we were really apprehensive because my stepdad worked as a paramedic. And so that meant he was constantly exposed and in the middle of all of it. And we were already taking measures such as having your care come to our house and not taking her anywhere to avoid all that stuff. So sending her to my mom’s house was definitely a big concern, and I really was not not at already. So I think at that point that’s when I first contacted you and you weren’t quite there yet.
Meagan D.
So I kept looking for every Avenue working from home. I knew that I couldn’t do, like, a customer service type job, especially with her by myself. Any mom that can do that for 8 hours a day and take care of their kids once I praise you up and down because I can’t barely get a half hour cash done with my little one here. So I ended up going back to work. We did the test trails, like you said, and my mom lives about 25 minutes away from us.
Meagan D.
I balled the entire way there. I cried when we left. I had such a hard time with it. And like you said, I think it was hormones, too. But I mean, even now, I’m going to admit I still have a lot of difficulty of leaving her without me here. I feel like I know everybody can take care of her, but I feel like I’m just the answer to everything. So I went back to work and I was also pumping, and that became really difficult to keep everything clean.
Meagan D.
I didn’t really have a space to pump, so I ended up getting a pump that I could hide and where. And I did that while I was working, because I also didn’t feel like I had the flexibility with my job to stop and step away and pump. I went back to a job where I had a lot of seniority. I had a lot of poll, and I went back. And I felt like I had lost all of that in three months on maternity leave and just felt very out of place.
Meagan D.
At that point, I just felt like I needed to be home. So we tweak some things around. And two months later, I ended up leaving my position and decided to come home. And we decided to live off some of the money that we had saved up and basically kind of wing it. And I figure it out. And then I got a call from you that you were looking and you are ready. And so I stepped in this position. It’s worked for me to be at home.
Meagan D.
But like you said, it’s a balancing act. I literally feel like I go all day, I wake up with her, I Cook for her, I play with her, and she goes down an app. I do my work stuff. During her nap, she gets up, we play, we do dinner, she goes to bed, I do other house chores and other things that you need to be done and then some work. Sometimes I don’t I don’t stop home the night. But the trade off, like you said, it’s worth it to be more here and more present.
Meagan D.
And I feel like there seems my daughter is very ahead in it. Like, because I stayed home and had that ability to do it, she’s been able to have those advantages that I guess she wouldn’t have had it. I wasn’t here.
Sonal Patel
I had to grapple with the fact that all my twenties were devoted to becoming a doctor with all the studies and all the like, I sacrificed, like the going out and, you know, just being a rowdy 20 year old and I was just going to put that on the side. I think that was, I think with any woman who’s going back in any type of career or even now more so do also is just that you come to the fork in the road and say, okay, what’s important?
Sonal Patel
Not in the sense of I think what’s important to me because and like you mentioned, why I say self care and identity. Because, you know what? If I would have been happy, I wouldn’t have. That’s how I wear my hits. Then I would be constantly not happy. And I tried to stay at home stand for three months, I think with my second and bless you. Stay home, Mamas. Megan, I do not know I know you work for me, but my goodness, the constant going. I was like, and I felt it was not a good stay home mom.
Sonal Patel
I was a better working mom because then I was more organized. And so I knew where I compromised. A lot of my stuff is this was like you said, than these 2 hours were just going to be productive. So I knew when I was gonna step away from work or when I was at work, it was just work. And I had a good nanny that was helping me in that background. And she would only text me and stuff when I was really dear and needed. But when I came home, it was just home.
Sonal Patel
And all I did was spend my time at home. So that balancing, buddy. Now I did try to be a stay home mom and Megan hats off, man. Like that. I completely failed at that part of it.
Santiago (Santi)
I yeah, I think juggling both, which it seems like all three of us here are doing is a good experience to talk about quality over quantity, right? In any aspect of life, both going to the gym, I’m sure you’re going to work harder in the gym knowing I’m away from my baby, I’m away from work. I better make it worth it. And same with work and same with a baby, right? When you’re with a baby, then you got to separate everything else so that that time is really worth it.
Santiago (Santi)
So that to me, has made it easier to try to balance everything out and just becoming a better person every day. That’s all I can try to do for the baby. To Megan’s point, it is very interesting to see. I mean, I was so ignorant to everything that it takes to raise a child. I mean, obviously I am the son to a mom and dad, and I have a sister who has two little ones. And even with that, I was so ignorant before going through this experience myself.
Santiago (Santi)
The pumping, right? It’s a 24/7 job. You can’t stop. You risk actually your health if you don’t pump. So that’s very important. And then just being away from a baby, all the hormones, everything that’s going on, it’s crazy to see how as humans, we’ve gone through this for so long, but we don’t really accommodate for one another rate, like at the office. Like, maybe when I’m saying there’s no room for a mom to go pump just now, I’m starting to see and hear of airports having pods for a mom to feed or pump like breastfeeding in public.
Santiago (Santi)
It’s still such a taboo that my wife is like, should I cover myself? Should I not cover myself? If I don’t cover myself, I make it so awkward for everybody else, and then they make it awkward for me. So I think I was hoping, joining the parent club that there would be more services like NIA Care and more people like us three here who can relate with each other know that we’ve gone through this and try to help each other out, right? It’s somewhat frustrating to see businesses so far behind with childcare or with just certain benefits, even if it’s just a comfortable room for mom to pump.
Santiago (Santi)
It’s a blessing and a curse, I guess, because because the blessing is that it brings like minded people together, like the folks here and the folks I get to leverage NIA Care services. But it also opens up my eyes to what I was so ignorant to before, which is really, I think, the world. And unfortunately, where we live in the US, like maternity leave sometimes doesn’t exist. Sometimes it’s too short maternity leave as well. And then when mom’s going back to work, like Megan was mentioning, right, you went from a senior position where you felt like you have a somewhat like power, right?
Santiago (Santi)
And say in the office. So now all of a sudden feeling like you lose all that because you’re not even comfortable in the place where you’ve been working and where you feel like you have this seniority, you don’t even have a comfortable place to pump. So it is very eye opening experience, not only becoming a dad, but seeing also the world and how we accommodate parents or don’t accommodate parents. But I’m glad we’re here. And again, I’m glad Doctor Patel, you took the risk you did, leaving your job to start night care so that we can hopefully move in the right direction as a community.
Sonal Patel
So on those two notes, so there are laws in Colorado that you can demand your employers to provide adequate breastfeeding areas. If you’re anywhere in Colorado, just contact the public health Department and they will stare you right, because the laws support that. Even if you’re working at a Burger King, there are ways, and I don’t think people are aware of that.
Santiago (Santi)
I would say at least me personally, I’m definitely not aware of that. So I think this is a great point of our blog and time together to highlight those fun facts are very important.
Sonal Patel
And then I had the privilege of actually sitting in the room where the paid family leads that we just passed last year was being formulated and had the voice. And I was able to be one of the speakers not only in the legislation, but when we actually had are rally and everything and just super excited. After six, seven years, it got passed and it should be starting to be implemented in 2024. So those are the couple of laws. But I don’t think, like you said, Fancy, you get aware of stuff, and then you’re like, wait a minute.
Sonal Patel
There’s laws to support this. Wait, how did I not know about that? I just wanted to point out those two things that’s what you had brought up.
Meagan D.
So I’ll go ahead.
Santiago (Santi)
I was just going to say, I definitely appreciate your efforts there and bringing awareness to them. Like, if the law is there, but nobody knows about them, then it’s useless. So it’s nice to have you leading the pack there and bringing awareness to all of us around you in the community.
