*~*~* August 2010 *~*~* where does the time go?

[CherryPie3]

Only 5 spaces left on the old thread - wonder how long it'll take us to fill ths one up?

Happy chatting :)

Yeah, I think you're right about that. It stretches on so long, doesn't it, when you've got specific dates, and nothing goes on at the beginning anyway in terms of scans and other exciting stuff.

Woodlands hopefully your low key day will be lovely anyway.

Can't remember if I posted this last week or not but, thanks to the sleep consultant, Eli has started sleeping through the night!! Four nights this week, and two nights in a row now. I'm absolutely over the moon! Really feel like I'm coming back to the land of the living. What a difference a night's sleep makes!

yay chulita so happy for you.

We've just been away for a few days at PILs new house (with swimming pool!!!). Was lovely except fri night when J woke every hour, screamed a lot and wouldn't settle. I felt so bad in the morning cos everyone was knackered, but he had a new tooth to show for it so that's something.

nat that's brilliant :)

Happy birthday to J woodlands. I hope you have a really nice day and the party in a couple of weeks is lots of fun. Still over 6 weeks til my J's birthday but I'm sure it'll come round quickly. How fast they grow

Wow, lots to congratulate people on! chulita fantastic news, I think you're a teeny a bit crazy but equally I do feel very nostalgic about those early days. Not so much about the morning sickness.
nat that's fantastic about the sleep consultant, did they give you any tips on early wakings? We're very hit and miss at the moment, she woke 6am ish the last couple of days but we had some 5.20am wakings last week...
Happy birthday to J, woodlands, sorry you're both off colour but sounds like the christening etc will be really good fun. E's christening was a really lovely day. We're planning a very low key party, we've invited a few people over and if lots of people want to come, we're going to do a picnic in the park, if it's less we'll have one here. There will probably be a couple of other babies, but not loads I don't think.
When has everyone else got birthdays? E will be one on August 21.

Nat great news about Eli sleeping more, bet you feel great now after lots of sleep. fingers x that it continues and you can rejin the land of the living full time

Woodlands happy birthday to J. Gosh 1 year, dosn't the time just fly by, the party and christening sounds just perfect. Hope you have a wonderful day.

Belly My Thomas is also 1 on 21 August, we are having a small party just a few of his friends from nursery and some family over. Ordered a number 1 cake for him, OMG how pricey are they , however, unsure as to what to do at the party as they won't be doing any games yet, think its more for us adults really and photo opportunities.

Hope J and Woodlands feel better soon.

Marzi Yah on the new tooth

Take care all xx

Belly - there was no magic bullet for early wakings. He was doing about 7pm - 4am/5am after we started the sleep training. Then the sleep consultant said it was all about tweaking. So I do a dream feed (I know I know!!) before I go to bed to MAKE SURE that he's not going to wake up hungry. I'm going to drop it in the next few weeks because, Lord knows, I do not have a newborn.

We also made his room much darker by pinning up sheets behind his curtains. Because the bloody John Lewis blackout material has not blocked much of the light out at all. This, I think, has really made the difference. I often hear him wake up (on the monitor) at about 5ish and grumble for a bit, but he has been going routinely back to sleep now until about 6.45. He did 7.15 today! And that's our forth day of sleeping through in a row.

Nat glad the sleeping is continuing to get better.

Thomas has just started to act oddly at bedtime . He has always gone to bed with little or no fuss, but the last 2 weeks he has been screaming his head off, proper crying and taking ages to settle. Not sure of any reasons, I check for teething, nappy, wind etc, but find nothing wrong. Just finding it odd and stressful as he has never been like this before. Is anyone else experiencing this or something similar? Hope it is just a phase as I hate hearing him crying/screaming and I hate to think that he is in pain and I don't know what to do about it.

Hope everyone else is well, take care xx

Dunno, Dogwalker - I'm finding Eli is throwing proper tantrums at the moment. He gets furious (with tears and kicking) if I take things off him, when I change his clothes/nappy... He seems to be asserting his independence in lots of ways. Do you think it could be similar, or do you think there's something else bothering Thomas?

Not sure at all, i snuck home from work early today. Thomas normally sleeps between 1 and 3 and I got home at 4.20 and he was in bed. The au pair said that he had only just gone down , which is why he was still in bed. Hope that is the case and it's not that she keeps him in his cot most of the time, which is why he doesn't want to go there at night. Oh how I wish my Mum was still here [wishful emoticon]

Hmm - could be just a one-off? I dunno, I wouldn't want Eli going down to sleep at 4ish though. A cat nap in a pram, maybe, but not a proper sleep. It's far too late in the day. Can you have a chat with her? I think it's okay to ask how his naps are going, as you're having such a hard time getting him down at night. I'm sure she's not keeping him in his cot most of the time.

