Just Mumming Along (viroids 2)

[Eskarina]

Tried to post on the original thread and my post got rejected as its full! Have copied and pasted below....

Congrats on the job offer ttl...hope the other one comes up trumps for you too.

Dd isn't quite crawling yet, but would very much like to. She is the queen of the Klingons at the moment, and has a meltdown the second I put her down, look in the opposite direction, or if someone else so much as looks at her. Not all the time thankfully, but definitely for part of every day.

On the bf thing, it's so personal.....I've just dropped doing the afternoon feed myself be cause dd is so distractible that she bobs on and off, which I don't like around other people, and now she finally has teeth the constant latch on/off was really hurting. I just bf once a day, our morning snuggle when she's nice and calm. I would be sad to give that one up just yet.

[FeijoaVodkaPlease]

PS, I won't bother posting our routine (or lack there of) as it revolves more around DS than DD. And as we are mid school holidays, there is even less routine than usual! The only real constants are DD napping sometime late morning/midday ish, with lunch either right before or after. Then dinner around 5 (for DC, DH and I eat later) bath, stories and bed. DD still feeds to sleep.

I should go to bed as that calpol is going to wear off soon and DD will be wanting to get into bed with me, so that she can spend the night complaining she's hot, hasn't got enough space, the boob she's by is empty.... Oh I do love her

[nickelbarapasaurus]

DD has got 4 more teeth.
3 are properly through, and the third makes her gaptoothed because it's just hovering on the gum.

and this is when she really, really becomes my mum!
she's pushing out her bottom jaw so that she can grind her middle top tooth (and jutting the jaw sideways)

[nickelbarapasaurus]

@*&^ing naps

NO NAPS :( :( :( :(

just thought I'd get one - it lasted 15 seconds!

[CuriosityCola]

Our routine:
Awake 6am
6.30am breakfast followed by milk
8am morning nap - anything between 30 mins - 9mins depending on previous night.
11.30am lunch
1pm (earlier if short morning nap) nap 30mins- 60 mins
2pm milk and a snack
4pm dinner
5pm bath, bottle and stories
6pm asleep on our bed
6.30pm awake! Try and feed back to sleep. On a good night stays asleep until half nine, when I go to bed. Bad night I need to feed back to sleep every 30 mins.
During the night: co-sleeping so feeding on and off constantly. Feeds during naps too. Ds is a boob monster

Two key areas of help needed. How do I go about night weaning? Is he too young at 11 months?

How can I get him to sleep for longer than 30 minutes during the day without laying with him and feeding him back to sleep or walking around with him in the carrier?

I want to completely stop breastfeeding at one year old. So I'm going to be starting to phase out boob feeds.

[CuriosityCola]

Nickel, how old is dd now? Is it because of her sore skin? Do you have a carrier?

Ds is only napping for me because I put him in the ergo at the first sign of tiredness and dance about like an idiot until he drops off. Previously had to walk him in pushchair, but weather is getting in the way of that.

[nickelbarapasaurus]

she's 7 months and 12 days.

not because of her sore skin, she just doesn't do naps. I try my hardest, but she fights it every step of the way.

I have had a few days where we've managed to get her off and she's slept for an hour or 2, but then the same method the next day doesn't work.
I can't do a carrier because I can't be arsed with the faff of it (putting it on) - plus, when I hold her, I have to feed her to sleep, or she won't go. If I hold her on my shoulder, say, she'll rub her chin (where it's sore) until it bleeds and she cries.
The only ways she'll go to sleep is feeding or in the pram/car.
Today I've pushed her up and down the shop for ½ an hour (at least) and she wasn't having it (even though she had fallen asleep in the feed and then woken up as soon as I'd put my boob away )


Why do you want to stop Bfing at 1year? is it because you're going back to work?
because if it is, you can still feed in the evening and morning, and either give expressed milk or other drinks/food during the day when you're not there.
(obviously, it's your choice, but I thought I'd stick my oar in show you options if it wasn't by "choice")

[nickelbarapasaurus]

just realised she's asleep.
today's method - I walked her pram up and down for ages, (at some point putting socks on her hands to stop her rubbing at her wrists), got pissed off with the effort, so put her (in the pram) (wide awake but staring into the distance) in the shop and left her.
she's asleep. that means she got herself to sleep.

