Yann Kerhervé's blog

I'm a certified lactation consultant in san francisco!

This is not a fake. It's a scan of a real certificate, not doctored:

 

Ok, the truth is that Caroline is, I'm not. I bet there are only very few men certified to help with breastfeeding. They messed up the names and used mine from the the credit card instead of Caroline's that really attended the classes. 

Earlier this year, Caroline started her own activity as a postpartum doula and lactation counselor in san francisco.

Oh, I know quite a bit on the subject now (the partner needs to be supportive in the process of breastfeeding a baby, otherwise it doesn't work as well), but nothing in comparison to her :-)

She's passionate about the subject (and postpartum as a whole) and our home is filled with books and other resources.

(See also on vox)
 

5 months baby sleep

Things have changed so much in a month (since posts here and here), Maelys is now doing 13 hours nights (with one feeding in the morning usually), which makes Daddy and Mommy very proud. She always has been quite a good sleeper, but the big difference is that now, we don't spend hours holding her before putting her to Bed, we do little ritual ("red light", a book, a bath, a big hug for daddy, a small feeding with mommy), and then straight to bed.

Tonight is not as rosy since, as I write, for maybe first or second time we had to pick her up, and Caroline is re-feeding her. Indeed she started crying, so she was probably still hungry.

The first night she didn't cry at all, the second night she cried for 40mn before doing a full 12hours, and the first week was tough, but much better for our general fatigue.

In France, I guess this is the usual method of doing things (just guessing, since we didn't have a baby there), but here in the US there is also the "Pantley's" no-cry method for bed training. I read the book and I was ready to go with the method which consists in lots of tiny steps to allow baby to go to sleep without crying, but eventually we didn't do it, because Caroline who had read many other books didn't think she could make it (too tired, for all those steps), and because she also learned and appreciated the benefits of other ways.

Most of the time, now, she can go to bed at 7, 7:30pm without tears and she would wake up between 8 or 9am. If we are less lucky she will cry a bit but not more that for 20mn and it's not big cries so we're pretty happy.
The challenge now is to get her to do naps (3) during the day about the same way... Since she sleeps so much during the night it looks like what appears to work best is small naps, it's rare that she naps for 2 hours during the day, usually it's more 1 hour, and in the afternoon as little as half an hour.

Maelys now sleeping better

I knew it would happen, I reopen this blog, post a few things in burst, then nothing for a week. *shrug*

Anyway, Maelys has now recovered from the JetLag. And everyone is less tired now. We've been putting Maelys to sleep manually since the beginning, and so we were thinking about optimizing the process a bit (Automation of repetitive tasks - Geek Procedural book vol1). We just didn't want to do that just before going to France, because we knew this trip would be a big disturbance for her anyway, so we were waiting for us to come back and to recover from JetLag.

We're in the middle of that process. And so far so good. I'll write up the details and how it goes later. I'm just tired for now.

"Cultural differences" from 6 weeks in France

This post made me smile, considering that I just got back from France, and that certainly I felt the pace in San Francisco, much much more relaxing than the pace in Paris. Especially with a young baby.

Granted the rhythm in Paris is like nowhere else in France (and the post probably described the country pace, not Paris' pace). We suffocated in the cold, noise, pollution and aggressiveness of Parisians, despite we lived in Paris for 6 years. But visiting Paris has its upsides too, at the top of it, visiting Family and Friends. And the city is just marvelous (not that we got to see any of it during our short trip).

Getting our 4 months daughter to sleep is still challenging, but we intend to get that fixed using the American way, to end up with a French behaving child (according to the description from the same post). i.e: ability to sleep anywhere, walking a lot, and later biking... That's the plan at least.

Oh, and the American way of achieving that would be for us the "no cry sleep" solution (Most people and Pediatricians in France would recommend to let the baby cry until exhaustion).