Due April 2008 - the one where Mollyfloss does not have a rat!!

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Hope this works - and someone finds it

I had a scan on Friday, the baby's kidneys were very dilated but now seem to be fine and I don't need anymore scans. They estimated that she is almost 5lbs.

Eloise is a lovely name. We are definitely going with Emilia, I'd rather that it is not abbreviated but my dh has already said he'll call her Emmy/Mimi.

I had a friend staying for the weekend and managed to stay up until 1.30 on Friday night, 12.30 on Sat night but faded last night and had to go to bed at 9.

VS, thanks for the advice. I didn't think you were being bossy; I am undecided about breastfeeding now, to be honest, but will give it a try for a few weeks and see how it goes.

My manager has just told me they can't renew my contract, he then looked at my stomach and laughed! I wouldn't have come back anyway so it's fine. Just 5 weeks left and counting.

Scorpio, just call her Millie if you don't want her being called a different name. My name is a shortened version of a longer name, actually I think I've alredy put my email address on here somewhere so it's no secret! My name's Katie, that's what it is on my birth certificate. I've always loved it, my mum & dad loved it and it suited me as a child and still as an adult. There was one supply teacher at school though who insisted on calling me Catherine, no idea where she got that from!

TBH Suze, I think all you can do is say you'll try breastfeeding and see how it goes for you, some people do have a bad time of it and it turns out it isn't for them, others breeze through and can't see what the fuss is about!

Hopefully VS. A lot of friends have told me they couldn't do it, found it painful, pumping was a drag, etc, but maybe they just had bad experiences.

I think one of the things that lets breastfeeding mothers down the most is that they aren't given information on just how tiring it can be. It can be all consuming for the first few weeks and you may feel like you never have baby off the boob, also if you don't have your latch sorted properly it can cause pain and cracked/bleeding nipples/mastitis etc but without any guidance of course no-one knows where they are going wrong, add that on top of the tiredness that we all feel and sometimes making up a bottle can seem like a miracle cure (it's likely though that the baby is finally getting a full feed and you're actually able to hand it over to someone else for ten minutes so seems like a miracle when in fact it's not!)
So my advice if you want to try breastfeeding is to make sure you're aware it will be tiring, newborn babies are tiring, but if you have any problems call a breastfeeding helpline straight away, the quicker you get help the quicker it will get better, and if you try and really can't do it, then at least you tried.

Hello all,

not posted for a while and there's loads to catch up on again. This is my last week in work woohoo! My DP is also self employed and gets nothing, though he's going to take a few weeks off - and I only get paid for 6 weeks, so going to see if we can claim some extra income from the lovely tax people

LO is moving around like mad and has been for the last few days, it's nice, but very strange too - can definitely make out some feet!

Hello, just a quick catch up b4 cleaning calls again. Have spent most of the morning on hands and knees cleaning floors and skirting boards, srtripping beds, cleaning bathrooms etc etc.

DH is unfortunatley employed by the police and so only gets 5 days paternity (3-4 days of which ill still be in hospital), were hoping he can take some holiday aswell. Otherwise mum/aunty will help - not sure i can manage getting other 2 ready and Lo fed ready for school run straight away.

Like the names Eloise, Emilia and Millie.

Denny - thats really poor paternity leave isn't it?? He is entitled to 5 weeks unpaid parental leave, that he can take in smaller chunks iyswim? I don't want to do school runs for a few days and i'm not having a cs. Hope you get some other help if he isnt able?

Scorpio - just go with Millie. One of my friends is a Mandy - not an Amanda and she is quite high up in the PR world. So there we go - you don't need a full name!

Hubby is new to his job so was not entitled to 2 weeks paternity, but his lovely company have given him 1 week full pay and a weeks holiday - so we are delighted!

Oh that's nice of them, not often you hear of companies being more flexible than they need to be.

I'm getting a bit stressy about bf. I reeeeallly want to do it but worried not going to get the support.

Ellie, are there baby clinics/special groups for BF-ing mums? We have them here, with trained BF counsellors there. You can also ring them any time and they try to visit you same day - i know i may be very lucky having that support available.

I'm really stressy about it too - i just know i couldnt be sitting down feeding for ever, or the first few weeks, i know it would make me feel down. I'm also worried about the difference between FF and BF sleeping hours. i know these are quite shallow things but are very importnat in my life and i know that you need a happy mummy for happy baby/other dc's etc.

I still just have it in my mind to do first feed if she looks for it straight after birth; if she doesn't then i won't. I have FF both babies and know it worked/s for me.

Ellie, post in breast/bottlefeeding, there is bound to be someone near you somewhere that knows your area wrt bfc's etc.

Have not been around for such a long time but thought I would say hi.

My DH is a teacher and although he does get the 2 weeks statutory paternity leave (which we can't afford) anything over and above this is 'at the head teachers discretion'. Of course he can not take any holiday either so if the baby was born in the middle of the term and the head teacher was in a difficult mood then no paternity leave. Luckily for us he is getting 3 days paid paternity leave and the baby is due just before the start of the 2 week holiday. Last time the baby was born at the end of the summer term (which was planned!) so he had 6 weeks at home - even though we moved house at the end of the summer holidays so these 6 weeks involved DH doing a lot of packing and organising!

