November 2010: Welcome to life on the other side

[bunnygirl80]

Pull up a chair and help yourself to a LARGE glass of wine

Welcome to the dark side the wonderful world of motherhood

kiwi very sorry to hear about your DD :(
Must be horrible to know she is uncomfortable but you just have to wait for the appointment

fen thanks for the reassurance, it's good to hear about other babies being slow gainers but it not having any other implications.

Hope everyone has had a lovely christmas! We've had a good one although I did end up eating my dinner one handed while feeding dd2 :) Poor thing barely got any presents either but I daresay we'll make up for it next year! Enjoying a couple of glasses of wine now both DDs are asleep. Cheers!

Thanks to all for the supportive messages and sorry for not updating sooner- have been glued to James' bedside!
We were discharged home late last night- a wonderful Xmas present after 2 days in intensive care then 2 days on a ward for observation. After many many tests, seems like it's just a bad bout of bronchiolitis- as Ebb said it's incredibly common especially in babies under 1, but the nurse said if baby has any kind of breathing problems to take them to hospital as it's really hard to tell how serious it is without checking their oxygen levels.
I think I'm only now appreciating what we've been through- I was so focused on staying strong this week that I've been quite wobbly and tearful since we got home.
Kiwi - sorry to hear about your DD's problems too and hope the specialist can give you some answers.
Hope everyone else had a merry Christmas with their little ones.

So thankful to hear you and James are home and he's on the mend, bookworm. What a blessing to be able to come home on Christmas! :) hope your holiday can be a bit more relaxed and enjoyable now. x

Very glad James is home and ok again b00kw0rm!

bookworm, phew, so glad to hear that! You are so right that it is after you have been through something like that that it hits you{{{hugs}}}

kiwi - sorry to hear about your dd kiwicat and hope you get answers.

Hope Christmasses were great. Hamish slept almost all day - he was awake for pressies in the morning and then slept until the evening (half waking for the occaisional feed) h slept right through Christmas dinner - hooray!

What great news bookworm you must be so relieved.

Christmas was very quiet here. Skyped with my parents in the morning, didn't attempt a full dinner but Norry slept during the day for the first time in weeks so we could both eat dinner with both hands :)

Merry Christmas everyone!

That's great news bookworm Hope you manage to enjoy the rest of the festive period

fen Glad you managed to eat your dinner together - I love how doing something as simple as eating a meal in a civilised fashion feels like such a mammoth achievment now

We had a fab xmas - gloriously sunny and 29 degrees. DH did a great job of the bbq and I went all Nigella and marinated all the meat and made a pavlova from scratch William slept through all present opening and lunch and then was totally overwhelmed when he finally woke up and was confronted with all his new toys all at once. Am now trying a much slower introduction to all his new things instead

Have put a pic of him in his xmas outfit on my profile

bookworm so pleased to hear that James is on the mend.

Christmas here was lovely - went to dps family in Essex and are still here, though staying in a hotel. Got some lovely presses and Finn is being fussed over by a legion of relatives - shall miss the help when we go home.

I have got a cold which am nog happy about as spent the whole of my pregnancy without getting one ( usually have 2 or 3 a year. Fingers crossed feel better tomorrow as finn is still snuffly too.

Hope everyone else is busy enjoying themselves.

Fingers crossed that we miss the snow tonight, am soooo over not being able to walk without slipping over!

My birthday on thursday so dps mum has offered to have Finn for a few hours so we can go for a meal, very excited!

bunny saw the floods on the news - you haven't been washed away have you?

hi all

just a quick question for the experienced moms on here.

DS will be 8 weeks on Friday and he is still EBF and still having major wind problems, which wake him up screaming, no matter how well he latches on nor how much i burp him.

Someone has suggested giving him an ounce of cooled boiled water, which they said settles wind and also helps if a baby is constipated. DS has always had very watery poo, but on trying to research the use of water i'm now worried about his poo.

