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

mrsd where do you live? If London I have Seb on his own mon-weds so could lend a hand.

mampam she's so cute!!!

I am pleased to say we have done the deed twice since Seb was born, have no idea what to do about contraception tho - not sure i like taking the pill - hormones etc - altho it's certainly the easiest thing to do i guess as there's no way dh would ever get the snip!

re sleep - seb was going to bed at 10ish & sleeping till 6ish which was great but i was getting sick of dealing with a crying baby in the evenings, however the past 2 nights he's gone to sleep at 8osh so had joyous baby-free evenings but then woken at 3 & 6 - i can't decide which i prefer!! might try to dream feed him tonight & see what happens...always feels so wrong waking him up tho - what does everyone else think about dream feeds? those whose babies aren't waking naturally for them anyway!!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.

minimoon lots of people swear by "dream feeds". I'm not one of them though. I prefer to let them sleep as long as they can! So whilst I know my DTs can go from from 10:30-6:30am (they did it 3 nights on trot), I am now letting them sleep from 7pm for as long as they want to until feeding (last night 2:15am). They then go until morning (7am). This wouldn't suit everyone, but I prefer to be in bed at 9:30pm and have a few hours sleep before the next feed.
We tried dream feeding for a week with DD, but found that she never fed well and ended up needing another night feed anyhow.

Also, we never had the issue of dropping the dream feed - the middle of the night feed simply went from 2am to 3am to 4am etc and before you knew it, she was sleeping 7-7pm.

But I'll bet lots of people on this thread swear by the dream feed!

Whatever you choose to do, I think you're sensible getting Seb in bed at 8am rather than 10pm - makes such a difference having a bit of time to eat your dinner etc.

p.S. I'm in London too - whereabouts are you?

minimoonnumbertwo We're another one without a dream feed. We were having a bottle at about 11 up to about a week ago when he just wouldn't wake up for a feed so we stopped trying.

At the moment Sam has a bottle around 7.30ish and then is asleep by 9ish then I just let him sleep. The last 3 nights he's woken up between 4 and 5 when he has another bottle and we try to grab more sleep before the DDs wake up.

MadameF and Mampam - those are beautiful photos!

Ok. My demand of the day is you stop me freaking out about sleep.

Now, I know Daniel is only four weeks old but in the last five days he has gone from doing pretty well (waking once or twice then settling in his basket) to being an nightmare.

Alot of your June babies were more difficult when they were this age, weren't they?

HE will only sleep next to me at night and I mean RIGHT next to me. If Imove him even an inch away he wakes. I've tried lying him on one of my t'shirts and I've tried feeding him on the moses basket mattress and then putting him and it down all together. I've tried sitting up and giving him proper big feeds. All he wants to do is snug up to me and snack constantly.

I don't think he's getting too much daytime sleep. In fact, I was convinced last night was going to be great a she'd been awake lots in the day. It wasn't.

Now, I know tiny ones do this but I'm terrified it's going to go on forever because DD was a lousy sleeper for about 18 months and it totally ruled our lives.

I REALLY hope that he changes at around the 6 week mark!

The thing that gets me is that he sleeps happily on a fleece in his carrycot downstairs during the day. x20!

Greensnail - they were very sweet and a total bargain

I hope you all forgive me for obsessing about sleep. I do it here because I'm really trying not to do it with DH as we tied ourselves in knots with DD.

Mampam - What a brilliant smile Tilly's got!

LaT - You are totally entitled to obsess about sleep!! I hope it makes you feel better if I say that Emma has suddenly cut her feeds down to just once between 11pm and 7am in the last few days and she has also been much more content to be put in her cot in the evening and stays there until she wakes for a feed in the night. (She's 6 weeks). I usually put her in her cot after she's already fallen asleep on me, but it always wakes her up and she fusses for 5-10 mins or but then settles to sleep as long as it's pretty dark in there. After the night feed I'm always asleep so she stays in with me then. A lot can change in a couple of weeks. I'd say, keep putting him in his moses basket to see if it works and soon I'm sure it will.

