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I write this with a six-day-old baby squirming on my lap. He doesn’t seem incredibly stoked to be sharing the real estate space with my laptop, so we’ll see how it goes.

(Live-feed update: 10 minutes just passed after me typing that first sentence, but now he has his soother and is sucking away peacefully.)

Yes, since my last column, little Russell was born into this world, making a frantic race to the finish line at Vic General, punctuated with a humorous water-breaking incident in the elevator heading up to the delivery room—which immediately made me think of something that would happen in an episode of Three’s Company, for some reason.

Twenty minutes later, I had a pair of scissors in my hand and was preparing to cut the umbilical cord. As I’ve learned from previous births, that thing isn’t easy to cut. I’ve often used that as a metaphor for all I didn’t know and wasn’t expecting with parenting: that cord looks way easier than it is and can take a couple snips to get through. It’s kinda sinewy and almost like you can feel ligaments or something as you…

Uh, yeah, it’s tough, even though it looks smooth and slimy.

All of which sounds pretty gross, but babies are pretty gross! The meconium poop is still one of the gnarliest things I’ve ever seen a human being produce, and that weird feeling of having someone stare directly, intently into your eyes as they suddenly, seriously let out a huge fart is pretty unparalleled in the human experience. These are all wake-up calls: I’m 42 and just had my third baby. Can I handle it?

(Live-feed update: he’s fast asleep on me, and I’m doing some absurd coffee/laptop/baby acrobatics that would probably raise more than a few eyebrows from cautious parents across North America).

Anyway, yes, sure, I can handle it. I think.

There’s no denying that, like a lot of things in life, I’m kinda late on this. By the time this dude is eight, I’ll be 50!

(Live-feed update: my heart rate just spiked.)

But then again, I don’t think I would have been ready to juggle three kids much earlier than this point in my life. Maybe I matured late—like a fine goddamn wine, not like a stubborn manchild, thank you very much—but it sort of makes sense now.

I feel like what I’ve learned since we started letting people know we were having our third is that a lot of parents want to have more kids but are scared to. No one has said that to me outright, but lots have said that to me implicitly. They make jokes about more kids being more than they can handle, more than they can afford; they talk about how they can’t mentally deal with going back to the baby years. But then they get that look in their eyes and I think they kinda want another.

I hear them and feel their struggles on all the above concerns. But if you’ll notice, those are the same concerns with baby number one—“Can we afford it?” “It will disrupt our routine?”— and number two.

Damn, man. We live in a city where real estate developers drink the blood of newborns if it means they can get another dollar out of the working class. None of us can afford anything at this point. I’m not entirely convinced I can afford this cheap Folgers coffee I’m currently drinking, and I’m pretty sure that’s the sound of me chuckling when people talk about paying for their kids’ post-secondary education. But we can get by. Don’t let those fears sway you too much. Three kids is amazing. We’re a “big family” now, and it’s great.

Anyway, I got through the cord in three snips. I was hoping to get that thing on the first try this time around, but nothing’s ever perfect. I’m just grateful that I had another chance.

Greg Pratt is the father of two children and a local journalist and editor. His writing has appeared in, among other places, Today’s Parent, Wired, Revolver, and Douglas.

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I’m a parent who traded a good night’s sleep for my children’s self-soothing habit—thumbsucking. I got them started but it took a worm to get them to stop.

Who wants to wake up at all hours of the night to repeatedly replace a soother into an infant’s mouth? I didn’t. Thumb-sucking seemed more natural, a form of self-soothing that was supposed to translate into a calmer baby and more sleep for me. So I encouraged it. What I didn’t realize was that breaking the thumb-sucking habit would take years and push all of us to our limits.

Hungry for help to undo my mistake, I searched the Internet. “How much do braces cost?”…“Does restricting self-soothing cause childhood anxiety?” Friends told us our kids would grow out of it. Once they reached school age and became self-conscious, the habit would naturally end, they said. Other people recalled reading about children who sucked their thumbs well into their forties.

So, we tried everything to break the habit.

We used the paint-on varnish that makes Buckley’s cough syrup taste like a Pina Colada. We taped socks onto my daughter’s hands with duct tape in the evenings. It seemed like a good idea, but proved problematic when she had to use the washroom during the night and couldn’t use her hands. More precious sleep lost.

Sticker charts? You bet. Rewards? We did that too. In fact, once after my daughter went five days without sucking her thumb, I bought her a pair of heeled white shoes that she wanted. My value for sleep was clearly higher than my values for age-appropriate footwear.

When I caught her sucking her thumb a week later, she told me she didn’t want the shoes anymore and I could take them back. Apparently her self-soothing addiction was stronger than her desire for high heels.

I bought a book called David Decides About Thumb-sucking, about a boy who decides that he no longer wants to suck his thumb. But my kids “decided” that quitting wasn’t for them.

We tried hypnosis and counselling. We spent hundreds of dollars replacing the oral habit with fidgets. We tried gum to give Julia the oral stimulation that thumb sucking gave. I convinced her Grade 2 teacher to allow Julia to chew gum in class. It kept her thumb out of her mouth, but wrecked her social life. The other kids resented her special privileges. After the first week, the teacher requested that she be able to manage the gum consumption because Julia had blown through a whole pack before recess.

