It's a Boy!

He is 5 days short of 20 weeks at the time of the ultrasound. My wife and I decided to learn his sex so we could better plan (green or purple nursery). He is now 22 weeks and we felt him kick for the first time. Most intriguing feeling ever.He was planned but we waited until we were reasonably sure everything would be okay to tell anyone. We don't have a name yet and yes I will take suggestions.Let the child rearing advice begin!

Cngratulations. Sleep now.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Virgil - like the poet I love that name. That and Roland.ABE: Oh ya... Congradulations! This message has been edited by Yaro, 11-08-2005 02:05 PM

Congratulations, Jazzns.How about Robert? When I look at the echo, he looks like a blob, erm... Bob to me.

Congrats!And what Jar said. Get some sleep.I have a son that is due any day and I know I'm not caught up on my sleep. :/

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"Damn. I could build a nuclear bomb, given the fissionable material, but I can't tame my computer." (1VB)Jerome - French Rocket Scientist

We have a close friend with 4 kids and they told us about this technique called Babywise (from a book called Babywise). I've been reading about it and it seem pretty cool. Apparently you just use a bunch of common sense techniques to create a custom schedule for your child. A child on a schedule will then regulate his sleep/hunger patterns and then start to slowly adapt to his parents daily routine over the course of the first few months of his life. The success rate is something like 8-10 weeks for a newborn to sleep greater than 6 hours at night that increases to 9-10 hours by the time they are a toddler.The technique is getting a lot of praise and I know at least from my perception that our friend's babies were some of the most alert and happy babies I have ever seen.Then again they might just be super parents. They had their 5 year old with enough reading comprehension to take on Charlotte's Web!

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

My advice - don't pay attention to the advice of others.It's good to have one or two close friends who you can talk to about problems. But don't look too far and wide.Trust your own judgement. Children, even young infants, are pretty resilient. Children are all different, and circumstances are different. What works for one child might not work for yours.As long as you and your wife are loving parents, you will likely do okay.As jar says, get plenty of sleep now. Once your child arrives, it will be too late

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Trust your own judgement. Children, even young infants, are pretty resilient. Children are all different, and circumstances are different. What works for one child might not work for yours.

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As long as you and your wife are loving parents, you will likely do okay.

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What does loving your children have to do with understanding developmental stages, understanding how children at various ages learn and what they understand, etc.?Love isn't enough. You have to know what you are doing, too.Lots of people love their horse or dog, but that doesn't mean they know how to train them.

Loving parents will understand what is abuse, and avoid it. Loving parents will regularly visit their pediatrician, who will be giving them good advice on development.The human race survived for many thousands of years without our modern understanding of development stages.

Quite true nwr and there is something to be said for parents who surround their children with as I have been told, "flashy gadgets, Eddie Bauer leather car seats, and Baby Einstein DVDs."That being said there are also a lot of neat things we know about babies now. We know now that babies can distinguish tones and voices that they hear from the womb. We know that they are fully capable of language long before they are capable of speech. Hopefully knowing these things makes us better parents.While we are probably going to pass on all the baby geek stuff. Certainly we have begun a regiment of speaking to our child right now and we plan on teaching him sign language. My wife was half way though the university interpreting program before she switched her major and I took 1 semester of ASL myself in college.Child development is mightily interesting and seems to be only helpful in the endevor. I guess we will see in 18 years how things turn out. =)

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

We passed up the baby geek stuff too, although there wasn't as much of it then as there is now.You are already acting as loving parents, and that's why I'm not worried about the issues shrafinator raised. But no matter how well you prepare, things won't work out as you expect. You might have read the book, but your baby won't have. That's where you need to be able to trust your own judgement.Our firstborn child came pretty close to following the rulebook. Things worked out mostly pretty well. Our second child broke all the rules, and it was pretty frustrating at times. But they both turned out well. You learn as you go. Our pediatrician was very helpful, particularly with the second child. A lot of the help was simple re-assurance.

I beg to differ.I have no doubt that my parents love me very much. However, there were things that they did to me when I was little that were both physically and psychologically damaging to me, permanently in some cases.There's a difference between loving your children and actually making sure that your actions yield positive results. The human race also survived for thousands of years WITH slavery and a whole bunch of other problems that only now in our modern times do we finally begin to see as wrong.Here is a very small example of child rearing. Remember when your child was 5 and he said that he was going to be a vegetarian? As far as I know, most people simply dismiss it as childish behavior and some actually laugh at the kid. What they don't understand is that such an action contributes to the child's development of self-esteem. He is taking a stand for the first time. You might not agree with it, but at least don't make a joke out of it. It's little things like that that determine whether he's going to be a healthy teenager or not. Take my word for it, I'm still trying to shake some of those negative things that I parents did (out of love might I add).Simply loving your child just isn't good enough. What the world don't need is more parents that abuse their kids out of good intentions.Added by edit.I know that you're going to say that you have experience and I don't. It is true that I don't have experience in child rearing. What I have experience in is growing up in a negative loving situation. Parents often have good intentions when they do things, like force feeding their kids so they don't starve (like their kids are going to willingly starve to death...). What they don't realize is that good intentions alone doesn't do it.I'm going to say it straight out right now. My parents are very loving and caring parents. However, they made crappy parents.This message has been edited by Lam, 11-08-2005 09:42 PM

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Loving parents will understand what is abuse, and avoid it.

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The problem with that is, I doubt a single abusive parent would deny that they love their children. Parents who physically and emotionally abuse their children regualrly also proclaim their love for their chilren.Love is not enough.

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Loving parents will regularly visit their pediatrician, who will be giving them good advice on development.

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Maybe, maybe not.I know a woman who has raised two incredibly bratty children, and she went to many, many pediatricians (I know one of the doctors personally). She loves her children, but she clearly has not a clue how to raise them to be good people.She raised them really poorly.

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The human race survived for many thousands of years without our modern understanding of development stages.

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Well, if all you are interested in is psysical survival, then that is different.However, I am talking about raising responsible, thoughtful, caring human beings who can integrate well into modern society.That takes skill, not just love.

Never make a rule that you will be unwilling to enforce (yourself).oh, and get some sleep.

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There's a difference between loving your children and actually making sure that your actions yield positive results.

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I'm right there with you, lam.My parents love me. They were also really abusive, and one of them was a nurse.