Meagan D.
And I was aware of of the laws, the place I was in, though I knew it had to have been within reason that they provide a space. But where I was at, the only reasonable space that would have been even able to be provided would have been the bathroom for me. There wasn’t where we were with such a small area. It wasn’t a typical bank. It was a stand up kind of bank, and they put the whole staff into there. So. And I knew I felt so uncomfortable when I went back as it was.
Meagan D.
I think that’s the thing, like, we know that there are things that protect us when we go back and even while we’re on leave and even while we’re pregnant. But I think there’s still a certain level of I mean, you feel uncomfortable. I know that you’re protected if you blow the whistle on those things, but you feel uncomfortable. You can’t stop people from making you feel outside the loop. And like I said, I went from the place I worked. I had ran this particular branch pretty much by myself at one point for over a year.
Meagan D.
So I went from having all this poll and all this day there to feeling very on the outside when I came back, and I didn’t want to feel anymore on the outside than I already did. And I’m actually friends with another man that works there. And she had similar feelings when she went back. She felt very uncomfortable about how she would even breastfeed. She was asking me questions about how I did it and how I went about it. So I think it goes back to what you said.
Meagan D.
I think people need to be more accommodating to mom and dad when they go back to work. We’re trying to figure out how we even do this. Something at work is a full time job. On top of your job, you’re literally pumping. You finish, you clean up before, you know, you’re setting up to do it again. And you’ve got to figure out how to correctly break out of work to do that, and you got to take care of it. And then you’re thinking about your baby.
Meagan D.
And like you said, you’re getting the updates from the babysitter, the little picture. So you’ve got that, too. And your job. It’s a lot for us to bounce. And dad, they’re worried about what mom’s doing when they go back. They’re worried about how baby is doing. There needs to be a lot more accommodation and a lot more easing back into the job and a lot more acceptance of what the parents have been through before they come back.
Sonal Patel
What you just said actually highlights literally sums up the literature that is supporting paid family leave because those companies that actually offer page families, their employees and stay there longer, and they’re more committed to that company. Exactly. I think accommodations in the sense of like, yes, of course, a good space to pump, a nice areas to do that. And that go along with the public health Department regulations, because the place needs to be clean. You need to provide places where you can clean your UM parts of reducing viral and bacterial thing.
Sonal Patel
But also the understanding. I think the accommodation is one time. But just overall understanding of this person was so important to our company, and they did so much, they just might need a little adjustment coming back to work. And so this overall understanding of it, I was super lucky. I had amazing role models in residency. We had. And my third year when I was an intern, I had two residents, two physician doctors who actually had two babies in the three year period. And they would pump.
Sonal Patel
And so everybody got comfortable pumping. Like, with us female residents pumping, they would nurse in the car rooms because their husbands or spouses would bring the babies. And when they had a minute of break instead of pumping, they would nurse. And it started fostering this culture of like, so when I became a 30 year residence and I had my baby, too, I was like, oh, my husband would bring the baby to me when I was on call, and if I had a chance, I was able to nurse.
Sonal Patel
And that was just accepted. It wasn’t like, oh, my gosh, you’re doing it again. I think just having people that have gone through it, we had a couple of male residents and they’re like, oh, yeah, you’re pumping. This overall understanding from both perspective was really helpful and encouraging to have a child in residency.
Santiago (Santi)
I think that highlights it’s not only at a regulatory level that efforts need to be made to establish these laws and regulations to protect parents, but also at a company level, no matter the size of the company might be Fortune 500 or a small mom and pop. But having that culture is priceless. I think, obviously, people I’m sure statistics that show that people stay there longer, that the quality of work is better. And now we’re talking about this four day work week versus five day work week.
Santiago (Santi)
Again, to me, just the quality versus quantity always comes back. If you’re sitting in front of your desk for 5 hours, but you concentrate for 15 minutes, what was the point? Right. So I think that culture, that company culture is an important thing to highlight what a lot of people business owners and also employees can make an effort, even though you might not think you can change the laws or you can change the company, at least make an effort for the culture to be one way.
Santiago (Santi)
I hate to see when people have the attitude of oh, I figured it out. So you’ll figure it out as well. You’ll be okay, right? Where it’s you figured out that there were obstacles that had to be overcome. And instead of just saying, I crossed the bridge and then burn it or figure out how to cross it yourself, let’s take 1 second to look back and say, how can we improve this for the next person that’s going to cross? Right? Maybe you’re not going to have another baby yourself.
Santiago (Santi)
Maybe you are.
Right.
Santiago (Santi)
So maybe you’re going to have to cross that bridge again. But don’t be so quick to forget just because you’ve gone through it. And now the next person is going to figure it out. Just as a community, take as a community, take a second to look back and say, how can we improve this for each other?
Sonal Patel
I mean, that’s a perfect place to end. So thank you, Sandy. The floor. We completely end. What’s? One tip that you guys think that you’d like to relate to your counterpart when going back to work so I can start as a working mom going back to work? One tip is particularly if you’re in the corporate world, if you could schedule your pump breaks as you would schedule meetings like 1520 minutes. So then everyone is aware that you are and they look at your calendar. They’re like, okay, that one is blocked.
Sonal Patel
And then always my responses smokers take breaks of breast, getting moms need to take break to, and that should just be part of it. But that’s one tip that really helped schedule pumping that I knew and everybody around me knew was like, okay, I’m taking 1520 minutes, break to pump. Then when I’m back in it, I’m going to be start working. So that’s why one tip that would give working moms.
I.
Meagan D.
Think mine would be just advocating for yourself. I mean, ultimately, I left my position, but I think there were certain things that I advocated for myself. And the biggest thing was that I was not the same person as I was before I went on leave, I came back a mom, and I mean, I wasn’t single, but I had an individual life before I went in. So I had all this availability, and I definitely had to advocate that. Now I have a schedule. Now my availability is not the same.
Meagan D.
Now I have these priorities out of work. I’m going to advocate that I’m here to do my job, and I still be the same person doing my job. But there were things that like the pumping and everything that needed to change, and I had to try to advocate, and I should have advocated more for my situation.
Sonal Patel
I’m not too much, Megan. Then you wouldn’t be here. True.
Meagan D.
And I’m actually way happier doing what I’m doing. I mean, longevity wise, I planned on staying where I was. I was in a good position, but I’m so blessed to have the opportunity to have and the fact that you give me the flexibility to be a on and bring home income so a better and even leaving.
Santiago (Santi)
You do advocate, right? Not only for yourself, but for the next people to go through that experience. Hopefully the company would do an exit interview and understand why they lost such a or ten year employee. So even not being there, still, I think that step hopefully would advocate and speak up for yourself. And the rest mine would be, I think, time management and quality over quantity. I realized even though yes, I could hold my baby and answer emails on my phone, I’m not doing either of them.
Santiago (Santi)
Well, there’s no point. I’m somewhat of a perfectionist, and I would much rather not spread myself thin or try to boil the ocean. I’d rather have the 2 hours set aside for work where I know, Unfortunately, I’m not going to be with a baby. I’m not going to see the baby or hold the baby. But because that’s the opportunity cost, that’s what I’m giving up. I’m going to make sure those 2 hours are going to be very productive. And I realized I can even fit what used to take me three or 4 hours of work into 2 hours, and then I can go home, be with a baby and put my phone aside.
Santiago (Santi)
So I think in everything not only time spent with a baby, but time spent at work or with friends, family at the gym, just quality over quantity is important for me.
Sonal Patel
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. This has been an awesome, amazing conversation. So thank you. Believe it.
