New Mum

[tweakfak]

Hi there,

First of all I hope you & your family are all well and keeping safe during this difficult global virus.

I am a new mum and have a 6 months old baby boy. I am finding it extremely difficult to get any information or support and when I try to contact the health visitors they seem to ignore the calls & text messages so I am kind of stuck! I was hoping some of you lovely mums could help me and give me some guidance on couple of questions I have below:

1. My baby is struggling to sleep. He only sleeps at night (impossible to put him to sleep earlier than 10pm) and even then short sleep, 1/2 hours then breast fed and sleeps again 1/2 hours and goes on & on till 7/8am. During the day he sleeps only during beast feeds or when we go outside in his pushchair. If he is left inside the pushchair he can sleep for longer duration (2/3 hours). During the day where can I keep him whist awake are there specific playgrounds/cot/areas where he can stay and not just to play but also sleep for this age?

1. Food

I have started solid food however I don’t know how much to give him? Couple of spoonfuls and afterwards he is not really keen and all he wants is to be breastfed!

1. Water

Is water needs to be part of his daily intake and if so how much? I have tried it few times and he is not very keen!

1. Health/Checks

As mentioned health visitors been very unsupportive and I don’t know how regularly I need to weigh and check him to ensure he is growing well? The last time the health visitors came was when he was 4 month and his next visit won’t be till he is 1.

Thank you very much in advance for your help

Hello op. My daughter is 6 now so I don't know if any guidance has changed since I had her but I will tell you the best of what I know!

1 - sleeping. Some babies need more sleep then others. My dd was a terror (even now she gets far less sleep than most of her peers). The best you can do is try to implement a bed time routine, keep things calm and relaxed, feed him, put him down. You can't stop him from waking up, but you can try to make sure everything is calm and quiet so he doesn't get too awake. Some people do enforce stricter routines and do things like "cry it out" - you can Google to read more. Tbh I was exhausted and just ended up co-sleeping with my DD as she was bf, screamed every time I tried to put her in her cot, and I got more sleep that way.
Some people are very against co-sleeping. There's also the "shush pat" method. It's really a personal choice how you manage it and you have to do what feels right for you and your ds. It won't go on forever. Sorry I'm not sure what you mean by playgrounds etc where he can sleep. You can get those baby chair things, my daughter sometimes fell asleep in hers.

2 - food. Let him guide. If he only wants a couple of spoonfuls, that's fine. Read about baby lead weaning too - it's basically offering him things he can pick up - like chopped veg/fruit, toast, chicken etc. No bones of course. Don't worry too much about how much he eats, naturally as he gets bigger he will eat more. "Food is for fun until 1" so it's just getting him getting used to textures and tastes, not so important nutritionally as he gets what he needs from milk.

3 - as far as I understand, water isn't necessary for breastfed babies. If he is on formula than water is more important. Breastfed is not, but I was giving my DD water at that age to try and cut down breastfeeding a bit (for my benefit). Probably no more than one cup a day - my memory is a bit fuzzy on that, but I don't think you need to worry if he doesn't like it yet. Just try giving it to him every so often and see if he'll drink any.

4 - I'm assuming things are trickier with weigh ins because of the pandemic. Unless you have any obvious concerns like he doesn't seem to be gaining weight, looks dehydrated, isn't producing wet and dirty nappies, then I would say try not to worry about it. If he stops producing wet or dirty nappies, or shows any signs of dehydration then you can speak to them as a matter of urgency. It sounds like you're quite anxious, it is a difficult time to have a baby what with every thing going on and I feel for you, but try your hardest to relax. It helped me to remember that women have been having babies forever, for far longer than we have had weekly weigh ins and all the other modern interventions we have now. As long as you're keeping him fed, clean and loved you can't really go wrong. Any major concerns you can get him taken to a GP or a&e or something, but I'm sure that won't happen.

Sorry for my long post but I hope there was something helpful for you there. Always ask on here if you have any specific worries.

