The Final Fruition of the Frolicking Forays for the First Time Frolickers

[Spirael]

We came, we saw, we frolicked.

Now our PFB has arrived and we can begin the stressful befuddled guiltridden exhausting wonderful journey of parenthood!

(Or at the very least we can stop bothering the antenatal bunch until they join us!)

zippys I am so so sorry for your loss. I hope that you are taking care of yourself. I too had an early loss and found I was very emotional for a while after (I felt better after a few days but was easily upset for a few weeks) spireal said some kind words then and I am always grateful to her and the rest of MN for thoughts and hand holding in my next pregnancy.

I hope to see you here again soon. Thinking of you. xx

zippys that's really sad news, I'm so sorry. I hope you're doing ok. Take it a day at a time and indulge yourself. Big hugs xx

Hi Zippys - I just wanted to say how really sorry I am for your loss... As you say, it must be really hard to look for the positives but they really are there. You've now proved the "experts" who said you couldn't conceive naturally wrong, and as you say you and DP have made positive lifestyle changes, so hopefully those, combined with the fertility surge will result in you being back here soon. Meanwhile, whilst it's true that life is cruel and terribly unfair (I don't know of anybody who deserves a baby more than you, after all this time), I just hope you know we're all behind you 100% and I'm sure if there's anything any of us can do, we'll do it. I hope you manage to take time to grieve, and have as much support as you need in RL. Lots of love. x

zippys if you're still lurking I hope you're ok

William seems to be having a developmental leap at the moment (my wonder weeks app says so anyway!). His sleep is up the wall yet again - we've been up from 2-4am for the last 3 nights.

Trying to be positive about it though - we can really see the cogs whirring in his little head. He seems to be figuring out problem solving - last night he was picking peas out of his bowl to eat, but they were too slippy for him to hold and put in his mouth. So he moved the bowl closer to him and successfully ate his peas He's also busy working on loading his own spoon - yesterday he spent lots of time dipping the handle into his dinner. Tonight he held it the right way round, but was dipping into an empty bowl. I did try and help him get some food onto it, but that just angered him so I left him to it.....he seemed quite happy dipping his spoon into the empty bowl and sucking it.

ugh bunny the sleep deprivation return sounds horrid. Clever Will though working out how to eat his peas!

highheels BRILLIANT about Rose's weight gain, well done you. Hope the highheels household is now cold free? I am still a bit snuffly, two weeks on, and cross about it. Baby C is better though so we're having slightly more sleep...

Happy 6 mth birthday to Hannah halo!! How is time going so quickly?!
I will compete with you for softest baby in the world. C is super clingy with me and DH and only we really see her super giggly, happy self. I'm hoping that she will grow in confidence as she gets older and at the moment enjoying the cuddles and feeling special.

lucky, beth is beeeaauuutiful!!!

kurly hope you are having fab hols! We are also still having night time wake ups and I tend to just feed back to sleep - I know we should probably not, but feeding means back to sleep in about 20 mins tops and I don't have to get out of bed - anything else means about an hour of screaming when we all end up wide awake and I then cave and feed anyway...

We're still doing the Battle of the Bottle in this house, with no success at all and C now screams when we put the bib on as she knows whats coming. Tried different formulas, expressed, warm, tepid, cool, different bottles, teats, times of day, positions, me giving the bottle, me being in a different room, and nothing. The prospect of having to continue two hourly feeds for the next year is really getting me down. Sigh.

Aww bless Will and his peas bunny reminds me of DSS the other day trying to eat cous-cous with his fingers, yep each little grain individually in the mouth!! And this is from a 3 (nearly 4) year old who knows perfectly well how to use cutlery but prefers to eat things like that with his fingers!
Hope the sleep improves soon.

Cherry Is there anyway you could try and distract C a little bit to stretch feeds out to 3 hourly? I tried to do that with Robyn first to 3 hourly and then to 4 hourly. 4 hours proved a bit much though and we're now back to 3 hourly although now she's on some solids she won't always take all her milk so means she is hungrier earlier than she should!! It's such a changeable thing this child raising malarkey!!