Santiago (Santi)
Of course. Always a pleasure. Thank you guys for what you do. We’ll talk again soon.
Sonal Patel
Yup. Bye.
What was your experience with returning to work? Share with us in the comments!
This month as we focus on baby safety, we talked with Santiago Ongay. He offered his perspective as a dad going through the process of babyproofing the house and their life. You can listen to the interview or read it below.
Sonal Patel
Hello NayaCare Family. And welcome back. We’re continuing our series with our amazing dad, and this time we’re going to be talking about safety and the way that we thought we talked about safety would be in the fashion that we’re actually dealing with it in the different stages of our lives. So for example, you guys all know that I have four boys, the ranges from four, six to 15. So I have other safety issues I am now more concerned about.
Sonal Patel
And then Santi has a three month old and Meagan has a toddler on the loose. So let’s kind of just start in the order about baby safety and infant safety. And obviously say sleep is one thing that always comes up. So we will. If you go on our website, we’ll have a PDF that shows you exactly about infant safety and what to do with it. But the next big topic. And so we won’t draw on that as much, because since it’s everywhere is car seat safety, and I think that’s one thing that people overlook or don’t know how to do it.
Sonal Patel
When we first got our cars for first little one, I remember bundling him up in it, but we didn’t know how to adjust the straps. And so the poor boy was, like squeezed in like it was a straight jacket for him, essentially because we couldn’t figure out. And until we went to our pediatrician’s office, they’re the ones that showed us to be like, no, no, no, you just have to press that button to loosen the straps. So did you guys have anything about infant safety or car seat safety in particular?
Sonal Patel
Or one last thing when I was doing my car, we didn’t have all these options that you young parents have now. So how did you guys navigate all of that? Because that seems mind boggling to me.
Meagan D.
For me, I get kind of lucky because my stepped out is a paramedic, so I don’t have the choice but to do it correctly because I have him in the back of my head constantly telling me, even as an adult, how to properly be buckled. In several weeks before we had our daughter, we installed the course, and we actually had him come over and make sure that it was properly installed because he actually helped do installations when he it was at the fire Department. So we got kind of lucky with that.
Meagan D.
I still don’t know how to install it. My husband has since figured out how to install it properly. I am hoping nothing ever happens to him because I’m never going to know how to install the car seat.
Sonal Patel
I hear you. Santi, how about you?
Santiago (Santi)
That’s funny. Yeah, I left that to my wife. She picked out the car seat. She did her research, got some recommendations. She also was looking for something light so she could carry it. But the installation, she then left to me. And we also went to the fire Department here locally in Arvada, Colorado, and made sure that they checked it out. And my sister also has a three year old and an eight month old. So we had her check it out. We letting everybody check it out. They could check it out just to make sure we got multiple points of view.
Santiago (Santi)
So that was definitely interesting, right? That’s before the baby comes, we were already driving around with a car seat ready to go. And luckily, at the hospital, they showed us what you were mentioning, Dr. Patel, how to loosen it, because that’s something everybody checks to make sure it’s installed. But then when you actually have a baby in there, you got to figure out a few other things. So they showed us how to loosen it, how tight it should be. The pinch test above the shoulder to make sure you can’t pinch the strap so that, you know, that they’re tight enough, but not too tight.
Santiago (Santi)
So it’s definitely a more complex situation that I imagined with the car seat. I thought we just purchased it, install it, and that’s that. But even as my wife was going through the research, I learned there were so many different car seats to choose from. Figure it out. Yeah, I’m definitely comfortable with it. And I think, like Megan mentioned, I think I’m a little more comfortable than my wife at this point.
Sonal Patel
I totally agree with all your points. There the comfort. My husband took over more of the charge with the comfort, but it was like I said, you guys have so many more choices out there. And to kind of find the right one, because it’s the safety of your infant. If you’re just like, I’m bringing this child home. And also you have to make sure that you spend your money wisely that they are, they can grow with a child as well. So then for car seat safety, obviously, the law is in Colorado two years backwards.
Sonal Patel
And then most people recommend as long as your child allows it to be facing backwards, and the car seats will start supporting that. The other little quick things about safety, car seats. There is an expiration date because of the plastic. So please be mindful of that. So now that we’re going to start with the state of Sunny, what is your biggest concerns now with safety now that you have a three month old?
Santiago (Santi)
So I’ll try to go in chronological order. I love the term making use to describe how we’ll talk about it today, the generations of safety. So I’ll try to keep it in chronological order as we were. So first, obviously, the car seat right before the babies here, we have that installed and make sure it was done properly, got a few people to review it. And after that, the whooping cough, the TDAP vaccine as well as unfortunately, nowadays the COVID vaccine was a big topic for us even before the baby was here.
Santiago (Santi)
My wife’s family’s out of state, so traveling right now was also a concern. Even with the vaccines being out. Obviously there’s concern whether vaccinating people can carry the virus, whether they can, whether they can spread it, etcetera. So those two I think again, the whooping cough, which is not a normal conversation that you would have if baby aside with friends and family. So that was a new conversation to make sure people had their shot, and also the COVID vaccine and just being careful with COVID. That was before baby was here, thinking about bringing him home, thinking about friends and family wanting to meet him and visit.
Santiago (Santi)
And honestly, till this day, most of our friends have not met our baby. Only my parents and my sister, who live locally in Colorado met the baby, and then some of my wife’s family who slowly have been traveling here to meet the baby as well. But health concerns, of course, sleeping and all that. I think we’ll get into those topics a little later because they’re definitely worth discussing in detail. But those two were new to me that I didn’t really concern until much later in the pregnancy were those health concerns of the vaccines and COVID.
Sonal Patel
So as a new parent, navigating all of this, how did you address that to your friends? Because some I mean, I could just imagine having that kind of a difficult conversation for some particular friends that I have.
Yeah.
Santiago (Santi)
And I think human nature, you try to avoid those difficult conversations. So what I found myself doing is really I wouldn’t approach the conversation unless someone was adamant about meeting or visiting us or meeting the baby. So at that point I would bring up the conversation of the options are to get the that vaccine and explain what the whooping cough is and what I’ve learned of it. And also the COVID vaccine and just being careful with COVID and mask, et cetera, or waiting a few months until the baby has the opportunity to get his vaccines so that he’s covered.
Santiago (Santi)
And luckily, most of the people that were adamant about meeting the baby were also obviously open minded and either already knew that they would have to do this or we’re open to doing it. And it’s funny, one of my friends even ran out to Walgreens to get the tap vaccine and send me a picture of his Band Aid afterwards because he was excited to meet the baby. But I let people more so open up the conversation right by wanting to meet the baby. I didn’t approach people who were more so willing to wait to meet them, telling them that they have to run out and get their vaccines Megan.
Sonal Patel
You had to encounter COVID White when it was starting with your little one. How did you navigate that conversation?
Meagan D.
It was really difficult because in general tend to be very far. I’m kind of known as the germophobe of the family. I get teased quite a bit for it. So this couldn’t have been, like any closer to my worst nightmare if it tried and then being pregnant and having a new baby, it was definitely scary. It was really hard because we didn’t have a lot of family around, but the biggest person that wanted to see him was my parents, and my stepdad was expose based on his job as a paramedic.
Meagan D.
So that was definitely a concern for me. But it was also kind of a relief because I felt like at the same time, he knew the risks and he knew how to be careful, and he wouldn’t have done something to put our daughter in danger. But my parents especially had been very good about being vaccinated, wearing masks, washing hands. David made sure they had the flu shot last year. They’re really good about adhering to what we’re comfortable with. But even after those conversations, we even had some people that were exposed that didn’t let us know until after they visited, which was very frustrating.
