Seewalds 26: Marketing her cute growing (?) family

[AtlanticTug]

Just now, SapphireSlytherin said:

Didn't she say Spurgeon didn't sleep through the night for 16 months?

Ugh, that is horrific.

[Carm_88]

2 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

Didn't she say Spurgeon didn't sleep through the night for 16 months?

She did indeed say that. 

[SapphireSlytherin]

5 minutes ago, nst said:

she did.

can't she try herbs on the baby who doesn't sleep through the night ?

She could (SHOULD?) try letting a kid self-soothe, and not feed him during the night. Luckily, GryffindorDisappointment was sleeping 9 hours from six weeks of age. She was sleeping 5 hours at a stretch from newborn. I was sooo lucky.

But I did have to let her cry it out when I was breaking her of being rocked to sleep (thanks, XMIL for starting THAT bullshit) when she was 12 months old. Took two weeks, but then she would go to sleep on her own.

*edit:  not mom-shaming or mom-judging. Just going by everything I was told in the dark ages about getting kids to sleep through the night.

**also:  my friends' daughter didn't sleep through the night for six YEARS. They kept getting up with her and giving her milk. For six YEARS. Hell no.

[AtlanticTug]

8 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

She could (SHOULD?) try letting a kid self-soothe, and not feed him during the night. Luckily, GryffindorDisappointment was sleeping 9 hours from six weeks of age. She was sleeping 5 hours at a stretch from newborn. I was sooo lucky.
 

That is super lucky and really not the norm. I am SO jealous lol!

My niece (brother's daughter) was exactly the same, she'd sleep 10 hrs straight from 5-6 weeks on. Never had a sleep regression. I joked with them that they don't really know what it's like to have a baby.

I have a friend whose first son was a dream, same thing. They had to wake him to feed him as a newborn. She didn't realize it was luck but was obnoxious about it to everybody, as if we were all doing something wrong with our kids. She told one mutual friend that she was just using the wrong pacifier. Well, #2 arrived and was a total and complete nightmare. That child did not sleep AT ALL. We contemplated mailing her the "right" pacifier one night over drinks but that would have been too mean. Was funny for a good 10 minutes though...

[VelociRapture]

35 minutes ago, nst said:

could she have that when he is 7 months old or because she is queasy? 

and you all have to wait for my dishwasher results until Monday  

it will be on my review of the wedding - just for fun 

I’m sure there are women who have developed it later on, but typically it starts within a week of the birth. I think it’d be pretty unusual for a woman to only start showing symptoms months after the birth, but I’m not an expert and I’m sure there are cases out there that don’t follow the normal pattern of development. There’s a section about PPP on the following page from the Mayo Clinic:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/postpartum-depression/basics/symptoms/con-20029130

I’d like to strongly caution anyone from trying to make an actual diagnosis about the mental state of any of these people. Unless you are a trained professional who is treating them personally you honestly can’t know for sure... And if you were treating them and you came running here to blab about it, then that’s completely unethical and a violation of HIPAA.

(I’m not calling anyone specific out here. Just a reminder to proceed with caution.)

2 minutes ago, AtlanticTug said:

That is super lucky and really not the norm. I am SO jealous lol!

My niece (brother's daughter) was exactly the same, she'd sleep 10 hrs straight from 5-6 weeks on. Never had a sleep regression. I joked with them that they don't really know what it's like to have a baby.

I have a friend whose first son was a dream, same thing. They had to wake him to feed him as a newborn. She didn't realize it was luck but was obnoxious about it to everybody, as if we were all doing something wrong with our kids. She told one mutual friend that she was just using the wrong pacifier. Well, #2 arrived and was a total and complete nightmare. That child did not sleep AT ALL. We contemplated mailing her the "right" pacifier one night over drinks but that would have been too mean. Was funny for a good 10 minutes though...

My daughter had to be woken up for night feedings too. Many preemies need to be woken up - they don’t have the fat stores necessary to stay awake. 

[divadivine]

A cleaning success story! 

The faucet in my master bath has been spraying everywhere. I thought I was going to need to submit a maintenance request to have it fixed. But, the Lord laid it upon my heart to try to fix it myself first. So, I used some CLR and viola! (Walla!)  the faucet is not spraying everywhere. The hard water deposits have been banished like Satan! Praise the Lord! 

[nst]

7 minutes ago, divadivine said:

A cleaning success story! 

The faucet in my master bath has been spraying everywhere. I thought I was going to need to submit a maintenance request to have it fixed. But, the Lord laid it upon my heart to try to fix it myself first. So, I used some CLR and viola! (Walla!)  the faucet is not spraying everywhere. The hard water deposits have been banished like Satan! Praise the Lord! 

you get a brownie and I want to watch Dead Poet's society 

[Lurky]

13 hours ago, MadameOvary said:

In a different world she could be having a high-flying career in PR, for example. I think her potential points towards talent in strategic management. But in this world, as a cult member with no education and shackled by patriarchy, she will not get far.