Well I missed the first roll over yesterday and there hasn't been a repeat performance as yet. Also teeth are very definitely on the way and surprisingly Robyn seems to be coping fairly well so far, we have one little tip poking through at the side and 3 more along the bottom are sitting right below the gum, wish they would hurry up!!

cherry Its quite reassuring that you have a clingy baby too, all my friends have these sociable things which they can leave in the pram to go order food or coffees. If I don't take Hannah with me she cries. At a group I can't even sit on a chair anymore, its floor all the way.

Sorry about the battle of the bottle. How old is C now? Hannah drinks water quite well (as of last week) from her cup and I imagine would take milk too. Its just a tommee tippee first cup and I have to hold it up for her. I let her practice holding it too though and today she managed a sip before it landed on the floor again.

You won't have to feed 2 hourly for the next year! I'm sure someone with an older baby will confirm that. At 9mo i'm going back to work and my HV assures me that she will be fine with 2 feeds a day when i'm at work provided she has calcium rich foods. Of course Hannah will no doubt be feeding in the night but freedom will arrive one day!

mrsw I'm so impressed by Robyn's babbling, Hannah doesn't make any of those noises! Poor you with all those teeth on the way. Still no sign here but I remember bunnys Will was late with teeth so i'm just making the most of it for now.

bunny Hope Will's sleep calms down tonight. Hannah likes to be awake from 9.30-11.30 but that's not as anti social. She is then sleeping til 3/4 for a feed, then til 6 for a feed and then a lie in til 8. (Loving this)

Best go, waves all round, but I want to watch Don't Tell the Bride.

Hi all,

Roses glad all went well with the scan and birthday celebrations. Hope you're not feeling too knackered.

Bunny boo for the sleep deprivation but I'm very impressed with Will's problem solving, clever boy!!

cherry hope you're soon recovered from the snuffles. Sorry to hear about the bottle battles, I've given up trying for the moment after Rose has just started completely refusing, although am considering trying her with a cup of expressed milk when she's old enough. Bit annoyed though as we're going on holiday in November and it would have been nice to be able to enjoy a bottle of wine with DP without worrying about when the next feed is due! Also would be reassuring to think I could be away from her for more than 1.5 hours or so at some point.

MrsW hope Robyn continues to cope well with her teeth.

Halo hope Hannah continues with the nice long lies! And hope you enjoyed Don't Tell..

Well Rose is continuing to be more adorable every day, although the sleep deprivation is getting to me this week! Had a bit of a blip last week when she seemed to feed really badly one day and then we had her screaming at the top of her lungs for ages that night, which is really not like her as she very rarely screams. Phoned the HV the next day for advice as we suspect she may be teething early, there are definitely teeth in her gums and they're looking very bumpy, plus we're getting lots of drooling and tongue sticking out! HV came out and basically said that she thought my milk was not satisfying Rose and she reckoned we would need to start supplementing with a bottle of formula. I was so annoyed and upset. Anyway, took her to the clinic on Monday and she's put on 7oz over the last week so had very patronising comment about "having turned a corner" with the feeding. The feeding has been fine right through, she just puts on more weight some weeks than others!! Also heard another woman having a simlilar conversation with the HVs at the clinic, she was being told she might need to give formula and asked if she could be referred to a lactation specialist and was then informed by the HVs "but we are lactation specialists". Sorry for rant but it annoys me when these people claim to be promoting BF and then suggest formula before doing any investigations or suggesting any ways to help the BF go better.

Anyway, rant over, felt like saying "Na na" and sticking out my tongue when they told me how much weight Rose had gained last week. Really looking forward to the constant checks finishing so hoping for another fab gain over the next fortnight before her next weigh in. She's still feeding every 2 hours in the day and about every 3 hours at night, and is now feeding for longer so sometimes I feel like I've spent half the day feeding but it's worth it as long as its working! Have tried to stretch the feeds out during the day but can only manage to distract her for about 10 mins and then she sometimes ends up demanding the next feed earlier! Don't really mind the constant daytime feeding but would love to get a longer stretch at night :)

On a more positive note, she is now regularly smiling and giggling away and chats away to us making all sorts of cool noises. Was really impressed with her at the weekend as she was lifting her head and feet whilst on her tummy and rocking back and forwards, but since then whenever I put her on her tummy she just smiles at me and lies there refusing to move!

