When b/f 4 wk old baby - what can my 3.5 yr old dd do?

[Mandymoo]

DS is b/f ALOT atm during the day. DD is at pre-school every morning so that is not an issue. However, what can i get her to do whilst i am b/f in the afternoon/early evening? Obviously, if we are out at groups or at a friends house then this is not really an issue but if we are at home then i really dont want to plonk her infront of the tv whilst i feed ds. Any tips?

I had the same age gap and I used to read to DS while feeding DD. We would sit on the settee or out on the grass and he would have the book on his knee and turn the pages and I would read the words.

My four year old would pretend to breast feed her dolly winded etc change nappies at the same time as me!

Reading actually works very well, as the older child gets a cuddle and loads of mummy's attention. It's the perfect reinforcement of getting rewarded for being non-disruptive, rather than forcing mummy to pay attention buy having to settle the child into an activity before giving the baby a feed. The child knows that all they have to do is leave the activity and they will get mummy's attention, but becuase the child generally wants the intimacy of a cuddle and knows they need to be quiet to get the rest of the story, this works veyr well.

I found reading hard, as I'm not very co-ordinated and combining baby and book was beyond me (as indeed many things are ).

I did find though that those times were the ones where c-beebies came in handy (you can switch off after the feed), and I tended to get healthy snacks ready about the same time to just hand over- apple slices, that sort of thing.

A tape of singalong songs might be good also.

I have 18 months between my two DDs so DD1 has the attention span of about 10 minutes. I use a combination of cbeebies/books/snacks/songs to amuse her. Sometimes I put on MTV music channels and she has a boogie whilst her sister feeds other times she has a cuddle and sucks her thumb which is lovely.

I have a 3-year-gap, and did a lot of "reading and feeding". We would all snuggle up in bed, with DS2 between me and DS1, and I would read that way. I had a section, so tricky positions were out of the question, at least in the early days.

Try bf whilst carrying your ds around. That way you can get on with your tasks, play with dd & you're not stuck sitting down to bf. It's the thing that saved me.

i have 6 wk old and 3.7 dd2

• dd2 gets all her polly pockets out and we choose outfits and make up stories for them
• read
• do sticker books

actually a lot of the time dd2 buggers off and plays upstairs making a huge mess happily

i do bedtime stories in my bed

me and dd3 in middle

dd1 and 2 on either side

dont worry about tv too much

My 3.5 year old self-entertains most of the day - pottering and playing

Is this unusual?

no mine does too

I would really, really recommend getting a ring sling (like the one on www.slingeasy.co.uk) because you can b/feed in it while sitting down/walking around and you still have your hands free to do playdough with your older child, or read, or whatever.

I am sooooo relieved that my children were born in the order they were. DS was as a 3.3 yo a pretty good self-entertainer. DD as a 2yo is showing absolutely no signs of being anything like that. But she has DS to help entertain her and no baby to contend with.

One friend used to get her daughter to wash the money in her purse! She'd put a washing up bowl in the middle of the kitchen floor and give her dd money/the play kitchen pots and pans/anything else she could think of to wash up. Kept her amused for hours. There's a really good book called "The Toddler's busy book" which is full of similarly bright ideas (There's a Pre-schooler's busy book too).