April 2011 - Food Glorious Food, Sleep Glorious Sleep <subtle key change> They're our babies, we'll obsess if we want to!

[fraktious]

Thread 4 - that's one a month!

Cycle I agree completely that all the rules go out the window when they are ill. DS1 has got a horrid cold atm too, and I sat at the side of his bed holding him until he went back to sleep when he woke upset at midnight - which I don't normally do else he would have me stay in there all night!
Really hope H improves soon.

Kitty - it does put you more on edge doesn't? Worrying about who else is being disturbed!

Poor H. Hope he gets better soon Cycle. And I hope that you're not too tired today.

Kitty I'll be exactly the same when we have our first hotel trip - I'll be worrying about every little squeak (and there's lots of them!). Did the Calpol do the trick?

I hope that everybody (especially the Scottish contingent) escaped the worst of the wind last night. It was meant to be really bad here in the North West but I think it must have been worse on the coast than inland, as it didn't seem too awful where we are.

Not a great night from P - she was up three times. I'd been spoilt by the run of good nights last week and was hoping that we'd turned a corner. Obviously not - she's just keeping me on my toes .

Fizz I'm glad your DH got home safe. It was a bit wild yesterday (and continues to be today here). I've lost a buddlia, a rose and a kiwi plant and the Willow tree is attempting to aim for the house luckily it will not reach! Self-seeded brambles have flown everywhere. Kansas indeed.
R is also growing out of her moses basket :( She usually goes to sleep in it after her dream feed about 11pm then after she wakes up for her 2 or 3am feed she comes in with me and then is there already next to me for her 6am feed. Last night I put her in the basket and was talking to DH before falling asleep and in an astonished way he said "M look!" My heart almost shot out of my chest thinking something awful had happened but no, R was on her tummy and her little head popping above the edge of the basket with a HUGE beautiful grin on her face! She slept all night next to me which is lovely and cosy. I say "slept" in that she spent all night pleased with herself and playing with my nightie. She's now zonked out on her playmat.
Is it just me that feels a little sad at contemplating weaning? I know R is only 18 weeks and there's likely a little way to go yet. I'm sure it'll be the same fun it was with F but there's a part of me which is a little sad as I know it's another stage that we will have left behind. It seems to go too quickly.
Has anyone been watching Outnumbered? It really makes me laugh but at the same time shudder to think all that is coming our way.......

Grrrrrr, i've got a huge basket of wet washing and the sun is shining, but I can't hang it out now (or open my windows) because the f-ing vinery next door have got a bonfire going. It had better not be bags of hedgehog poo again

Get well soon to all those DC with colds.

Think I might try P on the babyrice this weekend now that I've got the highchair out of my mum's spare room (it was too wide to go through our loft hatch).

Am also steeling myself to move her into her own room. I can't belief how the thought of it is. Must be last baby syndrome as I never had this with DS.
The moses basket has reached it's limits, although she's fit it an extra couple of months longer than her brother. She doesn't wake for a feed during the night so I'm hoping the move will go OK and she won't notice too much. I'll dust off the Tomy Starlight and put in some new batteries in preparation and probably spend the first night trying not to cry.

x-posts arch but funny we were both thinking the same thing

Hedgehog poo?!? GGF - we need more information! Why on earth were they burning bags of that?!

I have an incredible non-napping sleep refusing baby again today. I've exhausted all my rocking, bouncing and feeding reserves and am going to brave a walk in the pushchair. The wind has really picked up here now, so hopefully we won't blow away!

GGF I'd be complaining in the hope i get some free wine Hedgehog poo!! How do they gather that up, or are island hedgehogs litter trained??

Another rough night here with 3 wake ups. Not sure if he was hungry, but he got fed each time! Might have been the wind, it was really noisy here. We had a bit of sunshine this morning, but it's clouded over again and the wind has picked up.

