The addictable wagoners have abandoned ship - to a field.... for waiting to TTC'ers and TTC'ers alike, all welcome!!!

[NatalieJaneIsPregnantAgain]

Thought someone had better do it! Hope titles OK?

Huge congrats again Gruff

oh the shame 'threw' not 'through'!!!

LMAO at Diege's "in addiction to shopping" LOL There are support groups you can attend for shopping addiction hun

Gruff, I am sure your cold will at least be on the mend by then, and if not, what a lovely place to be poorly eh?!!

LOL Nat, hadn't spotted that . A true freudian slip as I've just spent the last of my exam marking money on a coat for dd3 which cost, ahem, £105 . I know it's a disgrace, but hey at least I've got soemthing to show for those many evenings of marking...even so, I do feel a bit sick...And it should sell well on e-bay..
Hope it just sticks at nausea for you GRUFF! House sitting sounds fab - wouldn;t it be great if we had a nice couple of days and you could use that pool!
Right, off to playbarn - put it off long enough!

£105????????? Did it come with £50 in cash in the pocket to make it worth while? No, seriously, if it will sell well then what's the harm?

Enjoy the playbarn

Another one here without much clue on bottles I'm afraid...mostly coz I can't remember. I think I started expressing at about 2.5 months so that I could have a bit of freedom, and DS probably started on a No2 Teat...don't think we ever had any No1's (advent by the way, but only coz that's the make of pump I was given). I think the number sounds about right Tink...

GS - if you are planning on BF then it might be worth having a read through some of the feeding threads - there are a couple of BF counsellors (?) e.g. Tiktok with some really good advice.

I plan to BF again but am well aware that just because it worked out last time, doesn't mean it will this time. I guess I'll have to replace most of my bottles anyway if I want to mix feed again and make sure they are free of dodgy chemicals!

It feels good to be remembering it all. Have been feeling really excited these last couple of days and really sort of 'loved up' - anyone else KWIM?

The Twirl has gone. I don't think I even chewed it

Oooh, took so long typing between stuffing in bits of Twirl I massively cross posted there.

Diege! £105! Hope DD likes it! what a lovely way to spend your hard earnt pennies!

mmmmmmmm twirl

Diege - The pool is heated to 80 degrees so I will be in there come rain or shine;)

£105 for a coat is a bit but its your money and you worked hard for it!

Thanks for bf advice cal!

I quite fancy a twirl now too - come to think of it any choc woul do!

I successfully BF both my two till their 1st bday... i'm not too bothered when i stop with this one... i'd like to possibly continue bedtime and first thing till maybe 18mths??... not sure... with dd we didn't have a single problem, with ds we got over the bad sore stage at the beginning, and we battled through 4 wks of passing thrush between us.... and i think thats it... but i still have some milk in my breasts now so i dont think it'll be too bad. I know it'll be close on 2 years since I last breastfed but i think it should all be ok.

coat sounds very expensive to me diege- but I'm sure its very nice!!! I saw a stunning coat on verbaudet actually and it was really cheap.... talk of coats has got me thinking i may just have to buy it!! here it is!!

that coat is really cute glas
well have just spent £35 on 7 bottles and 4 teats all sorted got them in blue penguin

Hi All

Just reading your notes about breast feeding.

Im clearly not very experienced since its only DC1 but will I need to read up on it first? should I be prepared for it not working?

omg there is so much I dont know!

I never read anything GYo... i just did it... DS was born and within 10mins had my nipple in his mouth feeding...

I'd say be prepared for it to be hard work in the first 2-3wks.... but normally once your out of the sore nipple stage its normally plain sailing unless you have a colicky baby... or get thrush or something...

Greedy babies can sometimes drain on the mother too. I am very lucky that i have a VERY fast letdown, so once my DC's got to around 3wks each feed was only 5mins and would fill them for 3hrs... i'd say an average feed would be around 15mins though from what my friends have had...

dont fret too much that its not going to work as you'll be too fixed on making sure you get it right.... go into it with the mindset that you'll do it as long as you feel happy with it...

Thanks Glask. I will just see how it goes. I'd like it to work but if it doesnt it doesnt. Dont think I'll read anything yet. Will just wind myself up if I do!

Clearly benefits of it not working are DH getting to do night feeding too!

you see i kinda thought that to begin with but with me only having 5min feeds i woke up as soon as they made the slightest noise, picked them up and brought them into my bed and fed them... most times i'd fall asleep and they'd fall asleep on the breast till the next feed!! so I got much more sleep than i would if i had to lie and listen to check DH was awake, got the bottle, warmed it and fed them!! He learnt to sleep straight through within a couple of weeks so it worked well for both of us still!!

If we bottle fed i could guarantee i'd have been waking DH up every time it was his turn anyway!!!!

wow it really all does come with experience!

suspect first few weeks are rather like fumbling in the dark, so to speak!

GYo, I really wanted to BF as have a lot of allergies myself so was really determined. I think it does help to read up about it if its something you are committed to as there is so much duff information out there.

The thing about reading up about stuff is that it means that if something is hard, you know that there's a solution out there and it doesn't have to be FF - not that there's anything wrong with FF. DS had FF, although not for first six months.

I discussed it with my MW and she advised me to start trying to manually express whilst in the shower from about 37 weeks...this meant that if I had problems (which I did) I could express and feed some to DS.

It was amazing actually, DS was screaming his head off, clearly hungry and both he and I were quite stressed. We'd been trying to get him to latch on and he just couldn't (I've got enormous norks and small nipples so it was hard work for him). A MW asked how I felt about manually expressing into a litte cup - I said fine, she got a little sterilised cup for me (like one of those medicine cups for cough syrup) and started to tell me how to do it - I said, its OK, I know how to do it, so she just watched whilst I expressed. I got about 2mm in the bottom of this thimble tiny little beaker and she said that it would be plenty! i was gobsmacked as it was such a tiny amount, but she said it was like eating extra thick whipped cream for DS. We held the cup up and he lapped it out immediately like a little cat! He then went to sleep. Job done. Stress over. Next feed was much easier.

