CRESH - Crap ham, stinky Brie, gin and lol'ing at birth plan believers

[AlpinePony]

Heeyah.

RockSteadyEddie we have booster seat from MuvvaCare. Has tray table and 5point harness and its about £30. Folds down for travelling too. It's pretty good. Downsides are bit fiddly to take cover off to wash a you have to remove straps. Also food gets stuck into couple of crevices but nothing a good shake outside doesn't shift. We don't have space for high chair and this is best ting for us.

bitesize bloody hell! That's quite a story. You rest up. You deserve it!

Bites I was saving your birth story to read when I could give it my full attention, just read it and have shed a small tear. Well done you bloomin' trooper. xxxx (unapologetic).

Thanks silvs I hadn't thought about booster seats as an option :o

booty i think you've hit the nail on the head. Until fairly recently we would have been popping them out from not long after we became fertile until we dropped from exhaustion. Not many of them would actually have made it to adult hood though. :-( I think I'd rather run the risk of a misbehaving cervix.

Box good news on a) possibly imminent return to work and therefore possible full night's sleep? and b) new kitchen. I chortled at new brand ad for BA - it did smack of the agency sell. They will struggle to ever outdo the big number in the desert to the overtures of Lackme flower duet IMO. Also 'serve' makes me feel v cynical - they are not the bloody forces...

iggs big love to you sister. Have you made any decisions about wedding/weaning? Sorry if have missed this critical info.

owly did manage natural birth but still fucked up my undercarriage royally and lost 2 litres, so will NOT be following the same au naturel method this time due to size of baby + speed of birth = fucking carnage.

cossie ever the argumentative cow, I would suggest that sleep habits are very much formed before 3 months. I'm not saying that people shouldn't do anything and everything that works to get baybees to sleep and some respite. But if you spend 3 months with a baybee sleeping on your shoulder, guess what, you might not have much luck getting them to sleep in cots etc. I spent alot of time from word go putting babymoo in his bedroom cot with mobile on and flitting in and out... was well worth it as he always loved his cot, more than moses. I definitely overdid the rocking him to sleep in pram as motion became the ONLY way to get him to sleep and I used to spend hours walking the common in order to get him to nap. I wish I had spent more time trying to get him to go down in cot at the beginning and avoided all of that.

Is it bad that hearing that other people are also sleep deprived is makng me feel more normal and therefore better?

Had a vay bad day today and bb not slept until now, I am having a gin and trying to stay awake long enough to finish it.

Akshilly have many thoughts re: the sleeping but too tired to type, maybe tomorrow will provide more opportunities!

Started a proppa message this morning, the day has gone by and did not manage to finish it, so just wanted to say: I hear ya sistah! to Bites. Tickle is also awful constipated but I don't want to give him medicine. Can I have some of your gin? Too tired to pour my own.

Amazing birth story, sniff.

I had a straight forward birth with no instruments and minimal tearing. But our NCT was a real mixed bag, think we had every birth going from lovely water to emergency c-section.

Honeymoo I disagree that sleep habits are set so early. My small one would only sleep in her sling for naps for ages. And then one day she had a nap in her cot. And I didn't do anything different, she just slept in her cot. She would always sleep in Moses basket or cot at night, but not during the day. If you put her in during the day she would cry and cry and cry and as much as I tried to leave her she just would not sleep. So I stopped trying. And one day I put her in her cot to keep her out of trouble while I showered and she cried briefly and fell asleep.

I'm not saying it's going to be that way for everyone. But sometimes babies just change their habits.

It was the same with bedtime here as well. She wouldn't fall asleep before 11pm until one day she fell asleep at 10pm. And then 9pm. And eventually 7pm. I didn't try and force her, just noticed she seemed tired earlier so responded to that. She used to cluster feed for hours in the evening. Now she has one feed and falls asleep.

Sometimes things change by themselves, or are set to change so you can gently nudge them. Sometimes you have to make an effort to change them. But I think you always have to do what's working best for you. And then if it stops working try something new.

Moo just wait till you have the second child and EVERYTHING you did that worked with the first one is useless with the second one! TT and LG couldn't be more different. We started off using the same methods with each of them, for everything from sleeping to BFing/moving on to non-BF milk to weaning, and they each have their own ways of doing things.