Meagan D.
So now we just ask a lot of questions and going into COVID kind of coming back. And with this variant, we’ve had to start having the conversations because my entire family is not vaccinated. We tend to be very close. And I’ve had to have the conversation that if it gets to the point where we feel uncomfortable again, we’re going to be distancing ourselves from the unvaccinated family members for our daughter’s safety, or they can wear a mask around her just because she doesn’t have the ability to be vaccinated.
Meagan D.
I mean, we’re hoping that breastfeeding is protecting her in some format, but there’s still just not a lot to know on how protected she is, and I’m just not willing to risk it. But my husband has never gotten the flu shot up until we had the baby, and now he is a regular vaccine taker.
Sonal Patel
So Interestingly. Pertussis and the tap was reemerging. And those guidelines came out when I actually was training for pediatric residency. So for our audience, pertussis actually present in less than six months, not as whooping cough, meaning that your senior by call cough, but they actually present with lack of breathing, which is the medical from apnea. And I remember being in New Orleans being in my LSU residency and had to admit to kids both babies. One was like a four month old, one was a five month old, and we thought it was in the winter.
Sonal Patel
Obviously you go to RSV, but when it came back as pertussis and you know, my residency training was 2003 to 2000 or 2004. Sorry, I’m missing of the date, but what I’m just trying to get at was it wasn’t very long ago that we saw this. It was less than 20 years ago that we actually changed the guidelines for pertussis. And it was really interesting to see avail in front of your eyes because of all what you were seeing. So that was kind of an interesting thing to take on that in science in real time.
Sonal Patel
And I think that’s what we’re dealing with COVID, right? Science in real time and people that people are seeing it more first hand than ever now fancy. So now we have the baby stuff. And like you said, the vaccines and all of that. What’s your next concern? Because I think that’s going to lead into really nicely to what make him dealing with these days.
Santiago (Santi)
My next concern, I usually was not a concerned person, but since my wife was pregnant, I’m now all of a sudden concerned with everything. So I’m just laughing at the question. But from the top of mind, what I would review as the top concerns right now, I’m terrified of choking anything to do with choking, and I know it’s more common than I imagined. So that’s something that’s on the back of my mind. And obviously the CPR classes we took, but they were virtual this year because a COVID following that conversation.
Santiago (Santi)
So I don’t feel like and on my hands on learner. So I don’t feel like I got the hands on experience of what the CPR infant CPR course would give you. So that’s definitely always on the back of my mind. And the other one is sleeping. I think we might dive deeper into this one, but not only sleeping right right now, I think of sleeping at night the way they sleep, whether in the bassinet next to the bed. We have a pretty fancy Basnet that has a swaddle attached to it.
Santiago (Santi)
So at least it just gives me the peace of mind also that he’s not going to be rolling around or anything like that, but also napping. So sleeping and napping. We used to or mom more often than that. After he was done feeding, he would fall asleep on her chest. And then sometimes mom would be tired and would start dozing off. And we know that Child Safety 101 don’t fall asleep while holding your baby. But we also read a little bit about that specific position of them sleeping on your chest and how if they turn their face towards you, their nose doesn’t really have the bone or cartilage to stop them from completely blocking their airway.
Santiago (Santi)
So that’s another super scary fact that I guess. Dr Patel, maybe you could speak to more. But going back to ignorance is bliss, right? As soon as I learned that now terrified every time the baby’s napping or when mom’s tired. Usually since I work from home, I have the ability to just kind of Hover when I can and make sure they’re not boat sleeping. And if mom’s tired, just take them and put them in his best in heat, or maybe hold them for a little bit if I can.
Santiago (Santi)
So those two sleeping napping and choking out the top concerns right now, on top of mine.
Sonal Patel
Again, how did you deal with the choking? And then we’ll dive into sleep.
Meagan D.
So again, I got really lucky. I have taken CPR several times. I started taking CPR when I was younger because I used to baby sit a ton. I also worked with adults with developmental disabilities, so I had trained for that as well. Then I did kind of like a refresher thing with my stepdad. I didn’t do formal training, but just kind of a refresher on what you do. But I’m kind of with you, Sante, where I still had to practical, but I feel like in the moment I would kind of panic and I question myself and I wouldn’t know what to do.
Meagan D.
So I do worry about choking. But surprisingly, my husband actually worries about it far more than I do. And it could be because I’m home all the time with her. So I see how she eats food and the things she does, and I see like, oh, it’ll be fine. She’ll work this out where he sees crap, she might choke. So for me, I don’t worry about it as much. I mean, it is there. I obviously watched for smaller things on the floor, things like that. When we started food, it was a little bit of concern.
Meagan D.
But I also kind of learned to trust her a little bit. I realized that when something was too big, she also realized that, hey, this is not going to work. I can’t swallow this and she’d actually pull that out of her mouth or try to get it out of her mouth. So I realized that some of that she could work out on her own a little bit, and it taught me to be a little less paranoid on that came to choking.
Santiago (Santi)
I’ll add a little bit to that paranoia in the first few weeks, any little noise that he would make, especially at night, he could make really, what would be a cute noise? But any little noise, I would jump up in bed and ask my wife if he was choking. I don’t know why I had that phobia so bad. And now little by little, like Megan mentions. Right. You get to know their noises and kind of just how they are when they’re eating or when they’re sneezing or sleeping.
Santiago (Santi)
So now much more calm and compost when it comes to any little noise. I haven’t got to the milestone of eating solid food yet or crawling around. Right. So what Megan was mentioning about making sure there’s nothing small on the floor that they could get to or eating solid foods. I’ll have to come back and let you guys know how my paranoia is doing at that point.
Definitely.
Sonal Patel
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it’s like it’s more watching and allowing your kids to explore. And you offer the best abilities that you can, but really starting to get to know them. And do remember, coughing is a reflex that they’re protecting themselves. So parents usually get really scared when their babies are coughing and the mistaken that is choking. But actually the mechanism of coughing is protecting your airway, so that’s actually a good thing. And then you can adjust your or just whatever they’re doing. And Fancy, I have to save this.
Sonal Patel
Also, when your little one grows up a little bit more, I mean, they can choke on a tether sometimes it feels like so they have it in their mouth. And all of a sudden, because of all that, the build up and they start just coughing on that. And again, like Reiterating, a lot of parents confused coughing as choke game. The coughing is literally it’s a defense mechanism for the body. So that’s a good thing.
Santiago (Santi)
I’m nervously smiling with us.
Sonal Patel
No, it is a voyage. It is. Hopefully in the fall, we actually started a series for introduction of baby food and developmentally and all of that good jazz. And just to have parents understand the knowledge about developmentally, we introduce food and that’s your biggest source of if they’re going to be choking or not. And that’s usually around six months. So you have a couple of months left to go. You know, being cautious is with everything. The minute you become a parent, the light bulb switches in your head, your mindset just switch.
Sonal Patel
And you just want to make sure that everything around this little one is the best to its abilities and the safest visibility so your little one can grow and thrive. So your concerns, I think, are not. They resonate through all parents and particularly new parents. And I’m sitting here fortunate to have four. But I will tell you, every single time experience does create more comfort in some regions, some ways, and in some ways you get too comfortable with certain things. But you do learn. You do learn.
Yeah.
