Hi, all!
Yes, unhelpful fathers seemed a really big part of the stuff I had to catch up on after Easter, so I just want to say that I don't know anyone from my first antenatal group who didn't have some kind of relationship difficulties in the first year after the new baby. I think it all comes down to independence and dependence. Having carried these babies for so long, a very intense experience no matter how easy the pregnancy, we are just more aware of how dependent" these little creatures are, and there just can't be any "independence" in the face of that. Fathers, by contrast, haven't had the physical/mental conditioning of pregnancy (nor the postnatal hormones), so don't quite get "dependence" so much, which is why* they really need to learn some new reflexes: if I want a drink after work, who will pick up the child (not have that be the default responsibility of the mother)? who's getting up in the night/morning? and even if the baby mostly depends on its mother, whom can the mother/older child depend on? I don't think DH "got" parenthood at all until he spent three months out of work when DS was little, and even then he kept trying to wriggle out of it, saying he had "to prepare for interviews"; he also kept telling people - in front of me - that he was looking forward to going back to work "so I can have a rest". He also became a really annoying know-it-all about what "we" (I) should be doing. However, something stuck, and now we have both taken DS away on holiday without the other, and just recently he said that in a way it would be a good time for him to lose his job, because he could get to know DD, and she him, by having the time together while she is small. It seems to have struck him hard that the children are the first thing we ought to think of when making plans and saving/spending. Maybe it was the lack of control he felt when being out of work, and it's really sad to think it might only have been being humbled that did it. Perhaps becoming a mother, with all the fear and crisis of labour, then the soreness and sleep deprivation 
is our equivalent of being humbled?
Speaking of unhelful fathers, this going back a bit, to Easter, when I fell off the thread, but my father was getting on my nerves with his rosy "recollections" (rosy-arsed collecions of nonsense, more like) of our childhood. Strangely, I wasn't flattered to be remembered as an angel by someone I know didn't do a lot of child-rearing till I was older, as how would he know? He was quite good later: he would take my brother and me camping for weeks at a time, and seems to be planning to do the same with my DC, but this translates into taking DS camping on his own when he's 7 (tho' my father's already 73, so I'm a bit dubious about that... and DD is probably too young to ever benefit 
). It's as though he is ignoring them till then, though 
- a bit risky at his time of life, and bloody annoying when he piously repeats the doublethink of both "I'm not going to interfere" and "A grandfather's work is never done" (in his case, it is never even started! 
).
Sorry about that rant. Anyway, re the extensive discussions about sleep regression, I can definitely confirm that it is not exclusively a boy thing, oh, no. Until she was about 2 months, DD was give me stretches of 9pm to 5am, and I was really with it. However, that's not been working so well ever since, and we regularly have her "gribble" in the daytime as she's refused to sleep, or OR two-hour crying sessions in the middle of the night, because she's tanked herself up, and now is trying to poo it all out, and getting immensely frustrated! She's currently slamming her legs against the cot springs, no doubt trying to make herself poo (see her posts on Babiesnet passim).
How are those of you back at work feeling? And those at home? At the risk of sounding sententious (again; I'm aware of how pompous some of that stuff above about unhelful fathers, sounded), apparently one of the big recent events in US feminism was the "Mommy Wars", which seems to have consisted of women's having massive goes at one another over the effects of being a WOHM/SAHM on children, yet little mention of... again, yes,... unhelful fathers (or any fathers, for that matter. if I were a helpful father, I'd be insulted by that).
Poor boy, seven, can you sign and draw on and put stickers on his cast? 
Bet he's being brave for his DSis!
Lots of travelling about with the littluns! How are they all liking it? Are they still hypnotised by motion, or only above a certain speed, as a friend of mine once, annoyingly, found with his DS?
What a pity travelling actually brings one to place where one then gets stuck: that was a very shite-sounding trip, NorthernChinchilla*!
DD not taking a bottle either - and after I had opened one of my own! Oops! 
Bacchic baby alert (well, she has got a Classical name)!
Haddocks to headaches, LMF! Speaking of pains, what about your back. DSM?
Impressed with the crawling. Not even rolling here! She loves to be held.
Had a really lovely playdate today, with "clicks" for DS and the same-aged boy, other Mum and me... and the two babies seemed to tolerate one another, too!
Sorry I have missed our loads of stuff and people and subjects. Trying to follow the FB group is a bit easier, as "a picture is worth a thousand words" - and can therefore be "read" more quickly!
Laying out 
for the night shift...