To absolutely hate when people say ...

[NoCapes]

"Just pop baby in the cot/pram/bouncer/jumperoo and clean the house/get dressed/cook dinner/shear a sheep"

If it was that easy to just pop him anywhere I wouldn't have a filthy house, hair stuck to my head and DC eating beans on toast for dinner would I?!
So why don't you just pop the fuck off yeah?

If I'd had DS first, there would not have been a second child.

DD (DC1) was a model baby - I'll admit I was too was a smug wank and thought it was down to my parenting. All I did was "popped her here, popped her there" No bother.

Then DS (DC2) came along and fucking showed me!

There will be no DC3.

Damn it, "I was a smug wank" !

Bloody help nocapes crawling at 4 months!!

You must be knackered.

My Dd was a very easy going baby. She slept in her pushchair, she could be put down for a bath etc etc

Ds on the other hand is one of the biggest reasons we have said no more children (bless him)

He was an undiagnosed CMPA baby for 7 months. For 7 whole months, he cried day and night. He did not sleep. I was knackered and exhausted and if one more person told me I was spoiling him, they got hit with both barrels. Me AND dh. Poor MIL didn't know what hit her when she said I shouldn't pick him up so much.

He is a much more settled baby now though. Still can't put him down and go for a shower though. He is very destructive

I HATE POP. It's is not possible to 'pop' anywhere when you have a child! With a teeny tiny it's the ability to actually find a window longer than 10 minutes between feeds/sleeps/nappy changes/winding/spew clear ups. With a toddler you spend 30 minutes chasing them round trying to get them to put on shoes/coat/hat/sun cream/put back on the clothing they are now removing/find keys they've hidden in the washing machine etc. I'm yet to get past toddler years and I can't see it getting better until DS is 20!

MIL is a serial popper. 'Just pop up to Scotland for the night' (I'm in London, they live in Edinburgh) - errr NO. 'Just pop over to France for the weekend with us' - errr NO. My favourite at the moment (I have a broken leg, a toddler and a DH that works all hours of the day) 'just POP over to Hong Kong (where they have recently moved) and I'll give u a hand' - errr sure I'll get myself, DS and all toddler kit as you have none, on a 15hr flight to China just so you can have a cuddle and spend the whole time trying to undermine my parenting - NO NO NO!

I'm so so so tired NeedA DS also has silent reflux (diagnosed at 7 months) and a suspected lactose intolerance - he was definitely sent to try me!

^Just pop to Hong Kong* absolutely wins the thread!

Oh I couldn't decide whether to italic or bold - I lose the thread

Hang in there NoCapes at least you have nice hair now.

I do have lovely hair as it happens LostIt

But.....you can let a baby cry for ten minutes while you have a shower. It won't kill them. It won't kill you.

This has made me cry, from the memories.

It wasn't so much that they literally couldn't be put down (though see other posters' remarks about screaming until they vomit, and being unrestrainable once they were on the move) but more that my fragile mental health couldn't stand it. I believed every word about the nascent brain being flooded with cortisol. The precise frequency of the screams made my skull resonate. Ten minutes in the shower felt like hours, hellish hours. With pfb we were in a tiny flat where the sound of the plumbing woke the baby anyway so it was impossible to wash then either.

Once, after DC3, someone (a MNer as it happens) realised I was having a bad day/week/month and just pitched up at my house. I bluffed a bit about having slept in or something; she sat with the newborn and the toddler while I zoomed upstairs for a proper shower. I cried through the whole thing.

The one that bugs me most is "just pop them in the bath with you".

Firstly, I think this is kind of dangerous. Like, how do you get them and you in and out safely? Maybe we have particularly high bath sides or something. 