Sonal Patel
Let’s dive into sleep, guys. So Fancy, you started with the sleep. Megan, do you want to add? So Megan and I have to be totally open. We’ve had a lot of conversations on sleep, and there’s two aspects of sleep. One is a sleep training, and then one is a sleep environment. And Megan knows my stance on this. You cannot sleep. Train a baby. You can sleep. Q A baby. What’s the difference is that when you’re training something you want it to do and respond to the same ques the same time every single time they have to do it this particular way, you can definitely train like to train your dog to go outside and pee and do it.
Sonal Patel
And training can lead into good habits and behaviors. But unfortunately, what happens in the first year is babies change a lot. So what you want them to do is you want to create an environment where they’re starting to recognize that this is the same place, basically sleep every single time. But you know what? When they’re six months old on the weather’s night and you want to go out, it’s okay once in a while to be like, I want to go out with my baby and I might want to skip my nap for that day and then have a bigger nap in the evening or however.
Sonal Patel
But the training, when people train their babies, they become so just too much into the schedule. I feel that it doesn’t allow them to have a little bit of maneuvering. So that’s my one stand one sleep training. I really prefer sleep queuing. And what that means is again, same environment, same thing. I think I’ve told you both guys, eat, play. Sleep is what I kind of go along with is babies. Each babies play for a little bit and then they sleep. And as your babies get older, you see that pattern occurring and occurring, and that’s what the pattern is.
Sonal Patel
The other thing is that when babies are crying at night or send you, like, for your age three month old baby, they’re crying for a reason. That’s their way of communicating. So go address that reason. And then you start creating bondings of comfort, bondings of nurturing, bondings of security because I’m seeing the end of it or my 15 year old, I wanted to reach me. I mean, he’s going to be in three years, he’s going to be in College, but I wanted him to have the security to be like, I don’t care.
Sonal Patel
It’s two in the morning. I’m going to call my mom because I need my mom. And I think sleep queuing is just a better way to go about when you have a three month old to a toddler age, because that’s just establishing more security and bonding with your babies. And not to say sleep is not important to sleep, it definitely is important, and there’s definite transitions part of it, even at this stage. My youngest is 6 miles old, is is 15. We have quiet time in the afternoons where we go into the rooms, everybody gets a book and they quit their bodies.
Sonal Patel
So that was initially when they were mapping, but now it’s turned into quiet time and then the sleep safety. So let’s break that up. Do you guys have any comments about the sleep environment and the training and the queuing?
Santiago (Santi)
Well, I have three months of perspective, so not as much as a few doctor could help, but I definitely resonates what you’re saying with the Cubers training. I think there’s definitely a balance, because if you’re so strict with just one right way, then maybe if you have to go out of town on a family vacation or whatever, you’re just outside of the normal environment, then it might impact the baby negatively because it’s just so used to that one specific way. We started being a little too much, I would say, with the apps and tracking the feeding and the sleeping and napping.
Santiago (Santi)
And then you gave us a different perspective, which you just shared right now. And since then, I think that as parents were a lot more laid back, we still have a routine not as strict of a schedule as you said. Right. If we have to do something during his nap time, he doesn’t necessarily have to nap in the bassinet at home. Sometimes nap more so, like in the car and things like that. So we are trying to find our balance and our routine without being too strict and also allowing us as parents to not be so under such a strict schedule and still allow us to kind of live our life, but definitely with a new routine now with a baby.
Santiago (Santi)
So I would say what I took away is just that balance. I think that being too strict might be a little too much, but definitely a good routine is healthy. So when it comes to that, we’re trying to find that balance. And like Megan said before, right. Just when you think you figured out the balance and their schedule or their routine changes a little bit, which is also nice to have that adaptability instead of being too strict with what we’re doing. So.
Meagan D.
For me, I have struggled every step of the way with sleep. When she was first little, I never understood the EA play sleep. I could never get it in that order, no matter how much I tried. My daughter seems to be a unicorn of that situation, and she just does her own thing and she beats to her own drum. Even when she was little, her wake windows were more like three 4 hours versus one to 2 hours, like she just always seemed to do stuff differently. We did at one point, as Dr tell us very well, try to hire a sleep trainer who I promptly fired the night that I was supposed to start, because even though we had discussed at great length what me and my husband wanted for our daughter, this person slowly came in and started trying to change how we were going to do it in a way that I wasn’t comfortable with, such as taking my daughter’s past supplier.
Meagan D.
I felt like at that point she had been used to sleeping in our room. So I felt like trying to take all those things at once was way too much, and I needed to do it in a way that I also felt comfortable doing it so I could reinforce it with her. I did take some things from the experience we do let her sleep in her own crib in her own bedroom. Now I do try to keep bedtime at the same time every night and that time at the same night, the same time every day within about a half hour of reason.
Meagan D.
We have noticed if we don’t stick to those times, we either don’t get naps at all or bedtime. It’s really hard to get her down. So we do stick to that. We do leading up to that do kind of a routine, especially at night. She gets to watch a little bit of she loves the Muppets. So we let her watch the Muppets, and then we do teeth brushing and story time and snuggling and bedtime. So we do keep a bit of a routine. But for us, that just works for her and her busy little mind.
Meagan D.
But with safety, we do the crib. And right now she’s 16 months. So we have just started to introduce a blanket in the crib. And that’s more at nap time when I can really watch her on the monitor with the blanket and make sure that everything is safe in the past, that we don’t use any kind of bumpers or anything like that. The only bumper we did use at one point was a mesh one. So it was breathable, mainly because she can literally turn a 360 and has.
Meagan D.
And she was really little in her bed, so she was getting her legs and arms stuck in between the railing of the crib. And for me, I was paranoid that she’d break her arm or something, getting it stuck in there. But we pretty much adhere to the safety rules. The only other thing that’s inter cribs, it’s a harder kind of stuffed animals that live up and it sings doesn’t really present a lot of suffocation risk past that, though. We adhere a lot to the safety rules when it comes to the car.
Meagan D.
I’m still very paranoid of something happening with her, but we’re doing pretty good so far. But like I said earlier, every time you think that you get used to it and I think you’ve got something in place, they change. I had her sleep trained, and as I would say, I guess at this point for the last four and a half months and now just recently, the last few days, she’s not wanting to go down. She’s struggling to take a nap. And it could be other things with teeth and everything else, those tend to mess with the sleep times, but it does change.
Meagan D.
I think it’s being flexible to work with it.
Sonal Patel
I think that’s one thing that you mentioned that you are particularly a little better than I did was structure versus being so like, I mean, I know parents who would be like, oh, my God, it’s 10:00. We need to go home right now, you know, or we need to do this right this second, because otherwise it’s going to mess up everything. And I just honestly, from looking in that way, it just didn’t seem healthy to be like, if you’re so ridges on that aspect of it that you cannot just enjoy one evening, then how are your kids going to adjust when things are thrown at them.
Sonal Patel
But I like the term structure a little better because it’s still not training because you’re not setting a particular time. You’re not being like, okay, we have to do ten steps first before we can actually have this bedtime routine and go to bed, because sometimes life happens and those things can be messed up. So you really do want to teach your kids, even with the sleep, part of it is to be able to adjust two things that happen to you, but hopefully in most normal circumstances have a good structure for it.
Sonal Patel
Making your little one reminds me of my oldest one. He never like, I remember he was nine months old, and I read in a book that he was supposed to get two naps still. And I literally had him in his crib and close the door, and he was crying his head off. And my husband looked at me and he goes, what are you doing to him? Like, Why? I was like, no, no, no. A book told me a book told me that I had to do this, and that was literally the last of that.
