June 10 babies have arrived. Now we are all sleep deprived!

[CantSleepWontSleep]

Welcome to 'the other side' ladies. Long may we all continue to post!

ARRIVALS
27/04 (due 23/06) - SunshineDay - Faye - 3lbs 2oz
16/05 (due 02/06) - Meggymegmegs - James (Jimmy) David, 7lb 1oz
19/05 (due 01/06) - whenwillisleepagain - Alice Emily, 8lb 7oz
21/05 (due 21/06) - Gizmo - Hester Rose - 6lbs
23/05 (due 9/06) - greensnail, Alice Elizabeth, 7lb 2oz
24/05 (due 8/06) - Saucepanman, Gabriel, 8lb 4oz
24/05 (due 31/05) - minimoonumber2, Sebastian Robin
26/05 (due 24/06) - GibberingGinger James Alexander, 5lb 13oz, & Douglas John, 5lb 15oz
28/05 (due 30/05) - GoodName, Fergus, 8lb
28/05 (due 31/05) - mampam, Tilly May, 9lb 11oz
28/05 (due 4/06) - jo807bump - Hannah May, 5lb 7.5oz
04/06 (due 07/06) - perkster - Sidney James Perkins Berner, 7lb 11oz
05/06 (due 31/05) - dinosaurinmybelly - Zoe Leila - 6lb 9oz
07/06 (due 02/06 ) - AlwaysHopeful - George, 7lb 13oz
07/06 (due 07/06) - MrsC09 - Rufus Jack
08/06 (due 01/06) - PogueMahone - Magnus Gabriel, 8lb 14.5oz
08/06 (due 11/06) - woofie - Laurence Elliot (Laurie) - 7lb 11oz
08/06 (due 21/06) - sunworshipper - Romola Ann Bettina, 5lb 15oz
09/06 (due 08/06) - LittleRobbo - Summer Dawn
09/06 (due 09/06) - Boobz - Constance Ella Reed,
11/06 (due 02/06) - Justbeme - 'Nobody' (boy) - 8lb 9oz
12/06 (due 02/06) - roundabout1 - Lauren - 8lb 14oz
13/06 (due 18/06) - Virgo1979 - nameless boy! 7lb 9oz
14/06 (due 30/06) - monthlymayhem - Hayden, 7lb
14/06 (due 08/06) - MrsAlwaysRight - Alice Rose, 9lb 7oz
14/06 (due 15/06) - Millymollymoo - boy
15/06 (due 31/05) - RnB - Artemis, 7lb 9oz
15/06 (due 29/06) - playftseforme - Rory 6lb 4oz, and Fergus 6lb 8oz
16/06 (due 17/06) - Chestnut100 - Daisy Belle 6lb 14oz
17/06 (due 01/06) - Madamfreckle - Emma 6lb 6oz
17/06 (due 30/06) - MonkeyMargot - Atticus Fox 7lb 8oz and Rafferty Bear 7lb 14oz
17/06 )due 04/06) - Suzy1975 - Samuel 7lb 14oz
18/06 (due 23/06) - earlyonemorning - Edgar William 7lb 8oz
18/06 (due 13/06) - sobloodystupid - Stella 8lb 8oz
19/06 (due 22/06) - Gaelicsheep - Robin 6lb 14oz
22/06 (due 14/06) - Fillybuster - Mia Rae 9lb 3oz
24/06 (due 16/06) - Nizzynoodles - Samuel James 10lb 10.5oz
24/06 (due 17/06) - summerhols - Lilly
25/06 (due 17/06) - Barbeasty - Ruth Damaris Rose, 9lb
26/06 (due 16/06) - JoKettle - James Lennox, 8lb 7oz
26/06 (due 29/06) - MrsDmamee - Elyssa, 8lb 5oz
28/06 (due 26/06) - imkeepingmum - girl, 7lb 11oz
28/06 (due 12/06) - Georgee - Anna Rose, 7lb 15.5oz
28/06 (due 12/06) - Elena67 - boy, 9lb 5oz
29/06 (due 17/06) - bluesnowfalcon - Corey, 8lb 11.75oz
29/06 (due 18/06) - theperfectbaguette - Clementine Jemima, 6lb
29/06 (due 26/06) - RubyReins - Luke Douglas, 7lb 14oz
29/06 (due 25/06) - Ilovemyterrier - Jeppe Sebastian Fagerlund, 7lb 6.5oz
01/07 (due 30/06)- LaTrucha - Daniel Timothy, 8lb 11oz
3/7 (due 29/06) - CantSleepWontSleep - Jeremy Francis, 9lb 4oz

