Summer holidays are over, the PESH are bringing their bumps and baybees back to school

[TheOriginalWinkly]

Pack your giant pants in your satchel and maternity pads in your pencil case, it's the antenatal thread for BESH graduates

CRESH

Faith - pinky faithlet arrived 14th April 2013
Pinkr - suitably pinky one arrived 25th August 2013
Jethro - blue one arrived 23rd September 2013
Noks - pink one arrived 12th January 2014
Frankel - large pink one arrived 10th March 2014
Merks - pink one landed safe and sound 21st March 2014
Sinky - Stubborn blue one arrived 26th March 2014
Driz - blue one arrived 12th June 2014
Kat - pink one arrived 21st June 2014
draf - pink calf on 1st July 2014
winks - a pink one dragged out kicking and screaming on 4th July 2014
euro - a pink one in a hurry to see the world, born on 17th July 2014
dor - a pink one born at speed on 28th July 2014
ginge - completing the ESH Summer of Pink on 23rd August 2014

PESH
Buggerlugs - Buglet due 20th October
Fankle - ESHlet expected 4th January
Cunty - Minichops expected 7th February

Oh bugs you have my sympathy. Some babies do do it in the day. Faithlet would start around 3/4pm and carry on until up to 10pm, worst night ever was 1.30am. MSB had to sort tea most nights and we rarely went out in the evenings because I had baby on boob and was shattered! It does get easier though.

Ps I'm not an insomniac I'm on a night shift! :)

Sounds like a crap night, you must be shattered. One thing to try is swaddling for the night feeds to calm the arms and legs. I had to do that for a couple of weeks. I hope you have had more sleep now.

I was about to suggest swaddling too.

I feel pretty awful today. I have stomach cramps. It is like the droid is about to make a massive and impressive reappearance!

I hope not, you'd be very unlucky for a droid so soon!

I love Jojo's stuff. Really well made and washes well but pricey.

Colds are everywhere. No escaping them now! Try nasal drops if she gets bunged up.

Its hard for them to latch with a cold. A combinationof saline drops or spray up the nose and use of the snot sucker before feeding helps. 2 hours is normal, wouldnt worry about that. You can get some product called snuffle babe for babies with a cold, don't know if it is from birth though. Since she is still tiny I'd ring the doc if she is really bad with a cold.

I love JoJo but it is £££! I might order her a pretty Xmas outfit from there though. I

16 weeks jabs today have resulted in grumpy baby. Big kitten and I have cough and cold and I am hoping she is not next with it.

frank The Wonder Weeks book says that poor sleep & clinginess, in preparation for the next big leap, can start from around 14 weeks. She was 14 weeks on Friday and has transformed into a bit of a velcro baby all of a sudden. It was as if she'd read the book. Why that book? Why not one that says 'thou shalt sleep 7 - 7, and nap in your cot'?

A snotty baby poked MiniWink in the face several times at baby group this morning, so the cold will probably be visiting us soon

sinks oh dear. Better luck tonight?

dor I do hope its not the droid, that would be bad luck.

Last season Boden is vair cheap on ebay....

I was meant to meet my bestie's squishy newborn today but she was too knackered for visits after cluster feeds between midnight and 6am, which seems reasonable :) but was a bit disappointing.

Ooo, that's interesting, winks. The calf has been sleeping poorly for a couple of weeks now, which I thought was mostly down to us going away (when she was 12 weeks), but maybe it's due to the leap. She's been quite clingy over the last week or so too, it's been hard to get anything done.

We went to the clinic to get her weighed today - she is 12lb exactly and has dropped from ~50th centile to ~9th. Still seems totally healthy and is obviously still gaining weight so HV not worried, but I admit to feeling a bit surprised. She feels like a ton weight when I pick her up, so evidently my estimation of weight is pretty poor. I will be making a concerted effort to stuff her face as much as possible just in case though.

