November 2015 Thread - Teams Yellow, Pink and Blue selection has started!

[tootsroots]

For all those lovely bumps incubating until last few days of Oct and all November, spilling possibly over to December for the super comfortable babies- come and chat, rant, vent, chant, glow, sweat, watch nails grow whilst doing antenatal pilates/yoga/sleeping/eating/navel gazing and over analyse to your hormones content!

Optional - FB group is up and bumping, PM me with email to be added.

Guy i'd love to breastfeed my twins. I really enjoyed it last time (once i got the hang of it), but only did it for 5 mths or so as by then dd didn't want anymore after a few minutes but would take a bottle so i stopped. I'm not sure how it would work with twins as you'd have to feed them at same time or else you'd just be doing it all day long. Dh thinks i'm crazy for even wanting to try but i think i'll give it a shot, even for just a few weeks if i can before giving in to bottles.
If i'm honest, part of me wants to do it so noone takes the babies away from me for any length of time... I know it sounds crazy as most people would love the help but our families will all be descending on us as they're all abroad too, and they will want non stop cuddles (a little overbearing some of them) and i'm a bit of a control freak. So if i have the excuse of breasfeeding they won't have a choice but to give them back to me for feeding times and i can shut my door and have some peace.

I keep complaining to family that i won't have any help but they think i mean with the babies while i actually mean with dd and the household ( cooking, cleaning etc).

Uchhh i'll deal with it some time soon...

Forgot to say, great news on the scan Focus

I have no experience of twins but my friend mixed fed hers. I have no idea how this works though seeing as I couldn't bf one baby, so er probably not very helpful. But might be an option?

Continuing the breastfeeding convo. Obviously our little bundles will have their own opinion. My friend whose little one is 4 months does both. She does mainly the breast but a bottle before night which gives them 7.5 solid hours sleep now. Also it gives her the freedom to go out and leave her baby with her OH. She expressed milk and was able to go off and enjoy her hen day night and hangover the next day. I am going to try this system but I think you need to introduce bottle week 2 or 3, maybe just once or twice then build it in to a routine later. My baby might have other ideas though. Focus I'd love more info can you post on FB page the links please.

Lovely scan pic Focus! Well done!

Pinka I hope you're feeling well today.

I'm also hoping to breastfeed and will have the lansinoh cream and nipple shields at the ready! We'll see if it works or not, I'm going to try not to pressure myself too much either way!

My husband felt his first proper kicks last night (I think the baby was traumatised by game of thrones) which was lovely, he felt a proper big boot!

Focus great news on the scan and a lovely pic! :) We are team blue too! I would also love to see those leaflets if you don't mind? I amon the facebook group if it is easier for you to post them on there.

I have always had my head set on breastfeeding but also expressing for some feeds... but I don't really have a clue about how that would work. Does anyone know of any useful books/websites that would give advice on breastfeeding and expressing? (This is obviously dependant on how the baby feels about all this!)

Lovely scan Focus! I hope you are ok today Pinka and you've managed to get some reassurance from your midwife.

Our scan is in 3 hours... I'm starting to get really worried, which I assume is normal? Had a dream last night that they announced it was twins and they'd missed it on previous scans. So obviously have spent the morning not working, but googling instances of people finding out it's twins at 20 week scan!

Question for all of you who have had the 20 week scan - we really, really don't want to find out the gender, we won't be able to tell will we? How does it work, does anyone know? As in if we don't want to know will they just not look, or will the sonographer know?!

Lovely news focus. I'm hoping to breastfeed too. Got to 19 months with ds!

Scanxiety completely normal MrsScarlettButler. The info here said you need to ask for gender - its not offered. I was looking at the scan and saw 2 white areas in that region but no idea if they were girl or boy bits - might even have been the kidneys .

Anyway I came on to ask if anyone else had been sore after the scan? I vaguely remember this with ds. Baby was fidgety so Sonographer had to be quite firm at times so presumably it's this?

Another one intending to breastfeed here if all goes to plan, if nothing else because I am horribly lazy and not having to get out of bed/sterilise/boil kettles appeals to me rather... DH would like me to express as well so he can give a bottle maybe once in the evening, but everything I've read suggests you should bf exclusively for about 6 weeks before this so baby and you have time to really get to grips with things.

Thanks all. Went to doctors. They checked the heartbeat. It was awful waiting to hear if it was there. Thankfully, it was. She took a wee sample but she was keen to get me seen at an antenatal or gynecology clinic. She sent me home while she sorted it. I've just been rung and told to go to a and e where I should get to see an on call gynecologist. Trying not to freak out but it's hard. Dh won't be able to get out of work as he lift shares and the other guy did the driving.

MrsScarlett, we told the doctor at the start of the scan that we don't want to know. The leaflet stated they won't tell you unless you ask, but I was wanting to make sure. She said she would tell us to look away if she needed to check in that area. But baby had it's legs firmly closed, so secret wad safe anyway

I also get very tense before scan, good luck to everyone who's waiting for theirs just now!

I would like to do the same as you Heir mainly breastfeed but a little expressing so my husband can help out but I am a little confused as to how this will work, people I've mentioned it to says it causes confusion but I know it is possible as people on here have said.

