July 2010: Weaning's in full swing, the kitchen floor's covered in ming

[CakeandRoses]

And voila: our 6th postnatal thread... which neatly works out roughly one a month [maths genius emoticon]

Thanks ladies it really helps to come out the room every now and then and vent on here!

I tried humming to him and he very nearly closed his eyes but then he started grunting/crying again.

When he wakes up in the night what do i do? Ill feed him but then do I have to do this all over again?

Sorry I didnt read that post mlic, Ive got to do it in the night too, great!

Oh DH i have absolutly nothing to add advice wise just want to send u hugs and strength. Nothing lasts forever, this will be over, u are doing the right thing. x

The PUPD made him alot worse, us being in there made him worse.

We've left him to it now, we'll go back in after 10 mins.
He is one stubborn little thing!

mlic I need you to come round and do it for me!
I dont know how its going to go in the night, hes in our room and DP has work tomorrow. Hes cried for nearly 2 hours now.

Thanks viks I hope so!

I darent even breathe but I think hes asleep.

If he is its taken just under 2 hours, DP is in there with him, I think hes shhing him.

I don't know if this helps at all DH and I apologise profusely if I'm teaching how to suck eggs. If nothing else, I'd be interested in comparisons between my technique and others? I just kinda make stuff up as I go along with this whole baby care thing!

I have a chair in the nursery and after the nap/bedtime routine I sit silently with M in my arms to settle her. If she's wound up and/or fighting sleep, I sit her up a bit to start with and hum. Once she starts to settle, I recline her more in my arms until she's mostly asleep and laying horizontal. Then I attempt to carefully stand and put her in the cot.

If she stirs and squeaks as I set her down on the mattress, I freeze and stay leant over her for a few moments with my arms still underneath her. If she resettles, I carry on slowly extracting my arms. If she wakes and gets upset, I immediately lift her out again and go back to sitting silently until she's settled and I can try again.

The whole thing takes about 10-20 minutes and two set down attempts on an average day. But can work on the first time in 5 minutes on a good day and take an hour or so on bad ones.

At night now she settles pretty fast and I often put her down awake after her bottle to sleep, but I still have to follow the above routine for daytime naps as she will not self settle for them unless she's in the car or buggy.

I realise it's probably not the ideal way to do things... The nursery probably will give me the look and I have no idea how I'd cope with more than one child! But it works for me for now. :)

It might work with D? I don't like leaving M to cry, but I'm happy enough passively comforting her with a silent cuddle. I guess it's a variant on the Pick Up Put Down technique..?

Doh... I type too slowly! Guess my tactics won't help at all then... Sorry!

evening ladies,

cakes I have only been on the group to do my nosey at the gorgeous babies, sounds good about meet up. I will go on for a look

dh it's hard work. I was really lucky last night with R. She had bath then supper and bottle, some quiet time lying on our bed then just as she was falling asleep I put her into bed, same routine tonight. She stirred a couple of times but wasnt properly crying so I left her to it. She cried twice I gave her a hug till she was settled then put her down. Both time she was still awake but fell over quite quickly. The shh/patting was no good with her.

chulita and memphis I hope you'll both be coming to the big meet up?

viksam We eat later than R too but she has had our dinners such as spag bol, sweet and sour chicken, mince and potatoes, chicken and some fish. Some things I let her feed herself with and she has started to take the spoon off me to feed herself so I am obsessed with babywipes. I also give her toast and banana/cheese/spread which she loves.

tsc a well deserved lovely day

Anyone got plans for the weekend? We are going to friends on Saturday so should be fun. I had something to ask but have bloody forgot, wow baby brain or what! Will come back when I remember

DH, we tried PUPD with J but it made him worse (he screams louder and goes stiff as a board if/when you pick him up and still doesn't stop crying). I've found that he needs to be distracted to sleep. I let him roam around the cot until he starts to get upset.

Once he's at that stage, I lay him down and just rest a hand on his tummy and my arm across the top of his legs to stop him rolling and kicking. He then gets more upset, so I use a distraction to get him to stop, DH blows on his face, I either use his melody teddy or his cot mobile or tapping. I've found that the sound of shhing can make him worse, so much so it's like a competion to see who can be loudest.