Secondly, how the chuff do you actually get clean if you're using at best one hand at a time and you can't use any toiletries (water only for eczema-prone babies)? I'd be rinsed but not actually clean, and no chance of a hair wash. 

~~~

Final baby is now two and a half and I'm just about in a position that I can always choose when I wash/eat/clean. It's been <span class="italic">eight years</span> mind you, and I still have an audience when I poo if I don't sneak into the bathroom early enough.

I have a very sad post cold snoozy baby currently and find myself in the middle of the living room swaying like a nutter while PFB snoozes in a sling. Apparently I should just 'pop her in her cot' says MIL. She isn't around to witness the screaming. She can go home to a quiet house. I'm totally staying swaying.

Anyway it isn't fucking ten minutes. Two minutes shedding clothing and trying to work out what shouldn't be worn again; three minutes in the shower; two minutes securing body and hair towels; ten minutes bf the inconsolable baby who's bright red and gulping back sobs from having been ABANDONED; two minutes actively drying; another five minutes cuddling; three minutes with baby on hip trying to identify an entire outfit of clothing that doesn't have posset/pureed carrot/mud on it; two minutes wrangling underwear on to slightly damp skin; another five minutes reassuring baby that you haven't ABANDONED THEM FOREVER AGAIN; $ eleven minutes trying to pull on slightly-too-small skinnies on to yes still fucking damp legs before giving up and spending two minutes digging out maternity jeans and dragging them on with one hand; one minute putting top on; one minute taking top off again because you've remembered you can't feed in it; five minutes comforting baby again; two minutes locating and donning same fucking bf vest and sloppy bastard jumper combination you've been wearing every day for what feels like a month &; fifteen minutes bf fractious baby yet again; thirty seconds receiving generous posset all over said jumper, vest and jeans, not to mention hair (self) and neck (self and baby's); three minutes changing and cleaning baby; one minute baby wiping milk sick out of hair; repeat from $ to & as necessary.

And at that point you're sweaty and your hair smells of sick even though it's still wet. Hard to feel like it was worth the hour plus.

But the thing with the shower thing - like, at some point you have to shower. You can't just breastfeed and fester for weeks on end.

Yes, the baby will hate it. But what's the alternative?

There are people proposing solutions and loads of posts saying 'oh it's impossible because XYZ'. I maintain it's not impossible to have a shower if you have a tiny baby. Even if that baby is very, very pissed off while it's happening and you end up crying all the way through.

At least you're clean.

I love this thread

I'm still trying to remember how I coped with my first, who wasn't difficult btw. Son no.2 was a different matter.
I know we didn't have a shower, not even a bathroom at first, just moved into a new house. I used to bathe him in the kitchen sink.
We weren't so aware of hygiene in those days, but survived.

Jelly the solution for me was only having a shower when someone else was around to "babysit". With DC1 that meant mornings DH didn't have to be at work early, and weekends. With DC3 it started as pure hell but eventually DC1 could reassure the baby if he woke up, for just long enough.

In each case it meant abandoning the idea of having a shower predictably every morning and choosing either hair wash or leg shaving because there would never be time for both. It meant having a haircut that didn't need lots of looking after (I find that short hair gets greasy daily).

Fortunately (?) the unputdownable babies also put exercise on a back burner so there wasn't the desperate need for immediate showering you have in that situation.

It should become law that you can only give advice on babies if you actually have a baby at the time, not in the past, you forget how hard it is.

Why don't you just pop her in bed with you?

Lying down next to me isn't being held. She only slept if she was held for the first 3 months. She didn't read the book that says babies love co sleeping. She read the one called There Are Wolves Outside, Pick Me Up.

She read the one called There Are Wolves Outside, Pick Me Up.

Yep, sounds familiar.

"JUST POP ME STRAIGHT INTO THE WOLF'S JAWS WHILE YOU'RE AT IT" is pretty close to the terror and fury.

at chair still attached like a turtle shell can't stop laughing!

And at pop to Hong Kong classic.

Have so much love for this thread and it's good to know we're not alone. to all who need it and a big piss off to the poppers!

...

I agree.Please see my thread.

To hate it when people use 'happily'?
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/2681894-to-hate-it-when-people-use-happily

My first child was one that could be "popped". I started to think there was something wrong with him as he wasn't like the other babies.
At 5 he's still fairly aloof, but is ironically a lot more work.
My 2nd child...
Hated his play mat. You could put him in his bouncy chair if you liked the idea of an immediate nappy change, usually fairly explosive. Why, ds2, why? It became known as his pooing chair.
He threw up all the time in vast quantities and then had the nerve to sit there and look proud of it. I suspected a bit of reflux as he would arch his back and cry an awful lot.
He couldn't be "popped". He did like the sling, but my neck did not. He'd fall asleep in it, but then you can't get a sleeping baby out of a sling, can you? I'd end up sat there with his sweaty weight on my lap, unable to move with my eldest running around unchecked.
I think I managed the odd shower on the weekend. I must have smelt like a milk float that had crashed on a hot summers day.
The tiny terror is 2 now and still has no idea that sleeping in his own bed is the Done Thing. I didn't mind co-sleeping when he was 1, but now he's too darned big. Just pop him in his cot! Ha ha! I have tried that, but the net result would not only be that neither I, DH or DS1 got any sleep but the neighbours wouldn't either. He's always been this way. He'll curl up asleep on the floor, my office chair, under ds1's bed... but not on his own bed.

I love this thread! My mum got me down earlier by saying it's basically my fault neither of my children sleep 'normally'. .