August 2010 - new thread ladies!

[Chulita]

New thread cos we've nearly filled the last one!

If any of you have an I phone download the words with friends free app it's like scrabble my name on it is shearer4 it's very good to pass the time in night feeds!

lol cazzy, i read your post as 'if you want to meet up with some friendly, chatty, well behaved kids...' and thought wow F is chatting already?!

Not sure if I'm going to be able to get out again today. Don't fancy driving and the snow is too deep to be easy for pram pushing. Oh well, another pretty good night from marzipanbaby so hopefully I can cope with whatever the day brings!

wish I had i phone gya, sounds fun

lol weehector I think Toysrus were doing you a favour, Barbie Fashion Fairytale Carriage sounds a montrously girly item I'm all for a bit of pink but I'm dreading the 'if it's not pink I'm not wearing it' stage if L ever gets there like her mum did I'm doing online shopping this year after my attempt yesterday, spent an hour wandering town, found one thing for my nephew that I now want to keep for S and got home to find S had fallen apart cos I hadn't fed him for 2.5 hours.

Any ideas what you can do for croup? L's got croup and S woke up with a cold - I think we're staying in today.

gya I said to dh yesterday that the only reason I'd want iphone was to while away the wee hours while feeding S...can't really justify it!

Morning ladies

Chulita how about steam? Never dealt with croup luckily.

Marzi last year i took DD round town on a sledge when we had all that snow, F too small this year though.....

Weehector YADNBU to firebomb toys r us but can you save the duplo

I am doing alright with christmas shopping actually, this is the first year i have felt the love for TKmaxx. It is at the end of our road and we cut through it to get into town, so i have been picking up bits every trip into town

F better last night, not great, but better. Ended up keeping him up in the evening instead of putting him to bed as he was asleep all day. Sleep at 9.45, woke for a feed at 1.30am, then again at 4am, then started grumping a bit at 4.55 so i ignored him(was just a bit of muttering and a little grizzle) and he settled back down until 5.20 when he got really grumpy.

Makes me want shout at those on FB who have as their status "...woke up at 5am, i am so exhausted, how can i get through the day?" Man up and grab a coffee!

Unexpected free day today due to the snow, so going to try to do a few bits round the house and maybe hit tkmaxx

I phones are a weeny bit addictive too ..
Always said I didn't want one now I can't put it down!

None of mine have had croup but I've heard the best thing is to get them in the bathroom with as much steam as you can manage.

As for the no snow here- it's definitely here now!

I want an iphone

hello ladies! just baked some festive biscuits, so help yourselves

thanks for the new thread chulita!

Right, all those suffering with extra-hungry, non-sleeping babies, I have something very reassuring to post!

..it's entirely normal! Not very helpful or practical, I know, but it made me feel a bit better when my friend (breastfeeding counsellor) sent me this:

Notes from a talk by Gill Rapley, compiled by Katharine Newman. Any errors are my responsibility, not Gill's.

Gill's talk looked at the reasons for weaning at 4 months - and demolished them.

Rationales given for starting purées at 4 months
Baby's weight gain is slowing; baby is waking at night after a period of `sleeping through'; baby appears interested when seeing older children/adults eating; baby has reached a certain set age/weight.

~ Slowing weight gain, and more night waking are characteristic of 4-month-old babies, whether they are being exclusively milk-fed or being fed a mixture of milk and purées, i.e. slowing gain and increased alertness at 4 months are normal developments irrespective of feeding mode. These developments are markers of being 4 months old, not of being ready for solids.
~ Interest in others eating is interest in copying what they are doing, not hunger (a pre-solids baby cannot have associations between meals and having hunger satisfied ? a milk-fed baby knows milk satisfies hunger, s/he cannot yet know that anything else does).
~ Texts are dependent on conventions at date when written ? at various times (60's, 70's, 80's) they say give solids at 6 weeks, 3-4months, when baby weighs 12 / 14 lbs (what do you do about the baby who is born at 13 lb and puts on a pound in the first 10 days?!)

Meta-analysis by Naylor and Morrow (2001) showed convergence of maturation at 6 months ?

1. immunological (sufficiently developed to cope with non-milk foods that don't contain breastmilk's antibodies etc) ;
2. digestive (gut closure); and
3. oro-motor (ability to chew, move food around in mouth).