Good idea Nat, I will ask her about his daytime naps, I think there is probably a reasonable explanation and he is just going through a phase. Thanks

I definitely wouldn't want S going to sleep at 4pm, that would throw him right off sleep-wise. I hope, like you said, she's not just popping him in bed so she can have time to herself... They do go through odd phases though so maybe it's just one of those.

I'm dreading the 1st trimester exhaustion kicking in, S is still usually up before half 5... gutted there's no magic bullet

Congrats chulita amazing news!! Ah I am nostalgic for the prego days....this time last year and all that. I'm going back to work August 31 and in order to qualify for the company's enhanced maternity package (18 weeks full pay) I need a year between maternity leaves so we could fesibly start TTC at the end of the year so i could leave again in a year!

S is doing well, 6 teeth now and proudly stands unaided so i think walking won't be too far away. She and I are visiting my brother and his family in Texas next month for 10 days and I am DREADING the 10 hour flight with her as she is such a restless minx. She's done plenty of short hops across to Ireland with me but nothing long haul - any tips? It's a day time flight.

Similiar to some of you, S has suddenly become a bit of a handful - goes ballistic if I take things from her, wiggles through nappy changes and screams as if I were murdering her - I am in a total sweat afterwards! And night time has also become very difficult to put down. Last night was awful, she woke up every hour so I am exhausted but she's now been asleep for almost 3 hours! Is there a sleep regression around this age? Of course it could be teeth but she seems generally cheerful and not acting like she is in pain.

Yawn.....

Oh yes I know that feeling LCR, Thomas had me awake from half past midnight and he's at home now sleeping, whilst I'm at work, suffering [yawn, yours was cathcing]

I really don't know what's wrong with him, but he was screaming so badly that I couldn't get him back in his cot. Hope it is just a phase he is going through. Spoke to aupair, who was obviously aware that Thomas didn't sleep much and asked that he stuck to his 1 -3 pm sleep schedule so that it might prevent him from being awake tonight. So fingers x that it was just because he had a late sleep yesterday.

Chulita oh yeah the exhaustion, remember that well, good luck, hope it doesn't kick in too soon.

Hope everyone is well, take care xx

Hi all, E has been difficult to settle the last couple of days too - screaming after her last feed when I put her down. This morning she wokr at 4.30am so I fed her and put her back to bed then she slept til 7.30 - which put all her naps out of whack and she was again really difficult to settle. Sounds like a few of us are going through the same thing...

We have a crazy weekend ahead - I got last minute festival tickets through work and have been trying to work out the logistics. Including buying a tent big enough for us all, which my dh is hopefully doing as we sleep. The ,ost exciting/ scary aspect is that becayuse we both want to see bands late tomorrow night, my sister has offered to have E at hers (35 mins from festival site) all night! It will be our 1st night without her. Am excited, but wish we'd had a bit more time to plan it all properly.

Wow Belly a night without the LO, I've not had a night away yet either, so can understand why you want to plan it with military precision. Hope you enjoy the festival and go for it, take up the offer, it's not like we don't deserve a bit of fun time.

Got to the bottom of Thomas's crying and not sleeping. Thomas has not been needing his morning sleeps a lately, which is normal, he's grown out of that, but the au pair, was worried and so when she put him in his oct at 1.30 pm for his 2 hours, she was leaving him until he woke up on his own, even if that meant he slept til 5pm. So when I was putting him to bed at 7.30, he was crying and I think that was his way of telling "Hey Mum I've only just got up" and then he wasn't sleeping all night as he's already had loads of sleep through the day.

Au pair now updated and told not to worry about him not taking his morning sleep, but that she must wake him after his 2 hours in the afternoon, hopefully that will get things back to normal

sorry about long post. Hope everyone is well.

That's good that you've got to the bottom of it dogwalker, sounds like it will be easily resolved.

belly how did it go? We haven't had a night without J yet, can't see it happening for a while but it would be nice!

I had a bad mummy moment yesterday I let J play with a tub of pills while I was washing up cos they made a nice rattly noise but the lid came of and I looked down to see him with a handful in his mouth They were only lecithin capsules (a dietary supplement) so not drugs, but still I was a bit panicked. I fished what I could out of his mouth and then rang the doctor who reckoned it wouldn't do any harm (phew) but I'm going to be more careful with what I let him play with now!

In other news, we exchanged contracts on our house yesterday so will be moving in 3-4 weeks. Eek! Very exciting but slightly stressful too.

LCR SNAP! We're going back to work the same day. It's the day after Eli's birthday, so I hope I don't get too weepy or anything. I think the first month or so are going to be very quiet as my boss sounds like she has no plan for what I'm going to be doing, and she works in another office, so it's not like I can pester her all the time for tasks. Hmm. I'm either going to love having lots of online/email time or be weeping in the toilets because I miss E so much.

