Martians 2014, thread 11. KEGELS!

[LyraSilvertongue]

Shiny new thread, ladies :)

I like that dress, Coolhand, especially the amount of sleeve to wipe one's nose on.

A crushingly boring day ahead for me. Th'usband is off visiting Oliver and I have No Cooking To Do. Tesco it is, then..

Pantomime, what a farcical service you received. Did you, at any point, address this dickhead with your annoyance?

Panto keep a record of everything and put in a complaint, possibly once the baby is here!! No excuse for such dreadful treatment.

After hearing about wonder's maternity leave I could do with a little advice. I work 30hrs a week in a very fulfilling but dreadfully paid job (covers mortgage, basic food and bills with £60 left over a month) I supplant this with on average 6-10 hours private tutoring which I do from home (have my own study/classroom!!) which pays v well (even after tax) and I use this for food, paying off debt, clothes etc. I will be on stat mat pay with a top up which will total about 70% of my weekly job based income. I can't tutor while on mat leave. The longer I am off the more time it will take to build up my contacts and tutoring hours again (never mind who looks after the baby when I'm tutoring!) should I go back to work after 5/6 months? In the hope that I can pick up more students?

Having typed this out I realise I need to think about it more, and there is no easy answer. Think I'm just feeling a bit stressed about it all. DH can't/won't understand that my current job + tutoring is going to be nigh in impossible with a baby!

Why can't you tutor? If you are set up as self employed you can continue to do this without it affecting your SMP, it's just that you can't start new work.

Yes, why can't you tutor?

With routines I think it very much depends on your baby as well as what you want to do as some are just naturally very routine whereas others aren't. DD1 was very routine, pretty much like clockwork (seriously - my mum still talks about how you could set your watch by her) whereas DD2 has only really been in a routine because we chose to have one. Which is actually quite useful as once you have another child already you want to be able to have more flexibility and that has been really easy compared to how it would have been with DD1.

I've also found that routine-ness has been less important to me second time than first as the first time I really needed to know more accurately that there would be a nap at such and such time etc so I knew what "breaks" I would get and when I had time to do an uninterrupted task whereas by the second time I had got used to being "on call" constantly and better able to deal with doing things around interruptions so a routine is less important and much more of a fluid thing for me now.

Panto that is awful that they are being so dismissive of you and so neglectful of your care especially when a consultant has specified that extra care should be taken. I imagine your OH's mum can probably point you in the best direction to complain but I would suggest/recommend e-mailing the hospital chief executive outlining the issues and requesting the care that you are supposed to be having (and specify that it was advised by a consultant). I had issues with my community MW last year (there were various problems including the complete insensititivty wrt to my previous late loss) and ended up changing MW because of it but was told that I would have to have her at my birth if she was on the homebirth rota when I went into labour. I contacted AIMS for help and Beverly Beech sent me a really helpful reply. She wrote a suggested draft e-mail to send to the chief executive and said that I should also include all the detail about why I had wanted to change in the first place which I did and it was very effective and resulted in the Head of Midwifery creating a back up rota for me and she also said that she was going to go through the issues I had raised with the MW concerned. I would also totally recommend contacting AIMS if you need any help as the help I got was brilliant. www.aims.org.uk/

Becca, I may be wrong but as I understood it if you are employed and getting SMP from your employment you can still do self-employed work while on ML but if you are just self-employed and getting MA on the basis of your self-employment then you can't (aside from KIT days). It might be worth checking into if it would make a big difference to your finances and length of ML.

Thanks so much everyone this is fantastic news!!
Might even be able to take the full year, as it turns out DH is pretty sure he can use flexible working to be home when I tutor!!

BWP, I appreciate your views. I'm finding a lot of mums are quite defensive about routine v baby-led so I'm tempted to shut up and keep my research to myself. However (and this is for your eyes only otherwise I'll get stoned to death), GF does not believe in 'high-maintenance' or 'needy' babies. She believes we make them that way. Of course, I will only discover the truth of this when I have my own and all Gina's advice goes to shit and fails miserably and I am wandering the streets of Chorley like a bedraggled loon with a baby hanging off my tit.

...what I have picked up from reading the Martians experiences is that routine worked for their first child but not so much for successive babies. There's got to be something in that...

Haven't read today's posts yet as I'm only on a 5 min break from cleaning and washing.

I had the flu jab this morning. I got to the doc's and there was a massive queue out the door and down the road. Luckily it moved fast and I only had to wait 15 minutes.

