Tips for dads - what to do with their kids over week-ends

Week-end Dads

Whether its up to you to give your wife a break from the kids over week-ends or you’re a single dad, here are some tips on how to make these a win-win for everybody (spouse, kids, in-laws – even you!)

Do’s:

Have a routine. Kids love routine. It makes them safe, secure and comfortable.

Food is a biggie. Don’t indulge them with rubbish take-away’s and sweets (you’ll pay for this later), but make a point of having their favourite e.g. mac- ‘n-cheese in the fridge. Little children especially, never tire of their favourite – even if it’s only marmite-toast or fish-fingers.

Take them to simple places they would not have the chance to go to during the week (age depending of course). The library or park, kids cooking classes, the nursery or local nature reserve. Take them swimming, fishing or hiking. Teach them about nature and the world around them. They may not thank you now but, believe you me, they’ll thank you in your eulogy one day.

Occasionally let them bring a friend (especially if they’re an only-child)

About once a month, plan something special; a movie, waffles and ice-cream, 10-pin-bowling or putt-putt. Take them to community events like exhibitions, games or a morning-market.

Don’ts:

Don’t overwhelm kids with too many exciting happenings in one day. They will only get tired and grouchy.

Don’t promise them the sun, the moon and the stars – then disappoint them. You will lose their trust.

Don’t put your week-end life on hold. This will only make you resentful.

Don’t do things with them that you know will annoy your spouse or X – like take them to your parents and talk nasty about her or let them do things they aren’t allowed to do at home – like jump on the furniture, go to bed when it suits them or watch X-rated movies.

Don’t ignore basic hygiene (like getting away without bathing or brushing their teeth) or ignore special diets e.g. allergies. Don’t let them get wet in the rain ‘to toughed them up’. Come Monday and their mom is going to have to cope with sick kids.

Remember:

Call, message, what’s app your children during the week. Don’t only be a week-end Dad.

Diarise concerts, sporting or dancing events and eisteddfods – and don’t forget special events like Birthdays and family celebrations.

You can’t say ‘I love you’ if you’re never there for them.

Trust your health-care provider

Trust your health-care provider: don’t take birthing options into your own hands

Googling your questions about pregnancy and babies is seriously risky. A recent tragic outcome for Sara, who was an ardent ‘Ten-Month-Mamma’ (home-birthers who don’t believe in inductions for overdue babies) who chose to ignore the advice of her midwife, resulting in the death of her baby, has left the group feeling flustered and guilty. They have  since closed.

A pregnancy is 40 weeks. Nine calendar or 10 lunar months – but remember, a lunar month is shorter than a calendar month. It follows the phases of the moon.

The trend for higher c-section rates has swung the birthing pendulum to women mistrusting doctors, demanding natural birth and doing things their way.

This is not good.

I am proud to call myself a midwife. It’s the happy side of nursing. Thanks to good ante-natal care, early detection and intervention of problems, prompt action, experienced doctors and midwives, having babies today is much safer than it used to be. But that does not mean that pregnancy and childbirth is without risks. There will always be a multitude of ‘what if’s’ that can become problematic. I strongly advise women not to take matters into their own hands. By all means, get a second or third opinion if you don’t agree with your health-care provider, but you are not qualified to make medical decisions. Even they can be flummoxed because childbirth is, and always will be, unpredictable.

My own birthing experiences is a good example. My first two babies were born naturally, without epidurals and problem free. I expected my third birth to go the same way, but when I got to the hospital in established labour (regular contractions five minutes apart) my baby was a ‘brow’ presentation. My gynaecologist said that there was a possibility that her head would ‘flex’ into the correct position and I could have natural birth – or extend and get stuck. What happened? Her little head ‘extended’ to become a ‘posterior face presentation’ and I was whipped to the operating theatre for an emergency c-section. Had I insisted on natural birth, there would have been serious and irreversible complications.

Listen to your instincts, but trust your midwife/doctor/gynaecologist. 

Leap Day for Frogs 28 February

Leap Day for Frogs

If we don’t have frogs, we’ll all croak!

Frogs were so much part of my every day when I was growing up. We used to hear them croaking away as soon as it was dark, and after it rained, there were always frogs jumping around in the garden. I always imagined them having some sort of a concert under the roots, leaves and trees. It was a comforting sound of the night. We don’t hear frogs croaking anymore.

Did you know that they’re a threatened species? When did you last hear or see a frog? Not only is it climate change that’s contributing to frogs disappearing, it’s chemicals and habitat destruction that’s interfering with reproduction.

Children are so focused on their smart-phones, i-pads and other AI gadgets. 

Leap Day for Frogs is happening on the 28^th February. If you want to read more about how this special day has come about, take a minute to google www.leapdayforfrogs.org.za

Find out where there is a wetland in your area and take your children your children to experience the mud, the reeds and learn more about amphibians.

