Pro Forma Crying

[franceslievens]

pro forma crying: noun, the ability to cry whenever the context requires this, e.g. when I notice you making my lunch I'll start to cry to let you know I'm indeed hungry. see also: Pavlovian reflex

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I think toddlers have a variant: After falling down, check for the adults' reaction. When they're watching and look worried, start to cry, even if nothing hurts. In case they haven't noticed and you don't feel any pain, just get up and carry on.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I think LB does that already. She can sit on her own now, but every now and then she topples backward. At first she'd glance at you and would only start to cry after a fraction of a second. Since we don't really pay attention to it, she doesn't cry anymore when she falls over, and simply lies there until someone helps her up again.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

So it starts that early? I wasn't sure.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, she totally figured out the "I cry, therefore someone comes to help me"-routine. :-)

[thestormcellar.livejournal.com]

When I was working in daycare back in college, we had a little 4 year old guy fall down and get quite a cut on his eyebrow from a chair. I was talking to him, and he was fine, didn't even cry once. Not even when I was putting on the bandage. We called his mom to come get him (because we thought the cut was deep enough he might need some stitches), and I sat with him until she got there. As soon as she walked in the door and he saw her, the waterworks started.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Aww poor fella. At 4 years old there's also that thing that you don't have to be so brave at home. My eldest niece (almost 5 now) is very well behaved at school. Always does as she's told. When I went to pick her up she was really sweet while we were walking on the street, but the moment we were at her house... She wouldn't listen to me one bit! *g*

[long-roadtoruin.livejournal.com]

Oh yes... My mother jokes that she thought even as a tiny babe I could smell their dinner cooking and would scream for a feed... Lol.

AJ has her moments of it too. But tonight's cluster feed has left her dazed and confused...fed every hour on the hour from 6-9 after a feed at 4:30pm, woke up at 1:45am and whinged til I put her on boob for only 5-6 mins each side and is now asleep again with a pot belly from the feast! I hurt but I am SOOOOOO pleased to have my boob obsessed, smiley baby back.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I guess it must have been her tongue that still hurt. Poor babe. So frustrated she couldn't eat.

She smells food on you. If it was getting time for LB to eat, but she wasn't asking for it just yet, she'd start to cry when I picked her up, going all "food food food". Given back to P. she relaxed again.

[long-roadtoruin.livejournal.com]

After feeding every hour on the hour til 6am...we're back to the screaming. Meh. At least after all that I don't feel like my boobs are fit to explode. And we have 12oz of expressed milk in fridge/freezer, so we can continue withthe madness...

Off to Baby Cafe in 45...hopefully health visitor will have ideas!

See you Friday!

xxx

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

If it really doesn't work out for you both, you can always express and have AJ drink from the bottle. It's terrible and time consuming, but at least she'll drink your milk. A colleague of mine had severe cracks with bleeding, and the baby wouldn't latch properly. She kept up with pumping and bottle feeding for two months.

And I don't know what kind of pump you have, but in Belgium there are places where you can lend an electrical pump, which goes way faster than a handpump.

[long-roadtoruin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what we're having to do when she won't feed. Normally we can just give her 2oz from bottle and she'll finish on the breast. But sometimes she won't even tolerate that (this morning included).

And I feel that...I bled so badly that AJ looked like a vampire every time we fed at first! I know someone who had to cup for feed 6 weeks and then baby switched back to the breast, so I'm hoping AJ will settle in time.

I only have a handpump. Electrical pumps are scarily expensive. But with my insane supply, I can express 4oz in 6-8 minutes if I've waited 2-3 hours since the last session. Some mornings I can do 5-6 oz in 10 mins. Not the end of the world!

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I had to check on one of LB's bottles to check how much these volumes were. *g*

I wasn't able to do so much at once. I think after a while I'd do 2 oz in 5 minutes. I would express between feeds to make a bottle for LB when I went to singing class. So that was always about an hour after her feed. I couldn't express straight after a feed, because LB just drank it all.

A friend of mine expressed for several weeks because her daughter wouldn't take the breast, and went to breast feeding after. They say kids don't like it, but she managed to do it, so there's still hope.