Yep, this is my take.  She has so many limitations on her, but still markets herself really well.  She learned from her abortion=holocaust bullshit (ETA even if she kept her horrible beliefs, she learned not to be public about them), and is doing a great job of getting the hits (as in the dirty house post, which has got far more interest/conversation going than clean house pics would), and being sassy in her replies is clever for branding too.

It's extra-interesting because she wasn't even allowed social media until she was Courting, so what, 21?  That must have been a tight learning curve in every way, because it's not like she's grown up with it, or chosen not to use it - just that she's not been deemed responsible enough for it. 

The young Bates women are allowed private instagrams before Courting, and their single young adult men are all social media-ed up, and I think it's a mistake in the Duggar brand to keep them banned.  Of course, not everyone likes using social media, and that's fine, but I wonder if they'll change tack once they have a load of the Lost Boys over 18.

[ViolaSebastian]

1 hour ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

But I did have to let her cry it out when I was breaking her of being rocked to sleep (thanks, XMIL for starting THAT bullshit) when she was 12 months old. Took two weeks, but then she would go to sleep on her own.

*edit:  not mom-shaming or mom-judging. Just going by everything I was told in the dark ages about getting kids to sleep through the night.

Up until this summer, I was strictly against cry-it-out in a way that only a non-parent could be. Then I met a two-year-old that took two and sometimes three hours to get to sleep, all of that screaming and crying and getting up out of bed. Now I swear by it. 

[Seculardaisy]

Jessa isn't my pet fundie but I can't fault her on the babies not sleeping thing as my 14 month old is currently nursing away at 11:43 p.m.  Babies are unpredictable, all four of mine have slept through the night at varying ages. Although I've never been one to sleep train so that's on me.

[older than allosaurs]

We tried many many foolproof techniques to get our first daughter to sleep through the night. No dice, until we adopted a toddler when #1 was 4. They slept in the same room, and it turned out that's what she needed, someone else breathing away in there.

[Percy]

I was that smug bitch when number 1 slept through the night at 6 weeks.

Number 2 bit me in the butt (figuratively). At 20 months, where it says the first time She slept through the night in her baby book, I wrote 'we live in hope'.

We then moved house and put the 2 girls in together, she started sleeping through the night from then.  She just needed to know that there was someone else in the room.

[AprilQuilt]

Interesting to read both your anecdotes about the kids sleeping better with someone else in the room. It kind of figures - babies and little children are pretty much never alone, and they depend on those around them to look out for their needs. It might be quite unsettling to be all alone. I will file that away for future reference.

[jozina]

Two out of three of mine slept nicely.  I think one was before two months and one at about three months, but my memory isn't great.

The other didn't sleep for more than a three-hour stretch until 18 months and didn't sleep through until two and a half years.

8 hours ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

She could (SHOULD?) try letting a kid self-soothe, and not feed him during the night.

 

Haha, I had people give me that advice.  It got to the point where if I was in a good mood I felt like patting them on the head and telling them how adorable they were for giving me advice to try what we'd tried about five times at that point like we hadn't thought of it before or been told it by other well-meaning people.  In a bad mood...I'll leave it to your imagination.  Crying it out, controlled crying, feeding them, not feeding them, white noise, silence, their own room, your room, co-sleeping, a comforter, no comforter - all useless. Some kids don't give two ticks what you do - their brains are not developed to the point where they can sleep through and what you do makes not one whit of difference.

[MadameOvary]

1 hour ago, AprilQuilt said:

Interesting to read both your anecdotes about the kids sleeping better with someone else in the room. It kind of figures - babies and little children are pretty much never alone, and they depend on those around them to look out for their needs. It might be quite unsettling to be all alone. I will file that away for future reference.

Isolating a baby in another room is a very recent invention and in terms of evolution it's pretty unnatural. Survival depends on staying close to a parent and it's normal to wake up and check that they are not alone. Some babies adapt to being alone, others don't. We co-slept and I find I cannot say when my daughter "slept through" because the waking up next to me was so brief I wasn't necessarily even fully aware of it. I did have to break the habit of night feeds however, but she was much older at that time and after three nights of crying she got used to just briefly touching my boob instead.

[Jenn The Heathen]

When my oldest was 4 months old, he would wake up once in the middle of the night.  For several nights, he’d refuse the bottle and just want to hang out with us so that’s when we tried a modified version of cry it out.  We’d go into the room every 5 minutes to reassure him.  It worked in two nights and he stopped waking up in the middle of the night.  We did the same thing with #2, just later because he had acid reflux and a milk protein sensitivity.  

