u/Kindly_Shoulder2864

Trying to not break the bank. Setting up a twin-sized floorbed for my little one, I need it to be something I can also sleep on as needed. Waffling between something more eco or just getting IKEA. The bed frame I ordered has a slatted base, so that accidently rules out most of the latex-based ones that I was originally looking at.

Currently looking at (in no particular order):

5 Little Monkeys 8" Cushion Firm Mattress ($399 from Costco)

My Green Mattress "Pure Eco" Kids Mattress (currently on sale for $594, this is definitely top end of my budget!)

Arizona Premium Mattress Twin Eco Sleep Hybrid Mattress with Extra Firm topper option (also on sale for just under $600)

Any of the IKEA mattresses in Firm, all under $500, and several options for $200-400 (but omg, how do I pick one??)

I am a side/back sleeper and can handle very firm surface (big-time camper). Maybe you've got a recommendation that I haven't thought of. Or perhaps a combination (firm short coil mattress from IKEA with a firm latex topper, perhaps?) that has worked for you. I'm open to suggestions, and definitely need some steering because these options are all over the place.

Please help me with my analysis paralysis!

I just ordered the bed frame, so I'd like to get a mattress on order asap, too!

LO is 10 months old. usually goes down for sleep in a crib and then at sometime in the night when she is hungry I end up bringing her into bed with me because at some point I got too exhausted to feed and return her to the crib. She's been waking up more and more frequently, and I felt like it was time for a shift.

We decided to move her crib into her own room, because we were all just feeling ready for a change. I work from home across the hall, so it kind of just made sense for me to be closer to her sleep space (I start work early and she sleeps usually for the first hour or so). I setup a safe sleep bed for cosleeping as needed. For now, I'm sleeping in there, because I want her to get used to the space and feel safe, but I am hopeful that someday I will be sleeping in my bed with my partner, at least at the beginning of the night (no rush, though).

I guess what I am looking for is advice on navigating this transition, and particularly how to adjust for when I start sleeping in a separate room from her. And maybe just some general positive feedback that we're on the right track. My mom says I'm going to end up sleeping in the baby's room forever, my sister says I shouldn't keep cosleeping or she's never going to learn to sleep alone.

Thanks for being gentle, this month in particular has been a rough one for us!

For most of her life, I've put our LO down to sleep and left the room and she slept just fine, and I would join a little later (1-2 hours). But at 7 months, she's started having a difficult time with this arrangement. She keeps crying out, so I go back in there, wanting more breastfeeding, so I oblige - sometimes she literally takes one pull and then acts like she's falling asleep, so I put her back in her crib (still right next to my bed) and within 10 seconds she's up and moving again. She did also recently start crawling/standing/climbing, so maybe the temptation is just too much? I dunno, but I am curious if anyone has advice for this. We still cosleep much of the night, but I just put her in her own crib at bedtime because otherwise I don't get any solo time to do things like type messages to the void on Reddit :D does anybody out there have a similar setup? anybody have advice for this shift? I really don't want to be a CIO mom, but I also am getting frustrated because the back-and-forth really eats up what little time I have before my own bedtime!

My partner (48M) and I (36F) have been together for over 10 years. Several years ago, we decided to postpone the question of having a kid until we owned a home. Three years ago, we bought a home. After a year in the home, I brought up that I was interested in having a kid. My partner said it was never something he envisioned, especially this late in life, but that he was willing to make it happen for me if he could. We talked a lot beforehand about whether he was just doing this for me, because I really was afraid he would be bitter if he couldn't also embrace the idea of us as a family of 3. But he really seemed like he was on board, and convinced me enough that we went ahead and went for it - and we were successful on the first try. Woah.

He was super-supportive throughout the pregnancy, but he would occasionally make these comments about "this is what you wanted" or "you are going to be so in debt to me for all of this". I brushed them off, thinking they were bad jokes or just him coming to terms with how our life was about to change in his own way.

Fast-forward to now: we are 6 months postpartum and he has very much NOT come to terms with the fact that we have a child. He keeps trying to live in the world where we have no kid, and complaining about all the things that are different because we have a baby now. I have tried to have us do things we used to do with the kid (concerts, road trips - it's gone well! certainly different, but still very attainable!), I have made space for him to have time to do solo things that fill him up. Nothing seems to be enough. Meanwhile, I am struggling! I feel like I barely have time to do things that fill me up, and because he doesn't want to watch the kid or doesn't feel comfortable with the kid, or makes me feel guilty any time he watches the kid, I end up having to pay for someone else to watch the kid so that I can do those activities.

