Poor little bum

My little guy is having some tummy trouble. Yesterday, he had 8 BM's. This has resulted in a very red and angry bum.

It breaks my heart when he's so distressed and trying to tell me that he has to have to BM. And the cries of pain when I wash his behind. It's terrible. I'm not sure what happened or why this is happening. It's not runny and looks like normal BM's, but I'm not sure where there are so many. He wasn't in any discomfort yesterday until late in the evening, so I didn't have the foresight to put diaper cream after the diaper changes. I'll have to remember this for next time. There have been days where he'll have 3 BM's in the morning and he'll be fine for the rest of the day. No sore behind.

Ah.. the life of a parent. Concerns about BM's, diaper rash, and folds in little necks. And like the life of a recent mother (again), I think I'm going to catch a nap before either baby wakes up. But just by typing that, I may have jinxed myself.

Sleep training

In the last few weeks, my daughter has been screaming bloody murder if I leave her sight. I understand it's that she misses me and doesn't understand that if something leaves her sight, it still continues to exist. Goodness, that must be traumatic to mourn me each time she stops seeing me.

In any case, she's been sleeping with me. She refuses to sleep alone for more than 30 minutes so she no longer sleeps in the swing and I no longer get 6 hours of uninterupted sleep. Needless to say, it's been getting tiring. I know she doesn't need to eat for up to 6 hours because she did that in the past. I'm tempted to start her on sleep training.

My problem is that she seems too young to sleep on her own. She's not even 6 months, yet. And if she thinks I fade from existence if she can't see me, wouldn't it be very scary for her to sleep on her own and have no one come to her when she cries at night?

When we sleep trained my son, we held firm to the "don't go in at night unless they've been crying for x number of minutes" rule. We did that for about 4 months. Now, we go in immediately when he cries because it's typically because he's had a nightmare. We had been concerned that our behaviour might encourage him to wake more frequently, but that hasn't been the case at all. Typically, he just needs a hug and will agree to be tucked in. Sometimes, he needs to leave his room for a short period. When this happens, he usually picks out a toy from the living room and he's fine to return to bed. My point is that it hasn't been a problem and he was sleep trained very late. It seems like there is an optimal time for sleep training.

Actually, it's probably that my memory is bad. So, maybe it would be fine if I start sleep training my daughter. Maybe after Christmas we'll start.