Sonal Patel
My husband was like, no, we’re not doing this. And he’s like, we’re gonna make sure that he gets appropriate sleep if we need to listen to our child as well. He’s telling us he doesn’t want to do this, and those points in time are just changed. So, like, your toddler is going through right now. Is she’s growing? She’s changing, and there might be something else that needs for her. So with every sleep change, I know I did this, too, is whenever they went down to one or one map or even if they dropped, they’re not completely.
Sonal Patel
Every third or fourth day, I ensure that they had a nap because then it would catch up to their body until they were over that transition. And, you know, when you start listening to your baby’s cues, I.
Santiago (Santi)
Personally really appreciate you guys sharing those perspectives, because obviously you are 15 years or a few months ahead of me. So it was great to hear your guys. We’ve been very lucky with our baby, so he has been, you know, as soon as I think he was two months, he was sleeping six, 7 hours through the night. And as a newborn, he was sleeping fairly often. So we felt like we got really lucky. And I’m looking into the future as to how things might change there. So thank you for sharing the perspective.
Santiago (Santi)
And I’m now more prepared from this conversation to what comes next with a sleep journey.
Meagan D.
It’s a difficult one.
Sonal Patel
Or it could be totally easy. That’s the thing with kids. They’re so different. My second one, he loves to sleep, and you still love if my teenager will wake up at, let’s say, 08:00 738 every single morning, he goes to bed at ten, and my eleven year old will literally can sleep till 11:00 at night. Do goes to bed 11:00 in the day, though. He goes to bed bed at 08:00. So again, I think what we’re all kind of saying in a different way is there are some guidelines.
Sonal Patel
There are some safety rules that we all follow. The safety about when to introduce things into the crib when obviously and you mentioned not to fall asleep with your babies and stuff, but all of the safety rules are there. And those are guidelines. At the end of the day, the relationship comes between you and your child, and you have to figure out how you need to make sure that they’re following the stuff that you’re putting as guidelines and also how to parent them appropriately. And then another thing you’ll see plenty.
Sonal Patel
I had plenty of pictures where my little one fell asleep on my husband, but he was being supervised. I was awake sitting next to both of them while this is happening and while they were doing their bond. So it’s okay to once in a while color your baby, but make sure that they are supervised that way. Someone supervising that that interaction.
Santiago (Santi)
That is a great point. Yes, we do. I do let them cuddle when I’m able to supervise, and those guidelines are priceless. Dr Baton also Echo something that I really took away when you mentioned nap time. Going to quiet time. I think that’s awesome. And I’m definitely going to try to do that when Santis older. I think especially nowadays with how quickly life moves and how we’re just stimulated having a little bit of quiet time. Some people might call it meditation reading, whatever you do. I think it’s definitely important just to let the the mind and the body relax, even if you’re not fully napping.
Santiago (Santi)
So I might try to do that myself.
Sonal Patel
I literally say my kids taught me how to take naps and they will vouch for it. I can take a ten to 15 minutes nap every afternoon, and my oldest is like, how do you do that? You guys trained me away around toddler age. Megan, what are you dealing with? Safety issues out of toddler age?
Meagan D.
Well, the biggest thing is that my daughter we always say that she’s kind of like a dog. There’s a movie where they say that dogs get to know each other by sniffing each other’s butts. And we feel like my daughter gets to know everything by putting it in her mouth like it’s how she figure out what it is. And everything literally goes into my daughter’s mouth at some point or another. So making sure everything is clean. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a bit of a German folk, so I am definitely the mom that is constantly cleaning toys, constantly making sure that things are picked up within reason.
Meagan D.
I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t want it in her mouth. It doesn’t come even remotely close to her level. I have gone as far as to kind of keep her in a zone. So we have gates by our living room over our stairs. My bedroom is closed off almost all the time. The only time she’s ever allowed in our bedroom is if we are in our bedroom. Her bedroom for a while. We had an issue with how things were plugged in. My daughter loves to pull cords out of the wall, is pretty obsessed with cords, really.
Meagan D.
So we actually had to block her off her room for a while until we could find a better solution for her chords. Now, I mean, everything safety wise. My daughter is the challenger. She likes to definitely test her boundaries. We got the plastic stuff that it’s like tubing type stuff that sticks on the edges of corners that’s supposed to protect them. The first thing my daughter did when she could reach for it was pull it off and chew on it. So that did not work very long.
Meagan D.
Needless to say, outlet covers. We had to get heavy duty ones because the plastic one. She also figured out how to pull them out, and she just would love to try to sit there and put them back. And she loves trying to figure that kind of stuff out. So we had to get heavy duty ones that actually have, like, a little plastic key that helps you remove them because they stick in so well. Like I said, it’s a lot of keeping doors, locks on cabinets, gates up, and nothing within realm.
Meagan D.
And now she’s starting to climb. So we were comfortable with her going into the kitchen because when we were in there, we let her walk in there because she likes to play with the room. But now we cannot do that, because even with cabinet slope and the things put away, she has started cling onto our dining room table and onto our chairs, and she’ll push the chair to wherever she wants to crawl up. That so she’s very crafty when she wants to be. And when she wants to get something right now, it’s just everything.
Meagan D.
Everything safety. I’ve got to constantly be watching her, and she learns something new every day. And I had to get into something new every day. So it’s definitely a little bit of everything.
Sonal Patel
And are you looking forward to that?
Santiago (Santi)
That’s so interesting. I’m smiling now, making his expense. But just looking forward to that, I was thinking, Megan has a little electrical engineer on her hands without interested. She is the record on outlets. But yeah, I’m thinking, oh, man, I got the plastic outlet covers and all the other things that I purchased that he’ll probably figure out. But as with everything else, I think everybody has their own journey. And I’ll have to come back and let you guys know how much my little guy figures out with all the safety protocols.
Meagan D.
Mind you, most of the safety stuff that I got was recommended to me by several other moms. I think for some, it works. My daughter just she’s very honor, like her dad. So she likes to try to test her limits and figure out what she can get away with. So I think that’s a big part of it.
Santiago (Santi)
Well, at least I know who to call. We have to move on to the heavy duty stuff.
Meagan D.
I’ll be here.
Sonal Patel
Man. It seems like the more the more germophobe you are and the more safety rules you follow, the for your daughter tries to break home. Yeah.
Meagan D.
I’ve let us on the germophobic hard a little bit with her. She’s taught me to be a little more. She taught me very much about being more relaxed, about things. It’s funny, because when she first would drop stuff on the floor, I would clean it. I’d sanitize it now. I’m a lot like, it might be okay. I mean, she’ll find, like, a cookie or, like, a cracker that she had on the floor. She has a little ball pen, and sometimes, like, food ends up in there, and she’ll come out with it.
Meagan D.
And I’m like, you might have had that, like, yesterday, but. Okay. I guess it’s still food. I’ve learned to just kind of pick my battles with her. Like, I can’t freak out about everything, because otherwise, I mean, my day will be intense. Like, she loves to go through our cabinet. So I gave her, like, a cabinet that she can go through and she could play. And so there’s a little compromises there, too.
Sonal Patel
I mean, luckily, the house that we moved into the mom had covered all the outlets. And so now we’re trying to uncover some of them because now we actually use them. Our kids are a little bit older, but it’s so funny that in the weirdest places, you will find an outlet cover. That’s awesome. The other thing don’t forget, is for tubs, make sure that you’re always monitoring your babies when you’re giving back, particularly. And then also, when the summer comes, people really forget that the toddler walking age, the number one area where receive drowning is in pales and buckets.
