Baby Bumblebee
So, when we first brought Robin home from the hospital, he was not a fan of bathtime. But Nanita managed to bring him around by making sure the water was warm enough and providing him with plenty of bath toys, and for a while there, he had a good time in the tub.
I don’t know what happened, but lately, he’s decided that being bathed is like baby torture. As soon as the heel of his foot touches the water he starts screaming, and when his butt sits down in the tub he arches his back and flings himself from side to side, still screaming. This happens no matter how tepid or warm the water is. I’ve no idea what the problem is because he still really likes splashing his feet in fountains, and whenever Sam or I am taking a shower he’ll crawl in the bathroom and pull himself up on the side of the tub so that he can peer in.
So we decided to go with that, and instead of trying to bathe him we simply brought him in the shower with us. Cleaning Robin this way is a two-person job: one person holds the slippery-wet baby while the other soaps him up. But it worked! He didn’t protest at all except when he got a little bit of shampoo in his eyes, and even then he was quickly soothed.
And afterwards we wrapped him in this adorable bumble-bee towel that Pappy and Nonna gave us, and it was so cute I had to take a picture.
July 30th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
That’s so interesting. You loved baths (and all other bodies of water) from the beginning. The co-bathing strategy sounds good, though. Have you tried ditching the baby tub insert and sitting in the bath with Robin?
July 30th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
That’s a good idea! Yeah maybe the little tub is just too confining for him now. I hadn’t thought of that.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Isabel hated baths when she was a newborn, then loved them for many months, then developed a fear of them, then loved them again, and so forth. The hating-baths phases have each lasted a few months, then passed on their own. As an older baby, she seemed to have a fear of water in general for a while, and as a toddler, she was afraid of getting her hair washed.
She also stopped liking her baby tub when she was around 8 or 9 months old, and liked being in the big tub. We got a big, cushiony, non-slip suction-cup bath mat at that point. We’ve also tried the shower-bath, where she sits in the tub and we use the hand-held shower to wash her.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
hmm…maybe we’ll do the bathmat thing too!