Oh dear filly, that sounds tough. Fergus has been shoving his hand in his mouth, champing down hard on anything which enters his mouth and drooling like a crazy person for about 1.5 months now and no teeth have yet appeared, he doesnt seem upset about it very often though. If it was teething would the paracetemol not help a bit?
Fergus has been getting very upset with his cold when he seems to get all the gloopy stuff caught at the back of his throat, he will scream til he sort of makes himself sick and coughs it all up. It doesnt seem like a bad cold most of the time but sometimes he just gets all upset and congested. Its awful when you cant work out why they are upset and you cant fix it.
Fergus does not tend to get distracted at all during feeds until he is full, He has quite the single minded determination to eat generally. He latches and and gulps it down like a starving baby most of the time

just adding back to list. hopefully on properly tonight.

Yes, I was a bit about the paracetamol making no difference. Aaaanyway, we had a perfectly good night (surprisingly), and she woke in a great mood at 8am and has been lovely and smiley all day. So I've got no idea what it was, but happy it seems to have passed.

Good things about this morning: Mia sleeping until 8, dcs 1 & 2 sleeping until 8.30.

Bad things about this morning: DH having a conference call at 6am and waking me from 3am because he couldn't sleep in advance of the call....

Aaarghh!! Off out tonight for a friends 40th (admittedly only an indian takeaway at someone's house, but a proper night out involving a babysitter no less) and all I want to do is go to bed.

DH is still on the phone for work. He's been glued to it all day apart from a 3 hour period when we had people over for lunch. I know its not his idea of fun but I'm still quite pissed off at being left to do all the childcare, cooking, clearing up etc etc

Grumble over :)

Glad she was better today filly. :) Feeling a bit jealous of your night out. Think I could do with getting out one evening soon, and definitely would love an indian.

Well, Alice will be 19 weeks tomorrow and I can tentatively report that we seem to be coming out of this period of terrible sleep. The last 2 nights have been a big improvement on how she has been. Fingers crossed it will continue to improve. Still have been absolutely exhausted today, fell asleep twice while feeding

Glad that the op went well MrsD, and fingers crossed that she doesn't need another in future.

Greensnail - re feeding for longer in the day - have you tried breast compression, and wearing a bf necklace so that she has something to focus on which keeps her in the right position for feeding?

goodname - are you certain that F has brought up all of his wind before you put him back down to sleep? Just thinking that he sounds similar to some of mine, who have always held on to their wind a bit more than I'd have liked.

Sleep very mixed here. Have had a couple of his best nights plus some of his worst, all in the same week! Last night he only slept til 11:30, and then woke about every half an hour after that! But I did at least get a couple of hours out in the evening first :).

Took J in to London on the train this afternoon to meet some friends for coffee. Sooo much easier doing it with a carrier than it would have been with a buggy!

Hey CSWS good to see you here. Hats off to you for braving London with a bambino and also for going out in the evening!
One of the downsides of twins is the lack of freedom as regards going out and about. I am trying not to become a total hermit and DH and I have made a pact to go out every Saturday morning to the park with all 3 DC's and the dog for a cooked breakfast then the playground. We arrived at 8:45am - the only people there apart from one or two dog-walkers! Was lovely actually.

greensnail glad Alice's sleep is improving too.

MrsD great new that the operation was a success. Must have been very stressful for all of you.

Twins are just lovely at the moment - lots of gummy smiles, normally when they're supposed to be feeding. They do look tiny to me though - I compared them with a photo of DD at this stage (who was a 99th percentile chubber) and they look so skinny! But they are strong, alert and feeding and sleeping really well so I'm not too worried.

