April 2011 - cake-offing, gin-guzzling, wine-sipping, dreams of sleeping

[fraktious]

Thread 3!!!

Star we are lucky, my parents are brilliant with the boys and we've learnt to not hover and just let them get on with it!
I didn't get 12 hours, but I did get a stretch of 6 and then 2 and 1.5 which is more than I've had in months I think so feeling more human today
DH got up with DS1 at 7.45 and left me in bed which was nice, and actually what he does most weekend mornings.

MrsW - hope R is ok with the hanging about! Have a good trip

Chilli - yay!

I say well done you cycle he has no right to be grumpy!

mrsw what a nightmare. They so should gave let u through. Grrr

I like ur style buck

Ali

yay chilli

I'm happy to report S has taken to his cot now and last night we were back to routine. Just need him to start sleeping through the night now. He's done it a couple of times but not for ages. He only takes about 8 min feed now too. Should I be offering both boobs now perhaps? He used to take 16-20. He goes every three hours. Hv wasn't worried cos he's still gaining.

I'll happily rent DH out for training purposes! But we did have to have "the talk" at some point - where I pointed out that him making excuses as to why he couldn't spend 5 minutes with his son looked pretty pathetic. And since he gets back from work after F's in bed, he really needed to make the most of mornings.

He'll be in charge of mornings in a couple of weeks!

Well done Chilli! V. exciting. F is still a sausage: no rolling, just shouting to be moved.

We've been working the ring-sling back-carry the last couple of days. Can't manage it for long (not got the muscles yet!) but we're getting there.

Can't stop - I need to get this house ship-shape and pack up - off to see the family for a couple of days.

(need to get the cat in too, no point putting a timer feeder down if she's on the wrong side of the door!)

Eek, all this holiday talk reminds me we're flying Ryanair on Wednesday night and the flat is a tip! DP's brother is feeding the cats and may stay over as he's living at the parents after a break up. He's super lovely and won't care but I'm desperate to tidy a bit before we go.

Turns out DP has a tummy bug. I did the food shopping alone so he could nap and he's now working again. Sigh.

In better news, after three big poo nappies, H is a happier chappy, no rolling Chilli but he has discovered his toes and keeps attempting to grab them with sporadic success.

Sassy I keep having the same prob with my DP, we have a talk, he takes it on board for a few days and then back to normal. I think he thinks staying at home with the baby all day is a doddle !!

Ginger wow Exams, very impressive, i dont think id even know where to start nowadays to study !

Fizz How was swimming lessons, i really need to find some classes asap ! She loves splashing in her bath,so would love to see her in a pool.

JKS I think thats so wonderful of you to donate milk, id love to have enough to be able to do that.

MrsWajs Hope the wait went smoothly and you are now getting to relax in France with some cheese and wine !!

Cycle I did basically the same thing this morning, DI was up early today, tried to see if she would settle, DP just laid in bed and rolled over while she was starting to cry as if its my job to sort, but then told DP to go make her bottle and take her to lounge as im tired, its the first time ive ever done it and he actually didnt whinge so ill be doing that again !!!

Buck Excellant training, please send me the manuel !

chilli we had our first rollover without getting arms trapped too, i was so excited, i was clapping and cheering for her like a crazy woman.

DI has woken at 7am the past 2 mornings which is unusual for her, yesterday i had just come back to bed after expressing and really just wanted another hours sleep before the next express, DP just laid in bed as she stired, i got him to make a bottle and then he fell back to sleep as i fed her, which he could of offered to do and then laid in bed as she cried and i rocked her only to take her into the lounge and onto her bouncer, i was very naughty and left her watching Baby TV - (SKY Channel 623, my secret weapon, allows peaceful expressing, cooking, cleaning moments, etc) and fell asleep on sofa, when i woke up 45mind later she had dozed off and i got her back to bed. DP didnt seemed bothered that he didnt even offer to help, right Peed me off ! Hence making him do it this morning.

Then today he decides out of the blue he is going out to the pub this afternoon, i got really upset and cried, telling him he shouldnt just decided to go out as if he doesnt have the responsibilty of a baby, I said i dont just get up and say, ok im going out shopping for the day bye, and leave him, he said i could and he wouldnt mind, and i said i dont want to do that cause i have a child that needs looking after so cant just up and go without talking. He apoligised but still went out ! so been eating lots of chocolate to cheer myself up !

Also made him do the whole bath, feed, bed routine for practise next week when i have my first night out with my girlfriend !! Im so excited, we are going out for Japanese, will probably be back by 10pm, but im really looking forward to it !! I havent had sushi since before i got pregnant, might even have a glass of bubbly !