On routines etc. We only ever had the loosest of routines, I bf on demand and let them sleep when they needed to when they were tiny. Neither was a Velcro baby and neither fed all night. They would wake up for one feed in the night and go back to sleep. I don't think they were in any way exceptional in this.
Pram, don't let other people's horror stories drive you to a fear of a Velcro baby. It's not a choice between a strict routine and a Velcro baby. There's a lot in between.

Right, back to the chores

Oh btw it's mine and DP's first anniversary. A lot can happen in a year

Coolhand - I love that dress. V pretty.

Becca could you contact CABx or perhaps post in the legal section to confirm about you Mat pay rights regarding employment/self employment? Also consider using KIT days to keep your contacts as much as poss. Perhaps you could consider timing in terms of the education year - I don't know what age you tutor but I guess you will miss next summer's exam season but might be able to swing things to hit the ground running in Sept?

Pram keep researching and keep posting. It's all good stuff for us all to think about. I hope, as one of the second timers, that I don't come over as know-it-all or defensive. I'm just hyper aware of a couple of things from first time round -

1. the lack of support some women get for BF (and the other side of things being pressure to go one way or t'other).
2. women feeling they are doing it all wrong, be it 'failing' with a routine or 'failing' to get their baby to sleep.

Just keen to avoid that for any of you.

Congrats Lyra

Thanks, Ice. Congratulations, Lyra and Lover!

Congrats Lyra.

I think one of the hard things with the GF thing is that it doesn't really allow for babies who suffer from things like reflux. DS screamed the clock round for the first 12 weeks, poor soul and while we did get things that helped him slightly, it's a long road before you finally get a hospital referral.

I can see where GF is coming from when she says there is no such thing as a difficult baby (they can all ultimately be trained provided there aren't medical issues), research has shown that the babies who scream the most in the maternity ward are still the most unsettled babies at 6 months, so some are just much harder to train than others. Some will also have a more naturally clingy disposition.

My DS is quite a sensitive, clingy soul - tears going into nursery etc. I blamed this on my insistence on routines, separation and the fact that I returned to work 5 days a week, as I felt he was insecure. My best friend is a SAHM, did the opposite and produced the same result. Another friend, is a SAHM and her wee one is as independent as they come, never looks back when leaving them. Her second is Mr Clingy and has been a huge shock to system! They can probs all be trained into sleeping but it won't alter their wee personality types IMO. While I am a routine kind of person by nature, this time will be more inclined to play it by ear.

Sorry - no offense to anyone who likes her but- but GF just annoys me. Mainly because her stance puts a lot of pressure on mums. It's all well and good to say to do certain things at certain times but that doesn't take into account the biggest factor in all this- emotion!! Logic and rationality goes out the window at times when the little being you love so much is crying and giving in to that sometimes is ok and instinct.

Congrats Lyra!

Wonder, GF does not advocate ignoring a baby in distress.

Wonder, I am assuming you have tried Gina Ford's methods. What went wrong, exactly, for you?

I've not read any of GF's books, but from what I've heard I don't think her methods would suit me.

Saying that, I don't think any set plan will work for us. I'm planning on going with the flow as much as poss (apart from following NHS guidelines on having baby in the room for 6 months etc)

I have 3 of GF's books but I've only dipped in/skimmed the 'Contented baby' one. I actually think I'll read it properly, possibly also a couple of other baby books this time- before new baby arrives. I was a bit 'head in the sand' last time. I feel I can pick out useful stuff from the bits I'll ignore.

These 'gurus' do know stuff. But they also have to sell their theories and sound authoritive in order to come across as credible. Hence the caution a lot of people are advocating.

Oh, I got a phone call from the Home Birth team today. The midwife sounded absolutely lovely.

Pram I would say that unless a baby has an actual problem (e.g. reflux) then calling them "high needs" or similar is just based on individual perception and compatibility of the baby's needs with one's own needs/capacity/lifestyle. So I wouldn't consider either of mine high needs but some would view DD1's need for routine which was fairly inflexible as making her high needs and I think a lot would view having a baby who only sleeps 10 1/2 hours per day including naps as high needs whereas for me, DD1's need for rigid routine actually fitted in very well with the need I had for that at the time and whilst I wouldn't say DD2's low sleep need is a really great thing, I have just found ways of dealing with it to avoid it causing problems for us (such as a later bedtime so we don't get woken at silly o'clock the way we would with a "normal" seven o'clock bedtime) such that it is just a normal part of our everyday life just like feeding, bathing, nappies etc are. And aside from when people have such a rigid adherance to a routine that they refuse to feed a hungry baby before the designated time (which I think is actually quite rare and not what the majority of people using routines do), I personally think that as long as what you are doing is able to meet your babies needs then it is right to do whichever is best for you (which based on the anecdata on this thread seems to be biased towards routine for parents of first babies but generally less so with subsequent ones).

