Jen Robe Writes

  As every parent knows your baby’s sleep can make or break your day.  I don’t have any magic tip solutions.  I do have a few favorite Instagram pages I follow that I have gotten all my advice.  I wish I had a magic wand for overnight sleep.  At 9 months, Mary is occasionally sleeping until 5 am and occasionally waking up around 3 or 4 for a feed.  She then goes back down until 7.  I am so looking forward to a full night’s sleep, but at least it isn’t more frequent.  What we do have down pretty solidly is her day sleeps.  In the day she takes 2 naps between 1 hour and 2 hours. Her first nap is normally at 10 am and her second nap at 2 or 2:30 pm.   This works well for our family until we want to do something.  If we want to do an all-day activity, or are on vacation, that perfect schedule can go out the window.  We handle it in several different ways.  Number one is we encourage her to nap. If we are out and we have her pram, we will put her in the pram, give her her dummy, recline the

  Cloth Nappies can be a pretty controversial topic. Some people think they are great for the environment and the best thing ever and you should never use a disposable. Other people think cloth nappies are way too much work and just use disposables. Some people have never heard of cloth nappies and believe everyone uses disposables.  I want to talk about our journey to cloth nappies, our philosophy on how we use them, and why we love them.  I first heard of cloth nappies on Pinterest. I had a bad Pinterest habit. I spend less time on there now, but I have spent many hours of my life browsing Pinterest.  I saw cloth nappies many years ago before I was thinking of having children.  But I clicked and read many articles anyway.  So I learned a lot about washing and the routines that many people used with their cloth nappies. It made me realize that using cloth was possible and very doable.  Once we found out I was pregnant I started talking to my husband about it.  I was surprised by how q

 We recently flew for the first time with our 9-month-old baby.  We flew from Melbourne to Perth, about a 4-hour flight with a two-hour time difference. I wrote a post about how I was preparing for the trip before we left.I have since found that some of the normal flying tips we use are actually the exact opposite of what we want to do with a baby.  We picked our flight time with 2 different things in mind.  Our number one priority was the price. We wanted to get the cheapest flights we could. The second thing was timing it around Mary’s sleep. Which was easy to do if you have ever tried to buy cheap flights.  We flew there leaving at 9 pm and arriving at 11:15 pm.  We flew back leaving at 11:40 pm and arriving at 5 am.  I’ll talk about our flights later, but the timing did work out well for us.  When we pack we normally try to carry on all our luggage instead of checking luggage. This prevents the airline from losing anything and also saves us time at the baggage claim.  This is actua

  We have booked tickets to visit family across the country! It is Tuesday that I am typing this and we are flying a week from today.  So only a week to plan and prepare.  I will walk you through what we are going to plan and prepare for Mary’s first flight.  The first thing we have done to prepare is the scheduling of the flights.  All of our flights are planned for when Mary is sleeping.  Actually, they are all at night after Mary’s bedtime, because that was the cheaper flights.  So the first thing we are going to do is bring her dummy and sleeping bag and hope she sleeps.  She is breastfeeding so if she needs it hopefully I can nurse her to sleep.  Now I’m in the awkward planning to pack and sort of packing, but it is too early to actually pack.  So I have started preparing.  I bought a big box of wipes today and a pack of disposable nappies (diapers).  We usually use cloth for both of them, but that is a lot of laundry for vacation and I don’t want to pack the extra bag it would ta

  I just had my first baby-free day out.  It was a month in the making. A friend offered to watch Mary while my husband and I had lunch. Unfortunately, her kids proceeded to bounce a stomach bug around for a month. But everyone was finally happy and we were able to go. So I'll share how we prepared and what I suggest for anyone else.  The first thing I did to prepare was write out Mary's daily schedule. I recommend listing everything that happens from wake up to bedtime, what are the important things. When she takes a bottle, when she eats solids, when she takes her naps, and when she gets nappy changes. From there I listed the details for those things. What solids to feed her and her nap routine.  I felt a great sense of relief once I had her plan written out to give to our friend.  The next thing that I did was make sure our house was organized. Not tidy or clean, just organized. Our house was messier than I would have preferred, but we felt overwhelmed and needed a break.  I

Everyone tells you not to compare your baby to other babies, but it can be really hard.  We have a friend whose baby was born one day before Mary(we will call him bub).  How do you not compare at that stage when the babies are so close in age? Today I want to talk about how I handled the comparison and what I recommend.  The first thing is to recognize that all babies are very different and do things at their own pace. There is no right time or right way for babies to do things. But it can be hard not to compare. Each baby has their own things they are better at and remembering those can be very helpful.  My friend dealt with hours and hours of cluster feeding the first few weeks. She just could not stop feeding bubs.  Mary, on the other hand, had hour-long feeds each time but did not cluster feed. We could just change her nappy and put her to bed. But as time went on, bubs stopped cluster feeding and started sleeping for longer and longer stretches.  He is a unicorn baby sleeping thro

  For me, one of the most important aspects of managing my depression and anxiety has always been sleeping.  If I am not getting enough sleep my mental health spirals downhill.  There is a huge difference in how I feel and behave when I am getting enough sleep and when I am not. I also have insomnia that kicks in when I am depressed.  Bad combination with an infant. There are also studies that show that depression and anxiety are worse when you are sleep-deprived.  Today I want to share with you my recommendations for how to handle infant sleep deprivation. This is what worked for me and my family. Each family will have its own solution that works best for them.  I am not talking about how to get your child to sleep, but how to handle the adult sleep when the baby is waking up frequently.  I am married to a very supportive husband. He has been working from home due to covid, which has been a huge help. His working from home has played a huge role in how we can approach sleep habits.  E

  My Induction Process with the Gel I was scheduled for an induction at 38 weeks and 3 days because of my gestational diabetes. I had known my doctor wanted me to be induced between weeks 38 and 39 so at my week 37 appointment I asked when we would decide on a date, and it got scheduled that day for the next Thursday.  On Tuesday the next week, I was walking home from the pharmacy when I got a call from my doctor saying that they wanted to move the induction and can I come in that day.  As soon as possible.  Well, I wasn't expecting that at all! So I called my husband and went home. We had lunch and hurriedly packed the last things we needed to pack.  I had planned on packing a bag for the induction process that evening and redoing my hospital bag once the laundry had dried that evening.  Luckily for me, the leggings that I wanted to take dry quickly and so were already dry.  We went to the hospital and signed in.  A brief bit of confusion and I had to wait a bit because I was sche

I thought I was doing a great job at staying calm for baby and being ready.  Until I went into my doctor’s appointment. She had been talking about inducing me between weeks 38 and 39 for a while now. So at my 37-week appointment, I asked about it.  I wanted to know when we would schedule the induction date.  I wasn’t sure if we would do it that day, but I wanted to know when and how much notice I would have.  My OB looked at the computer and went, yeah, we can schedule that now since it will be next week! And gave me a date for the next Thursday.  I was calm and organized until that point. And then we left the appointment and I went into a mild panic! Having a date made it seem so soon and so real.  I’m really glad my husband was able to come to that appointment with me for grounding.  If the appointment was even a few days later, he would not have been allowed in and I definitely needed his support.   I immediately started thinking of everything that needed to be done be before we bri