Then turn to https://za.pinterest.com/margaret6614/amphibians-reptiles/?lp=true to get some ideas on fun things to make and bake with your children. If we don’t teach them about the environment, who will?

Teach your children about nature conservation by:

• Watching National Geographic and other nature channels
• Getting them to help you with recycling: paper, glass, plastic, tins, bottles and vegetable peels
• Let them help you in the garden or grow their own vegetable pots
• Find out about Nature Conservation Societies in your village or town
• Take them to the library where they can get books about nature
• Get older children interested in reading Gerald Durrell’s books e.g.

The New Noah

Island Zoo

Look at Zoos

My Favourite Animal Stories

Bedwetting

don’t tell anyone

Getting your toddler out of night-time nappies can be a mission – but it’s more serious when children are bed-wetter’s at school-going age. The latter can be symptomatic of a learning problem, bladder problems, weak muscle tone or even the first sign of diabetes (a grappling problem today).

If your child is normally dry at night and then starts bedwetting, trouble-shoot by eliminating some possibilities.

• What’s happening at school? Is your child being bullied, not coping with the school-curriculum or new teacher?

• Is your child constipated?

• Does your child have any symptoms of a bladder or urinary-tract infection?

• Has anything happened at home? A new baby, moving, couple separation or divorce, work issues, financial problems?

Emotional issues affect children too. Working couples are stretched for family time to listen to their children. Too often, when children have a problem, they don’t talk to their parents – or they tell-all at an inconvenient time (usually on the ride to school – or when its time for bed).

Here are a few suggestions:

• Make an appointment to see your family doctor just to make sure there are no medical or other underlying problems.  All being well …
• Make time to talk. You may need to follow this up with an appointment to see the school teacher
• Minimise liquids in the late afternoon and nothing to drink at bed-time (some people say that this makes no difference)
• Leave a night-light on
• Toilet your child when you go to bed (sometimes they sit fast asleep on the toilet - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't).
• Invite a friend for a play-date (possibly a sleep-over too)
• When there are no physical, medical or emotional problems, bribery also works
• For sanity sake, cover the mattress with a plastic sheet.

 Luckily, this is a problem that most children outgrow. Some just take longer than others to do this.

Ante-natal care and Pregnancy Education Week

Pregnancy Education Week - Mommy-hood trophies

There are no ‘Grammy-awards’ for women who survive pregnancy, childbirth and breast-feeding, snotty-noses, potty-training and toddler-tantrums – at the cost of a slim waist, firm breasts and dainty calf-muscles. Rather, women who are wrung through this process emerge wearing droopy boobs, silver stretch-marks and a spare tyre.

This is “Pregnancy Education Week”. While we celebrate magic moments that make motherhood so worthwhile, let’s step back and think about how safe pregnancy and childbirth has become compared to when the word pregnant was whispered or disguised as ‘in the family way’. Travel writer, Carole Chester, writes the following in her book: ‘Traveller’s Treasury – New York’

“Doctor’s hardly touched Hiram’s life – but the deaths! Page after page of deaths. Letter after letter recording them line by line. The gravestones of wives and infant children haunt the cemeteries. Hiram was the first son of his father John’s first marriage; my great-grandfather, Amasa, was the second son of John’s second marriage; seven children by his first wife, eleven by his second; fourteen surviving to adulthood. There are 105 graveyards in Gloucester and 135 next-door in Burrillville, monuments to childbed fever, consumption, pneumonia, the epidemic diseases that raged the land, typhoid, smallpox, measles. For each husband, a tatter of wives – dead at twenty-three, at twenty-eight, and twenty-seven. To be a woman was an almost fatal early disease.”

Pretty scary stuff. Thanks to good ante-natal care today, pregnancy problems can be identified and treated before they become problematic. The focus of ‘Pregnancy Education Week’ is to make all women – irrespective of their social status, income, age and culture – aware if the importance of going to her local clinic, doctor, gynaecologist or obstetrician ASAP when her pregnancy test is positive.

Why?

This is so that her medical and obstetrical history can be recorded, blood tests taken to identify her blood group, haemoglobin (testing for anaemia) and the presence of various viruses that can affect her baby’s development in the first three months (possibly the most important trimester of pregnancy).

Then a plan is set for medical check-ups over the next nine months.

It is important that women stick to her re-visit dates, and that she follows through with her doctor/midwives’ advice and instructions throughout her pregnancy.

She can also help herself and her baby by:

• Not smoking
• Not drinking
• Exercising regularly
• Eating healthy
• Reading and learning more about each stage of pregnancy, how to stay healthy and prepare for the mammoth task of motherhood.

The effort is well worth it!