March 2016 #6, we're just breeding here!

[MyNameIsSuz]

New thread, whoop whoop. Come on over!

I am obviously mean as I have no intention whatsoever of going elsewhere for night feeds - DH can suffer like me

Vroc What about a show or a gig? Or even a pampering day somewhere nice?

No separate nursery here - we have a 2 bedroom apartment but DH tends to prefer having a room to himself because he has a sleep disorder so we may consider moving out further and getting a 3-bed in the medium term. I'm planning on putting the cot in my room anyway for around the first year - won't be bothering with a chair or a full changing table because I can just put a mat on the tray thingy on top of the cot for changing and just take the little one into my bed for feeds.

Ordered a maternity party dress for over the holidays there today, hopefully it looks good and actually fits! Work Christmas party is around 5 weeks away and is generally pretty formal so I need something nice, plus our anniversary is December 30th so need something for that too.

maybe we're not doing out a nursery until bump is ready to move into the 'spare' room. We did make some effort with dd, but she ended in staying with us until she was almost 2 as it made life easier so the lovingly decorated room ended up mostly as place to dump excess stuff. When she did really move into it she was more intrested in what was in it then getting her big girls bed. Dh currently uses bump's room as a music room so will need to move that somewhere downstairs when his ready to move in. No point in dissrupting it until it's actually in use. We're very lucky to have a bedroom big enough to fit cot bed in so we've never been in a rush to reclaime space.

me all I wanted was my bed for doing night feeds and dealing with night wakings! But then dh can sleep through almost anything. By the time dd was out of our room she was able to toddler to our room when she wanted us in the middle of the night.

rosie I was planning on watching that episode on 4 tonight, but if it's upsetting probably better for my anxsity levels that I avoid it. (Thank you dd for wanting to go to bed early last night). I'm already worry more than I'd like to this time round.

Tri my xmas work party is 6 weeks away and it's very formal but haven't got a clue what to wear, don't want to buy something now just in case I get bigger, arghhhh so hard trying to plan ahead!!

hmm, got me wondering now, we aren't decorating a nursery but it's a new build house so standard magnolia everywhere.

Do intend to use the room for night feeds etc, DP is an industrial electrician and really crap sleeper as it is and the last thing I was is him being so exhausted at work and putting himself and others in danger.

He has already agreed weekend nights are his job though haha.

My birthday is the end of this month and I'm getting a train to York (40 mins away) with the girls for a day out xmas shopping, lunch and the Xmas markets - they can have wine if they so wishes.

dobby Don't watch it, honestly I was so upset, couldn't stop crying and made my worry even more, seriously wish I didn't even watch it! Dp kept saying turn it over but I just wanted to finish watching it, your DD definitely done you a favor :)

maybe we don't have a nursery to decorate for this baby! I'm hoping that the 2 dcs will eventually share a room so dc2 will be in with us for quite some time.

I'm surprised that some of you are planning to do night feeds in a separate room. Please remember how much your body will have gone through with pregnancy, giving birth, sleep deprivation and (if you bf) cluster feeds. You will also still be sore and bleeding for a while and your homones will be going crazy which makes it all worse. Don't push yourself too hard. You need your rest too!

I also agree that there are massive benefits to sharing the night wakings. I used to do the feeds and then wake up dh to do the nappy change/settling back to sleep, and he really loved being so involved (even if it was completely exhausting at the time!).

Rosie I promised myself I wouldn't watch hollyoaks last night because I knew it would just scare me, but I ended up watching it anyway. Very sad but I thought the episode was done really well.

Trinpy don't get me wrong DP will be doing night feeds too haha it's only because he wakes up at 5am everyday (weekdays) and works with cars so he needs to be awake and have energy so he doesn't risk losing his job, but trust me over the weekend I'm not even getting out of bed :)

Yeah it was done really well, I was just super upset and kept thinking about it all night which was a bit depressing :(

Trinpy I'm not going anywhere, the thought of removing myself from my bed to go and sit in a cold chair... I may show your post to DH with the suggestion he does half of it... He is much better at having less sleep than me as well so I plan on exploiting that fact!

Q I am doing Christmas shopping and Christmas market with my old school friends early next month, I'm really looking forward to that... I'll enjoy sniffing their mulled wine... Most of my local friends are male, and I might accept that they perhaps don't get it and just go to the pub!

