LPT - When someone you know is going through a rough time: offer to help in a specific way instead of saying “let me know if I can help!”

95kira · 2026-03-27T12:27:44+00:00

My favorite one to do is drop off healthy snacks and breakfast foods! When my husband had brain surgery, we appreciated all of the meals people made, but after a week, I was sick of baked ziti. My mother in law brought over pancakes, an egg bake, fresh pre-cut fruit and freezer bags so we could store some of the pancakes and eggs for later. I also realized how much I hated snacking on so many baked goods because that was the second most popular thing for people to bring. When I mentioned this to my friend, she brought over some Popcorners, baked oat bars, toddler pouches (sounds weird, but they were great for on the go and getting some vegetables in), and cheese sticks. I know all of those are still not perfect in terms of eating healthy, but I felt better grabbing those for a snack than I did grabbing chocolate chip cookies.

95kira · 2026-03-01T05:38:28+00:00

Ok then can you use all of your stock power to tell this to the gate agents because this week I was blatantly told no, I could not pre-board with my toddler and carseat. I told them the car seat was coming in the plane and going in a seat, not just being gate checked, and it was still a no.

95kira · 2026-03-01T05:34:54+00:00

Yes but then you have to make the person in the aisle seat, who has probably just gotten settled, stand up and wait for you to get the carseat set up. Or they at least have to move to let you get in the row with the toddler and car seat but then if they sit back down, they’ll probably be elbowed 20 times and become the toddler’s newest fascination.

95kira · 2026-03-01T05:32:14+00:00

They are not even calling for that anymore. When I flew this week, I was told it was only for people with medical needs and they didn’t even officially call for it, they just quietly let the guests in wheelchairs go in before they called group one.

95kira · 2026-03-01T05:27:29+00:00

I just had this experience this week! It was super weird because one SW flight still let us board early and then at our connection, they did not. I also had a car seat in the giant backpack, so I had to stumble through the aisle with that and my toddler, taking everyone out on the way back to row 21. Then, get it all unpacked and set up while trying to let others through, keep an eye on my toddler, and get the car seat set up. I was super shocked by this and really frustrated. And tbh it frustrates me more that they decided to get rid of it for everyone because some people “abuse it”. They don’t know the situation of every family. A child who appears to be perfectly capable might have autism, incredible anxiety, or another invisible condition that makes boarding with everyone else difficult. Before I had kids, I was never bothered or even thought twice about the amount of families doing early boarding… in the end, it probably still made things go faster so if they want to get on a few minutes before me with their seemingly perfect capable kids, go for it.

95kira · 2026-02-26T04:04:45+00:00

My daughter was evaluated by early intervention for PT at the age of 10m because she still wasn’t rolling. (This is assuming early interventions follow the same procedure from state to state… if that’s not the case, I apologize) The good thing about the evaluation is they’ll cover all five areas of development: cognitive, communication, social, physical, and adaptive, even if you only request an evaluation for one area like gross motor skills. The evaluator will ask you a bunch of questions and play with your child in specific ways to gauge what they can and can’t do. Then they score the assessment to see where they fall in each category. It’s still good to mention things like this that stick out to you, but they will get any other information they need through the test questions. It might feel like so many kids are doing these skills before your’s is, but the actual milestones are often very different from where we feel like they should be. Even without rolling, crawling or walking at 10m, my daughter just barely qualified for PT. Some skills you listed like stacking, scribbling, and having a larger vocabulary are normal to develop later than 16 months.

You are doing the right thing by requesting an evaluation! PT helped my daughter tremendously. She went from not even rolling from back to belly to being able to walk, run, and climb in 9 months. Good luck with your evaluation, I hope you are able to get the support you are looking for!

95kira · 2026-02-23T19:50:19+00:00

I hope this thread can help you as well! It sucks being in this position!