Developmental readiness for non-milk foods is at 6 months. The old 'signs of readiness' are actually signs of being 4 months old.

There's loads more info, so if you're interested PM me and I'll email it to you

Phew! mammoth post over.

Hugs to everyone that needs it [hands round hot chocolate with sneaky glug of Bailies and whipped cream, and mountain of flapjacks for milk production purposes]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Daniel - he is still sleeping 10pm-5am, then a feed then till 8am. DTs keep waking me at least once a night as well though!

Can't believe we are at 4mths already and the weaning debates begin! I started the DTs at 22wks cos I was exclusively BFing and they started to cluster feed all eve and I just couldn't go on any longer. They settled very quickly after starting food. I am going to try to get to 26wks with Daniel but play it by ear cos nothing magically happens at 26wks to make a baby ready for food, it's just better to wait as long as poss. I will lay my cards on the table now and say I am a puree fan. Finger food is great and we'll do that too but pure BLW (where the baby only eats what it can put it into its own mouth - no spoon-feeding at all) is not for me, I just don't see the evidence for it. I have read Gill Rapley's book and it seems all 'probably' and 'it's thought that'. There is no evidence to suggest that it is better for babies to only feed themselves. Each to their own, I'm not saying it's bad for babies to feed themselves, just that it's not better

That is interesting Blueberries i have been reading up on weaning too atm. I went about the whole thing wrong with DD - she was fine, but i kind of went by what i was told and didn't question it. This time i have been sent information on an allergy study/early weaning vs 6months etc and it has made me look more into it. Tbh, i am going to go with blw, when F starts taking food off our plates and putting it in his mouth then i will take that as an indication that he is ready

x posts neenz i am the same, i won't purely blw (quite simply i do not have all day to sit waiting for F to finish his food) but i will take that as an indication that he is ready, and then give purees as well.

I find it weird to think of our babies eating food! I have 1st March mentally pencilled in for starting (when he's 6mo) but might start a couple of weeks earlier if he's showing all the signs (not the old ones!) of being ready.

I managed to get out to baby massage through the snow and now I'm knackered. I nearly didn't make it to the end of our (short) road. Deep snow and prams do not mix! Think I'm stuck at home now til the snow starts to go. I could go out in the car but a bit nervous of driving in this with J in the car

Hi all, we have a bit of snow here but not a ridiculous amount. After what you said about prams marzi I think it will be sling all the way during the white stuff.

E is confusing me a bit at the moment. I was always told better naps means better night-time sleep, but of the last three days, on one day she had 2 crap 20min naps but slept 9pm til 6am with just a quick feed at 2am, the other two she had at least one good 3hr nap then slept rubbishly. Last night, it took until 10pm to get her to bed - that's after starting wind-down at 7pm with a bath... I think she just wasn't very tired, and conversely it seemed much harder to get her down when she was relatively happy and awake as opposed to crying but clearly tired.

Babies are a mystery.

blueberries how's the 30 day shred going? I've just ordered it :)

I did blw with DD and actually I think that true blw involves some spoonfeeding. DD started off wanting to eat chunks of stuff and then as she got older she'd sit and cry til one of us fed her. Then as she got older again she went back to feeding herself. She also loved yoghurts but refused to do it herself - but that's baby-led imo. I'll try the same with S but seeing as he seems to have a dairy intolerance anyway, waiting as long as poss would be best.

For those of you with short legs, what boots do you wear? DH wants me to get some leather boots to wear with skinny jeans but I just can't find a pair that don't come right up to my knees. I lost the receipt for the last pair I bought :( £90 down the drain (I was juggling both children when I 'tried' them on so I just bought thinking I'd return them when if they turned out to be too long)

ooooo, didn't mean to controversial there girlies, sorry! Just thought it was really interesting re the four months markers etc.

Anyway, by the sounds of it I'm planning on doing the same as you alice - blw but a bit of spoon action as and when it suits

chulita it was going really well last week for the first 3 days and then G refused to co-operate! Velcro baby, super hungry and teething. eek. Not conducive to letting me sweat like a mad thing for 20 minutes. But I did lose 2lbs! So, I'm going to do it when I can and aim for everday, but not beat myself up if life with a young baby gets in the way

Woohoo the dairy cow is back! moooooooo

Just had to get an extra bottle as was overflowing it has been such a worry.