Definitely going to miss the mulled wine this year, we went to Leeds ones last year and Birmingham the year before and so getting rather merry doing the shopping has become a bit of a tradition haha.

Watched Hollyoaks last night but was expecting the storyline so wasn't too bad, hopefully they deal with the whole thing well.

I'd be able to tell if eggs were rottonen when I cracked them right? Making dd's birthday cake for friday, just clearing up after putting the first couple of sponges in the oven and realised we'd used eggs dated 31 october, instead of the fresh ones I brought. Looked and smelled fine when cracked so didn't think about it untill I was disposing of the egg shells. It's 3 massive sponges, don't want to poission everyone!

Will avoid hollyoaks!

Q I was on holiday last week and I didn't even catch up on what I missed, I just carried on watching from Monday so was not expecting it at all.

vroc not sure where you are but for my birthday my sister organised for us to do an 'escape room' challenge. It was a really fun group activity and we went for a meal afterwards. I know there's one in York that she'd done previously, and this was in Bath.

dobby Yes you'd have been able to tell if the eggs were off, and 4 days over date they're very unlikely to be. We often have eggs a month 'out of date' that are still perfectly fine.

I'm going to try and make a non-alcoholic mulled apple juice or something this year so I don't miss out completely!

I think I'll watch Hollyoaks - always quite liked Mercedes!

No nursery here and all feeds will be in my bed. It's SO hard even to get up for that so I wouldn't want to go to another room.

Q your birthday is on the 29th isn't it :) debating what to do for DD2's birthday. Hopefully her chickenpox has gone by then and the others don't have it!

Thank you pug, usually check eggs in water and don't go by the dates if they are just for us. But seeing as it's for dd's friends made me worry that I didn't check them before using them. Cakes are cooling and smell fantastic. Just have to sculpt them into a mermaid tomorrow! Had planned a chocolate cake covered with chocolates but she changed her mind at this morning.

Spiced apple juice is quite nice, I used to make it every year for my nursery group. The only alchol I ever drink is mulled wine, or the very occational glass of red if we go out for a roast. May make mulled wine with none alcholic wine this year, as I don't think mulled juice would be the same at christmas.

dobby you'd definitely know about it, they'd smell horrific. We get ours from a local family friends farm so never have dates on, do the float test ?? but we go through about 12 a week so they don't get chance to go off haha.
beautiful it is indeed, fingers crossed your dd is all better for hers, if not you'll have to build a front room fort and have a pj's, films and treats day (that's what granny used to do for us as kids if we were poorly)

My DH has to drive for around 7 hours a day for his job (travelling salesman) so I'm really worried about him getting too tired from night feeds and hoping to deal with most of it myself. I'm a long term insomniac and used to surviving on little sleep so our plan is for me to do the nights in the week and then he will take over at the weekend so I can get a couple of uninterrupted nights then. I'll just have to pray that our DS sleeps through the night by the time I go back to work!

dobby definitely don't worry about the eggs - they're fine for weeks past their sell by date and you'd know from the smell if they were off when you cracked them.

No nursery for us either, we only have two bedrooms so the baby will go in with ds once she outgrows the crib - no space in our room for a cot at all! Damn new builds with their teeny rooms and multiple unnecessary bathrooms! Ds didn't get a nursery either, we had too much stuff in the spare room with nowhere else to go. We put his cot and drawers up, eventually got rid of the desk, kept the big comfy desk chair for feeds!

I also never got up to feed when he was tiny, the Moses basket was right by the bed and it would have made no sense.

I'm feeling really sick of being pregnant today (and I didn't find out until 7 weeks, still sick of it!), sitting at my desk all day hurt my back, getting up has been a massive effort, and everything has just felt difficult. And now my stomach hurts, really achey under my ribs. It's a lot firmer today so perhaps she's had a bit of a growth spurt. I swear my last pregnancy I never felt like this, it was a breeze! I don't think I even felt this... waddly... right at the end.

suz pre-pregnancy I was so much fitter and 2 1/2 stone lighter than when I fell pregnant with dd. I really did brezer through pregnancy with her, doing more than I did before I was pregnant. I worked through sickness, became more active and just had a few niggles like leg cramp and heart burn. I walked miles the day before my c-section and felt fine.