Arch I might go and bring in my cherry blossom, I don't want it to blow over. It's in a pot, I'm not going to dig it up or anything!! The climber we have on the front of the house has detached a bit so I now have that banging on the living room window. Shame it can;t blow away the weeds that have taken up residence! How is your baby dancing thing going?

Was at baby group today. Alpha mummy was there! No cake offs this time, she was signing everyone up to take a turn at setting up. I'm the 1st of November, just need to write that down, in the hope my brain retains it! She was also trying to get me to take home some toys they were throwing out. manky horrible things. Er no thanks! She didn;t try to foist them on anyone else. I must look too poor to buy B toys . I'll admit it, I don;t like her at all, but the rest of the girls are great.

Lunchtime, B is sleeping, so there is a chance I can eat my soup while its still hot!

I did go on a fb friending spree yesterday Love seeing more pics of all the cute babies!

beetle that is one very impressive poo pic!

GGF you have a vinery next door to your house? I am [green], but maybe not of the smelly hedgehog poo burning.

Star I hope S doesn't follow P's suit tonight, they have an uncanny way of being in sync with sleep. We'll see. Her selfsettling nap glory days are over. The damn rolling has broken her ability to settle on her own so I'm back to rocking her to sleep before popping her into her cot. It has just reminded me that just as you feel you've sorted something out, it changes or something else changes!

X-posts Fizz. Hooray for more AM tales!

Don't get too excited about the vinery - this is Guernsey, it's just big greenhouses which grow Tomatoes .

Here's the hedgehog poo saga:
My house is on an estate of 40 houses/flats adjacent to a vinery site (they sold off the land nearest the road and built the estate about 15 years ago).
They have the occassional bonfire but earlier in the year they were doing it in a part of the field less than 100metres from my house and when the wind was blowing my direction my car was getting covered in ash and it stank etc.

One day whilst ranting chatting to a colleague at work who volunteers at the local Hedgehog Rescue Centre about said bonfires she mentioned that she had offered to help the centre move/dispose of some bags of old hedgehog bedding. She expected to be told to drive them to the local dump or such like but no to her surprise she was told to take them to the vinery by my house where they would kindly dispose of them .

Armed with this nugget of information next time the smelly bonfire was going I phoned up environmental health. Blathered away for sometime about horrible smell, worried about ill-effects on me, my then unborn child, DS and all the other young children who as a result of bonfire couldn't play outside.

EH officer did a spot check and found the site caretaker burning 12 black plastic bin sacks of hedgehog poo encrusted bedding etc.

EH officer was very nice and phoned me back later to let me know what he had found and said that the vinery owner and the rescue centre would be written too and warned to dispose of their waste correctly. Apparently the caretaker seemed quite happy about the spot check as he hated having to do the job .
The vinery does have a permit to burn certain agricultural waste like the wooden boxes the bees are transported in which is fair enough so we'll still get bonfires but I can phone up and report them if they are too close to the house or if it smells like they're burning something they shouldn't.

Caramello, your FB friend request was most welcome, I'd been umming and aaahhhing about doing the same thing but didn't want to go first

So i'm going to friend request everybody later. Don't worry, I won't take it personally if anyone doesn't to be friends

Right I'm of to stick my nose out the door to see if I can still smell bonfire.

I finally have a napping baby - she woke at 8, had 20 minutes at 10.30 and has been grouchy since then. And there's apple puree waiting for her.

Beetle I'm worried I'll be faced with a poo like that - she hasn't been for days, possibly a week... I hope it arrives soon to get it over with.

We had slightly better sleep last night - about 12.30 to 6 was the long stretch. The night before was waking every 2 hours :(

It's still quite windy here but not excessively - I've taken the opportunity to get lots of washing done and out. Not all the stains have come out - does anyone know how to get red wine out of the baby playmat?

Haha, that's the best question ever Chilli!

Ewww at the poo fire GGF.

H was also nap refusing but finally went off in the buggy. I'm hoping he'll go down later as I fancy making chocolate chip cookies and a sourdough bread starter because I'm sad I'm a domestic goddess. I lurve sourdough bread but it's so expensive. I used to make my own bread all the time and I have a recipe so why not? Have to make the starter at least two days in advance though.