Our last-ditch attempt was a dental appliance called “the crib.” A friend told me this was “the” solution to our oral stimulation situation. An appliance gets cemented to the child’s teeth and gives the thumb a stab every time it’s inserted into the mouth.

After consulting with an orthodontist I was crestfallen to learn that children find ways to suck their thumb even with the crib in place and, worse, once it is removed, they continue thumb sucking.

My kids were 5 and 7. I was sleeping at night, but I was still exhausted and out of ideas.

The cure came late one night when my son cried out and I was unable to calm him. He complained of an itchy bum. I remembered the notice from his teacher that someone in his class had pinworms. Back to the Internet I went.

I learned that the female worms crawl out of the anus at night and lay their eggs on the outer skin. The infected child then scratches his bum and because the eggs can live on surfaces for 14 days, they then get transferred to toys, shared crayons in the classroom, door handles and if you are a thumb-sucker, into your mouth.

Was that too much information? It gets worse.

With my head lamp strapped on, I went exploring. I found a tiny white worm crawling out of my son’s rear, and that was it. I was officially done with thumb sucking.

In the morning, I told my children that Nathan got worms because he sucked his thumb and we were no longer going to suck thumbs in our house. Period.
We all took deworming pills, washed our hands fastidiously and laundered every stuffy, blanket and piece of clothing. We made a 30-day chart with a reward at the end. I didn’t care about the price. It was going to be worth every penny if it worked. At night, we wrapped their thumbs in medical tape and after three weeks, we didn’t need the tape again.

I am proud to say we are now 90 days thumb-sucking free.

I can tell you that out of all of the things we tried, the most effective solution was simply my determination to break the habit. That tiny worm who came out at night and interrupted my sleep was my personal wake-up call.

Sarah Seitz is a working mother, wife and writer. She spends her free time cutting off crusts and uses good coffee and humour to get through the day.

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Potty training.

It’s the first time in my parenthood career where I have felt fully and completely stumped, although as of late, we seem to be making progress—it’s just taking a little longer.

For those who managed to pull off potty training relatively early, I applaud you and think it takes a special kind of parent to get it done, and likely your little one was just ready.

For the rest of us who feel challenged with making the commitment that modern-day training tells us to do, I’m here to remind you that life can still carry on as usual, and training can still be successful, albeit a slower wavering of periodic regression.

Those who have read Oh Crap! , the potty training book, and did the whole stay-at-home-for-days-with-your-naked-little-one will tell you, it’s the only way to go if you want to see results. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Once you take away the diapers, just never bring them back.” (Do Pull-Ups count?)

I’m not saying that we’re incapable of forfeiting three to four days of our lives to stay home and do nothing but chase after a naked bum and clean up accidents, but what I can conclude is that we have come a long way as potty-training parents without obliging to those rigid guidelines for success. And perhaps our little guy just isn’t ready to make the full commitment yet either.

Maybe it’s because I have a boy and, rumour has it, they take a bit longer (he’s only just turned three). But dealing with number two’s is still challenging in our household invoking fear, constipation, many accidents, and occasionally, some long-awaited success. Pees have been nearly mastered for months due to consistency of a reward system and of us being cognizant of his bladder at all times. That means physically taking him to the potty systematically (first thing in the morning and in between daily transitions) rather than only waiting for him to give us the cue. As for a reward system, small treats like Smarties, Rockets, real-fruit gummies and stickers are readily available beside every bathroom in the house. One of the most important things to reinforce, I find, is genuine excitement for every successful go. Now, he seems to look forward to impressing us with pees, and I can’t wait for the day where he can freely excuse himself for number twos, too.

We have for the most part gone about our days without diapers or Pull-Ups, and I would agree that in order for healthy progression, children need to feel the discomfort of accidents without the protection of a familiar diaper, however, I do believe that life should carry on as usual for the parents, and if that means putting on pull-ups intermittently to avoid the risk of a public accident, or to simply allow them to relieve themselves comfortably, then that sounds preferable to me. Over the long weekends, we have spent a good amount of time attempting the “cold-turkey” technique, where he is naked all day and we race him to the potty quickly, with some success here and there. These times have mostly resulted in extreme soiling down bare pant legs, in and around the toilet and tub, and truth be told, cleaning up after these episodes have been some of the foulest and most frustrating moments of Mom-Life to date. I’m talking up to five baths and no clean clothes in one given day. Frustrating because these Littles can be so advanced in some ways, talking full sentences and smart as a whip, yet unable to make a successful trip to potty to relieve themselves.

Nevertheless, I still prefer the inconsistency of accidents over the longer-term than sacrificing the ability to leave the house for days and to expedite a course that just might not be compatible for every little one. And honestly, based on the feedback he’s given us, maybe he’s just not ready for the intensity of cold-turkey training. But he’s getting closer every day and we’ve done it our way, and that to me is just A-okay!

Natasha Mills, an Islander of 25 years now, enjoys sharing the journey of parenthood and all Vancouver Island has to offer on her lifestyle blog. @mommamillsblog and mommamillsblog.com

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