They say you are more relaxed with the second kid, and I've gotta tell you, "they" are totally correct.
My parenting style with Jackson is a little bit different than it was with Lucy when she was a baby.
Sleeping arrangements: Lucy either slept in her crib, or pack and play, but never in our bed, until she was well past one year old. The first few weeks of her life, I pretty much exclusively pumped, so Andy usually fed her middle of the night bottles, and I still got up in the MOTN to pump. By the time I was nursing her 75% of the time, she was pretty much sleeping through the night. Jackson has been nursed from day one, though he still gets bottles throughout the day. During his first week of life, he slept all day and was up, hungry ALL night. Which meant I wasn't sleeping at night. That was fine during the two weeks Andy was off, but once he went back to work, I was going to need to be able to function during the day so I could care for Lucy. So after one week of sleepless nights, we decided to get a bed rail and have Jackson sleep with me at night. At first I was against this, but after doing careful research we learned that mother's have an awareness at night when their baby sleeps with them, which prevents them from rolling onto the baby. So I'd basically latch Jackson on, he'd eat and I would fall asleep, and then he would fall asleep until the next feeding. Lather, rinse, repeat. Starting at around six weeks, I've been putting him in his bassinet (next to our bed) at the start of the night, bringing him to bed with me when he wakes. Now he sleeps from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., so he really only sleeps in our bed until Lucy wakes at 7 a.m. and we start our day.
NIP'ing (or nursing in public): This is something I can say I never did with Lucy. I was just never comfortable with it, and since we had been giving her formula since her days in the NICU, I gave her formula when we were out. I figured nursing her at home was enough, and we were giving her formula anyway, so why not. Although my milk supply isn't as strong as I'd like it to be, and Jackson does get some formula during the day, I'm so much more protective of my supply this time around since I'd like to make it to a year or more of breastfeeding. I'm not one of the brave ladies who nurses without a cover, but if we are out of the house for longer than two hours, I don't hesitate to nurse him. We've nursed at the zoo, at the park, at the library during Mother Goose on the Loose, and several times at restaurants. It's feeling less and less weird as we go.
Cloth diapering: We intended to cloth diaper Lucy, but got lazy. Oh heck, and we received so many diapers at the baby shower that she was probably three months old by the time we ran out. But after three months of having two kids in diapers, realized it's so expensive and we'd be dumb not to. Jackson's diapers just came in this week, and as soon as we run out of disposables, it's cloth all the way. Oh, and Andy needs to assemble a diaper sprayer first. I tried out the cloth dipes yesterday, and it was all good until Jackson pooped. And I had to dunk and swish. Google it.
One thing that hasn't changed:
We still very much include Brody and Cartman when it comes to their human siblings. : )
