The brookers post graduate thread

[hawthers]

We've got so good at brooking no argument for no pregnancy complications and sneeze births, we're going for our Phds in big fat babies

If its to give you a break Dream I'd be really tempted to go for it. Ebf might be a good thing but so is a mummy who's getting more than 5 seconds sleep a night.

You've done so much already - its incredible. This probably shows my slattern side but I'm not sure i could have even done the expressing you've been doing so if it were me I'd have probably had formula in the mix from day 1 of any top ups, or needing a bottle to give medicine. I do really hate expressing though .

And I don't know how practical this is but you'd think that as they settle into a pattern as they get older (or at least get less 'demanding' and a wee bit predictable) you could possibly reduce the formula input and aim to get back to ebf if you wanted to? You're presumably not going to have a supply issue with feeding 2 of them?

That's great that they're offering support along with the formula Dream. Please don't even suggest it's pride making you want to ebf though!! You are a wonderful Mum who wants the very best for all your LOs no matter what the cost to yourself. You've been through so much to offer them the best, it's awe inspiring! Biscuits makes an excellent point though, at some point the best thing for your DC might be a Mum with more support and more sleep. Only you can decide that. Sending lots of No Brooking your way to help you choose.

Well, we'll see what happens tomorrow but tonight I fed til I felt I just couldn't carry on then dh loaded the screamers into the buggy and walked them. They slept for nearly three hours so clearly not starving to death after all, as you'd have thought from the screaming.... I should feel good, I've had 2.5 hours sleep, as good as it gets, but i still feel dispirited and exhausted. Ah well, will see how the rest of the night goes.

Thanks for all the comments and support Brookers, gratefully received :)

Thinking of you Dream and hoping those boys are letting you have some rest. Glad you were able to sleep while DH had them.

I suppose that's one more factor isn't it, that constantly bf is an extra physical demand on your body over an above 'just' being awake so much iyswim. I imagine it's difficult to find enough time to eat enough food / drink enough to sustain that much bf

As Scream says, sending lots of Brooking in your direction to help you decide what to do xx

Back on the night shift tonight - but oh so glad of my night off last night. And now I know you can do it DS2.......

Hope everyone else is doing ok and all the mini-brookers are opting for a bit of sleep xx

Oh and I meant to say yesterday:

Too - glad M had another good night - hope she's doing the same tonight but with a nice calm evening too; and

Jaggy - boo for DS2's thrush bum. Hope it will clear now you know you need to bring out the big guns cream xx

Dream hope you are happy with whatever decision you make. F takes one bottle if formula but I ebf the rest if the day/night (more of which later). So if you did add in formula it could work to give you a break from the total demands of two babies so that you feel more able to deal with it the rest of the time. I guess what I'm saying us that you aren't making a decision between bf and formula its more if a decision between ebf and mixed feeding. But who am I to talk I struggled massively with introducing any formula.

In other news f has been pissed off at my witty banter re his household skills and decided to reassert where the power lies. Turns out not with me as he has been waking every 2 hours for feeds this week. Am a broken woman. Hoping in vain that its a growth spurt or something

Whilst I shouldn't complain in the presence of dream I'm quite tired. A feeds every hour and a half in the day and every three hours at night and bar the odd day has done that since birth.

Umm, when will she stop eating so much?!

As pomme says sorry for whining about being tired dream I literally have no idea how you are still standing

pomme, DD did that, I always fed her truly on demand but was also quite tired. Then my dad said it was ridiculous and when he was visiting distracted her for another 45 minutes before pretty much every feed- where she was perfectly happy, and i started trying to eeek feeds out a bit and it worked for me. Think it was more habit than hunger for her. I wouldn't have done it if she was crying or not settling though. It involved quite a lot of walking and jigging though and this may be crap advice. Of course if you're happy with how much she feeds its no problem and I'm sure she'll settle down in her own time. Bit of a useless paragraph there...

I'm still alive this morning. I've surprised myself. hawthers like you, I'm really struggling with the idea of giving formula. So please, please let today be better!! I would say barely standing, more sitting on sofa crying yesterday.

jaggy poor Ds2 with the sore bum. DT1 has a sore bum, has been for 2 weeks. Hardcore metanium not sorted it. Am baffled. DD never needed cream til we weaned her and her poos changed.

