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

Jenni363 how long is it since your EMCS? I'm longing to get back to dancing, but daren't do anything too soon as my scar has only recently stopped bleeding.

Harmony we use Pampers and I swear they smell faintly of peanut butter.

I had a very scary moment earlier. Anya was lying on my maternity cushion on my lap, having a break in feeding, and for a moment I think she stopped breathing. I'm not totally sure as of course I didn't stop and check, I just rocked her and patted her cheeks to make her respond, which she did. It was an instinctive thing, suddenly she had felt too light and still in my lap. She's asleep in her cot now, having been awake for a lot of the day, and I'm just terrified about going to sleep tonight. I'm not even sure she did stop breathing, something had just felt very wrong for a moment.

Comtessa Freya was born on 22nd November. I also had some problems with my scar and it was oozing.. puss.. and I had to go back to the hospital and I took 2 different antibiotics to finally heel. Its all good now although sometimes my tummy is still bit tender inside so I'm gonna take it easy at the gym to begin with.

Sorry to hear you had problems too! When was Anya born?

^ And that sounds very scary! Hope she's all good now! Mothers instinct aye.. Maybe just keep a close eye on her. x

Jenni363 I am not sure if it is a bad batch of Pampers? I hadn't noticed it until now and I've been using them since Aiden was born, but they really do smell of bacon when they are clean, it's not nice, I think I am going to work my way through this pack and then try another brand!

Comtessa Peanut butter - you must have a different flavour! It's so weird that they seem to smell like food!

Sleeping going better here, 8.5 hours last night and a nice lie in in the morning from 7 till 9:30am, as DP took eldest DS on his school trip! Aiden has been a bit grizzly today but I think it is due to his tooth coming through, I think it is just starting to cut, which is making him a right little grump. Doesn't seem to be affecting his sleeping though, thank-god!

DP has got an interview for a night shift job tonight so I am hoping he'll get that as it means he'll be awake/around for a bit of the afternoon and can spend a bit more time with me/Aiden, fingers crossed!

Arghhh! Lottie was up crying ALL night, Dh and I took shifts before finally giving calpol. I have no idea what was wrong, she seems fine, if a little tired, now . I'm feeling shattered and very grumpy! I think it was either tummy ache or teething. If teething we could be in for a hard couple of years. Dd1 wasn't great with teething but with Ds you wouldn't have even known a tooth was appearing. I fear poor Lottie will let us know loud and clear!

Ds has a rather boisterous friend coming to play later and I'm wondering if it's too rude to cancel, I just don't feel up to it.

. . . and Dh has just text to ask if he can go out to the pub tomorrow night, note he daren't ask me to my face .

Sorry to hear about your broken night hmmSleep. Hope things improve tonight - and cancellations of other things are definitely allowed when there's a small baby on the scene. Other parents should understand. Crikey - that's just hit me: I'm a parent..

Jenni363 Anya was born on 5th December, so I guess my healing time is probably about the same as yours. I've been on antibiotics twice too. In the past week or so I've been feeling better all the time, though, and far less tired than I was too. Let me know how you get on with your exercise please, it would be good to hear how you find it.

sarah I'm not so much scheduling William's sleep as just using a particular routine that's based on the average baby as a guide. My plan has always been to just follow his cues and go with the flow, but it turns out I've got zero maternal instincts and am completely unable to tell the difference between a tired baby and a hungry one

The routine I've been using is very popular here in Oz, and in typical Aussie laid back style it basically says the average baby will follow the pattern of awake times and nap times, but not all babies are average so don't worry if yours doesn't. Naptimes happen wherever you happen to be rather than being in bed or at home. To be honest, it's not really a routine at all as it's so flexible, but it's really helped me figure out sleeping and feeding, and Will seems much happier now I've done that.....probably because he's been trying to tell me what he wants all along

comtessa that sounds scary, hope Anya's ok

Poor William's been in the wars a bit....first I dropped him while putting him on his playmat, then DH did it too, then I trapped his leg in the straps for his swing Luckily he seems ok, but I think we're out of the running for parents of the year

Comtessa hope Anya is fine?

