The Friendly Frugaleers, halfway through June!

[Cagliostro]

All welcome!

We need a new shower. But not surprised. Apparently showers in our hard water area only last 5/6 years. Hopefully will get the quote tomorrow morning and they will fit it after work on Thursday.

When will you move in properly to the house cag?

Thanks cag. I've never really had much formal music tuition as I had wonky eyes as a kid and failed repeatedly at all sorts of music lessons. It's very exciting to be given a 14th chance to try it now that I have the working eyes. I hope I don't screw it up.

I played my violin in front of actual people at our street party, and the clarinet as well at the weekend, and that was my first time of doing something like that.

I hadn't realised how much it would be like giving a scientific talk. 50% of the effort seemed to be making a sensitive connection with the audience, and also what i think of as maintaining that after the slide projector has exploded. It was nice to realise that I already have that 50% taken care of and that I just now need to get the technical side of the music right. Gawd it's exciting.

Well done on managing your caglets' trip out. That is very exciting indeed.

Good news then about the Ikea delivery cost then cag. To be fair, I don't think we've ever walked out of Ikea without spending at least £100. But we normally go there with a purpose.

It's exciting that you will get to choose new furniture and things that you want for your home

Aw thanks. I am getting super excited I must say! Will take the all important notebook with measurements. Two beds, plenty of kallax, and I've already chosen a trofast which will fit the landing really well.

Had a couple of texts from DD on their way home. Yay!

My day got much better - after really struggling to stay awake this morning and feeling crap I managed a good nap at lunch while dd napped. Felt very decadent but soooo good. It was worth sleeping through lunch! I ate a lot of birthday cake to make up for it

Tried DD on a cow’s milk bottle and she took it no problem so that it for formula then, we’ll use up the one we have and then no more. Big frugal woo hoo! I can sell the perfect prep machine and the steriliser and free up some space in my cramped kitchen too. Today I am WINNING!

Really hot again here but there’s a bit of a breeze so it’s lovely outside. I’m off to water the garden, see whether I can persuade DS to jump around under the sprinkler.

Glad you are okay Sunny. Is DS having music lessons? Can the teacher take the pressure off you for a bit?

Love the moving /furniture plans Cag. It’s brilliant that you will have it all clean and ready to move into by the end of this week. Let the fun begin!

Hope the shower isn’t too expensive Love.

£5 ish top up this morning on apples, satsumas and rice Krispies. Those kids are gannets.

And good work Caglets! And to Cag for letting them go, wibbles and all.

Here’s a pic of DD’s birthday cake (name blurred out, it wasn’t actually black squiggles ). It was a confetti cake inside so lots of sprinkles baked in to make spots of colour in the sponge. I thought I’d go for something pretty as I expect it’ll be Peppa Bloody Pig next year 😬😁

Wold can I have the recipe for the green bean and Halloumi thing please .
Love squeaky cheese
Super hot but luckily we live on a house with big rooms,thick walls and wooden floors ,so super cool.
Lots of gardening done and tea drunk today -love tea in hot weather cold weather,any weather
Dinner is salmon with garlic and chilli ,pilau rice and asparagus tip stirfry.
Our lovely village greengrocer sells odd sizes of loose asparagus super cheap and brilliant for quiches, pasta and stirfrys etc
This will be the last lot
Hoping raspberries will be ready next couple of weeks and we can PYO for jam
£62.50 Decking oil and brush plus soil.
DH will do cleaning of decking tomorrow and oil on Thursday -he is so pleased
Reporting back on Aldi classic dishwasher tabs -half a tab is just as good as the Aldi premium brand and have worked out £9.96 for a years supply if halved -Hurrah!

Just back from the gym. It was warm. And I have essentially no legs left. Haha!

Poor legs.

£53 in boots online. £36 of which was formula for ds. The rest was make up remover for me, and other toiletries.

Hi everyone. Thanks Em and Bandit for your messages.

Yesterday I got out of the flat and did the 5 minute walk to the corner shop with DH and DD (WTF feels well weird typing that!!) and got an ice cream and sat outside and ate it and then came back. That felt like a victory of sorts.

I am still sore but it is slowly improving. The biggest problem right now is BFing. It seemed to get a little better and then worse again. Having a BFing support worker out for the fourth time tomorrow . I really want to continue but I'm not sure I can continue like this any longer tbh. I asked her about expressing for a bottle or two a day to give my nipples some chance to heal between feeds but she was all like ~nipple confusion~ so she wouldn't advise that initially but I'm getting to the end of my tether now with the pain. Any tips on expressing and/or introducing a bottle so as not to cause nipple confusion? I have a Medela hand pump that DParents bought me after I burst into tears in front of them the other day when I was talking about how awful BF is going .