Oops - E has woken up a-bloody-gain from his morning nap, better go. More later!

Marzi congrats on the exchange of contracts, exciting stuff.

I'm not doing too well. I had to put my beautiful, gorgeous, 15 year old Tessa dog to sleep yesterday and its broken my heart . Thomas has been looking for her and he noramlly throws food down for her during meal time, which he kept on doing yesterday and then shouting because she didn't come running like she normlly would to eat it all up. She kept him amused during meal times. My DH is in Germany, if ever there had been a moment when I needed a hug.

Feel so guilty, as the last 3 months I've been juggling work and Thomas and feel that maybe I didn't have enough Tessa time. Sorry this is a pnats post. Hope everyone is having a better weekend than me.

:( :( :(

so sorry dogwalker, losing a pet is horrible. Lovely to think that T bonded with her though, maybe he will remember her when he's a bit bigger.

Well, it's been extremely eventful - on the way to the festival the car almost went kaput so we've been constantly on tenterhooks that it would just fizzle out. When we got to my sister's she REALLY took against my brother in law - who she's spent plenty of time with in the past - and was clinging onto me for dear life. Thought things were going to get interesting... Then at the festival site I lost my wedding ring as I've lost so much weight it literally slipped off my finger.

Fortunately, E slept at my sisters til 6.45 and was absolutely fine until we picked her up, the ring turned up and the festival was great. On Saturday E stayed up with us til about 10 with baby ear defenders, then we went back to the tent and with minimal protest slept til 6.50. Yay! On the less positive side, every single nappy change this weekend has been a major battle complete with screaming, and she has taken to arching herself rigid and crying when we try and strap her into the pushchair. Not so good...

hello, anybody out there?

I'm here! Hugs dogwalker that is so sad, I still well up thinking back to childhood pets. Congrats marzi and good luck with the move. Glad the festie went well belly am sorry we didn't make one this summer.

For those of you still bfing, how long do you plan to continue and how do we stop? S only feeds on waking up and before going to bed now and I am back to work next month so I am thinking about stopping - how to do it? I am totoally open to feeding longer but I met with some friends of mine at the weekend, both of whom are still feeding their 18 months old but are having great difficulty weaning them off the breast, they feel they have missed the window? So I wondered about weaning her sooner rather than later while she is still that little bit younger rather than a forceful toddler. any thoughts?

Hmm, interesting to hear that LCR. Firstly, how much is everyone else feeding these days (boob/bottle, I mean)? I've sort of kept going with a pre-breakfast feed, a mid-morning feed, a mid-afternoon feed and a pre-bed feed. They've got pretty short, and our nanny starts next week, so I'm trying to switch E to having milk from his sippy cup for the mid-morning and mid-afternoon feeds. Yesterday he had a good amount in the morning, today barely anything. I'm worried he's going to end up hungry... he didn't eat more for lunch than normal. But perhaps I'm overestimating the amount of milk he's now taking in at the feeds and maybe he doesn't need milk between meals anyway?? (Although my NCT friends all seem to be giving their babies loads of milk).

But anyway, LCR, sorry for the slight hijack there. I think I'm going to keep going with the morning and night feeds for a while after going back and just sort of play it by ear. One of my NCT friends found that her baby just didn't really want the boob anymore once he got used to her going back to work and not feeding at any time other than the mornings. It was more trouble to breastfeed him than not, so she dropped it. Otherwise, my plan currently is to drop the mid-morning feed and replace with formula (hopefully, anyway), then in two weeks, drop the mid-afternoon feed and replace with formula. I can tell my boobs are a bit full from not doing the morning feed, but it's not very uncomfortable and I think dropping one feed at a time should get my body used to it without worrying about mastitis or anything like that.

Dogwalker Really sorry to hear your sad news. I think you're doing brilliantly with your DH away at the moment. Big hug.

Belly WOW! Could have been quite dramatic, eh? But sounds like it all came good in the end. We're off to Green Man at the end of August, so hoping that we have similar luck in the sleep department!

S has 2 breastfeeds a day and during the day I offer water and sometimes cow's milk from a sippy cup. I've been assured by health visitors that this is plenty as long as she enjoys a varied diet with plenty of calcium rich foods and she is certainly thriving. So nat I'm sure E will be totally fine if you drop to just two feeds. S eats like a horse so I am confident that she isn't deprived in any way and she has remained on the 75th centile since birth. How is E's appetite? I shoudn't think that you would need to offer formula, cow's milk is fine at this age.

Hello, just marking place :) (this is Alice/supersonicdave BTW)