AUGUST 2010 - welcome to post-natal :o)

[CherryPie3]

I know I'm not around a great deal lately but we don't yet have a PN thread - so here we are.

Love to all xxx

:)

Gosh 4 months caz - seems like yesterday. Hope you and your dh are doing OK. Are you back at work? It is nearly half-term

HUH wish I was near the 10 stone mark...must stop eating so much crap. I was so good straight after having Poppy but am slipping and eating crap... not helped by the cold weather.

Thank you very much Caz, am aiming for mid-table obscurity [hgrin].

Was glad to read that your work is being so flexible and understanding in phasing your return, it can't be easy for you.

Another lil vote for cakey, easily the best name; is grusome enough but still sounds cute & makes me daydream of cake... :)

10 days Caz?? I was back in my pre-preg jeans relatively comfortably within a few weeks but still have an extremely stubborn half a stone that doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Mind you I haven't exactly done that much about it. Have attempted one exercise class so far & OMG I could have collapsed, Im soooooo unfit!

bellygazing don't read those books like they're the only way to do things. At the end of it all they just write the books, you're the one who has to live with your LO day in, day out. I've had a leaf through to get ideas but don't let them make you feel guilty!

elusive I snap at DD too, just the way she's so insistent with things. Normally it's fine but if I'm tired the incessant clambering all over me and whinging really gets to me. I have to keep reminding myself that she's only little and if I didn't have S she'd still be the baby!

Morning

Belly you are doing a great job. Chuck the book in the bin and go by your instincts

Thinking of you today Caz

I want to point out again, that i am nly aiming for 9st7 because i am short and need to be about that weight for a healthy bmi

Better night here from F, slept from 11pm til 3.30am, then til 6.45. I can deal with that ok and still feel human the next day. Last night DD woke around 2am and she has decided she doesn't like to have her gate shut, so if she wakes in the night she gets upset because we have shut it. So DH opened her gate and left our door open. 3.30am when F wakes up i go to his cot and the fucking cat is asleep in the cot! I was really shaken. F was fine, the cat was up the other end but has been increasingly interested in F so not sure what the answer is

Little something for you ladies, to remind you that you are all doing brilliantly...

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rock-a-bye, Lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek-peek-a-boo).
The shopping is not done and there's nothing for stew
And out in the yard there is a hullabaloo.
But I'm playing "Kanga" and this is my "Roo."
Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rock-a-bye, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Ruth Hulburt Hamilton, 1958

Wow, Alice, that's a really gorgeous poem, thanks. And really lovely/surprising that it was written in the 50s, when the idea of letting the housework slide while you looked after your kids really was frowned upon.

Cakey I've voted for you too and Alice I've posted that poem as my facebook status, it's lovely (and I need to remember the sentiment during the 2 hourly feeds every sodding night arrrrgh - yet despite all the feeding, DD has gone from the 70th to 56th centile.....am trying not to obsess about the numbers though xx

Cakey there's another vote for you.

Belly - snap! I drove myself crazy last week with a copy of the Baby Whisperer that a friend lent me. Made me feel like I was driving eli crazy with no routine... had a miserable couple of days feeling like an incompetent mum. Chucked it in and went back to no routine this week - it's loads better!

Elusive do you have a birth ball? Eli is similarly hard to put down and gets wildly overtired with legs and arms going all over the shop. I've found sitting on the birth ball and bouncing him with him over my shoulder means he can't flail his limbs about (sorry little man!) and the gentle bounce we get really puts him to sleep, without being much work for me!

Thanks for the advice Bubbabear, I passed it on to my friend. Just voted for you cakey.

Morning All :)

Hope everyone is well, it has been a while since I've posted as I have been struck down with a cold (verging on man flu) which by some miracle hasn't spread to DD! (yet)

Just a quick question - Nina has been waking earlier in the night and I think it's because she is cold, I have only been putting the correct number if blankets on her for the temperature when she goes to sleep bur once the heating goes off it is dropping at least three degrees - is it safe to put more/thicker blankets on at the beginning of the night or could this cause her to overheat initially, or should I risk waking her by adding extra blankets during the night? Sorry lots of words for a simple question but my brain is a bit addled this morning!!

Cakey I've voted for you too!

As you can see I've finally learned how to bold peoples names from my phone-the instructions have been down at the bottom of the page the whole time !!

I second Anna's question about blankets - it drops 2-3 degrees at night in our bedroom as well between the heating going off and coming on. I have a few little blankets I use, or I could bust out the 2.5 toy grobag we've got. Trouble is, we co-sleep, so Eli inevitably shimmies over towards me during the night. Tricky!

Lovely poem alice

I know about the books belly and nat. a friend gave me GF and the last week i ve been feeling down cos my ds wont fit into the routine. He s waking up after only 2hrs sleep at night and daytime naps arent easy. I keep telling myself to cop on that he s not even 7 weeks yet! I guess the sleep deprivation makes it hard to be objective

Anna and nat I was also wondering if F was getting cold during the night. I now have him in a vest, babygro and grobag. Will see how it goes.