EllieG - I found bf reeeeaaaallllllly difficult but I reeeaaallly wanted to do it too. I asked every midwife I met, a breastfeeding counsellor at the hospital, rang up LLL and NCT, and kept asking until I got the right kind of support. It did take a while to learn how to do it and the support of your DH/DP and other people around you (like you mum) is soooo important. DH was fantastic and always backed me up in front of his family who were not so supportive. You have to remember it is a skill to be learnt by both you and your LO. Some people find it easy to learn this new skill whilst other people struggle BUT once you have mastered it then it is wonderful, natural, easy, simple, portable, etc etc. In a way it is like learning to drive a car. When you first try you can't believe how complicated it all is and struggle to co-ordinate all the different actions but once you have learnt then you can't believe how easy it is and barely have to think about it. You do have to accept though that it can be very time consuming (my lo fed for about 1 1/2 hours every 2 hours for the first week so I was tied to the sofa with the remote control, a drink, some food and the phone) and if you have not got the latch right it can be painful but once this initial stage has passed (which seems like an eternity but as my wonderful mum says it is only a couple of weeks out of your life) then it is quite liberating (no problems with travelling, sterilizing, night feeds, etc)

I'm getting really nervous about the labour and birth now as the consultant said I was fine to try for a VBAC if my placenta is not low any more. I'll find that out in just over a weeks time. It is weird that I am more nervous this time than last time but I am trying to think positive thoughts!

I don't think there is much difference between bf/ff sleeping hours, TBH. Many of the best sleepers I know (sleeping through the night from very early on) have been bf and many of the worst sleepers ff. I think it's down to the baby, really. (That isn't intended to suggest that you should do anything other than what you're planning, scorpio -- you have your hands full and need to watch out for PND in any event).

thanks P&L - just i know that mine were ok sleeping and guess i connect that to having the bottles - my friends BF baby was a nightmare sleeper, and think i connect this to being BF iyswim?

Hands wont be so full anymore - am getting signed off uni - so just 3 assignments to do and then im good for a while. assignments not a problem.

Clearly you breed good sleepers . Let's hope Millie is no different...

i think i do....and im not saying anything about Millie incase it jinxes it

I went to parent craft class last week and they focused on Breastfeeding. We watched a video and in it they said that bf mothers generally sleep better than ff mothers as they can snooze whilst feeding IYSWIM. but like P&L said, it depends on the baby i guess.

I'm really worried about bf too. We were just on holiday with my friend who is bf her 5 month old baby, and it would take her over an hour to get through the feed every time. She was probably feeding her about 5 times a day - that's a lot of time feeding!!

My DD was a similar feeder - really slow. I just don't know how I'll do that when I don't have the luxury of time?

We used to notice a huge difference when we gave DD formula. She would feed in a much shorter space of time and was a lot more settled for longer afterwards. It probably does depend on the baby (and any feeding issues they might have) but it was a bit of a struggle to carry on with bf when I knew she was so much more settled on formula.

That's the thing isn't it? And I worry that if takes a while to sort out and LO isn't gaining weight or something I will get pushed into ff rather than being given good guidence about fixing bf problems. Plus, I'm not sure will get the support from DP and family - I think they think I am being a bit daft and lentil-weavy about it and so if any problems will just say 'Oh, stop, try ff'. Especially my Mum - I know she's had two children and she is therefore considerably more experienced than me, but we have different ideas about what's important and me and my sis were babies a very long time ago, and time and advice has changed since then. Don't want to be a know-it-all, just want to give it a fair shot with proper support. Was directed to babycafe link in the breastfeeding threads, which is dead useful as I didn't even know we had one here!

Am going to an NCT meeting other pg mums thing tonight so I expect there will be some good advice there.

Just to balance out the discussion, DD was BF until 7 months. I didn't really enjoy it, but i did find it really easy, and it is much simpler than FF - you only have to grab a spare nappy when you go out, nothing else. And she slept through from about 5 or 6 weeks, and has been a great sleeper since. I reckon it depends on the baby.

Just got back from DD's last swimming lesson YAY!!!! We didn't fight, I didn't cry, neither did she!! The teacher was pleased to see the back of us though, and called her a naughty monkey and told me I'd have my hands full with two...

I should also add that I really believe BF is good for their immune systems. DD is rarely ill, and other babies I know who were FF seemed to pick up bugs quicker. i don't know if there is any truth in that - VS would know - but ill babies are far more difficult to cope with than well ones...

Asking on the MN boards is always a good plan -- tiktok always has good advice.

I think taking an hour over a feed at 5 months is unusual. By that point DS was definitely on the speed-feeding.

My DH gets the two weeks paternity leave too (has to be taken consecutively) but most likely he will have to go in and out of work a bit anyway during this time depending on what's going on.

Both Eloise and Emilia are gorgeous names - very classy. Scorpio, go ith Millie is that's what you like. Then again, if you keep Emilia on the birth cert and write Milie on schoold forms etc. at least she has the option of going back to Emilia some day which could be for professional reasons. There is some research on that around... but then as Mum2b pointed out it's not absoloutely necessary to have a 'professional name' to get on in the world. Still it's a free option I suppose...

I'm really hoping to do breasfeeding. I plan to really persist at it. It just makes sense for me from every perspective. However, I agree that sometimes it just doesn't work for some women and that's just life. I've noticed here in the UK there is a lot of pressure on women (and it's good to make them aware of all the benefits because in France for example noone seems to talk about it) but I feel a lot of sympathy for them when it doesn't work out and they seem to feel guilty about it. I myself was never breast fed and I turned out relatively ok :-) My Mum recommends BF even though my younger brother, the last one of four was the only one to be BF. She reckons it's the best thing ever. She really like having not to prepare bottles!

My SIL's friend who is due on April 20th, a week after me has eclampsia and is probably going to have a c-section today. I'm waiting to hear the news! Must be quite a shock when your baby arrives at 32 weeks and not closer to 40...