& my exciting news, we had full belly chuckling laughing last night, well DP got it when he was bathing her and i saw about a minute of it, it was so funny, really hard laughing, we were cracking up !! Been trying all day for a repeat performance, but its just smiles and quick "arr's" today. Hopefully she is saving it for bath time again !!

Ok, im finished expressing and can here DI stirring from her nap, so im off.

3 hour drive = 2 hours of screaming & 1/2 hr sleep. Flipping nightmare.

He's so wired now. Just done the full bedtime routine at DSis house, feeding him now and he's flapping and clawing at my top/boob/face. He's more likely to bite me than actually sleep.

Another long night before MIL tomorrow. Oh, flipping joy.

Aww, Buck. Good luck. Hope it's not as bad as you fear.

I think S is teething. Was fine thru the night. Fed at 330 then woke two hours later screaming but I think in his sleep. Calpol calmed him. Asleep on me now as he woke crying again when I put him down.

kitty, F did that yesterday, although a cuddle sorted him out. I think his was tummy ache tho.

He did eventually sleep, with only 1 wakeup! I now have mega-boob: got the pump with me, but no means of storage!

Need to leave for work in an hour. My stomach is all knotted :( DH is coming along with M as well just in case M won't take a bottle and has a full scaled meltdown. It's only 1,5 hours but it seems so symbolic IYSWIM.

Plus I could barely express anything and I'm out the house from 6.30-18.30 next Monday.

On the plus side the nanny has landed and seems lovely. She's just sleeping off the effects of her flight now :)

Oh Frak, hugs You will be fine, M will be fine.

Hopefully the expressing will improve. When I used to express for DS1 I used to mimic his suck as closely as possible with the pump, and swap sides frequently to encourage more let-down.

T is 21 weeks today! I do not know where the time has gone.

Thinking of you Frak and Buck. I'm sure M will be ok but I can understand why you're nervous. And I hope the MIL is ok Buck.

Not a great night, 8.30-12, 12.30-4 (but didn't get back to bed until 2 after falling asleep on the sofa with him ), he was then awake until 6 and managed an enormous poo he fell back asleep and managed to get him into the cot until 8. Fed him in the bed and snoozed until 9.

I feel ok because I managed to get him back in the cot after the two hours awake for him to poo though.

Frak hope today goes smoothly, will be thinking of you.

MrsW hope you are now safely in France eating croissants and enjoying your holiday. What a nightmare start to it. Buck that does not sound like much of a start to holiday either. Can only improve!

Possibly bizarre tummy things going on here too atm. S has had 2 poos in 2 days. Unheard of for her. She woke for 4 feeds last night but each was only a few minutes so no idea what is going on...as usual then !

Aussie I would have been furious if DH decided to bail last minute to the pub. I need plenty of mental preparation for him going out and leaving me with the 2 kiddies.

Yesterday I went out for a whole 4 hours without children! Bliss! And they survived just fine. Will have to make sure I do it more often.

Am a bit late in saying too, congrats on the toilet training front Ali! That gives me hope that maybe my DS will not be wearing nappies when he is 10. We're on a toilet training break since he is refusing to even try sitting on the potty or toilet so I figure it's time to back off and try again in a couple of weeks.

I got woken up this morning by a big fat spider crawling past my head . Still haven't found it either!

sassy! what a way to wake up!

Frak it'll be fine! Although I am glad I still can have another 6 months off, I would be exactly the same as you.

MrsWajs Enjoy your holiday! Cheese, wine and bagguettes, yum!!

All those with DH problems I feel for you. I think we are probably the oppodite here. Dh has always done the bulk of the housework, when we were both working full time. I;m finding it hard to adjust! I attempted some ironing the other week and burnt a hole in the board .

Today, we had our last Surestart new mums thingy. And we have just been preached at about what we eat, salt fat sugar how it's all bad for you and really all we should be eating is raw carrots washed down with water*. So over the last 6 weeks we have been told how we are likely to kill our babies int he home, with food, with drinks, the illnesses they will catch from other "unclean" children, how their teeth will rot beofre they've even come in. The only light releif came witht eh baby massage and we can even do harm withthat apparently. Why do they presume 1st time mums are stupid and will unwittingly place their babies in danger! Seriously, they even tried to say that leaving the bedroom window open in the nursery was a no no, incase the baby climbs out/baby snatchers climb in! I only kept going after the first week because it got me out the house! Next monday we are going to start coffee mornings instead, much better!

*this may be a slight over exaggerations :o

Wow Fizz, you'd think more babies would spontaneously combust if mums were that rubbish! I do occasionally feel like the vast majority of new mums get treated like their idiots because of the tiny silly minority.

