Who is the expert anyway?

Last weekend when I went to my sister Natalie's for an overnight trip with my sisters to paint pottery. (see what we made here, (my pottery didn't make it in the picture, must not have turned out that great.)) Todd insisted he go with me because he thought I would ignore Anthony and let him cry while I was painting pottery. (seriously!) So I let him come along, I figured he could take care of Anthony so that I could paint pottery. There were times when Anthony was fussy, and Todd was tending to him, so I was glad to have the help. Then on the way home, he tells me "it's a good thing I came with you, since you ignored your son when he cried." (seriously!) I ignored him because his father was watching him, that is why his father came along after all.

I was reading in my book again the other day, and it said that fathers need time to bond and care for their baby and it is usually easier to do when the expert (meaning the mother) is not looking over their shoulder. It suggests that the mother leave the house once in a while for a few hours to let this happen. Well I have a very unusual husband, and I think he thinks that he might be the expert. Todd is always giving me advice and recommendations as to how I should do things, if I'm upstairs with Anthony and he is downstairs and Anthony starts crying, I know without a doubt that he will up to help if the crying doesn't stop within a couple minutes. He of course does all of this with the best intentions and is a very good dad, so I am not complaining. It's just that since Todd is not working right now, he is home all the time with us (again, not complaining, love the help) and even if I go somewhere, he wants to come along. I went to have lunch with a couple girlfriends last week, and I had to tell him he couldn't come with me. What I'm getting to is that Todd is in Chicago for the day, and I have my baby all to myself, to bond with and care for as I like without the expert looking over my shoulder. Although by the time he gets back this evening I will be glad to have him back.

Last night was another trying night to get Anthony to sleep. We keep hearing/reading conflicting information about the 6 week mark. Are they at their peak of fussiness or do they become better sleepers and happier babies? Today he is 6 weeks and I hope it's the latter, but I'm afraid it's the former. While I was trying to get Anthony to sleep, he had his eyes wide open for about an hour straight while I rocked him in the bathroom with the fan on. Meanwhile Todd was downstairs reading on the internet to see if he could find any soothing to sleep suggestions we had not tried yet. Making the bed warm was what he thought we should try. So he put the bedding in the dryer. I pulled the blanket out and wrapped it around him while it was still hot and his eyes instantly closed and he drifted off to sleep. Unfortunately when I put him in his bed, he woke back up. So we tried giving him a bath, which he seemed to enjoy, put different style of pj's on him and let him lay in our bed with us. He finally fell asleep and I was able to pick him up and put him in the bassinet (which we moved back into our room). So which of the above things did the trick? The whole ordeal took 2 hours before he finally fell asleep, so I was afraid he wake up to eat again any moment, but to my surprise he slept 3 hours before waking up again. So at least were making progress on spreading out the feedings at night.

I think it's pretty obvious that neither of us is an expert!