Wow, that was a lot longer than I intended, hope everyone and their LOs are well and enjoying the unusually pleasant weather :)

PS: Just put more recent pic of Rose on profile so you can see how chubby she's getting!

cherry you won't have to do 2hrly feeds forever. We were down to 3 feeds at 7mths (although I still offer milk in the night so sometimes it's 4), but Will doesn't even ask for milk in the day now. If I didn't offer his 2pm feed, I doubt he'd miss it, but he does drain the bottle so he still needs it. Once you start solids you can distract them away from wanting boob with a snack.

Do you feed her to sleep for naps? I found stopping that and rocking Will to sleep/giving him a dummy was the trick to getting him to go 3-4hrs between feeds in the day. He didn't even seem to mind, he actually seemed pleased that I'd finally figured out that the pre-nap crying was tiredness not hunger. It meant he stopped snacking and had longer feeds less frequently. (Of course, all babies are different, and some do need to feed more often, so don't think I'm suggesting you starve poor little C )

As for bottles - maybe don't try for a couple of weeks, so she forgets all about it, then offer again. I was lucky that Will doesn't care what the milk is coming from as long as he's getting it, but half of my mother's group had the same problem. However, they all cracked it in the end, the babies just seemed to take to the idea at some point. It seemed to coincide with them starting solids/water from a cup.....almost like they suddenly "got" the idea that food doesn't just come from boobs.

mrsw eating individual grains of cous cous sounds time consuming Hope you get to see Robyn rolling soon.

halo Hannah's sleep sounds MUCH better than it was, so well done Will was a late teether - his appeared about 3 weeks ago. He still has 2 little friends with no teeth at nearly 11mths.

hh your HV sounds particularly pants. Well done for not giving in to them though. Hopefully Rose will gain loads of weight this week - can you take her when she's just had a feed and needs a huge poo as that'll add a fair few grams to her weight

Thankfully Will seems to have finished his unsettledness for now, he's slept 11hrs straight the last 2 nights. Although this leaves us in the situation of him waking up feeling refreshed and ready to play at 5:30am, then realising an hour or so later that actually a bit more sleep might be a good thing......just as he needs to get up for nursery

Halo I think the sounds were more accidental than anything! We've been getting lots of "aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh" noises for ages and I think it is just a fluke from teething that means she's realised that by clamping her gums together the sound is different!! It's hilarious to watch the faces she pulls doing it! She does the nanananana one with furrowed eyebrows so it looks like she's giving me into trouble, I can't do anything for laughing!
We've been trying R with a cup too but she can't obviously lift it so instead just dunks her mouth over the top of it and tries to suck like a bottle! You can't lift it for her as she gets annoyed and just grabs it back! Easy to see I have a Taurean baby on my hands!

bunny that's my current trick, I always try to feed her loads just before we go for a weigh in and hope she doesn't poo before she gets on the scales!

I spoke too soon, we have a tooth poking through!

Thanks for your advice on the feeds. I think I am going to try to space them a bit more by distracting her, and may try a cup too (halo she is 4.5 mnths). bunny its v reassuring that all the bottle refusers in your mothers group got there in the end. I don't feed to sleep for naps - it's down in the crib and mobile on, but do for nightime still . We do have the odd 3 hour plus stretch if C has a long nap but not to be relied on. Hum. I really should just relax and stop worrying about the future but it's tough!

Yay for Hannah's tooth halo and even bigger yay for the much improved sleeping

Robyn is being such a trouper with her teeth mrsw, hope they come quickly. And that she rolls over for you on the weekend!!

hh your HV makes me cross. They shd be supportive of your parenting decisions and work with you, not completely undermine you and force their preferences on you unless the health of the baby was seriously at risk. Good on you for standing your ground.

Busy weekend planned, hope C sleeps well tonight as can't be doing all the activities tired!

Ps roses hope you are feeling a bit less sick as the weeks go on! How did your on laws take the news, double excitement?!

Zippys I'm so sorry to hear your news.

cherry there's nothing wrong with feeding to sleep at nighttime - I don't feed Will to sleep at the start of the night any more, but I always offer food when he wakes in the hope it'll settle him back to sleep

halo yay for Hannah's tooth

mrsw Will has the same attitude to his spoon as Robyn does with her cup. He dips it in his bowl but never manages to get any food on it, but if you try and help him he gets

We've just been for a weekend away - we stayed on a farm and Will loved meeting all the animals. He even rode the 3rd biggest horse in Australia We shared a room with him though, and I have no idea how I used to sleep when he was in with us at home......he's the nosiest sleeper ever. I got woken up every couple of hours by him murmuring and laughing in his sleep!