So 2 questions - how often should i give him water to ease wind and how much each time? (don't want to risk water intoxication)

and to anyone who EBF what does your babies poo look like? (my concern is triggered by an article suggesting if a baby is constipated then watery poo may pass around the hard poo obstruction, so they are still doing dirty nappies but are also constipated at the same time)

Hi *Loooopy, Lottie, now 10 weeks, is also still incredibly windy, not so much burping but the other end. I've found massage helps a little. I've never heard of giving water though and this is my 3rd EBF baby, maybe I should look into it. Lottie's poo is very liquid, mango smoothie consistency and colour I'd say , and she's only pooing once a day at the most.

Kiwi, really hope you get an appointment and that they can do something to help your little girl ASAP.

So glad you're home and James is doing well b00kw0rm.

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Oooh, I've been typing whilst expressing, just looked down and I've got 5oz, most impressed with my bosom, normally only manage 3!

Hi loopy, everything I've read has said you should not give a breastfed baby water, they don't need it, and they are not going to be constipated. DD2's poos are liquid, the consistency of a milkshake!

Have you tried something like infacol? You have to use it at every feed, just a quick squirt. So far DD2 seems fine but it really seemed to help DD1 in the early days. Once they are a few months old they seem to be able to deal with wind themselves and life gets a lot easier.

already giving infacol with every feed and still got bad wind :(

Bookworm really glad that James is on the mend.

Loooopy Abbie gets really bad wind, mainly from her bottom. She also has really watery poo at the moment. I'm actually going to ask the doctor about it as she still has awful nappy rash despite antibiotics, fucidin and hydrocortisone cream. It doesn't help that she poos so much and the cream never gets a chance to work. She's still coughing a lot at the moment and everytime, when I'm changing her nappy, she coughs and poo seeps out with each cough. I'm feeling really down about it as it's so painful for her to have her nappy changed and I feel so bad for her.

Does anyone know if they will still do her immunisations if she's coughing? She's due her first lot on Thursday.

On the sleep front, she's still very unsettled in the evening and doesn't really settle til 11/12 but I wonder if alot of that is due to her moses basket still being downstairs til I go to bed and it's too stimulating for her. I must get a baby monitor for her so she can go upstairs at 7pm. However she is then sleeping til 6/6.30am and then going back to sleep til 9.30am/10. She will on occassion, self settle too which is good.

I have got this cough/cold/man flu that is going round and feel like death warmed up. I'm feeling rather sensitive about life which is not making me great company. Hopefully I will get better soon.

ebb - poor abbie, have you tried egg white on her bottom? Re injetions if i were you i would hold off for a while :)

loopy sorry can't help with wind, but poo here v watery too :)

Meant to say got first smiles christmas day :)

Annabels nappys look like korma sauce, yellowy brown and slightly lumpy. Generally two a day. She has really bad wind also, mostly in the evening, just when we're most tired.
Do let us know if the water thing works as we've also tried infacol, extended burping etc without much sucess. One thing that does help a bit is to express a couple of ounces and warm it up (bottle in hot water for a min), for some reason that helps the burps come up tho it doesn't help the other end! :(

I'll try and explain the tummy massage that helps with wind. Try it 3 times a day, not straight after a feed, leave it about half an hour.

Lie baby flat on floor.

Put hand on tummy at belly button and stroke downwards towards legs, as you lift off with one hand stroke down again with the other. Repeat six times.

Holding babies feet and ankles press babies knees up towards belly, hold this position for 6 seconds.

With babies legs stretched flat again place hand on belly. Massage in a circular motion clockwise around belly button, do a full circle with one hand whilst doing semi circle above belly button with the other. Always in a clockwise direction. Repeat six times.

Repeat the knee lift.

It doesn't always work but often produces quite an impressive fart!

fen thankfully we've avoided all the floods, it's gloriously sunny here in Sydney.

loopy William's still really windy, and on occasion wakes up screaming. It's usually only bad in the evenings but we've tried everything we can think of.

So far what works for us is to hold him upright with his head and arms over your shoulder and walk up and down the stairs - the up and down movement seems to bring his burps up in record time. If we get fed up of going up and downstairs then I walk around the lounge doing lunges instead. Once he's burped I then switch to lying him flat at bringing his knees to his chest for 10 secs at a time - usually brings out some of the most impressive farts I've ever heard. Keep going in 10 second bursts until he stops farting. Once the farting's stopped then go back to the lunges and repeat as necessary until he's calm.

