December 2010 - Merry Christmas new babies!

[Chooster]

Hi, I couldn't see a post-natal thread but as we grow in numbers we'll need a place to chat!

All good here... Jude is now 5 days old and such a wonderful good baby. Mind you he must think he's been born in the Arctic as it was -16 outside this morning in Edinburgh. Brrrrrrr - Its not always this cold Jude .

How's everyone else getting on?

Welcome Heidicat

For ages Bob was rocked to sleep and then fed if he woke but now I seem to have also fallen into feeding him to sleep (at sevenish). I am now attempting not to feed him back to sleep if he wakes between 7 and 11 but still just shove a boob into his mouth any time after that.

I am starting to think ahead now, ie what happens when I put him into nursery. Do I need to get him to self settle? Should he be taking a cup for all his daytime feeds etc? He will take a cup and I managed to distract him for a whole hour by giving him water and bits of baked squash today but generally he still feeds every 3 - 4 hours from me. When I go back to work I will have the option of going over to feed him (creche is on site lucky me!) but really I think it will be far to disruptive for me and him if I do that so I will express in work instead I think. Does mean though that I will have to get him off the boob between 9 and 5.30 ... how does this happen? Is it just a natural progression from starting solids?

He's eating more each day, still just small spoonfulls of puree and lots of finger stuff.

No teeth yet but lots of grumbling and dribbling still.

Bob seems desparate to crawl but hasn't worked out that he needs to keep his head up and use his arms, so at the moment he's sticking his bum in the air, balancing on his toes and then falling over a lot! He's putting loads of effort into it so I don't think it will be long.

Good luck with the flight chooster

DF from experience last time round I tried going into bf DD at crèche and lasted 3 weeks before I was exhausted hence why Hugh was on ff before I went back to work this time - sorry might be easier for you

max sending you hugs, we lost one of ours on the weekend too, asleep under the raspberries and scared me and Bea when we were picking. found it really emotional, we haven't lost a chicken for a while.

Bea kinda drags herself around at the moment, can get her bum and shoulders to balance but prefers to slug about, and as she's drooling there are slug trails. :)

hello and welcome heidicat impressed with everyone's teeth, nothing here but drool and more drool.

Bea had a flower clip, a pretty pink and purple dress and being pushed in mum's pink buggy and she was mistaken for a boy. People are weird.

DF it's so astonishing watching them in the seesaw stage, their concentration and frustration.

lol steno no offence taken - they're defintiely pets - but we do enjoy eating their eggs

thanks kellestar

Thanks for all the nice welcomes, Natasha is another one who is not quite crawling yet, she can hold herself up on her hands and knees and can pull herself along on her tummy commando style but hasn't managed to put them together.

oh no! had my first, and hopefully only, baby falling out of bed experience today! He's fine and luckily the bed is quite low but he cried loads!

I have to take him to the paediatric surgery consultant to talk about him maybe having an mri scan as they were unable to find his undescended testicle with a normal scan :( I really want to delay it as long as possible as he would have to go under a general anaesthetic :(

hope all are good?

Hello all it's lovely to hear all the stories about wriggly babies! Life is suddenly much more active isn't it! M is another almost crawling but not quite. He's started cruising though and is desperate to be on his feet all the time.

Had a great week camping in Northumberland last week. M ate a lot of grass and sand though... Hope Barbados goes well Chooster, it's such a lovely place.

DF, ime I don't think you have to get them off the boob to match what will happen at nursery. If he's happy taking a cup then it should be fine. With dd I fed her myself when she was with me and expressed once a day at work.

Strix, sounds like you are the chilled out parent I aspire to be. I have to keep reminding myself not to wish away M's babyhood but to enjoy him as he is.

hey all been a chaotic but dull week, lots of check-ups for me. Finally teeth are all out and no more pain. YAY! though it was the most horrific dentistry experience I ever had at a teaching hospital. I know they've got to learn...but not on me :)

DF Bea is like a little lemming at the moment and she isn't learning from her leaping. She just leaps so quick, sat on my lap on the sofa playing with a toy and she suddenly turns and leaps straight off my lap onto the floor! . She's constantly trying to jump off the change table, you need both hands to hold her down. Started changing her on a muslin on the floor. I have bed guards installed just in case she does decide to roll out. The bed is so ridiculously high I struggle to get in!

Weaning is going well, but she's started to avoid the boob, she'd rather pinch the breast flesh rather than getting on with the nip, it's like handling an octopus, she wriggles constantly and has never been settled on the nip. Thinking we may have to move to the formula option. She does take water as well.

