Hellobee Boards

Our baby gets licked all the time. The one dog loves the "drive-by" licks. Walking, walking, walking - LICK THE BABY - walking... It's annoying but, we're dealing. She hasn't come down with any weird diseases from the dog yet.

As for jumping, she's a jumper/excitable one, as well. She has only knocked M down once, which is amazing. We just block as much as possible because we realize it's her way of saying hi to us and there's really not much we can do. When we come in, we have her settle, sit and then pet her. She still jumps but we try to keep things as calm as possible so she doesn't KEEP jumping. It's hard but it sounds things you will be able to handle with a baby in the house!

@grizz: white noise. It will become your friend. Our marpac white noise machine blocks out Thumper's barking!!! It's a life saver.

I worry about this too, because our dog is very needy for our attention. (He was a rescue. I don't think he was abused, but he was definitely ignored.) But he's practically a toddler with his personality and mannerisms!

We had a "trial run" with my niece (nearly 2 years old) and nephew (7 months old) this past week. Max was initially somewhat threatened by the running/laughing 2 year old, but then settled into something like grumpy acceptance, heh.

The picture of Max protecting his toy from the kids cracks me up.

@mediagirl: Drive-by lickings...I die!

This is something we're talking about now, and we're both totally okay with the dog licking the baby some. She's very loving. We will need to work on not jumping as soon as we get in the door, but we're starting that now that I'm showing and I don't want 45 pounds of dog jumping on the belly. One of our cats will be good with the baby, and I think the other one will ignore it.

Our dog does drive-by lickings! LO isn't here yet, so I'm hoping our dog will adjust easily. She licks and can get excited really easily. She's 65lbs, so not a small dog, so I'm sure I'll be nervous a bunch of times!

Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since K is only 2 weeks old, but we were super worried about our little dogs, too. We have a chihuahua and a maltipoo, the chi is very territorial and we always have had to lock him in his crate in another room when children are in the house. Both dogs seemed to "sense" my pregnancy, so we knew they were waiting for the changes. We also had the swing, bouncer, and car seat out in the living room several weeks before baby came for them to get used to not jumping on them. We still put them in their crate when people first come over since they are still jumpy at the door, but all in all, it's going really well.

As for the barking waking the baby, I read somewhere that baby gets used to repetitive sounds from in the womb, so she's already used to hearing the dogs bark. No idea if there is any truth to that, but K sleeps through them barking like a champ. She doesn't even startle.

We weren't worried about our dog hurting the baby or anything, but we were worried that she would feel left out or neglected because she was our "baby" for so long and we just lavished attention on her. But she is amazing with LO! She quickly understood her new role as companion and protector, and doesn't seem any worse for the wear having to wait a little longer than usual to be let outside (if she begs while I'm feeding LO, for instance and I'm home alone). It helped that we tried to keep everything the same as usual (she's still allowed on the bed/furniture, DH still walks her around the same time every day, etc.). That's just us -- I know other people want to get their dog off the furniture when LO comes and that's fine too!

She's so cute, when LO is playing in his activity gym on the floor and I'm in the kitchen or DH is on his computer, in other words, we aren't there with LO, Rosie will lay on the floor next to him like she's watching him for us!

And she constantly licks LO, and it doesn't bother us or him. It just comes with the territory.