Sassy - OMG! We have got a sonic repeller thing upstairs which seems to keep them away from upstairs. I must get another for downstairs because we had two massive ones on Friday. I am mega-phobic about them - anything up to 4cms or so I am ok, but any bigger than that I can't handle at all.

Aussie - I think you should go out and leave your DP with DI. Don't warn him, or plan for it (except making sure you've left milk :)) - just get up and go out for 4-5 hours. Then he will realise.

My DH isn't quite as good as yours Fizz He is brilliant with the boys but crap at housework. He will do stuff if I ask him to, but never cleans spontaneously unless it is to descale his coffee machine at inappropriate moments or something similarly annoying
He has always got up for both boys in the night though, and always does the morning shift at the weekend unless we both need to be up. He also knows that I would have his scalp if he disappeared to the pub at the weekend for hours without me

Ali I had to laugh, your DH sounds like mine. He will clean the coffee machine when it is pissing black water all over the bench because the drip tray has overflowed and he will dust his entertainment corner lovingly, but that's about it too without me asking. I have to say though that since having S my standards have significantly dropped and a lot of housework that I used to do I just haven't bothered with. Queue a LOT of dusty grim corners in my place at the moment

Ali - are we sharing the same dh?
Coffee machine - check
Cleaning at inappropriate times - check
Getting up in the night - check
Will clear up but only when told asked - check

What is it with doing things at inappropriate moments? It drives me nuts. He'll decide the kitchen floor needs mopping when I'm in the middle of cooking the evening meal, or some such scenario........

at the spider story. I bloody hate spiders and there have been harvest ones here recently

That Surestart thing sounds like it is run by divvies Fizzog.

Good luck today Frakk. All will be well.

I'm watching an old episode of House of Tiny Tearaways. I bloody love Tanya Byron.

Come to think of it Cycle there were 12 mums and babies(including the womans with 7 kids) at the start. Today there were only 6 of us! Haven't seen anything about exploding babies on the news though and I think that would make it to the 10 o'clock bulletin at least :o!

My friend has sent me a link to a baby sign language website, anyone done this beofre? Her DD is 8 months now and she says it's beginning to work. I'm a bit about it.

Was just watch ER it was the one where dr greene was diagnosed with his tumour floods of tears again, can I still blame hormones?

I tried baby sign with ds2, but he really didn't get on with it. Mostly because the teacher was shite and also because I would forget to do it and ds didn't show any interest either. However I do agree with the theory behind it and my friend used it a lot with her ds and he could really express himself with the signs before he learnt to talk.

I watched ER one night last week and Dr Green was starting to display symptoms. I vividly remember the episode where he dies, omg I was in floods. You probably can still blame hormones, but tbh becoming a parent makes you an emotional wreck.

Baby sign - thumbs up from me, did it with both boys and it was fab. We now use proper Makaton with DS2 as his SN sch use it all the time.

Ali - not sue if i said, well done. DS1 took ages to be dry at night, in fact we left him an extra week after i thought he was dry as we were going away somewhere. When we took off the Dry Nites, that was it, no accidents at all. I couldn't face doing lifting personally.

DD being a sleeping star, at night anyway. Not so fab at naps during the day, pretty much mostly on me and wakes as soon as i try and put her down. though she did manage a great long nap in her cot the other day.

My DP does the trying to tidy everything at once so doesn't actually finish anything. Sigh.

H grumpy now but has been a star all day while I've tried to do a bit of tidying and cleaning. I also packed up all his too-small clothes and have sorted through the ones that he's yet to grow into.

Too bad he's now wailing like a banshee with teething woes. Oh well.

I think baby signing is like most of this stuff that you do with weenies - it depends sooo much on the person who is running the class.
I tried signing with DS1, and we hated it. The woman doing it was rubbish, we would do about 20 minutes of signing and then she would turf out a load of mucky looking toys and spend the next half an hour rushing about trying to make everyone a hot drink. Disaster. I paid for a whole term in advance having enjoyed a small taster she did at a new parent class I went to, and I think we only went 3 or 4 times.

If any of you have a Monkey Music near you I really recommend that. I still take DS1 because he loves it so much, and once he starts school next year then I'll be taking T - if I could get to a class with T that fitted with DS1's preschool hours now then I would be taking him already, but none do.

T has been awake all day, until he finally conked out about 45 minutes ago. I don't know whether to leave him or wake him. Poor little mite is teething and screamy, although he sat and gurgled through a 50 minute music workshop I took DS1 to this morning so he's done pretty well!! :)