Just because something works for one baby doesn't make it work for another, and I with the benefit of having an older child, I don't think sleep patterns are set before 3 months. TT was a nightmare sleeper until she was 2 yo, and then she suddenly decided to sleep, sleep, sleep. As Cluck says, she looks as though she's sleeping in a coffin when she sleeps!

House update: I am bloody fed up of painting now.

I think you are slightly misunderstanding my point. Sleep patterns aren't set before 3 months but the ways in which a baby likes to get to sleep are imo. I say this, purely from bitter experience of spending frigging hours wandering round the neighbourhood pushing a sleeping baby when all I wanted to do was sleep myself, or bouncing him to sleep in his bouncy chair. I knew i wasn't helping - i was just helping create more of a problem. Nothing to do with me getting it right and therefore assuming it will be the same next time Box. It's because I got it wrong to begin with, that I won't be doing those things next time. But who knows, maybe I'll be lucky with a little one that's more naturally adept at self soothing to begin with. Babymoo wasn't, and he eventually needed a bit of help to be shown how.

Muser you obviously were lucky with your little girl who just worked out how to do it on her own. But for every one of her, there's zillions of dead eyed mums who spend hours rocking, pushing, walking, co-sleeping. If you're happy doing it possibly for months and months on end then absolutely fine, but I imagine everyone has that moment where they think why the fuck am I doing this for hours to get my baby to just sleep?!!! My niece is one who has been slinged around for most of the first 4 months of her life and literally goes mental if you put her down for long and needs rocking everytime and my SIL is just dying on her feet most days. I'm sure she will grow out of it, but I don't agree with being completely baby led when your sleep is suffering to the point of your health or emotional health being damaged. You are the parent in my view. That doesn't mean you can't cuddle or give your baby exactly what it needs - nor am I saying leave it to cry.

Sometimes you need to do whatever it takes when you are desperate, but I think it's worth being aware of patterns and asingk yourself if you don't mind doing it for another year or more. No doubt I'll cock it up again next time too and spend days doing 'accidental parenting' as they call it, but I'm going to do more of the things the books advise in the early days rather than take the path of least resistance. At least that's my plan!

I don't agree with being completely baby led when your sleep is suffering to the point of your health or emotional health being damaged

Neither do I.

And I'm not lucky. Naps are better but she still doesn't sleep through. I have yet to decide if that's because she needs a 3am feed or is just used to it. I'm not at the point of wanting to change it yet. And most people I know who have tried to find alternative ways of doing things have succeeded quite quickly so are very evangelical about them. So I figure if I want to change it I should also be able to do it quite quickly using one of their methods. It's just doing what works for you until it doesn't work for you anymore, then doing something else. If you're happy feeding a baby to sleep that isn't a problem that needs fixing. If you're not happy, then that's a problem. Does that make sense?

Muser I'm not saying you are! I was responding to Cossie's answer to Hoppy that 3 months is too young to form any kind of bad habits in terms of sleep, which I personally think isn't right. I'm offering up my own experience to her in having a baby that refused to nap in the day at the same age which drove me to my wits end over several months. I also said that I agreed - if you don't mind doing something, then it isn't a problem! But Hoppy said she is having a bit of a nightmare, as did we at the same age - hence comment - nothing to do with whether you should or shouldn't be getting up at 3am! I'm sure you think I'm a routine driven nazi but this is supposed to be a support thread and it is a bit tiring when I get the overwhelming feeling that unless you are a baby-led, sling-wearing co-sleeper (I exaggerate to make the point) you are completely outrageous and over the top militant smug mummy. I'm far from smug - I was the person who wasn't coping and cried every evening all evening because I wasn't getting enough sleep. I just hate to see people struggling from the same thing and if my tale helps one person avoid that, that's great.

I get the opposite feeling moo, that rather than being 'smug' I am somehow cold and uncaring.

And that. Not sure what has happened to the 'take no shit, gun-slinging ESH-ness' we supposedly represent?

I'm just offering up my own experience as well. And I think we agree on the fundamental points about not doing things that aren't working for you.

Everyone told me I was doing the wrong thing at the time, and plenty still do, and I would tie myself in knots over it. I ended up feeling I couldn't talk about it actually. In the end it has mostly worked for me so far, although not perfectly yet. So just want to offer a different perspective.