I got a few fleece sleep suits as presents, can you use these with a sleeping bag?

I've never really solved this question about blankets. DS1's room is ridiculously cold. Last winter, it was 21 degrees when he went to bed (because the heating was on) but dropped dramatically during the night - it was once 12 degrees when I went in there . Thing is, he never to my knowledge woke up from cold (things are different now he's in a bed, and kicks his duvet off...). Generally, he was always a bit too hot when he went down, but I'd rather that than have him too cold later. (Oh, and FWIW I've already put S in a 2.5 tog bag, with either just a babygro or a vest plus babygro.) The vest is probably overkill at the moment, though I think he'll be in his own room soon, and then it will be colder.

Cross posts. Personally I wouldn't use a fleece suit plus a bag unless it's really cold.

S is in vest, babygro and 2.5 tog sleeping bag in his own room. It hasn't dropped lower than 19 in there yet but he likes to be snug!

OK - might deploy the sleeping bag tonight. I mean, I'd be cold under just two thin blankets...

Wednesday night F wore a vest, fleece sleepsuit and grobag, and was fine at 3.30am feed. but at 6ish he woke up and his hands and face were freezing, brought him into bed with us to feed as usual but as soon as he was snuggled up he fell asleep again. May hae been particularly cold that night as that was the night the cat wanted to shre the cot Last night i put a vest, babgrow(cotton one) and sleeping bag on him, but put some socks on his hands and a little knitted cardi on him too (one of the granny knitted ones with quite a loose knit) and he slept from 11pm - 5am, had a feed then asleep til 7.45.

I have so much washing to do today, it is just never ending. F has just fallen asleep on me, so better get on with it a womans' work is never done....

I keep forgetting about the witches hats [hblush] [hgrin]

Thanks for your reassurance everyone [hsmile] it really helped. My DH was very sweet as well and told me to ignore the books and pay attention to the baby! After a very, very difficult day - although with E going to sleep v happily after a bottle from DH at 10pm and then a quick 5 mins on the boob to send her off to dreamland.

Elodie was a little angel yesterday, all happy and smiley. She started her day by doing an enormous poo (we are now on between 0 and 3 poos a day compared with about 6) having not done one at all the previous day - I think that probably helped. And, as it happened, she fed pretty much on the clock every three hours. Weirdly she always follows a much more sensible pattern if we're going out.

Re bedtime clothing, Elodie is in a babygrow and a 2.5tog sleeping bag - no vetst bcause she can't wear one over the harness but the harness itself is like another warm layer. She's in the room with us but in her cot - apart from for feeds [hgrin].

we're putting J in a long sleeved vest, warm babygrow (not fleece but warmer than a normal one), 2.5 tog sleeping bag and on extra cold nights, one layer of cellular blanket. Seems to be working.
We don't have a massive difference between day and night time temp so i haven't been worrying about him being too warm at the start. Maybe you could add an extra blanket after the first time they wake up?

i'm putting J in a long-sleeved vest, warm sleepsuit and 2.5 tog sleeping bag. Plus scratch mitts to keep his hands warm. it still doesn't really feel like enough! i guess when it gets even colder he can have a blanket as well.

Voted too.

Moan alert.....

Have had a rubbish day - DH has picked up this vomitting bug and so has been feeling bad since midnight last night. Obviously feeling worse than anyone ever has and his sickness is so much worse than the MS I had throughout the whole of pregnancy [hhmm] Hope he is well enough tomorrow - I'm meant to be off to baby show at Earls Court with a friend. We shall see. Really hopping Izzy doesn't catch it either! Feel realy bad as I should be all sympathetic but finding it very hard!

I'm a little embarrassed at my lack of posting for the last 2-3 months....just popped on here today and found this thread - so good to see you're all still here!
Anyhoo, I gave birth to Gabriel James on 4th Sept after an induced 16 hr labour that ended in a c-section weighing 9lb 5oz (I'm only 4'11" so thank god I didn't have to push him through my foof!).
He's 7 weeks today and is a contented little thing once I started ff - bf'd for 5 days until he was weighed on day 5 and had lost 1.5lbs so we were admitted to hospital.

I'm loving life other than a dose of cabin fever now and again if I don't get out!

Anyone having difficulty feeling confident leaving their DC with the MIL? Mine tells me she's been practicing nappy changes on a doll which worries me!!!!! She's not looked after a baby since DH and he's almost 37! I know I need to ease up a bit especially since she'll be looking after Gabe for a full day & night while I'm at a wedding but really finding it hard! Feel like she doesn't accept the way I look after him so worried she'll do her own thing

Hi All, just wanted to say thanks for the advice about blankets last night I dressed DD in vest, babygro, thin swaddle, 1 tog sleeping bag (haven't washed the warmer ones for the first time yet) and a cellular blanket over her legs and she slept for an extra two hours, fingers crossed it has the same effect tonight!!

Enjoy your evenings x