I actually feel quite cheated this time. I'm aching and stiff, get round ligament pain if I walk much futher than the local shop, which takes ages now. Have to plan to pop into town where as I'd have walked there and back twice without problem before. Doing most things is a massive effort and I have the advantatge of being able to pick and chose what I do. I actually have to think before getting down on the floor with dd or crouching down because I already struggle to get up.

Feel like all my stamina is none exsistant this time. Dd sings waddle, waddle, quack when we go out for a walks...

I feel for you with the new builds. I LOVE our old drafty house with big rooms. Our living room is apparently the size of the foot print for a new build 3 bed semi and our master bedroom a 2 bed. A boxy new build would drive me crackers, we're lucky our area had the choice really old properties to rent. Suprised it took our land lady 6 months to rent out our place before we came along because of all the space for such low rent. (I doubt we'll willingly move, we've been far too spoilt by this place!)

Beaut: "whatever every time they bend down/get up etc?"

I don't think I stopped doing that after DS!

TriJo, Rosie & Q, it was nice reading about all that amazing development really early on. I missed it with DS.

[Mary Anne Hobbs is currently reading the CBeebies bedtime story - her voice is amazing! I could listen to this all day!]

maybe we didn't decorate a nursery for DS, just stuck his cot in a magnolia room! We will eventually decorate the bigger spare room and move DS in there with the potential for them to share eventually.

Like you say, this one will be in our room for 6 months so we've got the best part of a year to worry about it.

I'm not planning on getting out of bed for night feeds if I can possibly help it either! Though DS pooed with every feed for months, I think!

Wise words from Trinpy, there.

me I hate to say it but in my experience insomnia just doesn't prepare you for lack of sleep caused by a waking baby . Or at least in my experience... I have suffered from insomnia my whole life and when stressed the first thing to go is sleep, both struggling to get to sleep and waking up at 4am and not being able to get back to sleep. I always thought that since I could cope with that, night feeds/settling would be ok but honestly its in a different league. I found with DD it was less about the total hours sleep and more about how long my longest stretch of sleep was. If you have a baby waking every 2/3 hours (or worse - DD had spells of waking every 1-2 hours) you're constantly being woken up when you are not ready to when you're in a deep sleep. It's punishing!

DD didn't really go more than 2/3 hours without waking till she was maybe 8 or 9 months old? Could have been even later tbh, I think I've blocked it out! I really hope I get a decent sleeper this time round! It does happen to some lucky people! We only really got rid of night wakings once and for all around 18 months and even now (she's two on Saturday) we still occasionally have them when she's teething - twice in the past couple of weeks she's woken for 2+ hours at a time, it doesn't really end until they finish teething, I think. Its worth remembering that the majority of children are still regularly waking at 1 year + (sorry, don't want to put a downer on things or scare people!), so unless you are planning to sleep train then likely they will be waking up when you go back to work which is why for those of you whose DHs don't have a good excuse for night parenting, I would say don't let them get away with pushing it all on you! As I said, I know a few women whose DHs pulled the 'I'm working and you're not so you should do the nights' excuse and then had to cope with night wakings when they went back to work.

Dobby, that's exactly what I've been thinking, I was so much fitter with ds! I also kept exercising all the way through, but was less tired then as I didn't have a preschooler so more time to rest etc.

We own our flat, bought a new build as a starter home and got trapped here by the property market crash six months later! The size has been fine in some ways, but mostly drives me nuts! Hopefully we'll be moving in the second half of next year.

Oops, posted too soon...

Dobby they're likely fine, especially after cooking. Eggs are usually fine weeks after their date.

Ha! Suz! Yes, we have 3 bathrooms but nowhere for a wardrobe!

Ours is a 3 bed new build. We were hoping to have moved by now but still here. We currently use the 3rd bedroom as a study as we both do a ton of work at home. But that might have to change if this one is a girl !

I'm 20 weeks today! Hopefully half way, but I'm going to save that celebration till next week.

Oops, posted too soon...

Dobby they're likely fine, especially after cooking. Eggs are usually fine weeks after their date.

Ha! Suz! Yes, we have 3 bathrooms but nowhere for a wardrobe!

Ours is a 3 bed new build. We were hoping to have moved by now but still here. We currently use the 3rd bedroom as a study as we both do a ton of work at home. But that might have to change if this one is a girl !

I'm 20 weeks today! Hopefully half way, but I'm going to save that celebration till next week.

Oh, twice. Sorry!