Haven't been to the gym yet as both Freya and I have a cold! Poor thing had her jabs on Wed and maybe we picked up something at the GP. Hate it there, always full of sick people! I'm feeling sorry for myself as all I want to do is curl up on the sofa with lemsip and trashy telly... But having a sick needy baby I don't have any time for myself.. And also while BF no Lemsip / Day Nurse / Strepsils! .

I'm going to check out the gym creche this w/e with DP. Hope they are more professional there as the reception is manned by snotty 18 year olds .

Bunny DP cut Freya's finger tip while clipping her nails! Poor poppet..

lol yeah I've had plenty of bad parent incidents... I put my 3 month old on the ottoman (poufe?) to take my 1 year old to the loo and 3 month old decided that was the very day and moment to learn how to roll over, and rolled off it, getting himself trapped between the ottoman and the wall! Thankfully he didn't actually fall onto the floor... And DS3 was hit by a flying wooden train once when he was in the bouncer. He spent very little time in the bouncer after that and never on the floor! And I definitely cut a little finger once or twice when clipping DS1's nails... One time my DH was changing DS2's nappy and gave the full one to DS1 (20 months old or so) to put in the bin, and he was so excited to be helping he went tearing out of the room, slipped on the wooden floor and crashed into the corner of the door, splitting open his forehead! Poor DH totally blamed himself for that... So far Skye has managed to be pretty injury free apart from once, BIL and his wife were over for a cuppa and Skye was in the bouncer while DS1, 2 and 3 were tidying up their toys in the living room, DS2 wasn't looking where he was going and tripped and SAT on Skye's face! Poor little thing, his trousers scraped her little forehead! I think SIL was much more traumatised than me (they have no children)...

WOW so much to catch up on, i lost the thread for a while but was given a link by rhinny :)

anyhow Merryn now 8wks old today, i just put her onto bottles as bfeeding was getting exhausting, she was such a fussy feeder as i had such a strong let down and she was getting so upset and only taking a little and then needing to be fed every hour, i tried all the self help stuff but i was tired, she was upset and i just thought ENOUGH.

she has settled really well on formula, easily goes 4 hrs between feeds and is sleeping really well, i almost feel human again. certainly makes life easier, esp with school run and all the clubs/activities i have to get the boys to!

so how is everyone?

re accidents when ds1 was a baby dp was carrying him and went through a doorway and hit his head on the doorframe!

ds2 got hit on the head by wooden train track as a baby and split his head open.

ds3 has had a broken foot and on friday ds4 split his head open!

we have also had dislocated elbows, poked eyes that required treatment at hospital, along with them trying to eat/drink stuff they shouldnt and various minor injuries, thats life with boys! but they are all fine, i did once get a check by the health visitors tho after we had three trips to A & E in quick succession

fingers crossed tho we havent had any injuries requiring A & E for a while, it helps that my mum is a nurse so i can just call her for advice

btw anyone with bottlefed babies how much formula are they taking and how big are they?

merry is 12lb 9oz but will only take 3oz at a feed, sometimes 4oz the packet (hipp organic) says she 'should' be having 5oz! but she seems very happy, is pooing/weeing and sleeping well, so i figure she is taking enough.

Welcome back 4madboys! Glad to hear Merryn has settled a bit now you've moved to formula. I'm still breastfeeding but am tempted to start giving the odd bottle of formula now that Lottie is 15 weeks. Dh booked me a surprise spa day for my birthday today which was lovely, but having to express milk prior to rushing out not great, would be much easier to just give formula on such occasions and hope it doesn't effect my supply.

Anybody else's hair falling out yet? Mine started a few days ago and is now coming out in big scary clumps. It happened after my other dcs were born too around this time and although I know it grows back it's still a bit . I hate the regrowth stage, last time I ended up having a frindge cut to try and blend in all the short fluffy new hair!

Hi 4mad nice to hear from you, glad everything's going well.

Happy birthday hmm . Bet your spa day was a welcome break after the sleepless nights. Is Lottie sleeping any better now?