We've also started treating his early evening feed as a 2 person job, as this seems to be when he has most problems. I latch him on, and as soon as I hear him gulping and taking on air I take him off and DH burps him. I don't let him back near me until he's either burped or is completely calm. We keep repeating this until he latches on calmly, without gulping or going bright red and straining to fart/poo. It can mean it takes about 90mins to get him fed and settled, but he never ends up screaming in pain. I think this is only a reasonable option for me because he only has the one really windy period a day, not sure I could keep it up for every feed.

The other thing that was suggested to me, although not sure there's any evidence it actually works, is to drink a cup of peppermint tea 30 mins before feeding him. I tried it a couple of times and he did seem less windy, but he's pretty variable in how bad he is anyway.

His poos are pretty much the consistency of korma sauce. He seems to be getting into a pattern of only doing very small amounts for about 3 days, combined with an increase in his wind, then it all culminates in a massive poo explosion and a significant reduction in the wind before we start the cycle all over again.

My HV has promised me that the wind issues are just a developmental phase, that peaks at 6-8weeks and usually resolves by 12 weeks. I am clinging onto this, and the fact that with all the climbing stairs/lunging I'm doing my bum will be super toned, even if William is still windy

love the christmas outfit photo :)

hi all as i live in Belfast northern ireland i have been ithout water now for 2day fs.It is a nightmare everywere as sold out of bottled water and mine is running really low ,and ive had to buy the cartons of ready made formula which is costing me £4 a day,we cant get washed and r using baby wipes to get clean.They are giving out free water but the places are running out and they are to far away for me to get to .I am cracking up !Sorry for the rant but needed to vent.

Oh mumcha, you poor thing. Saw that on the news the other day, looks like a nightmare :(

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. Aino has enough stuffed animal toys to start her own zoo!
Ended up eating Christmas dinner one-handed which is what I predicted would happen I'm still finding bf a bit of a struggle, and can't see myself doing it beyond 6 months if I even get that far.

mumcha sorry to hear that. I hope they get it sorted out soon, really not what you need.

b00kw0rm i was thinking about baby James. Good to hear that you got him home for christmas.

kiwi I really hope that there is a solution for your daughter and that she doesn't have to suffer the discomfort for long.

Wishing everyone with sick babies, of cold themselves a swift recovery.

So sorry for you mumcha that must be awful! Thankfully we've been ok here, although my husband went into his office today to discover water completely covering the floor throughout due to a broken pipe. Hope the situation with the water supply where you are is sorted out really soon!

To cardi just a bit of encouragement, breastfeeding a 6 month old baby is sooo much easier than a newborn! By then you'll both be experts. :) hope you can hang in there, it really gets easier after the first couple months I promise! I did have to eat some of Christmas dinner one handed, but not all of it. Skye is six weeks today and really getting the hang of the 5 minute boob draining feed with a lovely big belch after. . Sometimes she even makes a splat on the floor behind me! And lately she's gone from poo in every nappy to one GINORMOUS poo a day that leaks down her legs all over everything... Nice in a way as she is in cloth so one pooey nappy a day is easier than 6. Except for last night when she decided to do the poo at midnight! I forgave her though, as she then slept until 7:30 without a feed! :)

Hey all, hope you all had a fab christmas x

Had isaac weighed today, hes now 9lbs 6.5oz which is hard to believe as he is still in newborn clothes, think we have a shortie on our hands.

Also a heads up for anyone interested, Mothercare online have the bumbo seat plus tray on offer for £29.99 with free P+P.
The tray alone if normally £10

Hello all, it's been a while since I posted as I've just been too exhausted. How does anyone cope with a c-section for multiple DCs?!
Anya asleep upstairs so just taking the time (finally!) to catch up on internet things. Sorry, haven't read through all posts yet. Will catch up more later.

Is anyone else on combination feeding? Anya wasn't gaining weight fast enough, she was sometimes still hungry after feeding for 2-3 hours and I just didn't have enough milk for her yet so GP advised combination and she seems to be happy with that, but I want to try and increase my supply through expressing between feeds - any ideas on best times to do that?

That's timing, she's just woken up, time to go feed again. Hope everyone else is doing well.