Filly how is Mia now? has she settled back down? Does your DH normally take work calls at the weekend? Tough for you. Hope you aren't too frazzled.
Whilst financially it isn't perfect, I'm quite please DH has very little work on at the moment. Not sure he'd be keen on being a full-time SAHD for 3 children though. He loved it with one, but 3 would be rather more challenging.

CSWS Fergus seems to suffer more from farting wind, than burping wind so not sure how much difference it would make burping him for longer. i do know he sleeps better when he has had a good burp but he usually does this no bother. As a matter of interest when do the wind problems tend to improve.
Greensnail, glad to hear the 19 week thing seems to be working, how often is she waking now?

greensnail glad Alice is sleeping better. 19 week old Alice WWISA is sleeping worse each night. Can't get more than 2 hours at a stretch, and one of those stretches was interrupted last night by appearance of DS, which is thankfully less usual these days. I feel truly loopy this morning.

Like several other of your DCs she is dribbling like crazy and stuffing fingers in mouth. No sign of teeth though. Will check out sleep thread, but I read Penelope Leach and NCT books on sleep last night and I am pretty sure that I have created situation where A simply can't get back to sleep without the boob, and I need to steel myself for a few even worse nights of trying to help her get the hang of getting off to sleep without it. She did it twice last week, as I was consciously trying to tackle this. I am wondering about putting the side up on the badside cot and moving it as possible away (a whole 2 feet, given the size of our bedroom).

One of the downsides of co-sleeping and endless bf I guess - or maybe entirely unrelated. My friend's DS is 2days older than Alice and she said yesterday that he is also doing the 2hr feeding 24/7 thing.

We're having mixed success with sleeping, but are now tending to get 6hrs (although that starts an hour or two before I go to bed, so I don't get quite that much) before Ruth wakes up hungry. Then I get her from her cot (in her own room) and she feeds in bed with me and we co-sleep for a few hours. Hopefully it will slowly extend (or I will use days when DH doesn't have to be up the next day for work to see if she will self sooth- but in honesty I need her to feed by the time she wakes up!) Also hope we drop the nights where she wakes up about an hour after I've fallen asleep, and then every 2 hours after that...

LaT- I would have loved a pj day on Friday, but it was manic! It's busy enough anyway, with a post natal class in the morning and another in the afternoon, but Ruth has conjunctivitis, so it was a mad rush to get her to MIL, go to chemist to drop off her prescription (cue argument between chemist and checkout-girl about how long it would take), then get into town for my first class. Then a mad rush to get back, pick up prescription that had been filed under the wrong name so took ages, pick Ruth up from MIL and get to the next class. But we did get to do paint footprints at the 2nd class which was lovely- although due to wriggling Ruth appears to have 6 toes on one foot!

Well, I suspected I might have posted too soon about the sleep and I was right. Saturday night we had another rubbish night. Last night we made the decision to do the opposite of what you're considering WWISA, and removed the side of the cot and moved it next to the bed. Thankfully it was much better and we got a couple of 4 hour blocks of sleep which was fab. She was really difficult to settle yesterday evening though, and i'm fairly certain that teeth are the major problem.

Bf necklace is a great idea CSWS, will have a look for one now :)

MonkeyMargot - you're doing a great job bf the twins. It must be so hard balancing that and dd. Breakfast at the park sounds like a great idea for you all. Hope you're not feeling too hermit-like, do you have friends who visit?

greensnail pleased you got some good sleep again. 2 x 4-hour blocks sounds good. Teeth are such a nightmare. DD still has loads to come through yet, never mind the boys.
Thanks for your kind words Greensnail. I don't get out as much as I'd like, but yes, friends come and visit often so it's not too awful.

Thanks everyone for your good wishes re Elyssa's op.
She is getting better overall and at 14 weeks now has discovered the art of sleeping at nightime.
She is still not great in the daytime and will usually only nap for 1-2 hours between 11/12 noon and 10 pm.
But she is a lovely baby, adores her brothers, smiles at them both non-stop. DS2 (who is 4) just looks at her all day long and even helps change her nappy.