Now I'm starting to worry that Autumn is doing it all wrong. She is literally the opposite of Abbie, she feeds every 3 hours during the day, but every hour and a half (or every hour) at night. The feeding has never really bothered me though, it's the fact that she's awake from midnight to 6am, i.e. no sleep between the nighttime feeds, which drives me loopy. On Autumn's very first night home she was up just as frequently for food in the night, but after each feed she went straight back to sleep in her cot and it was heaven. I honestly felt like I'd had a full night's sleep. Since then, the whole awake all night thing has been grinding me down!

Ugh. I didn't get to lie down last night. Somehow I got the feed / nappy / put on sleeping bag order of things wrong and kept waking DS up. We eventually fell asleep together on the sofa at 11pm. I woke at 1am and popped him in his pram so I could get ready for bed myself, and he woke up. So I fed him and we fell asleep again, but then he fed from 4-6am! So I guess I did get about 4hrs doze on the sofa - compared with Dream I'm doing well!

This morning he's got his 6-week check with the doctor, then I'm meeting NCT friends for lunch, so no chance to catch up on sleep. :( And no point going to bed now.

Scream and Too I'm torn between wanting the reassurance of a routine (is feeling confident that he will nap around x time each day so I can do chores etc) and wanting the flexibility of not having a routine! One of my NCT group is doing GF and her 2-week old is only having one night feed! So I can see the advantages of it.

Dream why not have a go at formula top-ups and see how it goes? I guess you can always go back to ebf if it doesn't result in more sleep for you? One other thought - having offered DS a dummy, it does seem to comfort him and sometimes help him fall asleep when rocking, cuddling etc has failed. I've realised that sometimes I was feeding him when he really wanted comfort, not food/drink. So, if you felt that your twins were screaming but not actually needing food, maybe it's worth trying a dummy? I totally understand if you prefer not to (I didn't like the idea of it myself and certainly don't want it in DS's mouth all the time) but if it gives you a break could it be worth a try?

Jaggy poor DS2 - hope his bum gets better soon. Every other day my DS seems not to poo at all, which means that on a 'poo day' his nappies are swimming in it!

Hawthers I hope F remembers how to do long sleeps tonight !

Dream remember the twins are still getting all the benefits of bf even if you do add some formula.

Just want to add that before I had DS I knew babies needed to feed often but I foolishly imagined that they would sleep (in their own beds, not just when being cuddled) in between. Scream I feel your pain.

And Dream we had to feed DS with formula from a sippy cup every 3 hours from day 3-7 as my milk didn't come in for a week. I hated it and felt inadequate and worried that it would affect my supply, so I do sympathise with your reluctance to go down the formula route. It's such a difficult situation. But as I think Biscuits said, you have to look after yourself as well as the twins and an exhausted weeping mummy is not good for your whole family. No brooking that you find the right way for you, whatever other people say!

Scream - DD1 was a bit like Autumn, from birth she'd give me a longer stretch of 4 hours then would be up for two-two and a half hours crying/feeding/pooping/being windy. It was a killer. It got a bit better when I moved to ff at 6 weeks and then loads better when she moved to her own room at 9 weeks ish I think.

I would like to move A to her own room but she still feeds so much I'd be up and down more and I'd have to sit on the floor to feed and her room is right next to dd1's and I don't want her to wake up too! Think someone else said similar further upthread??

Dream - I think I might try starting to do that too. From the amount she's feeding during the day I think she should be able to go longer at night but I'm wondering if they're all 'snacks' and if I eek her out a bit more she'll actually take more in total. At least I can predict when she'll feed :)

Jaggy and dream - sorry to hear about the sore bottoms!

Does anyone else follow wonder weeks? I have the app not the book and if i do it properly (from conception) then it does seem to match up to when A is more cranky. It's nice to feel like you can understand a bit.

Wonder where fishcakes went to.

Realised I missed some stuff out:

Biscuits yay for smiley E! So good your DH got the benefit of a big grin. :)

Scarlet hope your feet are less swollen and you can get out of the house into the rain today. Also hope DD starts putting on weight so you don't have to worry any more about feeding dilemmas.

Too how did your night out go?

I've looked at the wonder weeks website pomme it is quite interesting. i know DS1 pretty much matched up with the big 4 month and 9 month things
especially.

thought about getting the book before and i actually have a gift voucher to spend - thanks for the idea!

more later... we are having an organisation fail this morning and need to get out!

OK - long story alert! HV came yesterday at 2, took one look at M and said she still looked yellow. She thought we ought to go see the GP and get a doctor's opinion. I phoned the surgery and got an emergency appt at 4.30. Mum arrived at 3 and DH came home at 4, so we were able to get ourselves down to the surgery in good order. GP also thought M looked yellow, although examined her fully and played with her a bit and said she seemed perfectly well and happy - also watched me feed and said she seemed to be feeding really well. However, due to the one kidney thing, she called the hospital and got us an appt at 11am today.