[SapphireSlytherin]

4 hours ago, Percy said:

that smug bitch

Well, I certainly hope I didn't come across that way in my post. I said TWICE in that paragraph that I was lucky - and I knew it.

What I left out? I got a GOOD baby, but a truly shitty/awful/horrid tween/teen. It was touch-and-go there for a while, whether one or both of us would survive those years.

[Pretzel]

So what's the consensus on Jessa?

I have to say, I found her posts refreshing. She tried to take herself not too seriously, which is what I like most about her. I don't like it when people take themselves too seriously, and I try not to be one of those people myself. She's a little snarky, a bit tongue-in-cheek and her Instagram is kept really positive overall. 

I like to keep a clean house,too, and at first sight, I was thinking 'Can't she get a simple trash can at Walmart?' and 'How hard is it to load the dishwasher?'. But, I don't have a demanding toddler and a demanding baby I need to take care of while surviving on little to no sleep and I know that even without that, keeping up with a family's household can be a full-time job. She tried to be real and she was not afraid to let people get a glimpse of her reality. From early childhood on, her parents and her cult instilled in her the idea that whatever she does needs to be an encouragement to others and she probably thought that her life, messy as it is right now, doesn't work well as an encouragement. Except, yes, for people who struggle as much as she does. That could have been her thought process and motivation for the first post.

Sometimes life just gets overwhelming and it takes some effort to get back on track.  With two little kids and a low energy level, some things just get neglected. Jessa is not the most likeable among the Duggar sisters, but I believe she genuinely loves her boys and wanted to show that they matter to her more than clean sheets. I find it a little sad she had to defend herself for trying to be real? She has 2 million subscribers, so the shitstorm was bound to happen, but still. If it wasn't Jessa, I am sure people wouldn't have been as judgmental. 

TL;DR: She's a young mother who still needs to figure things out. She survives on little sleep. Some people have more energy than others. Kids and household is a lot of work.

[VelociRapture]

Expectant parents and parents of young babies -

No two kids are alike and what works for someone else may not work for you. As long as you’re being safe, do what works for you and your kid. That goes for everything child related, not just sleeping arrangements. 

Rufus Bless You,

Your Scaly Lord and Master

1 minute ago, Pretzel said:

So what's the consensus on Jessa?

I have to say, I found her posts refreshing. She tried to take herself not too seriously, which is what I like most about her. I don't like it when people take themselves too seriously, and I try not to be one of those people myself. She's a little snarky, a bit tongue-in-cheek and her Instagram is kept really positive overall. 

I like to keep a clean house,too, and at first sight, I was thinking 'Can't she get a simple trash can at Walmart?' and 'How hard is to load the dishwasher?'. But, I don't have a demanding toddler and a demanding baby I need to take care of on little sleep and I know that even without that, keeping up with the household of a family can be a full-time job. She tried to be real and she was not afraid to let people get a glimpse of her reality. From early childhood on, her parents and her cult instilled the idea in her that whatever she does needs to be an encouragement to others and she probably thought that her life, messy as it is right now, doesn't work well as an encouragement. Except, yes, for people who struggle as much as she does. That could have been her thought process and motivation for the first post.

Sometimes life just gets overwhelming and it takes some effort to get back on track.  With two little kids and a low energy level, some things just get neglected. Jessa is not the most likeable among the Duggar sisters, but I believe she genuinely loves her boys and wanted to show that they matter to her more than clean sheets. I find it a little sad she had to defend herself for trying to be real? She has 2 million subscribers, so the shitstorm was bound to happen, but still. If it wasn't Jessa, I am sure people wouldn't have been as judgmental. 

TL;DR: She's a young mother who still needs to figure things out. She survives on little sleep. Some people have more energy than others. Kids and household is a lot of work.

Personally, I think the reactions Jessa got were probably a lot nicer than anything Jill would have received had she posted the same exact thing. 

That said, I think this was a mixture of Jessa being legitimately real and Jessa managing her public image pretty damn well. I give her credit for both because, as others pointed out, she was raised to only really show the positives of life and she had a steep learning curve when it came to social media. 

And I agree. I was grossed out by the diapers (I’m trying not to judge though), but I do think she honestly has a lot on her plate and sometimes it’s tough staying on top of things even under the best circumstances.

[WiseGirl]

Parenting is hard at all stages of the game. Keeping a clean house can be too. So many things can interfere (ADD child, child with autism, etc) with the dream of cleanliness. You never know the walk someone else is going through.

@SapphireSlytherinwhat are you talking about? I'm loving these teen years...you never know who you are going to get on any given day. Can you have a conversation?  Do you need to tiptoe on eggshells? It's super fun!  Then I get the whole, "So you're not talking to me now?" Me thinking to myself, "No, not really, I kind of want us both to live...."

