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!

How interesting that talk has turned to weaning. I've just finished cleaning up S's first bit of carrot that we gave him to smush up! He enjoyed smearing it over the high chair, he gave it a couple of tentative licks and gummed it but seemed disappointed it wasn't hard (he's having another bad teething day) so went back to chewing on a plastic bowl. He did launch himself at DH's plate so obviously the Yorkshire puds looked better than carrot!

I actually asked my mum what her advice would be at work (she's a Health Visitors Assistant so runs baby clinics) as I was unsure when '6 months' was (was it calendar months or number of weeks?). They advise from 24 weeks onwards if the baby seems ready, and she said that S was showing all the signs of being ready when she visited the other week.

I figured S is 23 weeks this coming Thursday, so a week or so of getting him used to the high chair (and us eating around a table again ) and from 24 weeks we'll give him whatever we're having. I'm still unsure what to do about meat as DH and I are vegetarians but don't want S to be forced to be veggie as we both decided to stop eating meat rather than because we were told to. The option I'm thinking of going with at the moment is reintroducing pork and poultry into my own diet to normalize meat eating for S, then cutting it out again when he's older and can understand that different people eat different things. I'm quite funny about textures, one of the reasons I stopped eating a lot of meat, and don't want S to follow my 'funniness'!

in other news, we're having a screamfest. F starts to grumble because he's hungry. He latches on, does a couple of sucks, and starts screaming & arching backwards. Then much latching, delatching and screaming (both parties, on occasion). And a 2 minute feed, if we're lucky.

Reflux is already being treated, so it's not that. Would teething do this? (I don't remember this with the first 2 teeth, or maybe I put it down to the reflux)

He's not taking much from the bottle when I'm at work. He hasn't put on much weight in the last fortnight, after doing so well in the previous 2 weeks with the gaviscon. So this could go really wrong.

It's not much fun, either.

Sounds crap Buck, hope he's ok.

Good to know about the 24 weeks thing Dairy, I was about to ask that very question!

Don't envy you the meat issue, I was brought up kind of kosher (weird fundamentalist Christian thing) and am a bit about pork products still and will not eat shellfish ever so I'm hoping I can avoid passing on weirdness to H.

Buck It could well be teeth, we've had a very similar sounding to-do this afternoon (and yesterday, and the day before)!

I'm really worried about when S starts nursery because he's still not taking milk from anything but me. (We've decided to bypass the bottle and are using a freeflow sippy cup instead because at the rate we're going by the time he takes a bottle we'll be wanting him to take a cup anyway!) When I popped in this week to confirm start dates at the nursery I actually asked the baby room manager who was very lovely and said it's quite common for BF babies to not take much during the day to start with and that they soon pick up using a cup or bottle. She also mentioned they often copy what the others are doing. Is F going to be with other babies at all (I can't remember what your childcare arrangements are)? If he is you might find that he picks up the bottle/cup thing from them and then hopefully the reverse cycling will stop.

Anyway I shall stop with my musings and hope things get better quickly for you. (Five weeks and I'll probably be in the midst of reverse cycling hell myself as currently S just likes to chew the cup...)

Re: the weaning, like Dairy we've just put up the highchair and are going to start eating at the table again with M sat with us - tonight in fact, it would have been last night but Dr Who was on when it was ready . We've given her a piece of carrot every so often over the last couple of weeks but the most she's done is have a bit of a suck. I'm, probably going to do a combination of purees and BLW and thinking of asking the HV about starting it when I get her weighed tomorrow (23 weeks)... I'm also thinking I need to make some space in the freezer if I'm going to freeze cubes of purees (and not confuse them with the frozen cubes of chillis!)

I think this is the thread Ali was talking about.

Hi all,

Ive just been looking at BLW information today aswell, i cant wait to start DI ! She loves to watch us eat but cant sit up on her own so will be waiting a bit longer. The 1 thing that gets me super excited is that she hopefully wont need any more milk and i can stop expressing, when do you actually cut down on milk when you BLW ? Ive cut out my 3am pump so feeling a bit more human, lucky DI is a good sleeper, she started STTN since i started giving her the bottle at night which is 8oz of EBM so dont know if that helps for anyone with sleepless babys. So just an hour pump at 11pm and then again at 8am and then 2hourly through the day and if i need to go out then i just do and express before i go and when i get back so my life is almost back.