Hi there
Thank you sooo much for talking your time and responding, much appreciated.

Will follow your advice accordingly thank you. Regarding the playground I mean like a portable living room large crib (the one we had is now a bit too small as he is quite tall and he is never comfortable there). I don’t want to leave him on the floor (playmat playground he has) or I don’t know is it ok at this age to be left there from long durations?

Once again thank you so much for all your help

If he falls asleep on the play mat, is there any way you can carry him to his main cot without waking him?
Does he have a daytime routine with set nap times? If so, can you not just put him directly in his cot at nap time?

Hi, I’m a mother of 3. Youngest is 3.
You’ll find for your first you will try to follow everything by the book and worry a lot.
By the time you have your next you will find you are very laid back and not care about anything you had worried about with the first.

1. Sleep- try a ewen the dream sheep or any other of those teddies that use white noise. Try a swaddle blanket, when they are tightly ‘cuddled’ but it they feel safe and warm. Try to keep them active and enriched through the day. And on a night keep everything dark and quiet. Don’t turn lights on and start talking to do night feeds. Then he will slowly realise there is a difference and want to sleep all night.

1. Food

Yep a few spoonfuls as at this age it’s all about getting them used to different tastes and using their mouth to eat rather than suck. At this age the milk is giving them enough. So relax and take it slowly.

1. Water is not important yet unless it’s a hot day and he’s dehydrated.

1. Health/Checks. I think they see you next when it’s his jabs. If you wanted to get him weighed you could take yourself to a clinic (probably off due to Covid)

Hey,

I'm a new mum too (9 month old DD 😃) . I'm no expert as I've been learning as I go along but here are some tips / stuff that I've picked up! Hopefully it will help in some way!!

1. My DD was the same!! It sounds so frustrating but it will get better I promise, think of everything as a phase! It will pass and it will get better. I tried absolutely everything to get my DD to sleep better at night, I read so many articles and advice and tried them all but nothing seemed to work for her. Eventually we established a good day time routine of sleep / play / eating and once she got used to this she started sleeping better. She will sleep 12 hours some nights but she's still up 1-2 times most nights. I found that once I stopped feeding her during the night she tended to go for longer stretches! In terms of the bedtime, again this will get better from 0-7 months my DD wouldn't go to bed before 10 and then we started bringing it forward by 20 mins every couple of days and stopped letting her nap in the afternoon and then now she goes to bed at 7pm every night.

During the day, if he is crawling you could always get a play pen? This would give you some time to leave him to play / sleep whilst you get on with some bits and have a break? Or maybe a Walker?

1. How long have you been weaning for? We started on one meal a day (lunch) for the first month, some days she would eat 5 spoonfuls some days she didn't want any. I was panicking so much and i found it so stressful but I just kept offering and again eventually she took more interest in food! Then we started to introduce another meal (breakfast) and then now she eats 3 meals a day. I breastfed up until last month and then switched to forumula. Again routine for us worked amazing, she knew when she was getting her meals and she knew when she was getting her milk. It's totally normal with what your experiencing the babies want the good stuff (breast milk 😂) as they are so used to it! Keep trying and offering different foods and he will take to it.

1. We offer water at meal times, we had to try 3/4 different style cups before she took to drinking water. She still doesn't drink a lot but we always offer and leave a non spill cup on the floor with her when she's playing and sometimes she will take a couple of sips throughout the day.

1. We had the exact same problem, we haven't seen a health visitor since she was 10 days old!! Luckily where we are they drop scales off at the front door we weigh her ourselves and hand them back. We get her weighed once a month (she lost a little weight so we have to keep an eye on her) but I remember them saying it's good to get them weighed once a month to keep track. But with everything going on this year who knows what's right and wrong!

I really hope this helps! Like I said I'm no expert but this is what we've experience and what has helped us! Anymore questions please throw them my way!!

Just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who shared their experience and advice much appreciated.

I will try all the above and see what works for us.

Thank you and have a lovely festive week and happy new year