We're just making our way out of a sleep fuddled couple of weeks. Norry's sleeping has been getting worse and worse since the beginning of the year and culminated last week in a 72 hour stretch where he fed (but a lot of it was just for comfort) every two hours. Argh! I put my foot down last night and insisted we do a proper bedtime routine so we tried pick-up put-down but with lots of cuddles and reassurance. It took 1.5 hours but he finally fell asleep without needing a feed and slept for 8 hours. Yay! I had to rock him a couple of times in the night but he dropped off again straight away. I'm going to make sure he gets some good naps in today and hopefully we can get back to 'normal', whatever that was :)

Hope Anya hasn't given you any more scares comtessa and that there have been no more little parenting accidents :) (hope DS4's head gets better soon 4mad )

jenni363 we're in the south of Germany. DH is half Finnish, half German, so he speaks German to Aino and I speak English. MIL sometimes speaks to her in Finnish and she also gets a bit of Welsh from my family. I hope she doesn't get confused.
We have actually skied in Finland, we went and did the Finlandia Hiihto followed by a hop over to Sweden for the Vasaloppet a few years ago.

4madboys nice to hear from you again, your house sounds so busy, I'm finding enough to do with just one baby!

hmmSleep hair isn't falling out but it doesn't look that great and my skin is terrible :(

I feel much better about Will's little scrapes now everyone else has confessed to theirs

He managed to injure himself this morning - poor thing rolled from his tummy to his back but dropped his head down a bit hard onto the wooden floor as he went. Hopefully he'll learn to be a bit more careful next time

4mad good to see you back. I don't know how you manage with 5 - one is more than enough for me. Glad Merryn is doing well-I would assume that if she's gaining weight and weeing and pooing then she's getting enough food regardless of what the formula packet says. I reckon that babies must all have different appetites just like adults do. Will certainly has his dad's huge appetite - he'll easily drink 150ml of EBM when we give him a bottle. This is probably how he's managed to go from the 25th to the 80th percentile and double his birthweight in 10 weeks

fen hope you get Norry's sleep back on track. Seems to be the thing they do at this age - plenty of us seem to have had similar problems over the last few weeks, and most of my mother's group have reported the same. Will seems much more settled since I started a proper routine - he seems to be a baby that thrives on knowing that things will happen in a certain order each day (which given that that's my personality too is hardly surprising)

hmm hope you had a good birthday. No hair loss for me yet, but it didn't go all thick and glossy while I was pg so don't think there's much scope for extra loss

We moved house at the weekend. Poor Will was a bit unsettled for the first couple of days - I was surprised he was so aware that we're in new surroundings. He's wanting to be held a lot, which I'm normally happy to do if he's feeling insecure, but it's been 38 degrees here the last 2 days so carrying another person constantly is a recipe for super sweatiness.

hi 4mad oliver is formula fed and 13 weeks ,he takes 7oz every3 hrs ,but when he was 8 weeks he was taking about 4 r 5 oz of hungry baby milk .

Cardi we've got English, German and French here, another one hoping LO doesn't get too confused.

bunny hope you're avoiding being blown away now, having missed the floods?!

hmm have you just posted in the "things they didn't tell you" thread? If so :(

Well, despite (or perhaps because of) my last post Norry seems to have remembered how to sleep :) The big thing for us now is getting him off to sleep. He won't feed to sleep any more but he'll cry and get upset for over an hour before dropping off (most of that hour spent in our arms or with us rocking the hammock and singing nursery rhymes). It's a bit fraught. Anybody have any tips or ideas of how to make it a bit more of a calm experience?

I hope it's a bit nicer at the moment in the UK. I wanted to go out for a walk later but it's misty and icy cold here. Better than the rain we had all weekend I suppose.

Fenouille, don't recognise that thread so must be someone else, must admit to being slightly intrigued now, hopefully nothing too .

Lottie's sleeping not much better. She's still feeding every 2-3 hours. She'll be 4 months in a couple of weeks and I'm contemplating introducing a bedtime bottle then. Has anybody decided what they're doing about weaning yet after the new research that has been reported recently? I spoke to HV who said the official line is still to wait until 6 months. Think I'll just see how things go and decide when the time comes if Lottie seems ready earlier or not.