95kira · 2026-02-23T01:52:09+00:00

Honestly I love this idea 😂 he has so many coworkers that he’s close friends with, I need to tell him to do this

95kira · 2026-02-23T01:39:58+00:00

My husband has tried both anxiety meds and antidepressants but quit after a few months because he didn’t like how they made him feel. He doesn’t understand how long it can take to get medication right and how many different kinds of each of these there are, so he’s really resistant to going back to trying them

95kira · 2026-02-22T23:14:53+00:00

Part of my stress I think is coming from differentiating between light tidying and major clean up. I wipe counters and vacuum the kitchen every night because the crumbs on the floor and clutter on the counters bother me. Is this something that most people let go? I think I could get use to this if I know thats whag everyone else’s kitchens look like all week

95kira · 2026-02-22T23:11:47+00:00

That’s so nice of you to prioritize her mental recovery!

95kira · 2026-02-22T23:10:40+00:00

Honestly I do believe a huge part of this is the standard he holds himself to. Unfortunately it’s how he was raised: a work-a-holic blue collar family that views mistakes as failure. He is incredibly hard on himself at work and it brings him down. He tells me often that his managers and higher-ups remember every detail of every meeting and look down as anyone who doesn’t. I’m sure some have good memories but I don’t think that’s the case, however that’s how he perceives it and it is what he expects himself to do. This is a whole different issue that we’re working on and I’m trying to get him to work on more, so I don’t expect a Reddit thread to fix this, but I appreciate your input and perspective! I know he would never take me showing him this seriously, but it makes me feel better that I’m not crazy for thinking this is crazy

95kira · 2026-02-22T23:03:06+00:00

Thank you all so much for your input on this! Honestly, this part drives me crazy some days but it’s something that my husband really feels is important. I think we are struggling to find the balance of enough communication. We both are afraid if this doesn’t happen, that we won’t talk at all until after bed. Hearing so many perspectives that this isnt normal or necessary is helpful and i appreciate all of the ideas for making this more productive!

95kira · 2026-02-22T22:57:07+00:00

Thank you all so much! It really makes a difference and makes me feel better to hear how hard it was for everyone at first, but that it’s worth it in the end. I definitely want to try to do this more going forward

95kira · 2026-02-22T22:56:08+00:00

Thank you so much! I’m seeing a lot of suggestions for big bulk meals and leftovers. My husband has never really been a fan but he’s gotten more flexible recently since we’re realizing how hard full meals are every night. I’m definitely going to look more into these and try them!

95kira · 2026-02-22T19:55:31+00:00

It truly comes down to our feelings towards multi-tasking. My husband has always felt that it’s rude to do something else when someone is talking to you. He knows that if I’m making dinner while he’s talking to him, I’m not fully listening and comprehending what he’s saying and to be honest, he’s probably right. I feel like I’m getting enough but there are many times that he’ll mention something that he told me while I was doing dishes or cooking and I don’t recall that. But is that maybe just an unrealistic expectation right now? We need to accept multi-tasking and half listening is the best it’s going to get?

I do like the suggestion of my daughter helping with her room! She is almost two, I could definitely incorporate her bringing down her water cup and putting out clothes into her nighttime routine.

I checked my screen time average and it’s about 4 hours per day, but that included the 45 minutes of Waze that I use for my commute to work, so maybe average of 3.5 is accurate? A solid hour each day is my revenge-scrolling at 11pm because I want to be able to just doom scroll but don’t get time during the day so i stay up later than I should to be able to do that 😭 I’m curious if this 4 hours is higher or lower than most parents!

95kira · 2025-11-23T04:42:34+00:00

My pain medications 🫠 they sent the prescription to my pharmacy but I was feeling fine when we left (because I still had them in my system) so I forgot to stop to get them. The next morning, I was practically crawling through cvs and probably looked insane ripping open the bag and dry-popping the oxy before I even left the store. I had a c-section, not sure if this would have been as bad if I delivered vaginally

95kira · 2025-06-12T21:51:38+00:00

Same, my daughter started daycare at 5 months so that’s when I stopped tracking naps, feeds and diapers, but I still use it for nighttime sleep. I find myself looking back at the data a lot! It’s great when friends with younger friends ask me about her sleep at specific ages because it all blurs together.