If it helps, I do not think you are a routine nazi. If I thought that I wouldn't have asked you for your guru's details when my friend was having issues (it worked although she was not keen on B). I know too many lovely people who follow strict routines to think they're evil, and I can see how much they love their babies so definitely not cold and uncaring. Although funnily enough I often think that unless you're a routine following, chasing the 7-7 sleep through, fitting baby round your life type then you must be a hippy freak. Is anyone ever just normal?

I like that there's people doing all sorts of different approaches here so if you ask a question you get different perspectives. It's hard to put over a differing view without coming across wrong though, I wish I could do it without adding a billion caveats.

Anyway, last point is I think you are great.

Just popping in to say 'what honey said. I have two boxer, and they are very different sleepers, in that the oldest is an Owl and the youngest is a Lark, but both of them were so much better until in introduced a gentle bit of Gina.
It was difficult at the beginning with MiniFC, as the FC loved holding him as he fell asleep, and I had to drag him away! But we kept him with us in the lounge and then gradually moved him away.

Number one son (NOS) slept through from 9 weeks. And he was exclusively bf. He started waking at 14 weeks. There was none of this '4 months sleep regression' stuff then, we were just told they were hungry. So I weaned him. He then slept. I have a skinny, healthy eight year old, who eats sprouts, olives, mackerel and Haribo! (other stuff too of course... That combination on it's own would make a pretty stinky house...).

MiniFC slept through at 6 months. So yes, the second child WAS harder! And I weaned him later, but still early, at 18 weeks. So go figure.

I think patterns are established early. And it was difficult taking an awake baby out of his Dads arms to help him get used to sleeping by himself. But it was worth it.

So yeah. What moo said.

Thank you Muse - you are too! I wasn't keen on guru either, in fact I nearly throttled her at the suggestion I was getting things 'wrong' and was utterly against her methods to begin with. That said, she was bloody right!!!!!

There are a million stances and ways of doing things, but if you aren't happy and suffering from sleep deprivation - there are ways of helping and it isn't just a case of put up and shut up and that's my only point with all of this. Today the routine went out the sodding window - I get told off by my nanny for not doing it on the weekend!!!!

On the "put up and shut up" point we are as one moo. There is always an option to make things better.

cho and I were laughing about this just three days ago. She's all 'easy, breezy, beautiful', and I'm all 'seriously? You don't bathe miniCho at PERZACLY the same time every day?!'
Goose and Gander. Laugh and accept we are all doing our thang.

I actually have a routine.

I used to be horrendously scared of diverting from The Routine - because it worked when we got him into it at 4 months and I was terrified of altering it. Now I'm dreadful and on weekends it's all very whatever. We had Agent Osso (disney junior doncha know) at 5, bathtime at 5.30 tonight and put him down at 6.30 because the poor child only had 20 minutes sleep all day.

The guru had a theory that girls were MUCH better than boys at sleeping, and this has def proved right with everyone I know (we were the worst to begin with) as they are more self sufficient and sort of know what to do eventually. It certainly sounds like babymuse did! I also reckon that had I not started work so early, I definitely wouldn't have sought out any help and I'm sure things would have been completely different.

Does anyone have any spitting issues? I seem to have a child who is obsessed with spitting stuff out. It really is gross. I think he likes the sensation.

That's an interesting theory about girls and boys. BabyMuse is definitely not fully self sufficient yet though. What I find weird is that I can now put her down for naps without needing to feed her or soothe her much. She does grizzle, but she's nearly always asleep within 5 minutes if not sooner. I've tried to do the same thing when I put her to bed but she will cry and cry and work herself up into a frenzy. She has just woken up and is resisting going back to sleep like crazy. I don't understand the inconsistency.

Cannot help on spitting. Raspberry blowing is where it's at here.

I guess they are even more tired at the end of the day and maybe just more grizzly? Could you try bringing her down for 10 minutes and then try again putting her back when she starts yawning? Or maybe a bit more boob/bottle? That also sometimes works if he is going into one.... Recently he has had as much as a bottle and a half at bedtime.

I normally go for a bit more boob. Or some bottom patting and a song will sometimes work. She does seem to need a bit more soothing at night. It's when she wakes not long after going down that things tend to be difficult. Some nights she'll be asleep and stay that way, some nights she wakes 45 mins after going down. I haven't yet worked out a pattern. There may not be one.