That's a relief hmm as it was pretty upsetting. It was a message on "what they didn't tell you about labour". Pretty good thread to read in retrospect, but glad I didn't read it beforehand!

Sorry to hear Lottie's not sleeping better. I'm still not sure if we're back in a good rhythm with Norry but I did find trying first to rock him back to sleep and only feeding him if he really started being a bit more noisy helped break the cycle. When we entered our sleep hell I was just grabbing him as soon as I heard a noise and he would always have a suck but mostly for less than 5 minutes. In retrospect he didn't need or want a feed and will drop off again with a little encouragement. Oh goodness, I've jinxed myself for tonight haven't I?

I haven't decided about weaning yet. Earlier would be easier for us really as I'm going back to work at the beginning of March - today is officially my first day back at work but I've taken some extra leave. But if he's not ready I'm not going to force the issue. I found this document helpful although obviously haven't put anything into practise yet.

It's just started snowing here

Hello all,

Quick update from me as haven't posted for a few days. Finn slept through the night last night wohooo ( 10.30-09.30) he stirred at 4 and thought would test the is he hungry or not theory by putting in his as hadn't cried and he went straight back to sleep. In the end had to wake hima up at 9.30.

I am sure it's just a one off but am hopeful it might be the start of more consistent longer stretches of sleep. He has been taking less and less on his 3am feed over last week or so ( barely 20z compared with 4/5oz in the day)
He's currently asleep so chances of it occurring again are slim to none lol

Can't believe we are talking about weaning already time is flying. I have briefly thought about it and will just go with the flow but doubt will wait til 24 weeks before introducing tastes as imo it's important for banies to be introduced to as wide a range of tastes/ textures of foods as possible.

Not too many mishaps here so far except when visiting dps parents. Finn was asleep in playpen (currently used to store dps sisters toys). Fil decided to do some tidying up of said toys by flknging them in playpen. Needless to say he didn't realise finn was in there and a giant plastoc toy landed on his head and woke him up. Poor thing.

No noticeable harm thus far

fen we're well out of the way of the cyclone thankfully, we're just being slowly boiled alive in a mini heatwave. It's 33 today and it feels pleasantly cool compared with yesterdays 40 degrees!

Will seems to be doing similar to Norry. He feeds off to sleep but wakes after 10mins and then cries if I put him down but will sleep in my arms. I think our problem is that he wants to be swaddled to go off to sleep but have his arms free once he's down I tried pinning his arms down with my hands last night and it was pretty successful

Ha, we have to do that with Lottie too bunny , pin her arms down to stop her flailing until she's asleep and then she like to sleep with them up over her head.

Thanks for the tip bunny and hmm, we'll try that as Norry also likes to have his hands over his head while he sleeps.

Urgh, I feel for you on the heat front. We can get up to 40 degrees here too and it's just horrible. Hope you've got a pool you can jump in

posing so I cantry to atch up later!

fen if only we could afford a house with a pool. Our new next door neighbours have one though so am going to go round and introduce myself soon

I an effort to get back to my pre-pg level of fitness I went to mum and baby boot camp this morning. Don't think I'm going to be able to move tomorrow Will had a great time lying watching me, till he had his dummy stolen by an older baby - he needs to learn to defend himself

bunny not at all envious of your hot weather, the su is shining here today and should hit a high of 9, count em, degrees!

It seems the sleeping through the night thing was indeed a fluke. However we are now maing it from 10-30-5am before a feed is required. Shame i can't make the most of the extra sleep, my back has been agony for the last couple of weeks down my spine. Am wondering if it could be damage due to epidural?

Took Finn to get weighed for the first time in nearly 6 weeks and he is now over 13lbs Up to the 80th centile, can't believe it, be just does not stop growing and is v long.

Still no clue how long he is as never been measured but HV assured that when i go back she'll make sure they have measuring mat for me.

Off to Colchester to look for a house tomorrow, v nervous as there isn't a great deal of choice. Typical as there were so many lovely ones last month that have all gone.

Wish me luck