Commando crawling rather fast now. Got the layout of the downstairs now and we play hide and seek, she's really doing some damage to her tights now, if I put her in trousers they come off.

She's still weighing in just on the bottom line, I worry though as this is how my brother was before all the well meaning relatives stuffed him up, they thought Mum was underfeeding him. He's now 30 stones and has food issues. Well meaning relatives now say it's all mums fault as she overfed him as a child. My in laws are so bad with neice and nephew, they only get bad things at theirs, they buy it in to spoil them and they know it's bad, but their opinion is 'that's what grandparents do' hard when they live a few minutes away in the car and can't exclude Bea from seeing them.

Hi All, hope everyone's well.

Kellestar sounds like the teeth thing was painful - glad it's all over for you. I got sent a reminder well under the normal 6-7 months for a dental check up, but seeing as it's still free, I'm making the most of it and booked an appt. Re childrens weight, we went to 2 yo's birthday party last week. Matty was the youngest one there. I picked up quite a few of the older children during the course of the party and I swear every single one of them was lighter than Matty - I virtually threw a few of them in the air! IMHO I wouldn't worry too much about the actual weight - as long as your LO is growing and appears healthy, that's what matters.

DF welcome to the baby falling club - glad Bob's ok.

Matty's doing well. No real changes to report (still sitting but not crawling) but he's really enjoying his food. We've had a couple of days recently when he's decided it's not necessary to sleep during the day and as a result, I've had at least an hour of moaning/crying to contend with from 5pm - just as DH has been leaving for work .

Just checked my bank account to discover work has monumentally messed up my pay. This was the first month I'd get just SMP - instead, they've paid me over £2k - go figure. I hate this, as then you're left wondering how and when they'll sort it out. My pay slip hasn't arrived yet, so I can't establish exactly what they've paid me for.

One of my cats died on Friday morning - he collapsed as I was talking to him in the garden and by the time I'd got dressed so that I could take him to the vets, he'd died. Haven't got used to it yet, and another of my chickens seems a bit under the weather. I don't think I can take any more pet deaths/illnesses right now.

Oh Max, I am so sorry to hear about your cat :( my cat died when I was pregnant but I was able to let her go in an easier way as I had her put down. It must have been so awful to have him collapse in front of you like that.

Stupid work too. I seem to have gained £1000 in my pay packet, they sent me a letter confirming my re-start date with the higher annual figure on it. Not sure if I should tell them or just assume they know what they are doing!

Interesting to hear of the sleep changes too as Bob seems to be dropping naps here and there which is frustrating as I was getting lulled into thinking I could read him like a book.

kellestar I love the lemming comparison, Bob does that lurching too. He is an accident waiting to happen for sure.

hi all - back from our adventures! All great here, the holiday was utterly amazing! Beautiful hotel and beaches and the weather was gorgeous. Most importantly the kids were great and the older 2 made friends there so we hardly saw them during the day!. Thankfully all 3 were well behaved on the flight there and then slept pretty much all the way back through the night. All in all just wonderful and still benefitting from the jet lag so the kids are lying in til gone 9am. Phew!!!!!

Jude is now crawling like lightening so its stair gate time. I was in 2 minds about having one but with 2 other kids in the house there is just too much distraction so I need to feel safe putting him down on the floor upstairs.

Glad to hear all is well for most but sorry to hear about pets dying. Its horrible when that happens and upsetting .

DF - when you due back at work? My boss contacted me just before my hols about a return date, but recently heard that there are another 15,000 jobs going from my place so my dept will undoutdly be hit again. One of my colleagues thought it might be Nov / Dec this year so I'd like to go back after this - provided I still have a job. Sorry to hear about Bob's testicle - Are they concerned about it? Really hope its all ok for him.

Jude is still breastfeeding and is such a boob monster - he just loves his milk. Am afraid I've made a rod for my own back though as have feeding him to sleep and feeding him whenever he wakes in the night. I've tried to just cuddle him to sleep but he constantly nuzzles for the boob and I feel rotten denying him as he gets so upset. And then in the night I just bring him into bed now and feed him lying down and we both nod off. I'm just carrying on like this for now but I will have to change this as Jude will need to move into his own room soon. How did this happen!!! - its not like I've not done this baby stuff before and my older 2 were settled by now and sleeping through and in their own rooms. Wonder if I'm hanging on the Jude's baby days?

Hope all well!!!!