We are possibly moving abroad within the next month and I'm fearful that Elyssa's routine will be knocked off course and the sleepless nights will start again. Especially with an -8 hour time difference. I'm trying to figure out how she will cope or what can I do to ease her into a different time zone.

Mia suddenly broke into proper giggles when DD1 was showing her her teddy bears last night ...I have no idea why, but DS and DD1 seem to get far more giggles and smiles out of her without even trying, than the rest of us :) Seems very unfair....!!

Nothing to report here...4 hour feeds are such a relief, I finally seem to have time to get things done :) :) Can't believe weaning on already the horizon...only a few more weeks to go....

Weaning?! We are only half the weaning age here!!

Lol @ CSWS...we normally start vaguely introducing baby rice around the 18-20 week mark (will be nearer 20 weeks with Mia as we're away for half term and I'm not doing it on holiday!!) in a fairly chilled way; dcs 1 & 2 were both eating properly by around 24 weeks...sorry!

Hi everyone - absolutely ages since I posted on here. Have had no internet for a few weeks & have felt very lost esp as Lauren has been going through a very colicky/sleepless stage. Very reassured to find other lo's the same although obviously not glad other mums are as sleep deprived as me! I took Lauren to be weighed yesterday & said to the hv about the sleeping issue, more in the way of a chat than seeking advice as there was only us at the clinic. Was told in a very brisk manner that of course she was sleeping as she wouldn't be able to survive without sleep, I explained that she hasn't slept longer than an hour unless held for weeks now, since dd1 had a tummy bug & when at the same time Lauren's colic came back with a vengeance. Was told that I had obviously made the problem worse by allowing her to sleep on me (even though it was out of desperation) so I came away feeling a bit peed off. Had a bit of a better night last night so hopefully improvement is on the horizon. Although the thought of weaning fills me with dread as with dd1 her colic/wind issues got so much worse after weaning. Think may try to hold off til the 6 month mark this time as did start weaning a bit early last time.

Filly - Lauren does proper belly laughs for dd1, I get them occasionally but dd1 def gets the biggest smiles. Her face lights up as soon as she hears her voice at school pick up. It is lovely but can make me feel a bit taken for granted by everyone!

Monkey margo - also think you're doing an absolutely fab job bf twins. You really do deserve a huge pat on the back.

A question regarding weaning - with dd1 I had already introduced a bottle of formula a day before weaning as I struggled pumping. So I used formula for mixing with rice etc. This time I'm struggling getting the time to express so can't seem me having enough breast milk frozen to use for mixing. What do you do, use formula with the food or just make a concerted effort to build up stocks before even starting weaning?

Oh well better go & pick up dd1 from school. Hopefully will be better at posting now.

roundabout - why do you need bm or formula for weaning? I eat neither, and ds will get whatever I'm eating, so he won't have either either.

We're starting to think about weaning here too. DD1 was BLW, but we started at about 22 weeks (when she swiped some brocolli from my plate and munched it ). Plan to do the same with Alice and she's beginning to show signs of readiness - she can sit with support for a short time now, is starting to reach out and pick things up and put them in her mouth. At the moment she's joining us at the table whenever she's awake at mealtimes, so when she seems ready I'll put some food in front of her and see what happens. Not looking forward to starting again with all the mess, but can't wait to see DD1's reaction when Alice starts eating.

Alice also laughs for DD1 much more than anyone else, although she'll smile at absolutely anyone which means it takes forever to get around the supermarket as we have to stop and talk to all the people Alice charms along the way .

Roundabout - sounds like you have a horrible HV. I mentionned our sleep issues to mine today as we had jabs and weighing this afternoon. She was surprisingly helpful, very understanding and although she didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, she helped me to see the problem and my options for dealing with it a bit more clearly.

Roundabout your HV sounds most unsupportive. Not really helpful what she said to you. Grr. Hope things start improving on the sleep front.
Thanks for your vote of confidence btw - always lovely to hear .