Monkeymargot - Fab weight gain too! Emma, born on the same day has got up to 9lb 12oz now. Just been wondering, do you feed them both at the same time or separately?
Re. getting it on. Nope! However, we are at least getting on well...without the it!

LaT Don't despair - if I look back to where were 2 weeks ago it was a whole different story. Screaming babies all night long, 3 consecutive nights when I couldn't get DT2 to settle until gone 4am. Nightmare.

Fastforward 2 weeks and suddenly it starts falling into place. The advice I got from the maternity nurse was invaluable in terms of getting their feeds to be longer (which knocked the "cluster" feeding on the head). I'm sure things will be easier in a short time. As Madame says keep persisting with the moses basket. With DD i used to swaddle her before the end of her feed, then BF her to sleep and then lay her down in the basket asleep. Didn't always work but worth a try?

MadameF good work Emma on getting to nearly 10 pounds!
I feed the DTs at the same time. I have this comically large cushion designed for breastfeeding twins, which is like a platform around me (it literally straps around my waist) and the DTs heads meet at the front. It's a strange sight, 2 little heads bobbing up and down on my temporarily enormous boobs....oh the glamour of it all!

MAdameF - I am really hoping so. Thanks for telling me to persist on him sleeping away from me. I'm sure I won't all the time, but someone else thinking it's a good idea may give me the impetus to try in the wee small hours.

MonkeyMargot - can you pass on that advice? Daniel as a cluster feeder too.

Hilarious picture of you. I'm sure you look like a goddess. DTs are doing brill, aren't they?

LaT Daniel sounds more and more like my DD1 and she's a fab sleeper now. What worked for getting her into her moses basket was to have it on the bed next to me (DH was in spare room) so she felt close to me and I could keep a hand on her if needed. Once she was used to it I transferred her to the moses basket in the cot and then directly in the cot. She was sleeping in the cot from 8 weeks with the odd spell back in my bed as needed or if I fell asleep during night feeds.

monkeymargot My DH was also very keen to get back in the saddle, so yes we have resumed relations! I'm also booked in for a mirena in a few weeks time. Am a bit nervous about it actually for some reason, so i'll be interested to hear how you get on.

Can't believe Alice will be 10 weeks tomorrow. Where has the time gone to?

laT I echo monkeymargot, Seb just started sleeping in longer chunks at around 6/7 weeks and this going to bed in the evening just happened on Thursday night, I did absolutely nothing different! It's really difficult when you've had a bad sleeper in the past, ds1 was a total nightmare and can be still so it makes you very aware of what you are doing in a getting into bad habits way. You say he sleeps well in his carrycot on a fleece - is this something he could do at night or is the carrycot not flat??

Thanks nizzy and margot for your advice on the dream feed, I shall take myself off to bed in a mo then and not wake him and see what happens. Because he's suddenly started going to bed in the evening off his own bat I kind of think maybe the same will happen in the night too.

margot we're in Balham - where are you? I never made it to the London meet up, hopefully we can arrange another soon?? I love the image of you with your feeding cushion, you'll not be able to part with it even when you've stopped feeding!

Right, fingers crossed for good nights for everyone tonight...

Greensnail - thanks for the reassurance. We're getting geared up ready for the 'nightshift' now. I'm going to try and put him in DG's bed as DH is downstaris and I thnk the moses is too small now.

Minimoo- DH suggested the same thing, but I don't know how safe the fleece is to sleep on. I use it in the day because I'm always around him when he's sleeping there. And yes, it is precisely our experience with DD that makes me frightened. I know what Daniel is doing is normal and I knw why DD slept as badly as she did and the two are nto related. After DD, though, sleeplessness just makes me scared!

Does anyone else know about the fleece?

Wishing everyone, including me, a very good night's sleep.

I don't know about the fleece LaT but one more thought - have you tried warming the basket (or wherever he will sleep) with a hot water bottle beforehand?