The calf has had a stuffy nose lately too - I've found that some Olbas for kids on a tissue does wonders. Don't think it's recommended for under 12-weekers but might be worth a try if you're desperate? I have a saline nose spray in the cupboard ready for actual illness...

We have the wonder weeks app, very useful!

Cresh, what ages were your baybees when they went into high chairs? MiniWinks has great head control and can sort of sit if she's propped up, and I think she'd like being higher up and looking around but I don't want to put her in one if it'll be bad for her.

draf is the calf bf or ff? If she's weeing and lively and happy I wouldn't worry too much, perhaps she was higher up the centiles than she's 'meant' to be because she was quite a bit overdue, and things are just settling to where they're meant to be?

Winks I think it depends on the highchair. Mine is an antilolp so very upright, used it from 5ish months with blankets to pad it out. It wouldn't have been suitable at 3 months but you get some that have a reclining function.

We used a reclining booster seat from about 4 months but she'd only tolerate about 15 minutes in there initially.

I had R in a snug (m&p version of a bumbo) on the table from just over 4 months. Don't tell the HV though...

She's ebf, winks, so maybe doesn't match the chart because of that. Although I thought the charts weren't just based on ff babies any more. Still, she seems fine. I probably will make an effort to get her weighed again rather than blithely assuming everything is alright.

You'll be okay, bugs. Sleep whenever you can. If P is alright when GP gets home, leave her with him and get some sleep. Otherwise, when feeding in the early days I worked on the premise of feeding if she made a noise, so if she wasn't settling I fed her more. It's not very interesting (or guaranteed to work), but was the best strategy for maximising sleep for us, along with cosleeping.

Yep all normal. Maybe she is on a leap, maybe she is coming down with something. Maybe she is just being grumpy.

I found it much easier once I realised I didn't have to have a strict routine. Especially, when I just had one we went with the flow. That way it didn't matter if we weren't sticking to a strict schedule. Don't rush for a routine. She is still little.

Babies have cranky days just like us. They can't tell us that something is wrong, like they have a headache, so all they can do is cry/ grizzle. It'll take a while to get used to things, but you'll soon learn her little ways and signals. Doing things on your own is daunting, but you will quickly develop your own little routine, and remember it doesn't matter if you stay in bed till 10am because you were up for hours during the night. Maybe arrange with GP that he settles her off to sleep after a feed in the evening so that you can go to bed and get a few hours sleep before the next feed. I went to bed at 8pm some nights just so that I could get those precious few hours in.

Its totally normal. Its quite common for newborn to be fairly unfussy at first then they "wake up" around the two week mark. Its a bright loud busy world and it can get a bit much. I found sling to be big help, E would settle better in there and I could get on with my day with M. Its the fourth trimester. Overtiredness is another culprit. At her age and size, she is unlikely to be able to cope with much more than an hour of awake time, including time taken to feed. Even at 16 weeks E is getting grouchy after 90 mins and by 2 hours is a nightmare to settle. If she's been awake an hour start winding her down to sleep again with whatever works.

As for flying solo you will soon find your feet. Its hard at first. Try to get adult company even if it is only baby groups. Without knowing much about GPs job its hard to give specific advice and I know it is hard with shift work. However, having a job does not excuse you from night parenting. You will be working all day too, a newborn is a full time job. You will need to find a system so that you both get enough sleep. Say he is on lates the next day, you go to early,arly he deals with resettling at midnight, you deal with it at 3am. Hopefully it will be easier soon, 2 hours is a long time! It is harder to share if your husband has an active job or has to do lots of driving but any one with a desk job can manage that with a bit of broken sleep a few nights a week.

And yeah, don't sweat about a routine at first. They change so much in the early months that a routine that works at six weeks may not work at all at 10 weeks. By three months P will have settled into more of a pattern.

You'll be fine bugs, if I can cope you definitely can because I'm an idiot :) Try to get out every day, unless you feel like hibernating for a day, in which case do that. Did you meet anyone at antenatal classes?