Well done on 2lbs weightloss blueberries

weaning will always get mums talking! some cos they can't wait to start and others cos they never really want to. Tbh I'm enjoying the simplicity of just milk and the faff/mess of weaning can wait!
Glad you lost some weight though blueberries, am hoping to rope DH into doing it with me so we encourage each other to keep doing it.
alice well done on the milk! I rarely express these days so when I did this morning I only got 3oz but I'm not too bothered, it's only so we can go to a christmas do of DH's this friday while my mum watches the children. Bottles give S awful wind so I'd rather just not give them...

I need to get a bit of a store for saturday and 3 nights out in the next few weeks, plus i am donating any surplus to Addenbrooks, so like to express regularly. Since the bug a week ago i have felt so empty and could only express 1.5oz, then 3oz. F drinks a lot if he has it in a bottle, i think as he is seeking comfort really.

I think you are right about some people wanting to start weaning and some wanting to put it off. With DD i was always waiting for the next step (not helped by my sis having a DD 6months older than DD) but with DS i can't believe we have come this far already. This time round as well i know better to say i will do certain things at certain points because it just doesn't work like that. Going to get DS some weaning bits and bobs for his christmas stocking to bulk it out a bit and because he will need it soonish

Knackered this evening. Have decided i am going on a cooking strike. Today i made soup (well, cooked last night, blended today) that is so bad i have just put it in the freezer and prayed for a miracle, made toad in the hole that hasn't risen and set the smoke alarm off, just as my friend walked in the door. DD helped by saying to my friend "Mummy has burnt the dinner" gee thanks so pasta bake it is from now on and that is it

Hi, can I join you? My DS2 was born in august and I'd love to chat with some other mums at the same stage.

Do you have any rules or guidelines for this thread?

My top 3 things I am preoccupied about re DS2 are:

• How come in the last 2 weeks we've gone back to a feed sometime between 3 and 5am when before that he'd been sleeping thru till 6 or 7???

• DS2 has silent reflux and is on gaviscon and ranitiidne. The symptoms re-emerge from time to time and he is always unhappy at bedtime (crying in pain and discomfort after the big feed he insists on)

• My boys (DS1 is 3) are lovely and much loved and wanted but why do I get so fed up, teary and stressed so often since becoming a mum of 2?

Looking forward to nice chats with you all...

Hi all,

Welcome KatieTulip! No rules here, I don't think - we're a pretty no-holds-barred lot . Sympathy on the reflux (I think DS1 had it, and it was bloody awful for the first few months), and big ditto on your issue number 3 - every night when I go to bed I find myself vowing to be a nicer mummy tomorrow, because I'm finding it so hard to look after two of them at once, and I feel that they both suffer (DS1 gets snapped at, while DS2 gets plonked in his bouncy chair for hours on end, whereas with DS1 at that age I used to spend ages lavishing one-on-one attention on him).

Well, I've had a seriously crappy few days. DS1 came down with a horrible bug on Friday - GP has since diagnosed a chest infection, which could possibly be pneumonia . He didn't even have a cough until today, so I'm impressed that my doctor picked it up - since Friday his main symptoms have been massive, rapid fever spikes (up to about 104F) accompanied by shivering and confusion, plus occasional vomiting and total refusal to eat. I nearly ended up in A&E on Friday night because I just couldn't get his temperature down. Anyway, to cut a long story short, he's finally seemed a lot better today - no temperature to speak of, and he's more cheerful and beginning to eat again. On the downside, he's just developing a nasty cough (which the doctor predicted he would), so I'm expecting a few sleepless nights.

In other news... Someone asked a while ago whether my loft was finished (sorry, can't remember who!), which prompted me to finally upload a few phots onto my profile. We're so pleased with it - I've never had an ensuite before, and I LOVE it. Particularly since S went into his own room at the weekend (which was kind of happy and sad, but he's so bloody enormous that he's too big for his basket!), so it properly feels like our own room now.

Also, quick question - is anyone else finding their baby a bit harder to entertain these days? S has been quite difficult for the last week or two - whereas he used to sit for ages happily looking around him, he nows gets cross really quickly whatever you do with him. If he's on his back or in his chair he's always straining to lift his head up and then crying, but if you sit him up he flops about or just starts crying anyway; he looks like he wants to put things in his mouth, but if you help him to chew on something, he gets cross with that as well. It's getting me down a bit, because this was the age that DS1 started to get easier, so I'm a bit depressed that S is getting harder... I'm wondering whether the fact that he's got a cold is part of it, or whether maybe he's teething? On the plus side, he's terribly interactive now, and it's quite easy to make him laugh like a hyena when he's in a good mood.