Re. cluster feeding - when my Mat.nurse arrived I was feeding both DTs from 6pm onwards til eventually one would fall asleep at midnight, the other at 4am (not good). She observed my feeding throughout the next day and it seems I just wasn't feeding for long enough - hence they were never really reaching the hind milk. So she made the DTs wait for 3 hours til I fed again to ensure they were hungry, then we fed them for 15-20mins, burped them (and if sleepy changed their nappy and stripped them down to the nappy) then fed again for a further 20 minutes. She also encouraged me to massage my breasts downwards with my thumb as they reached the hind milk (more difficult for them to get to, the massaging helps it flow down a little I think). Once the feeds were lasting longer, they didn't ask for food again an hour later as they had before. One obvious sign that they weren't reaching the hind was their nappies - DT1 doing 15 tiny poos a day (fore milk acts a laxative).

Good luck tonight :-)

minimoon we are in Chiswick. i didn't make the london meet-up either. Hope you have some quality sleep before your LO wakes you for next feed!

Off to sleep myself now. DTs are fast asleep on tummies but with these new monitors on, so feel more relaxed now.

Night all - hope everyone gets some sleep
x

P.S. I've asked before, but is anyone on here interested in playing Scrabble with me? Online on Facebook? I play with loads of MNers from my first antenatal thread and it's highly addictive! Any takers?

Thanks for passing on the advice, MM.

I'd love to play scrabble but DH will shoot me. He hates how much I'm on the computer (I don't kick up quite such a fuss about his fag breaks in the garden and long, long phone calls home, however )

I've been googling around sleeping on fleeces and while some (often sellers of sheepskins) will say it's safe, they really fall under the advice of sleeping your baby on a firm surface at night. Generally seems to be ok for a nap though.

I remember battling my conscience with DD because I was sure she was finding her bed too hard. In the end, I put a single duvet over the mattress and under the sheet when she was around 6 months old. I then put a softer blanket over the sheet as a sheet, IYSWIM. It doesn't seem risky to me and she did sleep better (just in case anyone has the same problem when LOs get a bit bigger).

Hope everyone had decent nights. Alice seems to have settled into a bit of a night routine now as she settles about 7pm then feeds about midnight and 3am. She then has a bit of a winge at around 5am but doesn't want to feed and I think this tends to be because she's got really snotty by this point after being flat all night. Last night I just popped her into her rocker so she was more upright and gave her the dummy and she settled back down until 6.30. She definitely seems to be taking less milk overnight now though as i've been quite full the last few mornings.

monkeymargot i wouldn't mind having a go at scrabble but have a feeling i'd be pretty rubbish at it! Feel free to add me on fb if you know my real name, if not you can email me on greensnail at live dot co dot uk with your details and I'll add you.

the twins are not 10lb 8oz and 11lb 6oz, 9.5 weeks old and nowhere near sleeping through the night. They are still feeding regularly every 3 hours day or night. Is so frustrating I don't even want to talk about it! Have been avoiding this thread for a while because whilst I know every baby is different and does things in their own time I think it just makes me feel pressurised to hear how well some other babies are sleeping. .

Haven't decided what contraception we are going to use. I would like DH to get the snip. Definitely avoiding hormonal solutions as after DD I tried the injection which I think exacerbated my PND. Will probably try a coil and hopefully persuade DH to get the snip as well. Have definitely finished our family. However at the moment, although we have resumed sex its only been a couple of times and its not really top of my "to do" list

greensnail have emailed you with my details. look forward to scrabbling with you soon! Don't worry if you're out of practice, you'll soon get hooked!
P.s. sounds like Alice is doing well with her sleeping at night.

gibbering I'm sure things will improve soon enough. Is it one twin or both who wants to feed 3 hourly at night? Do you feed both even if only one is waking?
Good weights for your boys though. The main thing is they are healthy and growing. Am staggered you have done the deed with your DH a couple of times - I am a rubbish wife!