Just to add another reassurance that two-hourly-feeds don't go on forever, to Cherry. :) It feels like ages ago now, but I'm pretty sure that Mindy's milk intake started to drop fairly rapidly once she started having solids at around six months.

By the time I went back to work at nine months, she was definitely on having milk only just before nap times and bed. So 3 times a day, at about 10am, 2pm and 7pm. She's still the same now, but she only takes a single nap, so just has milk at 11am and 7pm.

I really should try and phase her off having milk out of a bottle, but she loves her sleepy bedtime bottle cuddles so much I don't have the heart to take it away.

For accepting bottles, have you tried using a distraction? One time when Mindy had a stomach bug, she was point blank refusing to take a bottle. I eventually got her to take it by cuddling her with Cbeebies on. She was so distracted by one of the songs that she didn't realise I'd slipped the teat into her mouth and just started to drink by reflex.

I also had problems with one sort of milk... Cow and Gate powder, IIRC. The cartons were fine, but she would not entertain C&G powdered formula at all! However she was fine with Aptamil powder.

For teeth, M was a unitooth baby for months. I think she got her first one at about nine months and then nothing more until the next five came through all at once just after she turned 1!

She's now been stuck on six teeth for the last three months, though given the amount of dribble at the weekend I suspect we might be about to get another few in bulk.

Just in case anyone didn't see my endorsement on Facebook... For those with teething babies, I can recommend Anbesol liquid from the chemist. It's like bonjela, but faster and more effective. You have to ask the pharmacist for it as it seems to be stored behind the counter.

Loving the cutlery stories. M's pretty good with a spoon now, she can keep it level enough to get ice-cream or such from bowl to mouth relatively reliably. (Amazing what they can do for something delicious. )

Her fork prowess is good, but misplaced... Yesterday she was grabbing handfuls of tagliateli to shove in her mouth, then eating her bread and butter with the fork.

Though she seems lazy fine with DH or I helping her out with food, she'll happily relinquish the spoon/fork and open her mouth in what is affectionately known as the 'Baby Bird' face.

Totally agree with the room sharing trauma, bunnygirl! We're visiting SiL this weekend and I'm pretty sure Mindy will be sharing a room with us, which means none of us will get a particularly good night of sleep as we all end up disturbing one another.

cherry sorry to hear you're struggling. I was on 2 hourly feeds for a while and it knackered me!! Definitely persevere with the bottle, one day she will just take it and you'll be gobsmacked. Or try the sippy cup. They can take them from 4mths. I think the doidy cup is meant to be really good. I bought the tommee tippee and the brother max ones and even I can't get any liquid out of them never mind T!! So would not recommend those! Maybe if you try mixing your milk with some food she will realise food comes from different places and might help her take the bottle? And I am feeding T to sleep at night, it's part of her bedtime routine.

bunny hope the sleep is getting better! I honestly don't know how we ever managed with night feeds. If T has a bad night now (hardly ever bless her) I am a wreck the next day...Saying that I do secretly love her little night noises. For a limited period only! Hehe.

mrsw Robyn is coming on so well isn't she bless her? They're little monkeys with their timing of things, poor you missing out on the rolling over! She is going to be very string minded I think :)

highheels you're doing really well, good for you standing up to the HVs. I had to when I said T was teething. She said 'oh just because they are dribbling, doesn't mean they're teething'. I said 'what about if she's cutting a tooth, is THAT teething?' grrr!! Rose looks super cute too! You'll know when to worry about BFing, if ever. I definitely think mum know ps best, even if I doubted it before I had the baby!

spirael baby bird face sounds really cute! Love that she manages to eat ice cream herself hehe. You can have girly nights in together with the haagen dazs :)

All is good here, T still struggling with teething. New trouble area is daytime naps. She seems to think sleep is the enemy and just will not give in to it unless she's in the buggy. I feel like I, getting into bad habits by surrendering to it when she's really crying, but she just won't do anything else. Have bought a swing with little success and even a Ewan dream sheep :) still only buggy works!

