ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021 | PEOPLE’S CHOICE | A7
ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021 | OP-ED | A11
The quest to sleep through the night #MOMLIFE
some babies that can take a while to master. Once your nights start getting better, you can work on establishing better sleep habits during the day.
By A.M. Cullen
I
f I’ve become an expert on any subject in these short 11 months of becoming ‘Mom’ (and to be clear, the longer I’ve been ‘Mom,’ the less expert I feel on most subjects), it’s baby sleeping. There are hundreds of programs, thousands of websites, and a seemingly endless number of resources for new and sleep-starved mom zombies to pursue. If you’re like me, and madly googling solutions at 3 a.m. after a tear-ridden battle with baby to go back to sleep (my tears, not hers), don’t worry Mama, you’re not alone. Some days it feels like sifting for a non-existent needling in a never-ending digital haystack. Even right now, when I search “baby sleeping help,” Google offered me almost 600 million results. In short, it seems like everyone has an answer, but no one has the answer to the baby sleep conundrum. SO WHAT DO I DO? I’m sorry to report that I don’t have the answer either. But these are a few things I found insightful in my ongoing quest for the coveted “sleep through the night” status. SET UP A BEDTIME ROUTINE One of the most useful pieces of advice that I received from the internet, my mom, and other mom friends was establish a bedtime routine. It can be whatever works for you family,
A.M. CULLEN PHOTO
A.M. Cullen: Hold to sleep, nurse to sleep, rock to sleep, carry to sleep, drive around the block to sleep – do what works for you and baby. Day sleep, no matter how you get it, is essential for building toward better sleep at night.”
but the goal is to calm your baby and signal that it’s time to sleep soon. For our family, it’s a bath, a baby massage with lotion, read a few stories, and nurse and rock to sleep. MAKE IT DARK Babies find darkness comforting and it helps signal their brain that it’s time to sleep. When baby was still sleeping in our bedroom and having a hard time going down, I remember rocking her to sleep in our windowless closet. Like clockwork, she would yawn and start to close her eyes. Blackout curtains are definitely worth investing in, or if you’re looking for a cheaper solution, putting tin foil over the windows also keeps out the light (we use both in our baby’s bat cave). DRESS FOR SUCCESS
The basic rule of thumb when it comes to dressing baby for sleep is to dress them in one more layer than you would wear. This makes sense because babies shouldn’t be sleeping with loose blankets as they increase the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Our usual go-to is a footed zippered sleeper over a sleep sack. LUX Apparel in FSJ carries some beautiful muslin sleep sacks and I’ve seen some cozy ones at Winners too. If you find sleepers that zip both from top and the bottom, it makes those midnight diaper changes way easier. BE AWARE OF WAKE WINDOWS As mentioned, there are a lot of different sleep programs out there, but one of the most useful pieces I found in the early days was
getting to know your babies “wake windows” from Taking Cara Babies website. By better understanding baby’s age-appropriate time between naps, it made it less of a guessing game on when to start getting baby ready to go down. One of the reasons your baby may not be sleeping well is that she’s been awake too long, is overtired, and now has elevated levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) that is keeping her from sleeping. DO WHAT YOU NEED TO GET THOSE NAPS Hold to sleep, nurse to sleep, rock to sleep, carry to sleep, drive around the block to sleep – do what works for you and your baby. Day sleep, no matter how you get it, is essential for building toward better sleep at night. Eventually, you want baby napping in her crib, but for
DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU AND DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF Living in the trenches, I’ve learned pretty quickly that this supposed maternal instinct is a load of malarkey – parenting is a learned and practiced skill. It took me too long to realize that there is no ‘right’ way for baby sleep, rather the ‘right way is what feels right for you and baby.’ Be patient and go with your gut feeling. If sleep training feels right for your family, go for it. If nursing baby back to sleep every time feels right, that’s okay too. The road to “sleeping through the night” status is not a happy upward curve plotted on a linear graph (as I naively assumed it would be), but rather it’s a chaotic general incline with various pitfalls along the way (thank you teething, travel, sickness, weather, growth spurts, etc.) Finally, keep in mind that even despite reading all those resources out there, every baby is different. Our baby is still up twice a night on a good night. And on those crazy nights where it feels like were up every hour, it helps to remind myself that we’ve come a long way from where we were in the beginning. Before you know it, they’ll be a teenager and getting them up out of bed will be a whole new challenge. A.M. Cullen lives and writes in Fort St. John