Sorry for the long (and totally self-absorbed) post. I have been following everyone's updates, but no time to post recently. (I always used to go on MN while DS1 was looking at websites, but now that he's learnt to use the mouse/computer himself in the last few weeks, he refuses to let me sit with him now, so I don't get a look in ). I'm hoping to catch up with everyone properly soon. Right, it's dream feed time....

xx

Welcome katietulip...ha to rules! But we can be a fairly sweary, straight to the point bunch.

chulita im a short arse too and my winter boots are black, just below the knee from pied a terre a couple of years ago, that is when I'm not scuffing about in a pair of uggs with holes in them or converse.

Alice pasta bake sounds just lovely. I'm surprised you have time to cook anyway with all that milk gushing from your boobies...I'm very jealous but a very lazy girl when it comes to expressing with my pieceofcrap Tommy Tippee manual effort. If I ever do this again, I'm going to 'treat' myself to an electric Medela one.

Well, today I left A with his dad for 5hrs (DH goes back on shift tomorrow) whilst I raced to Glasgow, did a big Asda shop as we were down to 4 nappies and did 80% of the Christmas presents, including that pink Barbie junk for my niece(toysrus still sold out, boo but TKMaxx had it, yay!). DH coped fine but the words 'you had some time to yourself' were definitely mentioned. He did so well that I didn't have the heart to put him straight that I wasn't exactly getting my hair done/tootsies massaged or drinking wine with the girls....

elusive I'm finding A much more hard going physically & in terms of time at the moment. He seems to want up lots and do lots of bouncing. I'm hoping it gets better when he can sit up & play & we have had a good couple of days since my sister lent us her rainforest jumperoo. He loves it, my long term strategy is definitely tire the baby out.

I'm afraid I'm still burying my head in the sand re weaning. The breast feeding may be endless but I'm looking at the 6month mark on the horizon & just jogging along hoping that we get there without resorting to chucking the bf or whipping out the blender. We do have 2 Annabel Karmel weaning books though that we were given - is she ok or she in the GF to be avoided gang? Clueless again here...suspect weaning will be the last outing for my Judgey Pants. At the moment, it will be organic & home cooked all the way but that may go in Room 101 along with the no co-sleeping, no dummies, no baby wipes & no tv. I suspect Christmas, despite the lists to family will be less brio & stieff bears, more plastic guff too (yes, double standards too, I'll buy crap for my nieces but ask for wooden educational toys for A).

and cazzy get yourself an iPhone. They are a godsend in the middle of the night. I'd have gone mental if I hadn't had one over the last 6 months.

Hector get yourself on words with friends then! Yes I phone is the way forward for night feeds! Am considering downloading a book into mine though I'm not sure I can allow myself to do that.. Really love the smell and feel of a real book. Though they re a bit difficult to read in the dark

Welcome Katie yes it's difficult with more than one , I feel myself say to the dds all the time 'in a minute mummy just needs to sort the baby out..' then saying 'you're big girls' ffs they re only two and three!!

Off shopping today as it's Dh s birthday tomorrow and need to get on with the Xmas shopping too.

We have a friend who used to be my childminder when I was little and who is like a 3rd grandma to the girls who also conveniently lives walking distance to our nearest big shops so she ll have the girls for a bit whilst I shop

Did a body balance class last night and I'm really aching today- went there for circuit training which was cancelled so god knows what state I'd have been in if I'd done that!

K

Serious snow here! DH is on his way home to make sure he doesn't get stuck at work. I have a hospital appt tomorrow, getting there will be interesting

weehector AK is ok, but simplify things a bit instead of following her recipes. She is good for ideas, but seriously, making your own purees is easy, as long as you keep it simple. She would have you making 3 course meals for them

Wlcome Katie my ds is 15wks and my DD has just turned 3, i am definitely a worse parent now

Another crap night here, in my weaker moments (eg; the middle of the night) i have been tempted to start him on formula top ups. I know it is not the answer, but i need more sleep dammit!

Been to playgroup this morning, then for tea and cake, quick lunch at home, feeding F now, then on to ballet for DD, then to the horses.