Sonal Patel
Usually in the summer, even a little Kitty pool is dangerous for that age of kids. Just because, first of all, with the buckets. Yes. If you ever seen a Home Depot buckets, they just kind of fall in. And that has actually happened. Make sure all the chemicals and the cabinets are closed. Kind of reminded myself where the buckets usually are captive, where all the cleaning supplies are capped. And then obviously, when they get a little older, pool safety is very important. But I think people don’t recognize the fact that toddlers actually drown in smaller bodies of water up to, I mean, as little as two to three inches of water.
Sonal Patel
And we are more aware of them when they are in a pool or a larger body of water. But kind of forget about that one. And however soon you can get them into swimming lessons. That’s one place that I would spend my time and energy and money doing is swimming lessons, actually. So that’s one of my takeaways. But now to my generation, to my generational, kids and safety. And I think, Sandy, we have kind of bridge the subject last time. And you’re just like, oh, I didn’t even think of this.
Sonal Patel
So we have a rule in our house that we don’t do sleepovers until kids are between nine and ten. So we don’t do sleepovers. And below that. And it also kind of depends what when and co. So that’s the other thing, too. It’s like we need to to know this family really well. They can’t just be a random like, I just met this person and a tech window, and I want to go to sleep. But we’ve got to have known the family for a while, definitely through school and everything like that help.
Sonal Patel
And one of the questions we ask is about gun safety. And I just remember walking that line like, oh, my God, I’ve got to ask about gun safety and just like you. And I don’t like confrontation. I don’t like telling I don’t like to hear or I don’t want to hear something I don’t want to hear either, because that leads to a different line. But luckily, most of the people that we interacted with initially when the kids were a little bit younger, they did not have guns.
Sonal Patel
And we did come and ask them. And a lot of parents were very open to the question and very understanding. So that actually was really helpful, because then you knew they were on the same values as you. And then now as they’ve gone older, we do have some friends who have done they had BB guns. But, you know, I know the safeties for that and hand guns and stuff, but I’m very comfortable saying, okay, that’s great. My son’s coming over for even a simple play date.
Sonal Patel
My oldest eleven year old just went for a play date where they actually have done. And he shot a couple of begun on the farm and everything. And I was fully aware of that. And I was like, okay, but it was that asking those questions and guns are such a trigger point in our society that when I was asking it, initially, I was very reluctant. But then I realized, well, if something happened to my child and I didn’t ask this question, I would never forgive myself.
Sonal Patel
And more and more, just keep asking it. I mean, you ask it on. I remember I know. I remember coming to both of you guys when I did you guys home is is I asked you right away. One of my questions is like, okay, do you guys own any guns? Where are they kept? And I’ve learned over time to have more of that as a natural conversation rather than it’s a triggering conversation, because the way I approach it now, it’s like I’m just going to ask and I get comfortable asking it.
Santiago (Santi)
I just want to say thank you for sharing all those perspectives. Obviously, they’re not something I’ve experienced firsthand before. Not only sharing that, but also I think after every subject that we’ve touched on, you’ve added great facts there regarding car seat safety, vaccines, sleeping safety. So just thank you for sharing that perspective. It’s eye opening to here. Here what’s coming next and what tough conversations to get used to because it’s a lot easier when you have time to at least mentally prepare about having these conversations, both with friends, family as well as with your kids directly.
Santiago (Santi)
Just thank you. Thank you for sharing that and opening up that perspective for me.
Sonal Patel
You’re welcome. I think there is one thing I read very long ago, and we can kind of end on this and making asswords. Also, I’ll tell you, I read somewhere when I was having my first to about 16 years ago that it’s actually the kids aren’t afraid to receive information. It’s a parent are hesitant to give information because they’re not comfortable talking about it. So I remember when my baby was one month old, I told him smoking is bad, smoking is bad. Do not smoke, do not do alcohol.
Sonal Patel
I kept just repeating it off and on. I would do that through the childhood because I got comfortable saying it. And back forward, when he was 9910 years old and were on the car and he saw some guy on the side of the street, he was in a wheelchair and he was smoking, and he turned to his brothers and he said, that’s what happens when you smoke. I I did my job, so I still remember two or three months, smoking is bad smoking. No, because you’ve got comfortable talk about those conversations.
Sonal Patel
More conversation wouldn’t even talk about with sex, education and the safety that goes around that. But I think that’s a whole another hour discuss. But there’s a lot of stuff that comes on when you start diving into and when they start getting older. And I really want the last piece of advice is get comfortable having the conversations on your end because it’s not the kids don’t want to receive information. It’s how you present it to them. That’s going to really help.
Santiago (Santi)
It’s a great point.
Meagan D.
I completely agree. I think it’s being comfortable to have those conversations and being open. My parents were always pretty open with me about things, and I think in turn, I felt for the most part, comfortable being more open about things with my parents and most of my friends did growing up. But when it comes to the safety, I think we just have to lead with what we think is comfortable for us. As you said, like those gun conversations, you know, vaccine conversations, all of it has to be what we feel comfortable with for keeping our kids safe.
Meagan D.
As I said before, it ultimately comes down to us to keep our kids safe, and we can’t leave that responsibility to anybody else. And when they’re so young, especially, they don’t have the choice to make those decisions.
Sonal Patel
Well, thank you guys so much. Once again, this was amazing. Anything I’ve missed, I think that pretty well covers it again. Thank you. Thank you so much for bringing the DoD perspective. Like, just enjoy it so much. And I think it’s so valuable for people to hear what dads are going through as well. So it’s totally indebted to and appreciate everything that you have put the time and effort to do for us to.
Santiago (Santi)
Yes, the right back at you guys. Thank you guys so much for giving us a platform and for inviting me to be here. I think that there’s definitely a lot of dad that would like to speak up, but they’re just never given the opportunity our platform to do so. So right back at you guys. Thank you for everything you’re doing and for allowing me to be a part of it.
Sonal Patel
On that note, thank you, everyone. And we will end the conversation on safety. Thank you.
Do you have any tips or things you’ve learned about baby safety on your parenting journey? Share them with us in the comments!
When I announced I was pregnant I was inundated with everyone’s helpful and not so helpful advice. The seasoned parents shared there stories, tips, and what I thought to be anecdotal advice. No one ever expressed how much time I would spend not only worrying about my daughter’s safety, but implementing it as well. The worrying started when I was pregnant and has been a continuous part of motherhood. I was about to experience the mischievously inquisitive mind of a toddler on the loose.
For the longest time it seemed as though my daughter was not going to start crawling. She was very content to sit and sometimes roll around on her blanket on the floor. Myself and my husband had gotten comfortable with her inability to go anywhere. We had prepared ourselves early for baby proofing by purchasing item we would need . Some part of us was still holding on to the last bit of our home that we had left, before being regulated with locks and gates that would become our new normal. It took a matter of a few days for her to go from rocking on her knees to zooming around the house on all fours. For my daughter this meant doing it at high speed to because she does not seem to know how to do anything gradually. A short two months later she was walking and by the time she was one she could run.
Babyproofing: What did not work.
Soon enough our daughter started crawling. We knew we had to protect her from sharp edges on furniture and even corners. I spent quite a bit of time spent researching all different types of products. We came across a sticky protective edging that can cover the long edges of furniture. This product did not work for us. Even though it was strong enough to rip the finish of my entertainment center, it proved no match for my 8-month-old and her need to not only take things apart, but chew on them as well. She, yet, found it very useful to chew on. We ended up lining the base of the entertainment center with pillows to prevent her from hurting herself.
