Totally's PostGrads- you know who you are II

[clareanna]

Totally's original thread was for TTC after MC. It continued long after Totally herself graduated, and is still going strong. Totally's grads was set up as a thread for pregnancy post MC - i.e. anyone who graduated from Totally's thread and anyone else who had experienced MC and was now pregnant. It, too, is still going strong.

Now, more and more of us have graduated from Totally's grads - including LouiseSH, whose Georgie was born asleep. I suppose that makes us postgrads. We have travelled together for a long time and would like to stay in touch, but the pregnancy post MC thread is starting to get very big, and I think it should be allowed to keep its focus on pregnancy post MC. May it be as wonderful a place for support for current "members" as it was for us.

So this thread is a place for us to keep in touch, share experiences, and provide support.

Waves to all will post tomorrow x

How was the camping Loopy? hope the weather was good.
Gilda sorry to hear you've been I'll, sounds nasty, hope you're feeling better now.
Muser, hooray for good nights sleep! How is the stuffy nose? Since I started using the saline spray I've seen a real difference in Little D.
Sadly, good nights sleeps are a long, distant memory in this house... It was every two hours again last night... and it's taking ages to settle her in the evening. I feel like things are getting worse not better. Not sure what to do really, other than ride it out and hope it's a phase? She had a three hour nap on me yesterday (luckily I had a book to hand!) and I was hopeful that might have helped her night sleep but no. Is four months too soon to be worrying about this? I can't remember the last time I had more than a three hour stretch of sleep.
It's been very quiet on here lately? Where is everyone... surely you don't have better things to do than come on MN?

Dorcas - 4 month sleep regression. Sounds like. Sorry.

You'll get through it... (feel for you)

We have a tooth peeking out!

10pm-6am. Get IN! Except I woke up soggy and with boobs like melons. Big hurty melons. Hope she goes back to sleep after this feed though. 6am is a bit of an early start. Especially for a baby who doesn't go to sleep until 10pm.

UPDATE: never got to hit post as she was back asleep by 6.20am and woke up at 8am. I hope this isn't just a one off!

Muser big big big congrats that's a fantastic sleep!!

Meita a tooth!!! wowsers!

Dorcas we had the EXACT same with little C.. it is 4 month sleep regression which I'd previously never heard of but C def had it, then had a cold, then was starving marving and currently rolling over in her sleep but all in all it's totally fine again now but it did take a while.. some nights she sleeps thru, some nights she wakes once or twice cos she rolls over and gets confused the poor little thing. I'm struggling a bit nap wise in that I don't know what to do but sure it's grand grand grand. She is such a little dote. I just saw a pregnancy picture of me there on the laptop when looking for something and like I can't believe that C was in side that belly of mine, incredible!

Yes on the 'it shall pass' regarding sleep regression. We've just survived the 9-months version of it. Found this one worse because at 4 months I. hadn't really been sleeping well, sleep regression or not, so it was just more of the same. This time it hit when I had just started to get used to some half-way decent sleep again...
But now we're on a pretty regular feed&bedtime at 7:30 (give or take), quick waking around midnight, waking to feed at 5am (moves to our bed), perhaps another quickie-feed at 6ish, awake for the day at 7/7:30 (with or without feed) schedule. Works well for me. Basically he sleeps about 11 hours, with one feed, but even that is only after 9.5 hours. Now if only I could get used to going to bed earlier, I'd have proper nights' sleep!

I am now an experience richer: I know what it feels like when a toothed baby bites on nipple. Ouch. Just hope he doesn't make a habit of that!

Gi1da hope you are feeling better!

Muser WTG!
HappyGirl time passes sooo fast doesn't it! Was looking at the c-section scar the other day, and wondering how they ever got a baby through there ;)

Loopy how are you finding the swimming? We love it! And we have some great underwater pics from it too...

Meita I'm with you on learning to go to bed earlier! I'm here on mumsnet when I promised myself I'd be in bed by 9.30 tonight as I'm just exhausted.. ohwell!

Waves good night to all and hope everyone has good sleeps

Aargh. Knew I shouldn't have posted about sleeping. Babies just love proving you wrong, don't they? Last night I. was up just about hourly from 2.30 onwards, and everytime refused to go back to sleep without feeding. Whatever happened to my easy sleeper?

Muser yay for your big sleep, but I'm
I'm with Dorcas, wondering when he's going to sleep through, only we're at nearly 5 months now...

I would now proceed to namecheck, but I'm just far too tired to remember everything else I meant to say...