Managed to have my first night out this weekend, with my NCT girls. It was lovely, but I did worry about T as she was with my MIL and doesn't really 'know' her. She did brilliantly though and I needn't have worried. Although I wasn't impressed with her 3am waking...she has slept through since 5 weeks so it wasnt the best night to choose to mix things up!

Hope you all have a lovely week and that this sunshine holds out.

spirael Will's just the same as Mindy when it comes to self-feeding - if I hold a pre-loaded spoon out for him to take, at least half of the time he just opens his mouth and moves his head towards the spoon

crazyb we had a couple of months where Will would only sleep if I was pushing him in his pram. Thankfully he grew out of it just before we hit winter and the weather got bad. All that walking helped me to loose the last bit of baby weight and got my bum really toned, so it wasn't all bad

Am v of T sleeping through since 5wks. It took Will 9mths to decide that sleeping all night would be a worthwhile activity, and even now we still have the odd bad week

The big news from the bunny household today is that William took one step all by himself Then he chickened out and held the nursery lady's hand to walk the rest of the way over to me. Knowing him he'll wait another month or so before trying it again, so I'm not getting too excited just yet

Well... I have thrush in my milk ducts! It is sooo sore! Had a bit of a battle with the gp and managed to get the right antibiotics (thanks to a thread in here!) so here's hoping it buggers off soon. BFing...who'd do it?! We must be mad

And Tabitha is cutting another blinkin tooth. All go here in the crazy house! Hope you're all having better weeks...!

Ow ow crazy you poor thing! Does T have get treated for it too? Hope it clears soon, your BF commitment has really tested the past few weeks huh?! Thanks for cup tips, we are going to try one when back from hols. I also had first evening out - also with NCT ladies last week! Got there after C had gone to bed but had a lovely evening. We managed to not talk about babies all night too

love the baby bird face Spirael!

Good luck with your KIT day mrsw let us know how it goes.

Yay for Will's first step bunny what a grown up boy!!!

We are off on hols for a week - eek! Unfortunately C has come down with another, much worse, cold and cough, hope the flight is not too awful for her . Wish us luck and hope you have good weeks!

Just having a catch up with you all - poxy work geting in the way of mumsnetting! Hadn't realised I had been gone so long!

Zippys if you are lurking at all, really sorry to read about Pip. Hope you are continuing to be looked after xx

Must run now, as picking T up at 5.30 - but will post properly - life has a way of reminding you to be grateful whilst giving you a shit sandwhich, so hopefully I will be relaxed and calm (with time to MN) this evening

Rose is 3 months today, can't believe where the time has gone! She's possibly going to need physio, noticed the other day that she's holding her head cocked to one side plus she's still got very little head control and although she used to briefly lift and turn her head when on her tummy and hold her head up when we carried her she's stopped doing both. Asked the HV who got us seen by the Dr and she's referred us to developmental Dr to check there are no problems. Hoping she's okay and just being lazy just now! When I was comparing her to younger babies at the mum and baby group this morning she looks so floppy still in comparison!!!!

In need of some reassurance. Rose is really grumpy just now and sometimes when she's screaming I just cannot figure out what she wants. She's still happy a lot of the time but the past few days she'll be smiling one minute and then her face will just crumple and she'll look like she's about to burst into tears. Sometimes I can distract her back to smiles but other times it then develops into full blown screaming. Is it normal to still end the day feeling bewildered and wondering what you've done wrong at 3 months? And is it normal for them to still get grumpy for no apparent reason? Thought I might be feeling more in control by now!!!!

Yes, completely normal - I still don't feel in control now at 15 months! However every 3 months it does seem to improve a bit more, I found. Though even now Mindy sometimes has days where she's randomly grumpy and upset for no apparent reason.

Best thing I can advise is to keep going with the basics. Make sure that Rose has a clean nappy and a full tummy (even if you only just seemed to feed), give medicine if you hear an edge to the cry that means it might be pain (it could be early teething!), and aside from that assume tiredness/over-stimulation and give lots of gentle cuddles in a quiet room. Preferably with rocking, if you have a rocking chair or even a computer chair with a tilt mechanism!

Mindy tends to switch from smiles to tears in quick succession when she's overtired.