Book excerpt: An Annafield Girl By J.E Stanway
I
woke up to the birds singing their sweet song, inviting the rest of the world to share in the beauty of the morning. It was four o’clock a.m., and I needed to attend to household and farm chores. I started my days much earlier than before, as I had so much more work to do. Not just on the farm or with my writing, but my job at the post office. But I didn’t mind, because early mornings to me are as rose petals: sweet, fragrant, and never failing in their beauty. I didn’t even bother tying my hair back to attend to my duties. I quickly threw on my chore dress, ran a brush through my hair, wrapped a shawl around my arms, and walked outside. I stood for a moment and just breathed in the morning air. It was awe inspiring, the dew that trickled down the thin blades of grass, filling the air with a sweet dampness that made everything look freshly painted. The sunrise was vibrantly gold and red-orange, casting its blessing over the vast land I was raised to tend to. That view in itself was enough to permanently instill the love for the land in me as a child. And it remains steadfast, no matter how tedious the work we do may be. Once my farm duties were done, I decided to start breakfast that morning. It wasn’t long before the scent of crackling bacon and brewed coffee pulled my family out of their beds and down to the kitchen, allowing them to eat before they began their own work for the day. “I could get very used to this,” Mother said as she walked into the kitchen to a nearly finished breakfast. I smiled and continued frying potatoes and eggs. Father got up the same time as I did and was tending the animals before Mother
J.E. STANWAY PHOTO
summoned him to the kitchen. He came in through the back door, wiped his shoes on the mat, and poured himself some coffee. “It’s a chilly morning for April,” Father said, rubbing his hands together and holding tightly to his cup of coffee. “I have a feeling it’s going to rain.” “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning,” Mother said as she dished up her plate. I laughed, as the sky had been more orange than red that morning. But I did hope it would rain. “Everything smells so much prettier after it rains,” I regarded, sitting down to my breakfast. Michael
came into the kitchen momentarily, yawning wide and loud, which made me giggle. “It may make things smell pretty, but it’s an inconvenience with all the work needing done around here,” Father corrected sarcastically. I smiled and shrugged, because he was right. After finishing up breakfast, I packed the snickerdoodles I made the previous night for tea time at the post office and ran upstairs to change. I decided to wear my purple day skirt with my nice white lace blouse. I pulled my hair back into two braids and wrapped them on the top of my head, wrapped a shawl about my
arms, and made my way to the post office. The path I took to work never failed to impress me with its beauty. I loved to linger for a while in the glory of the spring month that was finally upon us. April seemed especially beautiful that day as the warm sun beamed down through the still growing leaves, waving hello to me and to the rest of Annafield. I thought it would be the most beautiful day we had yet in this early season. Upon arriving to work, I decided to seize the few moments I had before beginning my day to write in my beautiful journal about all the things that spring made me think of. I had become fond of poetry of late and tried my best to write in my journal as poetically as I could; I felt a writer’s journals should be just as well-written as their stories. I sat and immersed myself into writing for a little while, before I suddenly felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around to see Mrs. Copperfield, half smiling at me, handing me a letter. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say your hand was glued to those pages the way you scribble on them constantly. You seem to almost forget where you are half the time,” she expressed with a sarcastic yet amused air. “That I do, regrettably,” I laughed as I closed my notebook and handed it to Mrs. Copperfield to put in the back room. I then took the letter from her, turned it over, and saw that it was addressed to myself - from the Larson & Whittaker Publishing Company. J.E. Stanway lives and writes in Fort St. John, and is the Editor of The Postmodern Journal. Read more works by visiting thepostmodernjournal.com.