However, don't start me on fur babies that have no consideration for sleeping in on the weekend.

[SassyPants]

13 hours ago, nst said:

what is PPP? post partum .....

Piss Poor Planning

[Lurky]

It must be weird for all the Duggar daughters to cope with live without the J'slave system.  Being one of the assertive ones, Jessa will have been used to saying "J empty the bin for me" and it being done while she's changing a nappy for example - and or the less assertive ones who just do as they're told by Jana/Jessa, it will be a learning curve to make their own decisions.  

And I wonder how the assertive ones adapt when their headships tell them they want something do/for the more submissive, if their headships expect them to take control of the household.

At least each of the younger daughters after Jill/Jessa had a brief spell of more responsibility (with Jana being in charge)  but I do wonder how the young men will adapt to go from being Duggar number 7 or 8 - or worse, the lost boys - to being the head of a household.  They're not even allowed smartphones, or access to the internet, and now they have to be in charge of how a home will run?  Likely with teen brides, if the examples of Anna, Kendra and Marjorie are followed.  It must be a really scary prospect.  And while any changes in beliefs can be blamed on the daughters' husbands, the sons have to still be accountable to JB.   I hope some of the young Duggar men get to escape, or at the very least, follow the route of the Keller sons/Wesley Morton and go Conservative Christian and move away.

[JillsFlowerHeadband]

1 hour ago, Pretzel said:

Jessa is not the most likeable among the Duggar sisters, but I believe she genuinely loves her boys and wanted to show that they matter to her more than clean sheets. I find it a little sad she had to defend herself for trying to be real?

I admittedly used to have a strong knee jerk feeling of dislike for Jessa because she always seemed so smug and self absorbed... the more I see of her now, my opinion has softened somewhat. Do I still despise her beliefs? Absolutely. But I also think she’s proving herself to be quite a good mother who’s doing as much as she can to encourage Spud and Henry’s curiosity for life. 

I also feel like her recent posts praising Jana to the heavens are an attempt to reconcile with her or make amends for the tension between them in the past. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, toxic and hateful ideology aside, I see some growth in Jessa as a person and that’s why I have a slightly more favorable opinion of her. 

1 hour ago, VelociRapture said:

Personally, I think the reactions Jessa got were probably a lot nicer than anything Jill would have received had she posted the same exact thing

I feel sorry for Jill, actually. I think her Pinterest-perfect dreams of being a wife and mother (especially the perfect easy home births she hoped for) got crushed in a spectacular fashion and her husband being an absolute raging jerk hasn’t helped her cope at all. Plus, (and I don’t mean this in a completely derogatory manner, it’s just an observation) I don’t think Jill is as mentally sharp or savvy as Jessa so she struggles harder to keep it together.  

[Pretzel]

@JillsFlowerHeadband Same here. I didn't like the smugness that came from Jessa in the early years. Then again, Jessa is a really strong character. I think she's sharp and smart, and if her intelligence and intellect had been nurtured differently, she could have thrived in the secular world. I think her alleged past issues with some of her sisters root in the fact that Jessa is as no-nonsense as it gets. Her strong and dominant personality go against everything her cult is teaching about women, and JB himself proudly told the camera that Jessa was hard to control, with that smug and self-righteous grin giving away that he's proud he controlled her anyway. I wouldn't put it past her that putting up with so many personalities was just too much for her at times and she took it out on her siblings (except for the ones she felt she needed to protect, like Jinger). To some degree, that's normal among siblings. When you get older you realize you've been a real dick and you apologize, and you start seeing your siblings in a different light. You value their strengths, you accept their weaknesses and see them for who they are. I don't think that is any different for Jessa. 

It's obvious she's grown on me over the years. I can't forget about them being members of a cult and ascribing to toxic beliefs, though. I just hope that with time, they use every chance to grow. 

On top of that, Jessa has never made it a secret that homemaking is not her forte. She grilled the damn manual of her new oven. But she's taken it with the necessary dose of humour and that is exactly how I read her messy-house post. A little tongue-in-cheek about how all of that is not her strong suit and there was too much going on for her to keep up with everything, but she knew it just had to get done at one point.

[cascarones]

I find it hard to comment on their relative intelligence. These are women who were raising children as children themselves, the education available to them is questionable and their demeanor/ chance for further exploration is controlled by their headship. 

Is Jessa more media savvy or does Ben permit more expression online? Jessa posts frequently, Ben doesn't and the reverse is there for the Dillards. Derick posts all sorts of crazy stuff to Jill's few postings, the Vuolos seem coordinated in their public postings and the Forsyths are still sharing an account.