Also if I have the intention of breastfeeding should I still buy all the formula, bottles and sterilizing equipment just in case it doesn't work out?

Gosh Pinka how worrying for you - I hope you get seen quickly at A&E

Loving all the scan news, I still have ages till mine.

Bf twins sounds really difficult, I think the mixed feeding suggestion sounds sensible so they get the benefits of breastmilk but you don't have to spend the whole day feeding one or the other of them!

When DD was tiny we introduced a bottle of expressed milk at bedtime which worked till she was a few months old then she suddenly decided only boobs would do. She also rejected her dummy at the same age. Babies are awkward little buggers!

Alittle you can buy ready-made cartons of formula so you could buy one or two of those in case of an emergency. If bf doesn't work out then you can buy everything else you need at a later date.

Just seen your post pinka, hope you are seen quickly and it turns out to be nothing serious

Pinka, I hope you are seen quickly and all checks out ok. Now thinking I'll call midwife and see what she suggests.

I plan to breastfeed but also offer a bottle from birth of either formula or EBM. I want my partner to be involved and know I'll be a lot less stressed if I have another option to feed baby. I'm planning on just buying a hand express machine and seeing how it goes before buying electric one. I'll also just buy two bottles for a start as well. I've seen too many mums fall apart when bfing isn't as easy as they thought so I want to be more realistic. I also will introduce a bottle in first two weeks in case baby rejects it later on. I've had plenty of babies reject bottle but none reject breast. For bfing advice I use Dr Jack Newman or www.kellymom.com. For the first two weeks will do demand feeding and offer both sides per feed at least and breast compressions. I also plan to make lactation biscuits and store in the freezer and have oats for breakfast. Will just take it day by day.

I couldn't bf DS1 as he was tongue tied and couldn't latch properly. The postnatal nurses were crap and didn't even think to get this checked and instead gave him formula before they sent us home. When the mw came for a home visit she said she wasn't allowed to advise on ff so we were clueless about how much and how often to feed him. This meant that after a week we had to go back to hospital as DS had lost more than 10% of his birth weight and he had to be tube fed. Only at the hospital did a bf consultant examine him and discovered the tongue tie. She then had to literally fight the consultant to refer me to have it snipped, and this happened at 3 weeks, but by that time he was so used to the bottle that he refused to go anywhere near my boobs and screeched every time I tried so I gave up, after attending local bf groups and being fobbed off. I did express (although only produced about a bottle a day so had to top up with formula) which was fine for the two weeks DH was at home but not easy to keep up once he'd gone back to work. I did feel a bit of a failure and I'm hoping it will be easier this time, but to tell the truth, ff did work out quite well for us as it meant we could share the night feeds and DH has a very strong bond with DS now - he's a proper daddy's boy.

Hope all is well Pinka! xx

mrsscarlett I didn't want to know with either of mine but both DS and DD-to-be were exhibitionists! She had her legs by her head with her parts in the camera for 5 minutes so it was obvious. With DS we didn't get to see the screen much but I was pretty sure I saw.
Oh well maybe baby #3 if I'm lucky enough to have one will surprise us!

Exactly the same happened to us with dd karmanna we were kept ridiculously long in the postnatal ward because she couldnt feed, I was a first time mum with no idea what I was doing, the midwives were no help at all and if anything implied it was my fault, and we ended up giving in and putting her on formula just to get out of the hospital. It was only a week later a midwife visiting us said 'oh, she's tongue tied! No wonder you couldn't feed her!' And made us an appointment to get it snipped at the hospital which is an hour away, only for us to get there on the day and be told they wouldn't do it because she wasn't breastfed! She is now two and a half and its quite a severe tongue tie, she will probably need speech therapy as she can't pronounce the 'L' sound. Makes me so angry just thinking about the whole thing and how badly it was all dealt with!

Ive just binged on youtube videos

I intend to take my ipad so if the support isn't there I can at least watch the videos. Its worrying how many of you say you were so badly treated. My socialist side thinks those maternity units should be named and shamed!

I had a bad time on the postnatal ward too. I don't think I was badly treated but they were just so busy they couldn't adequately help. The one thing that still makes me furious was DS having an injection he shouldn't have had (not sure what this actually was) as he "didn't look prem" and no one had time to read the notes. Actually no one explained to me that DS being early could've been the cause of his feeding issues and I never got any information about it at all really. Due to later reading on mumsnet and from charities etc I now know that his jaundice and funny breathing when asleep were probably due to his early birth too. Thank goodness for the Internet!

Sorry, not meaning to put anyone off. Most women go home really quickly if everything is straightforward. I think typically it's the same day for a vaginal birth (depending on time of day) or 1 night. And for a c section it's 2 nights usually, although there's a 12 hour thing they do now I'm hoping for.
My long stay really isn't typical, and the first few days were OK actually.

Thanks everyone!

I just met someone for lunch in London, and ate a chicken burger with chips on the side. A hour later I've just eaten a ham and cheddar quiche and a beaney side salad at St Pancras station. Wtf is happening with me? I hope others are hungry too! I feel so greedy! Literally as I polished up the last bit of the massive burger I thought of the quiche shop :(

Oh dear.