We had initially talked about having two kids, but I quickly saw how absolutely miserable and hung up he was about the one baby, and I told him that I was willing to be "one and done" instead of having a second like we'd previously discussed. And instead of being grateful for that sacrifice on my part, he was just like "yeah, you bet we're not having a second, you better be able to handle that..." So yeah, not the response I was hoping for...

To be clear, he emphasizes that he loves our kid, but that he hates babies, and he wishes we did not have a kid because he would rather live our childfree life from before. I apologize to our baby regularly for bringing them into a world where they weren't 100% wanted. I feel horrible about it. I have tried to tell him to talk to a therapist because he's really not adjusting well, but he flat-out refuses. He's never done therapy before and has no interest in it. He says he loves our kid, but that he hates babies, and there's no changing that.

TLDR: I love my partner, I love our child, and I cannot see a life without either of them. My partner loves me, loves our child, but cannot seem to connect with the life that includes both of us. We are only a quarter of the way through the baby years, how do we get through the rest of it?

Y'all - I need some serious encouragement from other folks who've been there and done that. I've always heard that the first two years with a baby are the hardest. We had over a decade together, had been through so many things, but I don't think we were prepared for how much having a baby would rock our relationship.

Any encouragement, any stories of others who have made it through this, would be greatly appreciated.

Working mom here, hoping you can help save me some time by pointing me in the right direction. I just completed a short story (a little shy of 3k words) that would qualify as a sort of speculative fiction/sci fi bit. Tone is generally positive (though it does discuss the end of the world). I'm wanting to submit it to publishers, I know in the past I've seen calls for submissions for short story collections/anthologies/etc. but I have been out of the game for AWHILE. Any advice on what publications to look into? Who is calling for submissions these days?

Working mom here, hoping you can help save me some time by pointing me in the right direction. I just completed a short story (a little shy of 3k words) that would qualify as a sort of speculative fiction/sci fi bit. Tone is generally positive (though it does discuss the end of the world). I'm wanting to submit it to publishers, I know in the past I've seen calls for submissions for short story collections/anthologies/etc. but I have been out of the game for AWHILE. Any advice on what publications to look into? Who is calling for submissions these days?

I was listening to a podcast about education and reading, and they said the steps of learning to read. The second to last step was sounding out all the words in your head. The final step was not needing to sound them out in your head, but just seeing and comprehending.

Y'all. I was an excellent student all through school, graduated summa cum laude in college, and have a masters degree (both in very reading-heavy majors) - and reading has always been the slowest thing for me because I SOUND OUT EVERY. Single. Word. In. My. Head!!! I will even stumble over words I don't know how to pronounce even if I know their meaning (en-velope or on-velope...)

How did I miss the last step in learning to read? I'm in my 30s now, is it too late for me? Does it matter that I never mastered the final step? How did this get missed? And how do I make sure that my own kid doesn't get stuck on the last-but-one step of learning to read?

Anyway, not sure where to go, so I thought maybe Teachers was the right place. Thanks for reading!

If you're not into dreams, don't bother reading/commenting.

My grandmother and I were very close, I talked to her every week on the phone (we lived on opposite sides of the country), and she passed away about 3 years ago now. I still will dial her phone number (it's been disconnected) just because I wish I could talk to her. One thing that made me so sad about having a baby was that she never got to know or to meet our LO, who is named after her.

Well the other night I had a dream that my family members were all hanging out, like we would after a holiday meal or something, and my grandma was there playing with my LO, with such a big smile on her face. She was so so happy! My damn logical brain said, "wait, this isn't possible, didn't she pass before my baby was born?" to which my dream sibling said, "oh no, there was some overlap". But the spell was broken, I woke up shortly after, crying happy tears. It was the most beautiful dream, the most beautiful gift. My grandma hasn't come to me in dreams at all since she passed, which just made this one so extra special. <3

Looking for advice for camping with a little one. She'll be 6mo in May and we'd like to do some camping, and potentially even backpacking, this summer. But let's start with just a basic car-camping first. We've got a nice big tent with lots of room, but I'm uncertain how we should handle the baby? I've seen some folks mention using a "Kidco Peapod" so they have a little private tent within your tent... we have a doublewide camp pad that I could probably share with her but just feel nervous about a semi-inflatable thermarest vs. my firm mattress at home because it just seems different...

Anyway, curious what folks have for advice or ways they've made it work!