DI is now almost 11lb and looks noticeably bigger, her new fascination is with our cat Tango, she stares at him constantly, he is super friendly and will sit in front of her or next to her bouncer and let her touch him, its really cute !

No sign of teething here, i keep looking but cant see anything, went to a baby sensory this week and DI loved it, most of the othere babies could sit and crawl so could play with more toys but she liked the singing and the visuals and i made her finally giggle. Since she did it last time ive been doing everything i can imagine to get her to laugh but only DP seems to be funny but was playing with a tiger hand puppet and roaring and she was laughing and luaghing, it was GREAT !! Also got giggles yesterday from slamming the remote onto the sofa and yelling "wah" It was so fun !

We are starting a swimming class next week and at end of course they do an underwater photo shoot !!

Anyway, off to make dinner, its taken me 2hours to write this ! how does the day go by so fast when your just at home ??

It's so exciting to hear about the high chairs going up! We need to buy one. We're also planning to get one which clips onto the table for travelling.

dairy/buck honestly they will get better at taking milk from someone/something who is not you. I can tell you as a nanny giving the bottle and now as a stressed out mummy that they do and they don't starve, even if you think night feeds have increased. I have noticed M wanting to nurse more frequently when we are together (as if he's worried I might disappear any moment!) but when I'm not apparently he now takes a bottle fairly happily.

buck could be teething. I've always suspected a recurrence of thrush when M does it so I've not noticed a correlation here, however that's not to say there isn't one.

Aussie I wouldn't have thought you cut down milk for a good few months. It remains the main source of nutrition until they're about 1, although I know some people are more relaxed about that than others. As an aside, spending an hour hooked up to the pump?! How do you do it? I find it tough to fit in 10-15minutes, which gets me 1,5oz per boob from one let down. Must express in a sec actually.

chili my eyes just watered at the thought of you mixing up purees and chilli. I hope you're going to label the bags!

Also buck G has started feeding 2 hourly overnight (joy!) and I haven't gone anywhere so it may not necessarily be because of being away in the day although obviously you will be the best judge of that :)

Thanks for your help and advice with weaning ladies :) Always appreciated. I think it helps sometimes to hear people tell you things even if it's things you already know if that makes sense? Especially when you are getting bombarded with opinions from all directions. Being a first timer and having no experience of babies whatsoever before having my own, I am easily persuaded by other people that I am doing the wrong thing! But it's not always easy to filter out the good advice from the bad.

Thanks for your input/reassurance/sympathy folks. Just posting helps my frustration!

Just reading some kellymom stuff and found this satisfyingly scientific sounding (alliteration points) article

Don't read it if you've already started solids, I don't mean it to be a dig. It's just interesting.

Aussie - DS1 dropped a feed at around 7.5 months, but he fed LOADS through the night, I was up to him 3-4 times most nights so he was getting loads of milk during the hours of darkness and less during the day! In terms of a meaningful decline in milk consumption, he was 10/11 months.

Dairy - we are trying with a cup here as well. I am a bridesmaid on Saturday, and I cannot feed wearing the dress. He will need to drink something, although I am going to change shortly after the ceremony into something that I can feed in.

Buck This is the 10 week weaning thread, it's in parenting. I was mooching around there earlier and couldn't resist giving my judgey pants an airing.

brill, thanks GSY.

On 2nd night feed here. At least he's not screaming.

P is hopefully settled for the night, i've just been ordering name tags for DS. Thanks to a lovely MNetter i've found some that don't need ironing or sewing they come with a little clip - genius.

And excitement here this evening as P has finally discovered rolling over unfortunately I was in the kitchen when she did it but I did take a photo of her on her mat afterwards looking very pleased with herself. I'll try and get round to putting it on FB sometime.

Second feed of the night here too. Not convinced she's hungry but am feeding in the hope it'll settle her. It's so sticky here that she might be thirsty I suppose.

I'm also hoping that feeding will help me drift off. Now on night five of not being able to sleep . Feel like I'm on auto pilot and am really worried about how long it will last. I can't carry on like this for much longer...