I most useful thing I've found is having some kind of night light for him to stare at. Normally if I distract him, he'll stop crying and just stare at the light and then it's only a few minutes until he's asleep. All of the above was a routine which DH had to set in place so he broke the association of me, feeding and sleep.

actually spirael your technique is a good halfway house and obviously works well with M. i was wondering if dh might need to try something similar, i.e helping D to settle but not by bf.

and re nursery...F wouldn't nap at nursery for ages but they eventually worked out their own technique that worked with him

tsc happy birthday

dh I hope tonight goes well for you. We're hoping to get b's room decorated this weekend and then get her moved into it by the end of the week but she sleeps in a crib right next to me in bed at the moment and sometimes most nights she comes into bed with me. She's still feeding 3-4 times in the night as well so I'm crapping myself about moving her.

cakes I've replied to the meet up thread.

Still not heard from work they said they'd make a desision about my hours by the end of this week I'm hopeing that no news is good news

mlic i'm trying to work out if A is waking up for feeds due to hunger or habit or maybe a combo. she's teething with the second bottom tooth at the mo so i'm waiting til that arrives and seeing if she starts to sleep for longer periods again, if not, we'll have to encourage her to drop a night feed.

i find it hard to be strict with her re night feeds as she's actually a good sleeper - goes down easily and generally only wakes for a feed (or occasionally with wind/teething pain) so it's hard to convince myself that she's waking for a feed she doesn't need iyswim.

it was easier in a funny way with F as he was such a crap sleeper i knew i had to be tough to ever get him to drop feeds and sleep longer.

cakes I'm exactly the same, J might be up and down a lot but he does it quickly and efficiently which makes it hard for me to believe he doesn't need what he's asking for.

Yep, G usually has one night feed, usually about 3am, she drinks quite a lot (which makes me think she still needs it) but it's reasonably quick (about 10 minutes) and then she just goes straight back to sleep.

From memory, A did this till about 10 months and then started "properly" sleeping through. At the moment I don't want to swap one quiet, easy 10 minute wake-up a night for a lot of sitting by a cot doing ssh-pat or PUPD.

Different for every baby though, we all have to decide what works best at what stage for our dcs.

exactly wss and hotg - the wakeup/s are bearable at the mo because it's so quick and makes me think she's not doing it for comfort.

wish me luck everyone - starting potty training tomo!

we're trying the one-day method - has anyone tried that with their older one?

I don't know what the one-day method is cake

We just did the "wear nothing on the botttom half for a few days and hope for the best" method. I didn't stay in all the time though - we had trips to the park but made them quite short ones and timed it so we left immediately after she had done a wee (working on the theory she wouldn't need another one for at least an hour or so).

It took about 3 days I think for the general concept to sink in. There were still accidents after those 3 days of course but far fewer.

Heaps of praise and a chocolate button every time she did something on the potty - worked a treat for us.

this kind of summarises the one-day method.

My step-mother used it to great success years ago with her two boys and told me about it even before I had F!

it's pretty full-on for a day but is meant to be pretty easy after that.

i'm nervous about going out after tomo tho. we go out lots to cafes etc and i'm not sure whether i'll rely on finding a loo quickly or take a potty everywhere as some friends have.

eek!

I didn't generally take a potty out with us. I usually went to outdoor places where there were public toilets or, if we couldn't find one, we ended up doing "wees in the trees" .

Easier for me in a NZ summer than the end of a UK winter though (the going to outdoors places thing)

I think once they're ready they'll get it pretty quickly whichever way you do it. I know someone who did it at 20 months but just ended up with 6 months more of wet clothes to wash. A was about 2.4 or 2.5 but I only did it then to try to get it done before G was born.

i did wss's method, boys love weeing outside. When mum was potty training my sis (shes ten yrs younger than me) my aunt and i had her in the city centre, she was desperate for a wee so we took her up a side street and did the hover over a stank and she followed on with a poo lol

Would you credit it dd is sleeping great only moaned for dummy and i cant sleep. Nodded off for ten mins at tea time and its knocked my whole night. Better go try and sleep.

DH what happened? what was ur night like?was he asleep when u posted last night? Reading the discussion re potty training puts the sleeping thing into perspective for me a bit. I guess its just another thing we have to help them to learn. Potty training doesnt sound fun though. Do we not want to discuss the meeting on here? I can never find that FB group easily. So is it not in London any more? Have we heard from Needles lately?
Off to work in a bit, leaving Devon with his dad, i hope they have a good day, i have had to write out his routine, i just hope it goes smoothly as he wont want to do it again!