As regards weaning, I have to agree with CSWS. I will be waiting til 6 months and will be doing pure BLW with these 2 (it was such a success with DD, who eats for England).
Are any of you first-timers going to try Baby-Led Weaning? I really recommend you read Jill Rapley's book before you decide.
My DD is by far the most consistent and adventurous eater in her peer group. And to be brutally honest, I couldn't be arsed with pureeing tons of mush only to see it flung around the room.
Ooh - such exciting times ahead! Roll on Christmas Dinner!

Yes, I agree, definitely have a look at the Jill Rapley book. DD1 is also the most consistent and adventurous eater we know. She impressed everyone at a family party last year by eating chilli that was too hot for most of the adults there and she has converted lots of our friends to BLW for their babies with great success.

Is it really nearly time for weaning? Sam's only 15/16 weeks and nowhere near ready yet so I've not really thought about it this time. I did the whole puree thing with DD1 but was much more relaxed with DD2 so I'm sure I'll be even worse with DS. It's so much nicer when they eat the same as everyone else - either mashed up or with their fingers. I think in the past I've started around the 5 month mark.

Hope the sleeping improves for those that need it!

Thanks for the recommendation of the book. I'll have a look at it too. I totally messed up weaning with DD for various reasons and am hoping for better for DS. DD started at 6 months and can I just state the obvious in case it helps anyone to learn from my mistakes - if they're not interested, they're not ready or not hungry and food does NOT help them sleep.

He's only 12 weeks though. I'm doing some research on introducing food for my bf supporter training ATM. It 's pretty interesting.

But for starters I'm going to take my cue from him. He's only 13 weeks now so it'll be a while.

Lol @ CSWS :) :) You know me too well I guess its (probably) fairly obvious I will not be doing BLW in the filly-house....I'm far too much of a control freak...ok, control freak (I can't think of another expression!) for BLW. But we won't be having puree up the walls either - in our house mummy holds the spoon for quite a long time :) :) :) Yes, we will have finger food as well, of course, but we'll be starting as follows:

day 1-3 baby rice made up with ebm (of course you can use formular if you don't have ebm to spare, roundabout)

day 4-6 butternut squash puree mixed with baby rice plus ebm

day 6-8 apple puree mixed with...yada yada...

at some point further along, once spoon food has been established, I will start offering cucumber/broccoli/apple/whatever pieces especially if I'm feeding them to the dcs at the same time.

for what its worth, my dcs are also very confident around new foods, eating adventurously etc and are comfortable sitting at dinner parties for extended periods eating everything there and not whinging about getting down to play etc. They also expect to use adult cutlery and plates (aged 2.5 and 5) and are always surprised at friends houses when given plastic...

...so good eating is probably a combination of luck/personality and perseverence (and training) rather than blw or puree-ing being right or wrong...you gotta go with what works with your own parenting style :) :) :)

I agree filly, there's no point stressing yourself out trying to BLW if you're a control freak . I'm far too lazy for making purees and spoon feeding myself, I love being able to plonk something off my plate in front of the baby and just get on with eating my own but can totally see why that wouldn't suit a lot of people. At the end of the day, its all just getting food into the baby.

On the subject of gina ford - I'd heard her book was good for potty training. Anyone got any thoughts on that?

Have forgotten what else I was going to say. May be back later if it occurs to me....

Thanks for the book recommendation. I think I might have a go at BLW this time round as I think I'll be a bit more confident to let Emma take the lead. [whispers] - gina ford weening book was good for us first time round - and some of the recipes we actually still use now. However, I did get extremely stressed out trying to feed ds and it frequently ended up with me in tears trying to pull myself together in the next room before going back into the kitchen for a second attempt . He was always quite small on the charts and I was desperate for him to chunk out a bit - but I think the stress I felt over the whole thing back-fired.

He'll try anything now and does eat really well although he's lazy as hell and after the first few mouthfuls always says he's had enough as he just wants to get down and play or just talks incessantly instead of eating - so just for an easy life, we end up putting forkfuls into his mouth - not good at nearly 4!

With BLW, what i'm not sure about (and maybe the book would answer this) is when I'd get Emma to eat in the evenings. Are they always supposed to eat with you or do you just plonk a few bits and pieces in front of them at 5pm and hope they nibble on a bit?? (You can tell I'm an amateur, no?)