I give him a wipedown, but it would be more convenient to put him directly into the tub, which raises the question in the title of this post. We were bathing MacBaby every other night on the recommendation of the pediatrician. But with advent of rice cereal I feel as though it is now necessary on a nightly basis, lest he go to sleep with rice cereal in his hair.
How often do you bathe your little one? Is nightly too much? An additional question - what shampoo/soap do you use? I was determined not to use these cancer causing agents, but was given them as gifts. I'm planning on switching to organic after they run out.
8 comments:
I hear you about coordinating dinner time with Baby's dinner time. It's a lot to juggle. What time does Macbaby go to bed? Around 5 months, Timmy started going down around 8 and now he's down by 7-7:30. Our evening routine is this - get home around 5:45-6ish, feed him by 6:30, followed by bath, massage, bottle, bed. So every night we bathe baby. It's a good routine for him and signals to him that it's bedtime. Either Dad or me does this, while the other walks the dog and starts dinner for the two of us. Just as T is going to bed, dinner for us is about ready and we sit down and eat by ourselves around 7:45.
I want to eat as a family and think that that will come in time when baby is feeding himself and can eat more table food, but for now, this works. Good luck!
Right now he's going to sleep at 8. I have heard it is good to incorporate the bath into the nightly routine so that they know it's bedtime. I was just saying last night that it would be easier to get him settled for the night and then for us to have dinner, but MacBaby is not yet very good at sleeping on his own, so I stay upstairs with him. I guess this opens the door for MacDad to bring me dinner in bed on a nightly basis. Ha!
Josh and our pediatrician were all in the same "don't bathe the baby too much" camp. It was harder to convince me, but it really is better for their delicate skin to not bathe them that often. Now that he is older we bathe him after a poop day or an extremely messy eating day...i never considered rice cereal to be one of the "messy" food items. He is also ok with his routine if the bath is left out because that is part of the routine...that the bath may or may not be part of it. The brushing of the teeth/gums, reading etc are all part of the every night routine. As for the products we use, we love Burt's Bees or Earth's Best, (my mom-in-law gave us a Weleda cream bath soap and i hated it, but their other products are good). We gave or exchanged all those other baby products because they like you say "may" cause cancer. Hope this helps!
That's so interesting that you didn't find rice cereal to be messy. MacBaby had some IN HIS EYE last night. Maybe I'm doing it wrong?
Yeah, the sensitive skin is an issue for us too. But Timmy is so Irish - he sweats so much already! And after spending the day in daycare around so many other kids and germs, I just have to bathe him! ;) And now that he's starting to feed himself, food ends up everywhere - he had blueberries in his ear last night! So no, you're not doing it wrong!
In the beginning, when T was going to bed later, we would try to eat and do the bedtime routine, but there was nothing quality about it - I remember eating frozen pizza on the floor in his room in order to maximize eating and playing. Now that he's going to bed earlier, it's nice to have some quiet time with Patrick.
About staying with him until he falls asleep - be forewarned, you may be setting yourself up for some hard to break habits. He's what? 5 months old? That's old enough to learn to soothe himself to sleep (IMHO). I know that this method is not too popular with the AP fans, but for me, I can't take 45 minutes to soothe him to sleep every night and still do all that needs to be done at night. Put him down, walk away. He'll figure it out. Might take a few nights of crying, but he will. Within a week, I could put Timmy down at night, while still awake, leave the room and he'd be fast asleep before I was sitting down to dinner. The routine helps with that too. Just what worked for us... every child and parent is different though...
We bathe both kids (2 1/2 yrs and 2 1/2 mos) every night. It's part of our bedtime routine. Nicholas had some eczema as an infant, but it's actually okay to bathe eczematous babies--some would say that it's better provided you do the right thing afterward. You just have to make sure that you moisturize/lube them afterwards with lotion/vaseline/aquaphor, depending on the severity.
And the sleep issue, I think is a hard one. You end up doing what's right for you. We did the crying out multiple times with Nicholas. And still occasionally have to go back to it. But he did have almost a year's stretch where he slept in his crib, on his own, for 12 hrs a night and it was marvelous...
Ray has been bathing the baby every morning since she could sit up. We had a big yellow rubber duckie bath tub that he would fill up with warm water. Sometimes with bubbles and sometimes just plain water. This way she gets all the night time urine and/or bowel movements that have been sitting on her skin cleared away. It wakes her up and she is ready to go for the day. Plus he feeds her pudding or bananas with milk while she is in there. He is definitely spoiling her. (What woman would not enjoy being spoon fed pudding while soaking in a warm bubble bath)
Wow! That's multi-tasking! You gave us one of those rubber duckie bath tubs. We'll have to use it when he can sit up, which I'm thinking will be sooner rather than later.
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