ALASKA HIGHWAY NEWS
A12 | OP-ED | THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021
Using leverage to help reach your financial objectives
T
o be totally clear, this is a column that will be fun to contemplate, but it will only be suitable for a very select number of situations. This is a high-risk, high payoff idea. If you are reckless with this you may cause permanent and irreparable financial damage. Everyone likes fireworks until someone loses a few fingers. Leverage. In other words, borrowing to invest. Used properly, leverage is like a chainsaw. You can cut a lot of wood in a short period of time. Used improperly, leverage is still like a chainsaw. You can cut your foot off. Leverage will magnify your results. Leverage will turn a good investment into an amazing investment. But leverage doesn’t turn a bad investment into a good one. Leverage turns a bad investment into a nightmare. The use of financial leverage is actually fairly common. Anyone who takes out a mortgage to buy a house is leveraging. Any-
one that takes out an RRSP loan is borrowing to invest. But these are plain vanilla applications, and they are relatively low risk. Today we aren’t going to be talking about plain vanilla leverage. Today we are getting spicy. And, to reiterate, spicy is not for everyone. Given that, how would you like to make your mortgage tax deducible? And unlock the equity in your house to potentially grow at an enhanced rate? Well, then, let me introduce you to the Smith Manoeuvre. In a nutshell, the Smith Manoeuvre involves taking equity out of your house and investing the proceeds. Why, you might ask, would anyone want to do this? Well, let’s say for sake of discussion that the longterm growth rate for real estate is about five per cent and the long-term growth rate for the stock market is about 10 per cent. If you can double your longterm rate of return on your investment you can accomplish magnificent things.
BRAD BRAIN But it’s not just getting a bigger return on your own money. By borrowing you can buy in with a bigger stake than if you just put up your own money, and now you can make money on other people’s money too. And then what makes the idea even more appealing is the tax treatment. You can’t write off your mortgage, but you can write off the interest expense on an investment loan. So, by using a home equity line of credit to fund the purchase of a non-registered investment, you can turn your mortgage into a tax deduction. At this point it is vital to point out a few things. First, this is a 600-word article and important information is beyond its scope. If you ever consider leveraging in real life, make sure you do your due diligence. But, perhaps more im-
portantly, leveraging illustrations will always look good when you assume everything works out. And in the real-world things don’t always work out. So here are some important things to consider. Buy high quality, diversified investments. The use of leverage is already jacking the risk profile, you don’t need to purchase speculative investments on top. Have a long time frame. This is not a get rich quick scheme. You will need time to recover if things go sideways. Don’t buy at the top. The time to leverage, if there ever is one, is when investments are cheap to buy. Don’t take it to the limit. Have a margin of safety in case there is a change in interest rates, or in your ability to service the loan. Don’t get greedy. You don’t have to literally bet your whole house. Understand what a margin call is. Also, understand how unforgiving and ruthless a margin call is. Implement only on the
advice of a knowledgeable professional. Ask yourself, “how will this help me reach my goals?” If you can’t articulate why it makes sense, then it doesn’t make sense. If it doesn’t make sense, then don’t do it. Used wisely, leverage can help you reach your financial objectives. But you do want to make sure the idea fits your situation, and that you understand the entirety of the strategy, including what could be daunting levels of risk. Certainly, you can cut a lot of wood in a short period of time with a chainsaw. Then again, nobody ever accidentally cut their foot off with a handsaw. Brad Brain. CFP, R.F.P., CIM, TEP is a Certified Financial Planner in Fort St John, BC. This material is prepared for general circulation and may not reflect your individual financial circumstances. Brad can be reached at www.bradbrainfinancial.com.