Ginger - would you feel better to know that ds2 (although younger) weighs more than your two, but doesn't sleep for more than 2 and a quarter hours at a time maximum?

I imagine that dh and I will just not bother with sex for another year or so, and then he'll prob have the snip, with us using condoms (or more abstinence) whilst he organises it.

Hello -

have had guests here for last 2 weeks which was lovely, but I'm also happy to be able to wander around with easy access to boobs for feeding and to get back to some sort of routine. Zoe is also still feeding every 3hrs and shows no signs of going longer (she is 8weeks now). I am exhausted and not in the mood for any advances from DH, so nothing has happened here. He has brought it up and tends to make a mountain out of a molehill on this subject if it is left too long, which makes me even less interested... I think some awkwardness ahead. I'm not a good wife....

He won't get the snip and I don't fancy hormones either, so we are left with condoms. Not sure I'm finished (now have 3), but DH is quite adamant that he is (but won't get snip).

DS1 is 3.5yrs and he is a real handful at the moment. I think life with me not exciting enough for him (Summer break from preschool over here) so I am praying this resolves itself when he goes back in 6 weeks.

I am feeling quite lonely at times (DH works 7am - 8pm and doesn't call during the day), and also a bit grumpy about me weight now (have 20lbs still to lose and I gorge on biscuits and choc alot at moment). Hoping to pull myself away from junk food next week and feel better.

I so admire the mothers of twins - fantastic weight gains - you both deserve a big celebration of some kind.

DIMB I totally sympathise with the lack of preschool etc in the school holidays. I'm trying to think about losing the extra weight too so if you need any support let me know as I'm absolutely rubbish and have no will power on my own! It does seem like a bit of a challenge though with everything else that's going on.

DH and I are both agreed that 3 children is perfect - no danger of anymore at the moment anyway as we're never in the same bed and sleep is more important!

GibberingGinger I know it's really hard but try not to compare as it will send you nutty! Babies are like adults - all a bit different with their own personalities. I know this is a completely unhelpful piece of advice (especially in the middle of the night) but thinking about it has helped me get through times when I've compared my three or thought about other peoples children.

I think it sounds like everyone is doing really well and we've got a lot of lovely June/July babies. It's hard to remind ourselves how well everyone is coping sometimes so I thought we deserved a pat on the back.

Hope you all get more sleep than you did last night!

Thanks Nizzy we definitely all do deserve a pat on the back!! It's hard to remember a time without these little ones now isn't it?? Can't believe Seb is ten weeks now, ds1 was in his own room at 12 weeks but I can't imagine not having little Sebbie sleeping next to me! He will be there until he's 18! What's everyone else doing re moving into own room - I think filly you said Mia is not with you any more is that right?

monkeymargot Chiswick is lovely! I am always around mon-weds if you fancy a coffee.

Hi all, I am back to use and abuse all of you for your mummy wisdom.

My DD is 5 weeks and seems to have got a cold, she is really blocked up and snuffly, she is dribling like mad and has watery eyes. Also she is a lot quieter than she normally is.

I'm trying not to become a crazy 1st time mum - but I am not sure at what point I should go to GP? Her temp seems OK at 36.9.

Any advice? Or do I just sit it out?

By the way - I am impressed and jealous at anyone who have resummed a bit of slap & tickle, I'm way too tiered!

Summer hols - I would say, trust your insitinct in general. If you think she's really ill, take her. More generally, I'd say any increase in temperature, real difficulty with breathing, unusual lethargy, unusually upset I'd definitely go straight away - even to A&E if necessary.

If she's just having slight difficulty breathing you can get saline drops from the pharmacist. You put a couple in each nostril. Both my DCs have had them and they do make a real difference to snuffly babies.

Can I ask a question about bowel movements? Ahem.

Daniel's poos have been very loose for a few days. He seems fine in himself. He has been feeding loads. When would you start to worry about this, if you would?