Child’s Age: 2 Years Old
Location: New York City (UES)
Fun Fact About You: I work in luxury residential construction in NYC, love building things, and am fully the handyman of our household.
What has one of your biggest parenting hurdles been?
I struggled postpartum (my therapist called a postpartum depressed state but not formally diagnosed with PPD). I had a very hard time with the sleep deprivation, breast feeding, sex drive, you name it. THERAPY was and is essential in getting me to and keeping me a healthier place.
I wouldn’t call them health issues, but deffinately extra “things” Gari had to deal with i.e. she was breach and born with Torticollis. She started PT when she was 3 weeks old. As a result, she has a flat head and at 8 months old wore a helmet for 5 months that sadly did nothing to correct it. Yes, it is only cosmetic, but it was expensive and time consuming to do (multiple visits to Cranial Technologies that only has offices outside of the city). It was extremely frustrating and defeating to make no progress.
When Gari was 18 months, her eyes started crossing and it turned out she needed glasses.
WE ARE SO THANKFUL these are our issues, but they still had their challenges to navigate.
Also, my kid will suck her thumb for the rest of her life. Please help me. No solutions yet.
What has one of your proudest parenting moments been?
I absolutely crushed getting Gari to let me put in her eye drops. It was her first time being perscriped eye drops for an ear and eye infection and she was viscerally distressed about having to put anything in eyes. My husband was away on business and I had to figure this out solo parenting. Night one I fully gave up, but before I went to bed I found an old bottle of over the counter eye drops and decided to give it to her (closed) I the morning so she could have “her own eye drops”. I told her she was allowed to “give” herself some eye drops a take turn giving me some eyedrops. Then I was allowed to have a turn giving her eye drops and giving myself eye drops.
It wasn’t perfect and she definitely cried and resisted a bit, but I was able to get them in. She was super proud of herself too. And it worked again when I had to give them to her at night 🙂
What’s the parenting advice you wish you got?
My sister-in-law gave me a great piece of advice when hiring our nanny — she told us to make sure our whoever we hired would be proactive in creating our daughters social calendar i.e. making friends and playdates with other children, suggesting classes for us to sign up for etc.
We took her advice and truly believe our daughter’s socialization and cognitive development has benefited from this.
What’s a perfect parenting product you used?
We love the slumber pod for travel especially if you share a room with your baby/toddler. Not only does it give us parents some privacy (and the ability to keep lights on while sharing a room post bed time), but Gari always feels at home/comfortable in there in different environments.
What new things are happening in your child’s life this month?
Gari is Disney Princesses obsessed and wants to watch every single Disney Princess movie (and we’ve pretty much watched all of them since she’s been sick with on and off ear infections this entire month).