They gave me a couple of little pre-packed sterilised cups to take home in case we had anymore problems but we didn't.

Just knowing about things like this means that when you are having problems, you know that there are solutions available - other than some MW standing next to you saying, its no good dear, you really should give him some FF to settle him down.

Sorry for mega post there, but I find it really hard when people say, I just didn't have enough milk because the number of cases where this is actually the truth is very, very low. But having expressed colustrum on day one, I can see why mum's are led to think this.

As I'm sure is bloody obvious, I'm a passionate BFer but at the same time not at all anti-FF IYSWIM. I just think its such a huge shame that women that want to BF often aren't given the right support.

I know its easy for some women, but for many it isn't - you both need to master a new skill, but once you have, its wonderful.

I'd have been the same as Glaskham, lying in bed willing DH to get up, getting cross with him fumbling around in the kitchen making bottles whilst trying to pacify DS etc etc. Learning to feed lying down was a revelation and meant that most times I pulled him into bed and went back to sleep whilst he fed. I'd wake up in the morning with him nuzzling away at me trying to find it again and not remember putting him in the bed in the first place .

Thanks Cals- its really interesting to read. I've really no idea about it.

Defo not issue re megapost!

Will chat to my friend about her experiences too.

Evening everyone. Hope you are all well.

I breastfed dd until she was 3 months old when I had to stop on advice of doctor... When dd was born she had such bad bruises and cuts on her face and mouth that she would not feed. I had to express into a pipette which we then dripped into her mouth. After the first night where she was given pain killers she was ok and fed nicely. GYo at the hospital I went to they don?t discharge you until you have established feeding (I had one MW holding my boob and another holding dd and showing me how to do it).

Dd got very bad reflux however and at 5 weeks started losing weight. This went on for 4 weeks when we were sent back to hospital for medication. She stopped losing weight on the med but failed to gain sufficiently so at 3 months GP and paediatrician told me I had to measure the amount of milk she was taking and guess the amounts she was bringing back up.

I tried to express and did for a week but found that I spend all day with a bloody pump attached to me. I couldn?t go out as it took me so long to get the milk out... I admitted defeat then and started to ff... I cried for weeks and felt so bad but it was the best thing to do. I then knew what she was getting and could mix the meds with the milk so that she got it all at the same time.

i didnt get on with breast feeding as dd wasnt getting enough. the last starw was one day when she seemed to be permantley latched to my breast all day then i quit.
when i then went onto bottles she was only taking 2-3 ozs @ 5 wks still has a small appetite.
glad i have bought all my bottles have a tommee tippee steriliser from dd going to start bottle feeding straight away with next one to make sure that i know what they are getting to hopefully have one that is less fussy.
thought with having baby and toddler as well bottles would be easier if out and about wasnt keen on bf outside
so decided a while ago to give bf a miss this time and see what happens

I am the same as Cal, feel very pasionate about people getting the right support - which ever way they feed.

DS1, I really struggled, there was absolutely no support from HV/M/anyone, he was feeding every hour for half an hour (so half an hour on, half an hour off) 24 hours a day, I had so much milk my boobs really felt they were going to explode, it was sooooo painful. Everytime I fed him on one side the other side would leak at the same flow rate so every time I fed him it was a change of clothes for both of us because we were just drenched. I had an infection in my stiches, had running fevers for days on end, got over the infection eventually although how I did I will never know, I was absolutely exhausted, the worst kind of tired I have ever been. When he was 6 weeks the HV helpfully suggested FF, and gave no other advice, not even about expressing (I didn't even know you could express and then feed them later with the EBM) he had one bottle of FF, I actually had a whole 2 hours off feeding, can still remember how good I felt in those couple of hours! When he wanted feeding again, he took his usual amount and then sicked it all back up again, and every time I BF him after that first FF he just chucked it all back out. I was half devastated and half estatcially happy that it was over!

DS2, completely different end of the spectrum, firstly I did have the support of the MW/HV, and even had a BFC ring me within 2 hours of getting home from the hospital to set up a meet and just let me know she was there if I ever needed her advise. As it was DS2 was a dream feeder, we got into a routine within a week, I had no engorgement like with DS1, he would feed for about 10-15 minutes every 2-3 hours. I also co-slept which meant I missed out on very little sleep. We just had no trouble or problems at all! He started dropping feeds in the day at about 9 months, and then slowly it just stopped, he did get to the point where he was waking in the night, not because he was hungry just for the comfort, which at 11 months I stopped doing, I thought he'd go absolutely mad but he just seemed to 'get it' and that was it, we'd finished BF'ing.

Fingers crossed DC3 will be like DS2 because I am not even going to buy bottles or anything 'just in case' DH can always go and get some if we needed them.

i had great support with dd in birthing centre after i had her and we did nct classes they do a special breastfeeding class

Although I will be attempting breast feeding and will be having bottles 'just in case' I need them, I will also, if possible, be expressing milk for bottle feeding so that DH can share in the feeding. I want DH to be involved as much as poss. Therefore I will def b needing bottles!

Oh yes deffo, I had bottles in for both of the boys, maybe just because it all went so smoothly with DS2 I am more confident that we won't need them (I won't be expressing except to add to the baby rice etc. for weaning)

But if DC3 ends up like DS1 I will be the first one lined up in boots or wherever! There is no way I'd put myself through that again, I couldn't, not with the boys as well.