Just did my first online shop since DD came. She is a week old now. Weird. I still feel like she's not really mine and someone will just come and take her away again sometime, like I'm just babysitting or something.

Quite DF comes from a country that has very hot summers and they drink tea constantly including throughout the summers, so we continue that tradition . Although they drink weak black tea there with sugar cubes. Your dinner sounds lovely, I love asparagus.

Lovely cake Seacow. This time next year that will be me and my DD .

Sunny Well done on the musical performances, sounds great! I used to play violin for awhile as a child/teen but I had the most horrendous stage fright that I couldn't really play in front of anyone.

Cag Hope moving is going well.

What specific problems are you having meadow? Ime bf hurts for a bit regardless, letdown especially is painful. I don't think it would be wise to introduce a bottle yet if you want to continue with bf. with expressing I would express first thing in the morning from the side she isn't feeding from. Did you know babies can drink from a cup? YouTube it and you'll see, that way there'll be no confusion. She's still very tiny so won't be taking much at each feed but that's something dh can do whilst you have a break. You don't need to sterilise anything unless you're using formula. Also remember every breast feed counts so if you decide to stop then you've already done so much for her

That really is a victory meadow well done! It’s a huge step. I’m glad the pain is improving.

BFing can be really painful. I’m assuming as you’ve seen people (well done for that BTW, I found it really hard to ask for help with my eldest) they have ruled out a tongue tie? I asked a couple of times with Cagletini but it turned out it was basically more painful because she was tiny, her mouth was tiny, and my nipples are, erm, not tiny! 😳😳😳 It is horrible, that toe curling pain. I found lansinoh brilliant right after a feed as it doesn’t need washing off (I got the Boots own brand stuff). It will hopefully get easier, basically your boobs just get used to it, but you know what, every feed you’ve done is amazing, it is absolutely your decision and yours alone what to do.

Can’t believe she is a week old already! I still have stuff to send you! 😳

Thanks folks re: the park trip, they did good :o they’ve walked there and back alone plenty of times over the last couple of months, but with us meeting them at the park/shops/tae kwon do class. So me staying home the whole time was new. Eep. It’s still weird texting my own child :o

Financially we will be better off by actually moving sooner, so we are going to hope the cleaning goes well, then it really depends how quickly we can get the Ikea delivery. May still get some things from BHF too. Luckily affording the stuff all at once isn’t much of an issue as my parents and grandma have been very generous ❤️ But equally don’t want to just splurge on anything as we have to think long term, especially as the place needs a good lick of paint

We’re in France. Today’s battle was - DH ‘let’s go in here and have a drink’ DD look at fancy pants drinks and he has a fit at the price

Well done on getting out for an ice-cream Meadow

NSDs for me.

It's baking hot here as well, got my summer uniform out today which makes me look like physio but I care not one jot 😎

Bit of a funny one at work today, had a shock of sorts, life is so weird sometimes.

£3 meal deal tescos
£6 fish n chips for tea for dd and I.

meadow I combine fed dd and she was fine, no nipple confusion but obviously that might just be luck. It does take new borns a few weeks to get the hang of feeding and I can remember gritting my teeth with pain!! I can also remember that feeling of having 'borrowed' dd and that she wasn't really mine. The first time I took her out in the car I was convinced someone would ask me where I had taken a baby from!! It does gradually sink in they are yours for good though 😉

You could also ask about syringe feeding while she’s still very little. I expressed directly into one 😂 Caglets didn’t bat an eye either.

Those of you with kids around 10-13 what type of beds do they have?

Meadow
Nipple shields really helped me -the pain was toe curling .No tongue tie ,DC1 just had a small mouth .
As did changing feeding position -rugby ball (under arm and feeding lying down.
I have heard that feeding lying back and allowing DC to find the nipple means they open wider.
Has DD been checked for tongue tie ?
Just to say I was told not to use nipple shields,reduce supply etc but I was at breaking point.
Went on to feed all 3 for 2 years .
The first time I went out felt odd too but its essential to get out and about

I used nipple shields for a bit at one point, it really helps if you have a painful crack.