Chilli White wine? G&T? Seriously though, soak the stained fabric then make a paste with baking soda and water and spread it over the stain. Leave for a good few hours then wash it as normal. It might need a couple of goes to get it out completely.

Thanks Fizz will give it a go.

cycle mmm, choc chip cookies. I have the breadmaker on every week but never tried sourdough bread.

OMG both children are napping at the same time ! I'm going to run to the kitchen and grab a coffee so I can catch up here whilst caffeinated. Whoot! does a little dance to kitchen

The how to get a wine stain out a baby playmat should be quote of the week

Hurrah for T eating, he sounds more than ready!

I had a weaning dilemma yesterday. I was sitting up on my lap while I was eating my lunch he kept diving into my plate. So I held a cucumber baton in front of him, he took it, put it up to his mouth and sucked the life out of it. I was NOT expecting him to be able to do that. But after much umming and ahing, I have decided that I won't try him with food again until he can sit unaided.

Hope you got some time to yourself Archie. Now ds2 is back at preschool I really need to start putting I down in his cot for naps. Saying that he had a kip in there earlier when ds was at pre school, which was fab as I was able to put the dinosaur wall stickers and glow in the dark thingys on ds's bedroom wall without interruption.

I love sour dough bread, and of course cookies, but that's a given!

GGF those fires sound vile. Glad for everyone's sake that you got it stopped.
Bettle I cannot get the image of the poo-explosion out of my head! My that's impressive.
Fizz Sounds like a good idea to put the cherry blossom in a cool light place somewhere indoors. The wind has since taken down two small willow trees (willow for goodness sake! meant to be practically invincible)
The dance term has finished for Bellybabies but it went quite well. Once the other lady is back from her hols I'm going to pitch it to the pregnancy centre in Edinburgh. On AM I'd take her passive aggressive behaviour as a compliment. She wouldn't need to put you down unless you made he feel threatened...not that we want to go around being some kind of Amazonian Super Mummies scaring folk but YKWIM. She seems mean and slightly put out by you.
All FB friends welcome..well I say that...my MIL and SisIL have been on ignore for two years...weirdly that keep refreshing their requests rather than bowing gracefully away. If you're wanting weird AM behaviour now those two are the direction to look at....I wouldn't even know how to start to describe it!
Chilli your wine/playmat request made me chuckle :D Fizz do you think that soda is an ingredient in those neon pink boxes at the supermarket that promise perfect whites? It just made me think.
I do have two bits of news. R has started to crawl. It started with head butting the playmat then she got on he knees and rocked then she shuffled forward. Poor girl got startled by me clapping with F. :)
Second bit of news is that after a LONG time I have rediscovered Cairn O'Mohr wines. I only had one glass but goodness me was it nice. I plan to work my way through their catalogue at a snails pace.

cycle your baking sounds great
I'm going to a board meeting with the NHS finance division tomorrow. I hope that they let me speak at the meeting and listen. It's a big deal to reduce maternity service provision for women and babies but the "men in suits" who do not even have recommendations from medical research taken into consideration appear to be making stupid and potentially life threatening service cuts. I really hope they will listen. I must admit I'm quite nervous.

Go Arch, you tell them! and hurray for crawling!

Cookies are ok but went all flat and spread out, mine always do, grrrrrr.

H is on a roll, literally, today. Every time I put him on the floor he flips over. He's still super snotty though and I'm already dreading tonight

Arch good luck with your meeting tomorrow. Our local birth centre recently closed due to funding/staffing issues. It's apparently getting reviewed in october but I can't see it re-opening :( there are plans to partially re-create it at the main hospital but I can't imagine it'll be the same. The NHS has some interesting accounting. It's been claimed here that each birth at the centre costs more than at the women and children's hospital when the birth centre only has a couple of birthing pools, aromatherapy and gas and air available . We found out later that c-sections, etc aren't costed into maternity services - they're charged to theatre!. I must have cost a fortune having used the birth centre all day in labour before being transferred to the W&C hospital and eventually ending in a c-section

Glad I amused everyone with the red wine-playmat question :o I can't decide if it's worth trying to get the stains out yet, when we might add a few more...