We shot home, I fed M some more and we headed off for our night out. It was weird to go back to that pre-Maia existence! It was a lovely night and I did relax into it, mostly, mainly because Mum texted to say M was good as gold and had fallen asleep just after we left. It is just bizarre to be with a group of people to whom M is not the centre of the universe! I did have a great time but I would still rather be at home with M. We got home about 10.30 and Mum said M had slept for an hour or so after we left, then been sung to and played with in an attempt to stave off having to give her the milk and maybe use it all up too soon. She had drunk all the ebm in the end, but had been angelic and not wanted more, just let them sing her to sleep about 20 mins before we arrived home. Then she slept until 2.15am, by which time my boobs had nearly exploded, so we did quite a bit of guddling because my boob was so engorged she couldn't get a good latch. I had to get up and find the breastpump in the end. However, this morning her little bum was bleeding with nappy rash, which I think was related to the amount of chilli I ate last night. Oops. [bad mother emoticon] So as a first night out it was a success, but I'm not in a hurry to repeat it even though nothing went wrong and she couldn't have behaved better.

This morning we had our appt at the hospital and the first thing the consultant on call and the paediatrician both said was that they didn't think she looked yellow. The paed examined her - I had to get a urine sample by taking her clothes and nappy off and holding her over a cardboard tub! Luckily she peed immediately and although she did poop at the same time it didn't go into the tub. She was v good and was awake and chirpy while she was examined, and only started to howl when she'd been naked and being prodded for some time. I fed her while the paed pricked her heel to do another bilirubin test, and then we were sent away for an hour. Came back at 1, and they said she is not jaundiced and it was all a big false alarm. Phew!

Why has this thread stopped showing up in Threads I'm On? And why can't I find it on the PostNatal Clubs board? I had to follow my link from the antenatal thread to get back here.

Too - blimey! Slightly unhelpful from HV/GP there. Bit of an adventure! Glad the night out went well. I keep dodging night out invites as although she normally sleeps during the evening we havent tried a bottle yet so dh would be stuck and I cant be arsed to unwrap, wash and sterlise the pump and bottle.

I feel exhausted at the end of this week. A has been grumpy (for her so just a meltdown or two a day) and has kept on with her busy feeding schedule. DD1 is better which is awesome but I'd forgotten quite how much energy she has when not ill! Potty training attempt one starts tomorrow...

Wow Too! That's a hectic 24 hours! Glad your night out went well and it was all a false alarm for the jaundice. I didn't realise chilli could cause nappy rash though!! Thanks for the heads up - I love chilli and I'm going out to dinner tonight so I would definitely have picked something spicy without this warning! Autumn hasn't really had nappy rash yet, just a little redness a couple of days ago which went when we started using barrier cream.

Pet sounds like a tough night! Hope you still had a good day, and tonight is much better!

The wonder weeks website looks interesting! Thanks for the tip Pomme! Also thanks for the encouragement re staying up for ages at night, it's great to hear when this passed for other babies!

Got to run now, need to get Autumn ready to head out to the restaurant as soon as DH's cousins arrive - and they're already on their way... oops!

Oooh, good luck with the potty training, Pomme! How do you go about it? Okay, confession: did not sterilise the bottle/pump etc. My boobs are not sterile so I didn't see the point. Is that awful?

Have fun tonight, Scream! Yes, I love chilli and we went out for Chinese food and had a banquet with lots of v spicy dishes and I think M is feeling it today.

Ok, so The Transfer has been achieved...but in the wrong room. Now we need to manage The Transfer of Moses basket from living room to bedroom without Maia waking up.

Soooooooooooo tired! Can't quite see how I'm going to make it through to DH-handover time at 5am.

don't worry about the chilli ladies, it's really not likely to affect the babies. they might get some interesting garlic tastes etc, but as far as i know the power of what we eat to affect the milk/baby is very greatly exaggerated. :) as usual, there's good info on Kellymom about diet etc.

also sleepy here, tried to stay up and watch a film. didn't make it to the end though, possibly not helped by a wee glass of wine.

had to take DS2 for first trip to doc today for his sore bum. metanium hadn't touched it and HV advice to do antifungal every 4 hours and no cream in between resulted in it getting worse. got same cream with steroid so hope it works.

glad your night out went ok too. :) nightmare re the dash to hospital though! not many HV points on here today.

good luck pomme