Hope you manage to get some rest Star

These "wuwu" & "lala" noises would be cute if I didn't have to get up in 4 and a half hours.

What can I do to make him sleep? I'm actually going mental.

I'm getting desperate- waiting for Paul Mckenna's sleep app to download onto my phone . I fear I may be clutching at straws.

Hope you managed to get F to sleep. If not, can your DH take over for a bit so you can get some shut eye?

he did sleep, star. hope you did too.

quick thought, are you veggie?

Only two wake ups at 2 and 6 after going to sleep at 8pm but he has weed all over me this morning and is now pulling poo face.

He's now decided he's up for the day. I'd be annoyed but as I'll be back at music school once a week from Saturday I was thinking about a more routine morning wake up time anyway. I was thinking 7 but he was only an hour off.

Hope you got some sleep Star.

at 'poo face'!

Well shortly after my last message, P decided to copy F and went down the 'wuwu' , 'lala' wide eyed and lots of smiles route. She definitely wanted playtime. I tried to resettle her for a bit but in the end DH managed to get her back down at about 3.45.

I think I was asleep when he came back in the room but not sure if that a result of being totally knackered or Paul McKenna! P slept until 7.45 then, so at least I got a four hour stretch of sleep.

I'm not a veggie Buck - why? I eat some (but not masses) of meat. Glad you got back to sleep in the end.

On the weaning front, our high chair is up and P seems to enjoy sitting in it when we're at the table. I think she likes sitting at our level. She's still only 17 weeks though, so we're quite a long way from introducing any solids. I suspect I might start around the 24 week mark if she seems ready. She's not showing any of the signs of being ready yet though, so it seems a bit early for me to be thinking about it. I keep forgetting that with her being nearly a fortnight late, she's so much younger than some of the babies in the group who were born early.

Glad you got some sleep Star I use to suffer with Insomnia when I was younger and used to have prescribed medication as it really affected my work, but after many years on them I wanted something drug free. I did some investigations into alternatives and what worked for me was a relaxation CD of the ocean, it's basically crashing waves, you can get them cheap online. I still occasionally use it and have it downloaded onto iPod, I play it with soft headphones or really softly on speaker and as it's usually my mind that won't settle over thinking, I think (say in my head) blackboard and picture a blackboard sliding into focus, if something starts popping into my mind, I keep picturing the blackboard. I find the plain black, settles my mind and the ocean sounds are always soothing but it is about focusing on quieten your thoughts so did take some work. Just an idea that worked for me

Looks like I'll still be expressing for a while once DI starts weaning, we never eat at the table but after hearing everyone mention it, I think it will be nice to start once DI is weaning so it's like proper family sitting down to eat together and start the habit now !

After the 6am wake up, H decided he needed another hour's kip at 7. the flat was a bit nippy so I was naughty and went back to bed as there was a warm and cuddly DP in it

Glad you got a bit of sleep Star, I'm mystified by H's lack of rhyme or reason to his sleeping. We have a semi decent night last night then I'm dreading tonight in case it's another bad one.

We have a poo squeak rather than a poo face, unfortunately she's recently started doing it without it being followed by poo

I have a baby napping in her cot! so after some mumsnet I'll try and get the bathroom cleaned. Just got to work out how to get her to nap in the cot regularly - I suppose consistently putting her in it would help!

Funny that there are a few early weaning threads around. To you all I was apparently weaned at 6 weeks. From what my mum has told me I think I might have had reflux or a milk intolerance as I projectiled after every feed (breast or formula). At 6 weeks I just refused to feed and in desperation I was given mashed banana. I didn't really have much dairy until I was 5 or 6, but I'm fine with it now and fortunately don't have any intolerances or digestive issues from the early weaning. I was also given brandy at 3 days old before I'd even got home!

Don't worry - the frozen diced chillis will be labelled and kept well away from any frozen baby purees :)

Urgh! B is sleeping finally.he's been up since 5. i am sooooooo tired. I am not getting dressed today. I'm hiding downstairs and not doing all the things i should be doing upstairs for fear of waking him!

Might try for a wee snooze on the sofa.