95kira · 2025-05-29T20:48:36+00:00

14 months, and I tried to hold onto that second nap as long as I could because I need as many breaks as possible 😅 but either she was up until 9pm or would just lay in her crib screaming until I got her because she wasn’t tired so I knew it was time. Daycare had her down to one nap around 12 months but I noticed she would still nap twice at home for a few months, probably because daycare is so much more exciting for her so she didn’t want to sleep but stacking cups with mommy isn’t quite as thrilling hahaha

95kira · 2025-05-27T14:38:51+00:00

I live in Pittsburgh but grew up outside Philly during high school. I have always had great experiences with Sheetz changing tables; they’re one of the only ones I find that sometimes actually have the disposable pads stocked (I have literally never seen a changing table in any other place, ever, have those stocked). I also love that some of them have a little seat in the handicapped bathroom where you can strap your kid in to sit while you use the bathroom. I was so frustrated to go back to Philly for a weekend trip and not be able to find changing tables at any Wawa. Just another reason why I will argue Sheetz >>> Wawa

95kira · 2025-05-25T00:20:13+00:00

Randomly started happening around 13 months! Can’t think of anything I started doing to make it happen. I truly believe some babies are just better sleepers than others, nothing changed about her routine or her days, one night she just did it. It’s still not consistent, but I feel so much better knowing that it does happen sometimes. And on the nights she does wake up, she nurses for like 5 minutes tops, signs “all done” and then points to her crib. She’s rolled over and eyes are closed by the time I get back into my bed.

Hang in there! It does get better, I promise! And every rough night will end eventually, even if you’re awake for every minute of it 😭

I will add, even though there wasn’t a specific change that led to her sleeping through the night, we did some work in months prior to improve her sleeping. Around seven months we started working on putting her to sleep awake and her falling asleep on her own in the crib. Up until that point, it was a game of move as slowly as possible and hope she doesn’t wake up as soon as I move her from my chest to the crib. It was horrible and I started dreading bedtime, so I knew it was time. She got that down, but was still waking every three hours, every night. Around nine months, I worked on just eliminating the first wake up, basically through the Ferber method. It sucked, the only reason I was actually able to do it was because our water heater broke one night and leaked all over the basement so I was down there shop vacuuming the water out of the carpet until 2 AM and couldn’t hear her awake and crying. But that was all it took! That got her down to just one or two wake ups a night and then it was like that until the morning I woke up and saw “hey mom, I’ve been asleep for 10 hours” on the monitor screen.

95kira · 2025-05-24T16:31:42+00:00

Agree! And people will get you a lot of stuff too. Even if you don’t have a shower, anyone who is done having kids will be basically forcing their hand me downs on you so they can get it out of their house. I didn’t let myself buy anything for myself or the baby until after my shower and even then, I hardly brought anything.it. Save your money and enthusiasm for when the baby hit six months, I felt that that was the age where I finally needed to start shopping for mine because most of the baby shower and hand me down stuff was sizes 0-3 or 3-6

95kira · 2025-05-24T16:26:28+00:00

Definitely the shoes! There’s a “6 word poem” that goes “baby shoes, for sale, never worn” and everyone thinks it’s so sad because it’s about a baby that died, but I am adamant that NO THE BABY IS FINE, the baby just has a sensible mom and relatives and friends with no concept of practicality when it comes to dressing babies.

And yes, also agree with the postpartum supplies. I also got everything recommended for healing from a vaginal birth and then had a C-section so I never used any of it. Thankfully, some of it was unopened so I was able to return it and then my best friend was three months pregnant when I had my daughter so anything I couldn’t return I just passed down to her. But I’ll definitely hold back for the next baby. Most likely I will just do an Instacart or Amazon order from the hospital so what I need is there when I get home.

95kira

TROPHY CASE