The next item that did not work were the cheap translucent outlet covers. They were too easy for my daughter to pull out of the wall and try to put back it the wall. They were more dangerous than safe in our case. Instead, we used some higher quality covers that we got in a baby proofing kit. They only require a little plastic key or significant amount of effort to be removed. The last item that did not work for us was the little foam pieces shaped like a “C” that are meant to be placed on the inner part of your door frame to prevent the door from smashing your littles fingers. These did not work for two reasons: 1.) you must take them on and off when you want to shut the door 2.) taking them off tends to lead to forgetting to put them back on which means they turned into toys for my daughter. She still has one of these foam pieces in her toy bin that she plays with, so at least one of us got something out of it.
Babyproofing: The things that worked.
As soon as our not so graceful daughter started crawling around, we knew we had to protect her from the corners of the wall. The pillow trick mentioned above might have worked but I would not have had enough pillows. So, upon some more research I found some great pre-cut wall corner protectors. These have been great because they are thick to cushion a blow if she falls into them, and are strong enough to defeat my little mischievous girl who likes to disassemble and chew on things.
My absolute favorite product I found was the outlet cover with attached power strip. From the minute my daughter could start grabbing for them, she was OBSESSED with cords. With that obsession came unplugging said cords and trying to plug them in. We tried to hide the chords and the outlets they plugged into but we were not always able to. There was a particular outlet in her room where this was an issue. We found ourselves locking her out of her room except to sleep because she would always try to play with these cords. This outlet cover was our saving grace. It plugs in like a flat panel and comes with adhesive to adhere it to wall. It also has varying sized extension cord lengths. With the extension cord it was long enough that I was able to hide the cords behind a dresser. My daughter is no longer able to continue her potentially shocking behavior.
Life Babyproofed
Everyone knows your life is supposed to change when you have a child. I did not want the appearance of the home I had before having a child to be completely altered though. When choosing some of these products I selected them not only for there safety, but how they looked esthetically. There are so many options out there now to choose safety items that are not as loud and go with your home.
The next thing I took into consideration was ease of use and practicality. I did not want to struggle to bypass these safety features more than my daughter. When it came to practicality, I had to decide if some of the safety products were to over the top. I decided that I would have to teach my daughter safe ways to engage with some things. For example, we chose not to lock the toilet. We started trying elimination communication at 9 1/2 mos. so early on she was used to the potty. Additionally, I did not want to be fumbling with a lock on the toilet in the middle of the night. We use the rule that the bathroom door stays shut unless we are there to supervise.
It has been an adjustment and a learning curve to have all these products in my home. It has been 100% worth it though to keep my daughter safe. I have even found myself getting used to them just as quick as it took my daughter to become mobile and now they are our new normal.
Shortly after having my daughter, I made the decision to be a stay-at-home mom. Now, there were several things that contributed to this decision. The biggest being the fact that I had my daughter right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and believed the best way to keep her safe was to be home with her. There were other contributing factors like my job where before I left, I had some seniority and felt like a part of the team. However, upon my return from maternity leave it was if I had never been a part of the team and my seniority was dissolved during my 13 weeks of maternity leave. You layered that with the struggle to pump with a demanding job and I felt as though I was going to have to make the choice between my job and continuing to breast feed. Childcare was another contributing factor. We had childcare figured out before I was even pregnant, but because the household had someone working as an essential employee in the medical field, we could not continue to risk potential exposure to my daughter. We could not afford outside childcare and knew the right choice was for me to stay home.
Just like that, Stay-At-Home mom (SAHM) became my new title. I am blessed to be able to be home with my daughter and watch her grow but I think there is so much about the SAHM world that can be underappreciated and so much harder than it seems from the outside. I feel like the SAHM title gained another layer of difficulty when Covid hit. When I heard the term “Stay-at-home mom” before I had my daughter, I envisioned a woman that was home all day with her kids doing fun activities, having fun playdates, doing some cooking and cleaning, but also having some time to herself. I can honestly say that I thought for sure that being a SAHM was easier than working before I became a mom. A big part of the problem is until you are a mom and are actually in the thick of it , appreciating the hard work that goes into being a stay-at-home mom is difficult. This is the thing, when you decide to stay home the vision you have in your head for how thing are going to be and how they really are , are vastly different. So of course, I went into this naively thinking that it would not only solve the previously mentioned factors but would also give me more time to get things done and it would all be easier. I mean it did solve the problems we were facing but I was now working for my daughter- this was a whole new level of employment for me.
The year 2020 was deemed “the year that everyone stayed home” and that could not be any truer for moms. This meant no play dates, no activities like story time at the library, no coffee dates with other moms while your kids play, or just going wherever we wanted without restrictions or worries. This for me meant I rarely left my house at all except for weekly grocery pickups and occasional visits to my mom’s. I had all these ideas during my pregnancy about all the thing I would do with my daughter, and just like, I was not going to be able to do them. This left me feeling like I had been robbed of the experiences. I never imagined I would feel as isolated as I did, especially as a new mom. Granted covid made it worse but even now I feel it. Most days a majority of my conversations are had with a one-year-old. While she is cute, her incoherent babbling doesn’t add a lot to conversation; It becomes very easy to get stuck in your own head talking to yourself. I find myself jumping at the opportunity to have an adult conversation when I get the chance. I honestly think this can be the hardest part about being a SAHM not having anyone one to talk to or relate to throughout the day, especially when you are having a tough day.
In general, when you work outside the home you get to come home and be away from your job until the next workday. When you are a SAHM this does not happen. My coworker is still here at 5 o’clock – I never leave work. I have made this choice to be home with my daughter, but it can be difficult to have to always “be on” and in mommy mode. I don’t get to go out into the career world and switch modes into whatever profession for 8 hours and be my own person. I am my daughter’s world 24/7. I love being there for my daughter but there are days when the fussiness and neediness can make you want to clock out of being a mom for even just an hour.
I recently decided to start working on top of staying home with my daughter. For whatever reason I have convinced myself that it would be good for me, and it would be a great example to show my daughter what a rockstar her mom was. Staying home with her, doing activities, cooking all her meals, and working. It has been great because it has given me a purpose other than being a mommy. A lot of SAHM make the same decision and many more moms had to work from home when covid hit. Remote work became the go to and the ultimate test to every mother’s sanity who had to do it. I personally love the flexibility to work from home on my own time. However, trying to work while being a SAHM is strenuous. I am going to give a shout out to all you moms that do 8+ hour workdays at home, while trying to manage your kids at the same time. YOU ROCK!!!…and you deserve a raise. I literally do not know how I would do it. I have had to figure out how to do my work when and where I can. You know the old saying “when your baby sleeps, you sleep”? Well, when my baby sleeps, I work. I find it next to impossible and the most pointless activity to try to work when my daughter is in the same room. She has no problem contently playing alone until I pull out my laptop to work and suddenly, she is drawn in as if my laptop was calling her name. If it’s not that it is the literal CONSTANT interruptions that make it impossible to maintain a train of thought that lasts more than 5 minutes. Essentially, when you work on top of being a SAHM it’s like having 2 jobs at once and it is a struggle over who to give attention to. If you give your child attention you are not working hard enough and if you give your work all the attention you feel like you are neglecting your child. It’s a scenario where neither one wins 100% of the time.
Being a Stay-at-Home mom is not an all-inclusive vacation spent eating bon-bons on the couch with endless free time. It is making memories in the chaos, juggling more than you ever thought possible, and trying to maintain your identity while being a mom 24/7. It’s getting to enjoy every single moment with your kid while wanting to hide in your closet and have peace for two minutes. Mainly it is finding our strength as women and realizing just how much we are capable of. It is income free hard work and now that I am in it, I appreciate it so much more.