Hello girls,
wow it took me over 2 hours to catch up on the posts and they are sooo fun... babies growing, crawling, teething, falling off beds, ... :))
Sorry for the dead pets... :(
So let me give the updates about my girl, she is 23 lbs (99 percentile) and very tall (90 percentile)... she wears 1.5yr - 2 yr clothing and eats 3 times full bowl of solids every day + 3-4 bfing. She sleeps through the night since she was tiny but recently there has been couple of nights when she woke up (teething??). But most evenings she kills me before she falls asleep... we do strict bath and bed routine but still some times she just wants to sleep on my boob and when I transfer her to bed she screams and then she is awake an wants to play!! This is new too so I am hoping that it will go by... No sign of any teeth yet. No sign of any attempts for crawling. I don't think she will crawl. She is too fat to move around... She sits perfectly though and can stand up holding my hands... okay need to go and pick her up from nursery now. lovely to catch up with you and hope to come back soon for more chatting - life is manic since I have been back to work though and no time!!

By the way, we need a new thread... this thread is 8 months old and a giant!

Wow, can't believe your "little" girl was a preemie byaiw!

Not clever enough to start a new thread so am hoping someone wittier will take on the challenge.

I have discovered a cure for feeding to sleep - teeth! After keeping me up most of the night M decided the best cure for his itchy gums was to bite! After 2 days of this and some blood (me) and lots of tears (both of us) I was getting scared to even attempt feeding. Tried expressing but had to bin one lot of milk as it was completely pink. Anyway, things are getting better now, 48 hrs without a bite and better sleep means I'm feeling much more human again but I have to be very sure he wants milk before I'll risk a nipple anywhere near him...

It has really made me reflect on the horrors that some people go through in the early days of BF and how quickly it could have a serious effect on the bond with the baby...

glad you had a good holiday chooster, you sound really chilled out! I sympathise re the work situation. I'm due back in Feb but that is likely to coincide with a seond round of redundancies. Like you, I'd rather they had it sorted before I went back, but in all probability, I'll go back right in the middle of it all.

I'm suprised at how many 'giant' babies we seem to have on this thread! Matty's out of most of his 6-9 month clothes and at a guess is 21lb something. He was mistaken for a 1 yr old the other day. I think he may be having another growth spurt as he's slept loads today, but then again it might just be the heat.

Matty's learned to clap his hands - sooooo cute. We spend all day with DH, DD and I trying to get him to do it, our neighbours must think we're all insane.

DH and I had our mandatory 7mo baby row about life this evening (I remember this well from when DD was 7mo ). He started it though

the poorly chicken has perked up quite a bit so fingers crossed she'll be ok

Any ideas for a witty title for the new thread...

Weaning, Crawling & Toddling all over the place.

My wit is at an all time low. Keep wasting it on Bea.

weaning, crawling and falling off the bed?

will catch up on the thread and be back later, waves to all.

falling off the bed... yeah so relevant! She's started to cruise about now. Pulling up on anything and everything, so excited and proud &e&of herself and then forgets to hold on and falls over. So many bumps this weekend. MiL said I should head to A&E each time, just in case. I worried all weekend that I was a bad mum. I did keep an eye on her and checked for bruises and lumps and if she seemed out of sorts would have headed off to a&e.

Classic quote from DH: I read the manual, she shouldn't be doing this just yet, it says 10 months!

Feeling a bit grotty today, weaning seems to be working as my period returned today! PMS pains are definately different to what they were. I ache in my thighs and hips, where as before it was all in the back.

DH has mentioned #2, he seems keen to have two close-ish together. I am a little fluttery at this as part of me thinks, hell yeah lets get on with it. The sensible part says, what if your SPD comes back, can you cope with Bea walking etc... just stupid worries... anyone else thinking about #2.

Getting ready to watch Cherry's Parenting Dilemmas on BBC Three.

Hi all been absent for a while as find it hard to post long messages on the phone and don't really get on the computer much.