I have to put the heating on. I vote Frak shares the no doubt lovely weather she has over there and pops some in the post to us. :(

Heating on here too!! The temp sensor in Bs room went off because it went below 15 degrees !

I joked about B being windy yesterday,but today I think he has been waking himself up by farting . Anything I can do to make them less, erm, violent?

Arch I never use any of that pink stuff, good old bicarb is magic stuff! I get the impression my feelings are reciprocated(sp?) by AM.

ooh squawking better go!

Beetle that poo is tremendous!

arch yay for R crawling! Go for it tomorrow, I would be v.nervous! I shall mentally hold your hand.

Thanks for the good luck wishes.

Chilli It sounds like they are trying to to reduce patient safety in your area too. I strongly suspect that the reason that they can say it'd be more cost effective to close your birth centre and route all women directly to the hospital is because they are reducing the number of buildings they have to service. I expect they will not however increase the number of midwives when the women are rerouted to hospital. Instead they will stretch the current number of midwives to the point that they are looking after several ladies at the same time during active labour (which is not safe and generally considered very bad practice, machines cannot do the work of a midwife yet they are used so often in place of one). They will no doubt not increase the number of beds and therefore encourage the already overstretched midwives to make decisions which lead to quicker turnover of cases (i.e. increase in induction meds, more likely to be sent for c-section, sent home before being ready to cope etc). This is happening up and down the country and I've heard countless examples through the NCT and various groups I'm a member of. Medication and surgery are vital for those that really need them and a complete God send in that sort of situation, not in order to shuffle a poor women off to create more room in a hospital. When it happens to a woman unnecessarily it can have huge implications for her mental health not just the extra physical recovery time. The weird thing is that the health trusts get paid about £3k per c-section and about £1200 per "normal" birth in a hospital by the government towards their budget the following year. The more c-sections they do the more budget they can bid for in the following budgetry process. I'm not making this up, it's too cruel to imagine. It's completely shocked me to find it out. I have a close friend who is a midwife in England and another friend who is an independent midwife in Scotland (they both say the same about how it works behind the scenes) and the more I research the more it makes me want to try to encourage Trust Finance division to not be in charge of such decisions.
I tend to think that if I want something to change then I have to go turn up at board meetings (all NHS Board Meetings are "in public" so you can go and request to speak). It's an emotive subject but as we all know it's so important that women and their babies get a good start in life. If you want to lodge support for your birth centre so that it doesn't close then go to www.writetothem.com click on your MP and drop them an email saying that you want them to represent you in supporting the birth centre then just turn up at the NHS Board meeting and request to hear what the safety implications are and projected resource changes at the hospital to compensate. Contact the press, just phone them up with what the shortfalls are and ask them to run a story. We've got our service cuts into four newspapers so far and on STV News and it seems to be working as they have reinstated the service temporarily if it remains a service long term or not will depend on these meetings. If we don't do these things then what system will be left for our daughters when it comes to their time? Sorry for the long post, this is something I really think is scandalous yet because it's a women's issue (and when we use such services we are at our most vulnerable) it gets swept under the carpet. Birth is so personal, what works for one person might not for another and every birth is different but to reduce a service to unsafe levels so that our country which is currently less safe than Albania to give birth for woman and child and a very high and creeping post-birth depression rate despite all the money that the government throws at maternity services shows that something is amiss.

Fizz - T wakes himself up farting too. And sometimes us too in the middle of the night!

He hasn't done a proper poo for a few days, I am nervous.

I just had a look back to our last antenatal thread...goodness we've all held hands through thick and thin. No detail has ever been TMI I feel very lucky to know you all :)