Cag
It depends on the size of your DC but I would go for proper single beds not "kids beds " as they grow fast andxwill get much better back support.
I have to ask -do you all sleep in one big bed?
Im not a good bed sharer ,after 9-12 months mine went in their own😂

Meadow my only advice is keep plastering on the lanisoh! If you express don't be surprised f you don't get much at a time. So long as you store it properly it'll keep for a few days in the fridge and you can mix all the little bits together to get enough. DD had 1 bottle of expressed milk every evening so dh could do bedtime and I had a bit of me time. We didn't do this for about the first month though. I found expressing aat the same time each evening helped me to get more.

NSD but only because the ticket machine at the park car park was out of order! Saved 50p anyway.

Aw Meadow bf was by far the most difficult and traumatic (for me!) part of having a baby. I never managed a latch once with DS in 3 weeks of trying (and crying - both of us!) and in that time I didn’t use a bottle at all to give us the best chance of success. What I did was pump milk and then finger feed DS with a tube. You’d need a bf councillor to show you (and give you tubes) but basically what I did was pump into a bottle and then when DS needed feeding I put the end of a thin flexible tube into the milk and held the other end against my forefinger, almost to the tip, and gave DS my finger to suck with the pad of my finger (and the tube) facing the roof of his mouth. It feels much more like a nipple than a bottle does and as the tube is very narrow they have to ‘work’ for it and don’t get lazy. You do need a few tubes though as they do need boiling to sterilise, even with breast milk. Anyway, it’s an option if you can get some help with it, at least to give your nipples a little rest. DH can also do it so you have a break. As Cag says, Lansinoh helps a lot. I also got some special soothing gel pads which I put on my nipples between feeds with DD which helped a lot. I will see if I still have them (unless I sent them to Cag - does that ring any bells Cag? I can’t remember what they were called).

The other option, but it is a bit more of a step towards an artificial nipple, is nipple shields. I used the Medella ones. They are very thin silicone and go over your nipples. Good if your DD is having difficulty with a latch but they also ease the direct pain a bit. But if your DD is getting the milk but it’s just painful for you it might not be the best step in the long run. Anyway, those are some ideas to ask your bf person about.

If you do manage to keep going you will get through the pain barrier in the end but it’s not a small achievement - it bloody hurts for a lot of people. So please (and I know it’s impossible!) try not to feel guilty if you don’t manage to keep going, or if you take the odd short cut. Whatever you do the baby will be completely fine in the end. I wasted a lot of emotional energy on tears and guilt when I should have been enjoying my baby.

I will PM you as I have various baby bits that might be helpful x

Cross posted with lots of people... finger feeding does the same as syringe feeding really, but is better for a very little baby who struggles with the nipple as it feels more like nipple feeding so keeps them on task. But if your dd is okay at feeding and it’s just your pain you need to manage by skipping the occasional feed then syringe feeding would be fine. Both are easy to do but syringes are easier to come by than the tubes.

Sea we were told in SCBU that nothing needed sterilising for breast milk as long as it was cleaned properly? I suppose it's one of those things where there's lots of conflicting advice.

These were the gel things I put on my nipples between feeds to help with the pain:

www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-Mam-Compresses-Intensive-Treatment-Breast-Feeding/dp/B005KJ3DSC?tag=mumsnetforum-21

I had lots left over but think I sent them to Cag. I cut them in half and just used half each time, they were still big enough for my small nipples

Wreck they told me to boil the tubes as they are much harder to clean than, say, a bottle. They had a luer end so could be cleaned by drawing cooled boiled water through with a syringe but even so.... In any case I was advised to sterilise them and also the medela pump bits, nipple shields etc every few feeds so I did - possibly overcautious but I guess that doesn’t hurt. You probably get a different answer from different health visitors!

I meant to say that cake is beautiful Sea!

LOL quite no we don’t all share 😂 the Caglets don’t have proper beds ATM, they are on mattresses on the floor. 😳 Which they are totally fine with I might add! Basically the beds were old and falling apart and thus unsafe (especially DS’ as it was a cabin bed) and we were pretty sure we’d be moving within the year so we all agreed to just dismantle them and then get new ones once we move, rather than building, dismantling and reassembling (which does result in more wear and tear IME).

Unfortunately it also meant losing all their clothes storage as it was built in, so apart from their jammies and underwear which are in boxes, we are all sharing one wardrobe in our room! And it’s a built in one so we can’t even take that with us! Hence starting pretty much from scratch for the bedroom furniture. DH and I were on a mattress on the floor ourselves for most of last year, only bought our bed a week before Cagletini was born! 😳