Hope everyone is ok after the past 3 days of trouble - whereever you are - be safe! It's times like these I am glad i live in the bottom end of nowhere - only shops they could loot round here are Greggs and The Edinburgh Woollen Mill
I am currently covering mine and my boss's job for the next few months so really busy at work. For some reason today though I cannot get motivated, I am on leave from Friday which will be the first time off snce I came back to work in April - definately need the break!
Good luck to those of you soon to go back to work, it's not too bad being away from the LO although I am lucky enough to work 5 mins from home. If you can try and get them sleeping through - Hugh is still up at least twice a night and no matter how good Dh is as SAHD he can't do the night thing as he just doesn't hear him so I am surviving on broken sleep, it is getting better - only 3 times last night and he settled really quickly, better than the wide awake for 2 hours from 3-5 we had last week!
Hugh has 2 teeth coming through, both front bottom row - he's very dribbly with it but other than that and the night waking seems fine with it.
He is mobile with forward crawling this week, was just doing reverse and circles but this week it suddenly clicked! We have put a stair gate at the top of the stairs and solved the falling off the bed thing - we don't put him on the bed unless one of us is with him whilst the other does what needs to be done. If I go for a shower he comes and sits on floor in bathroom with me etc.
We haven't had him weighed since early Jul but he was 22lb 6 then - due to be weighed tomorrow again, we only go once a month now as he is always 95-98th percentile. Last measured at 74cm height wise.
He is eating really well Breakfast - a weetabix; lunch veg, yoghurt and fruit and or biscuit; Dinner - still softened rusks as he loves them (just cut it down from 2 to 1 1/2 though) plus about 20 oz milk across day and night equally.
Still not really napping in the day - if he naps for more than an hour in the am he wont in the afternoon, if he doesn't nap in the morning he is too tired for lunch, has a big sleep in the afternoon and then won't settle as well at bedtime. I suspect much of this is to do with DH not sticking to a strict routine, when I am off on leave I may try to sort it out properly!

Max sorry to hear about your cat
Anyway better dash - must appear to be doing some work

Kellestar we're having lots of bumps here too, he's not cruising yet but is pulling up and then falling down. I think A&E is only really necessary if they are really distressed, drowsy or are sick.

I would like another baby but when I think about the cost (I would probably have to stop work and I don't want to) it seems impossible. Not to mention my age but my siser is 43 and pregnant naturally so who knows. DH was using the withdrawral method (TMI) but seems to have given up on that, though we're probably not having sex enough to have a baby. It would be amazing for me to get pregnant when I was unable to before despite trying really hard! My periods aren't back yet but I know that's no guarantee.

chooster I am back in work on 19th September, though I am planning on doing a lot of half days and using up my holiday! Bob is in the creche to do settling in the week before. I am still feeding him a lot although the last couple of days I have woken up with quite full boobs which usually means he hasn't had so much as usual. He seems to have mastered latching on while I nap which makes it so much easier. We are still co-sleeping but the mattress for his cot-bed arrived today so he is, as I speak, asleep in the cot for the first time. I am thinking of putting him in there for all his daytime naps and starting him off there in the evenings, though I have it pulled right up against my bed with one side down.

I always said I would have a baby out of my room by 6 months but it's easier said than done, particularly as DH still snores like crazy.

Wave to Becauseyouareinworld, maybe the waking is teething? Bob is dribbling and crying a lot and I noticed a small bit of white coming through today. He's also blowing raspberries now which seems really late as other babies in my ante-natal group did it ages ago!

good to hear that returning to work has been ok mrsSnaplegs I doubt I'll get bob sleeping through by the time I go back but who knows.
I am lucky too that I will only be a short walk away.

So who is going to start this new thread then

Good to hear from you MrsS enjoy your time off!

DF congrats on transferring Bob to his cot - how's it going?

Matty has cut his first tooth and a second is very visible, though not quite through yet. He's mastered getting to his hands and knees but no crawling (although DD didn't crawl so I wouldn't be suprised if he didn't either). Having said that, if you put him down anywhere, he manages to motor himself around using a combination of wriggling and rolling.

I'm not witty enough for a new thread title - I'll give it a bit of thought though I quite like choosters DH's quote - 'I read the manual, she shouldn't be doing this just yet' - what do you reckon for that as the new thread title?

I like that title!! I have no ability to be witty due to lack of sleep... Oh Jude, Jude, Jude - my little guy is still not sleeping well. I'm trying to get him to sleep without feeding to sleep but its not going great as I just cave in in the early hours when I'm knackered... I've dusted off my copy of the no cry sleep solution so I hope that may help me. He's such a lovely little baby but I just need to crack this part.

We've had a bit of a tricky week as 3 of us have had tummy bugs (not jude thankfully) and my mum's been in hospital all week with another bout of pneumonia. Ds1 back at school tomorrow and I dont feel ready at all. Not got all his bits ready yet.

Anyway, going to get some sleep... Hope Bob is happy in his cot DF!!

that's a great title!

Bob is back in the bed. He seems to think the cot is a good laugh so jst wants to play in it.

new thread here hope it's ok!