But gotta love mumsnet for weaning advice... I got myself to ikea last week for a cheap as chips antilop high chair with lovely plastic cushion, it's like a small wraparound lilo that wedges him in comfortably upright.., so we've been playing with bits of banana and avocado. He appears to think it's just a game, he puts fistfuls to his mouth, licks them then throws them on the floor! But it's much more fun than purees... We tried that too but he prefers to take the spoon from me and wipe it all over his cheeks. But since he doesn't really need to eat yet I'm fine with it just being a game for now, and it keeps him from grizzling whilst I eat...

Don't be envious yet, she was back to waking at 1.30am last night.

I can't wait for weaning, Alba, I think it will be fun. If you're doing some spoon work give him his own spoon to hold as well. I know many people swear by that.

Oh yes, it is ALWAYS two spoons for us. And yes, weaning is fun. It is also a next step to independence. I found the first step to be when I. stopped being with me or DP all the time, i.e. when we started putting him to sleep in his cot rather than having him sleep on us in the evenings. It progresses from there... now he spends whole days at the CM's and basically doesn't 'need' me anymore because he has three meals a day, plus snacks, and would take formula from cups if I weren't around to BF. Already it makes me a bit melancholical!

Also agree weaning is fun, although toddler tantrums at not having all mummy's attention at meal times is NOT! It was v cute this evening though, we all had toast fingers, pieces of cheese, pear slices and yoghurt for tea (I had some of J's toast not the rest though!). Can't believe how big he is, 18lb already, have screwed up my wrists and am wearing supports from carrying him around... Yes, how DID he fit in there 6 months ago?

I envy anyone who gets nighttime sleep, although he's getting better - dreamfeed at 10ish and wakes between 4 and 5.30 for feeding, then up at 7ish if we're lucky. I love the dreamfeed though, all snuggly cuddles and makes me all sleeeepy and ready for bed - i feed him in our bed all curled up in my nighty and then have a nice big cudlde, put him down in his room and then zzzzzonk out (with any luck!!). It makes up for those grotty grizzly days of wailing baby and Terrible Twos somehow!

Loopy!! CAMPING??!?!?! with, erm, newborn!??!!?!??!?! [totally agog and in awe emoticon]

Hope sleeps go well for everyone tonight xx

hello all - back from the land of no wifi or mobile signal (lincolnshire coast) so just getting caught up.
gi1da how are you feeling now? sounds rotten - hope you are being well looked after?
loopy CAMPING?!!!
buffy how is the head rubbing going?

waves to everyone else!

We are good - DS2 STILL has sticky eyes, antib's merely changed the colour of the gunk... so back to the docs to get it looked at, really hope it does clear up by itself, DS1 had to have 3 ops on his tear duct.

Hi everyone . Have been lurking and not posting for a while as by the time I've read the posts I realise I really should be asleep! N currently having a nap so thought I could post.

On the sleep front I thought we had it cracked. Went to the cranial Osteopath and mentioned the night waking every 1.5 hrs- from the night after N slept from 9-4 for 5 nights in a row. Amazing. However, since mon night he's been really stuffy and so has been waking more again. Will see what tonight brings.

Loopy can't believe you went camping with a newborn AND 3 kids! I didn't want to visit family after 5 weeks!!

Thank you everyone for pointing out the four month regression thing to me. It is reassuring to know others have been through this. I feel a bit confused with all the baby advice at the moment- not on here but in RL, books etc. It doesn't help that when I mention to my NCT group that Mini D is waking every couple of hours the response is one of surprise/ raised eyebrows/ comments along the lines of "really?"... Makes me feel even more crap, like I am doing something very wrong. Only I don't really know what else I can do... She wakes, I nurse/comfort her, she goes back to sleep. I don't want to leave her to cry and to be honest I don't think it is unreasonable that she needs my help getting back to sleep. But then I start to doubt myself, every other baby in RL is apparently sleeping from seven till seven with just one or two feeds and... Aargh, I get myself in a right muddle about what I should or shouldn't be doing.
Sorry for rambling on, just needed to get that off my chest!
loopy, good to hear you survived camping!
Clare, welcome back to the world of t'internet, I was wondering why you'd gone so quiet!
Meita, hooray for the tooth but ouch for your
happy I too have nO idea what to do about naps. I experimented with trying to ensure Mini D had a decent lunchtime nap this week- got her to sleep for a couple of hours (on me, obviously!) and her nighttime sleeping got even worse! I keep reading about how babies are supposed to have three decent naps a day. Trouble is Mini D has clearly not been reading the same books...
northern and Muser, yay for the good nights sleeps- I am massively of course, but at least some of us are getting more sleep!
Unbuffy, sorry to hear about your baby-related wrist injury. It's bloody hard work carrying them round isn't it?
alba I feel your pain about the sleep. Will be thinking of you (and all the other sleep deprived mums) at 1am tonight. (and 3am, and 5am...etc) The weaning sounds fun though!
Phew, that was a mammoth post, sorry to anyone I missed out. Oh magic, hello ! Hope you are doing ok too!