"I'm just hyper aware of a couple of things from first time round -

1. the lack of support some women get for BF (and the other side of things being pressure to go one way or t'other).
2. women feeling they are doing it all wrong, be it 'failing' with a routine or 'failing' to get their baby to sleep.

Just keen to avoid that for any of you." Totally agree with you ice. I strongly think that as long as the baby's needs are met and the parents are happy with how things are then it doesn't matter whether they are fitting any cultural expectations of routines or sleeping or whatever else. I also think that women should be made more aware of the BF support that is available (such as LLL, ABM, lactation consultants etc.) so that even if the NHS MWs can't provide the right support, the right support is easily accessible to them instead of just all these leaflets about "breast is best" and "it doesn't hurt if you're doing it properly" which don't actually enable or help you to be able to do it.

IIRC GF does actually state in parts of her book that if a routine isn't working for you/stresses you out/you are happy with e.g. babywearing and feeding with demand then you shouldn't try to make yourself follow her routines but should go with what you are happy with and that her routines are there to help those who feel they want/need them. But the style in which she presents them does sound a bit like "my way is the way" so I can understand how people get that impression.

"GF does not advocate ignoring a baby in distress." Correct she explicitly states this many times - I think the problem comes where people are so caught up in trying to adhere to the routines that they can end up thinking they need to do so in order to stick to them. I think her style of writing plus the fact that the troubleshooting parts are separated from the descriptions of the routines and take up a small proportion of the book probably contributes to this kind of misconception.

But having said that, she does advocate things like giving juice from eight weeks, moving your baby to formula if they are not sleeping through by something like four months and then if they still don't sleep through on formula speaking to your HV about early weaning. As a parent of a BF baby I started on solids at seven months who did not sleep through until eleven months but (as I said before) had a more than ample supply available and was growing fine on the ~91st centile, I think it is incorrect to assume that a BF baby is in need of formula if not sleeping through or to assume that any baby needs solids early just because of not sleeping through and her advice goes directly against the DOH and the WHO advice on infant feeding.

Yeah I've got the GF book and she does say if the baby is getting upset you should see to it and calm it, (it could be in pain with wind etc) but if you can to put it down awake but sleepy to see if it dozes off on its own. In the early days though it is virtually impossible to avoid feeding to sleep because they drop off all the time!

We were lucky with DS because he sucked his thumb from 6 weeks so as soon as he was tired, thumb went in, he went in cot and quickly to sleep. (Nightmare now at dentists but that's a different story!) DD didn't suck her thumb but I was on my own for bedtime for the 2 of them right from the start, so I did have to put her down whilst I settled DS. I made sure she was fed and warm and if she dropped off then great; if she cried then I read the Gruffalo at lightening pace, said goodnight to DS and went back into settle her. Because of having to do bedtime on my own, I had to nail this quite early on, but I'm sure it helped get them into a good sleeping pattern.

HOWEVER, DD was chilled from the start - DS had reflux, was sick all the time from it in first 2 months and if he hadn't have started sucking his thumb we'd have been screwed!! We also (don't tell social services) let him sleep on his tummy from 2 months as he simply could not settle on his back. When I had DD, it was a revelation to me that the child could go to sleep on her back without flailing around like an upside down tortoise!

Plenty of times, if they were over-tired, I'd sit and stroke their heads to help them drop off. It never had a knock-on effect the next day if I caught them in that "window". I loved watching them drop off, so sweet.

Couldn't get on with the feeding patterns in GF at all though. DS was big and hungry, DD diddy and not so hungry.

I love the dress coolhand.

I don't mind feeding to sleep. Maybe I will when I have 3 children to attend to but I haven't found it a problem before and I found they stopped doing it on their own soon enough. Both my children had dummies and the dummy fairy came when they were 2 and swapped them.

Mine will have a dummy whether it likes it or not.

BWP & Pirates, thanks for your lengthy responses. I am learning lots here. May I ask a couple of questions which are going to sound facetious but are most certainly not?:

1. When women say 'my baby won't be put down', what do they mean exactly? What actually happens when the baby is put down? I don't understand.

2. Why do some women feel it's wrong to wake a baby for a feed? Why are some women happy to let their baby sleep vast amounts during the day, knowing this will result in a wide awake baby at night? I don't understand.

3. What is so wrong with a baby crying? Don't babies sometimes cry for nowt when they are put down?