Hi all there you are!!! Hope all s well ? I m fine dying of a cold and sore throat but GBOS fine . Will let u know any news re; sex in 2 weeks after my next scan xx

hello ladies o hope you're all well!

Louise I was so pleased to hear your news!

I was wondering if I could ask you ladies for some advise? I was hoping that the anxiety and mentalling would have calmed down by now but I'm 23 weeks and still v v anxious that it's all going to go wrong. I started a thread about it on the Pregnancy board and it's been suggested that I talk to my midwife in case it's antenatal depression so I'll definitely talk to her when I see her in a fortnight, but I was wondering if any of you experienced this too? If so, do you have any coping strategies I can borrow? I would really love to stop over-thinking all this and just enjoy being pregnant!!

Sorry for gatecrashing your thread!!

Sorry about typos-I blame my phone!!!

pink I would agree with loopy, I don't think there is anything anyone can say which will help stop the mentalising. Losing a baby is heartbreaking so of course you are going to be afraid of going through that pain again. For me the first twelve weeks were the worst, I had a small scare around 16 weeks which weirdly helped as I think that I thought the worst was going to happen again and it didn't. After that and once i could feel the baby move i did stop feeling quite so ill with the fear as i had done. But... I never ever relaxed about my pregnancy really and don't think I enjoyed it in the 'innocent' way that maybe I would have done without having had a mc. I think what I'm saying is that don't let your inability to fully enjoy this pregnancy become something for you to beat yourself up about. One thing that did help me was counselling, so maybe you could consider this if it feels like the anxiety is just too overwhelming. And just try and be gentle with yourself. Remember you're not really being 'mental' and crazy- you lost a baby and you're scared of it happening again, that's totally normal. I know it's hard to live with that level of stress but before you know it your baby will be here and you'll be joining us here to share tales of sleep deprivation and sore nipples

Big hug pink we've all been there and dorcas and loopy have given some great advice. Speaking to your mw is a good idea, just talking about your fears can help alot. I found the thread mantra " today I am pregnant" extremely helpful, if I found myself worrying about things that hadn't happened yet then I tried to put a mental stop to it- you can wear yourself out worrying about things that haven't / aren't happening! It is also good practice for when your baby arrives as the mentalling can take on a whole new dimension and it can be good practice to take control of your anxiety levels as best you can xx

Morning all...hope you don't mind me posting here a little early, but I'm hoping you ladies will understand...I'm 39 weeks and can't shift this sense of helplessness that it's not actually going to work out right.

The thing I found hardest about my mmc last year was that I had absolutely no idea anything was wrong....that I believed I was pregnant for 6 weeks longer than I was...that I trusted my body was doing what it should and that I could believe that no bleeding/cramping meant I was pregnant, but that wasn't the case.

Now as my EDD is getting closer instead of getting excited I'm getting more and more scared that I can't trust my body to do anything right....that something is going to go wrong. I can't put my finger on it, but I'm just getting really low and it's really annoying DH! He keeps saying "we'll have the baby here soon", but every day that passes just makes me more nervous that it's not going to happen. I had a weird thing ten days ago where I had a small gush of water (wet my pad and trousers with no smell) followed by branstons all day...got checked at the hospital and they think it might have been my hind waters and they've now sealed again, or something. Baby's head was 2/5 engaged, but is now back to being free (second baby) and every evening from about 5-11/12ish I get irregular branstons, mostly non-painful but a couple that hurrt across my back. All of this doesn't help as I'm left wondering whether my body even knows what it's meant to do anymore.

Flip I sound so silly and melodramatic!! Just wanted to share with ladies who hopefully will understand.

Hope you're enjoying your babies. I had a read through your thread and it cheered me up a bit remembering all the ups and downs of new babies. I think you're advice to pink actually resonates a bit with me too.

Hopefully see you 'properly' soon.

Hello all thank you soooo much for your advice, it is really helpful. Just seeing you guys on the other side is really confidence building. I had a really good chat with DH about it the other day and when we were talking about what, specifically, I'm worried about, I couldn't pin point it but I think it is feeling like the MC was horrible but totally out of my control, and that now there's a person relying in me to sense if there's something amiss and how am I going to know when I'm constantly mentalling that something's wrong. However, DH has very sensibly pointed out that in reality I have very little control over what happens in this pregnancy too and weirdly instead of stressing me out it's calmed me right down. That, and remembering that I'm exhausting myself worrying about something that hasnt happened and so I'm going to try and spend that energy on something more productive instead!!

Anyway sorry for early morning ramblings, just wanted to say a massive thank you for all your help and hope to be joining you in a few months' time! Xxx