[Eskarina]

Cc it's completely fine to want to stop bf at a year. You have done so well to keep going this long. I'll be stopping at a year too. Well, if we get there. I've been resoundingly rejected the last couple of mornings, so I think dd might be weaning herself off anyway. I replaced a couple of feeds with formula when I was ready to - the bedtime feed fairly early on, as I wasnt getting on with expressing, and the afternoon one when she got teeth top and bottom and was so distracted that she was constantly bobbing on and off and biting hard.

So you could just replace one feed at a time with formula (or at this stage, probably cows milk) over the space of the next month.

Not sure what to suggest about the napping and night weaning though. We just got fed up of getting up every hour or so, so decided that dd could feed max every 2 hours, we moved her to her own room (just after 6 months) and I would feed after 2 hours, inbetween DH went to her and just persisted with walking her up and down until she either settled or the 2 hour mark came up then I fed her. But she wasn't hungry, that was the thing, she just wanted boob for a minute or two then fell asleep. It worked though. It didn't take more than a week of that then she was only waking once (well, after a dream feed) at around 3am, then at 7 months we phased out the dream feed and the 3 am feed and by 8 months she was sleeping through reliably.
You have to be willing to put up with a fair amount of crying though, even though it was generally in our arms, we have just left her to cry for a few mins at a time too. That's not going to work if you want to carry on co sleeping though.
Naps - hate to say it but dd got a whole lot better at naps once I enforced naps in cot. We've just moved to having one long nap late morning and she has 90 mins or so then. I'd like her to have more, but if she goes back down in the afternoon she's a nightmare at bedtime.

I did find that the day and night sleep sorted themselves out hand in hand - once she was getting a sensible amount of sleep at night then she could nap properly in the day, then we reined in the afternoon nap and she slept through the night.

BUT that all sounds very preachy and smug, and I don't intend it too at all. It was hard hard work, and we often wondered of we were doing the right thing. I think dd slept through/napped more when she was ready to, and we just did what we could to get us and her through to that point. We would have liked her to sleep through earlier of course, but I don't think getting tough earlier would have helped, just made her more upset.

Good luck xxx

[FeijoaVodkaPlease]

Night weaning I may well be following this advice soon too, as I'm so tired of being tired.

[nickelbarapasaurus]

DD has dropped off to sleep.
it's the second time this week that she's gone off in her pram (well, reclined buggy now!) after a few pushes up and down the shop. was it yesterday she did it before? oh, yes, just checked my post.
yep, she's just done it again.
But this time I had to pull her hands away from her neck (covered again), and wheel her up and down a couple more times.

[vallinnapod]

Just been reading back....

FVP - DS is getting his first molars (can can only assume as he has the 8 front ones) and dear lord above have the nappies been foul. Yesterday he managed to shit all over the car seat (god knows what material Maxi Cosi use but it really does repel everything ) and today he shat all over the pushchair (faired less well....smells funky still despite copious amounts of anti-bac spray....poor bubba.

Esk - what car seat have you gone for? Had a browse in JL today. The MC Pearl looks tiny and no way would DS be in there until 4 (even the lady said 3 would probably be a push!) She was recommending the Tobi or Axiss.

Nickel DS had a good line in teeth grinding...my god, I used to want to drop him is was so hideous. Thankfully he has stopped now but it lasted a couple of months

CC - I can't help I am afraid. DS and I sort of self-weaned...in that around 7 months I stopped offering, he stopped asking! Only because the nights were so terrible for us. He was very good and took to a bottle really easily. We stopped co-sleeping during this time (he would wake 2 or 3 times and DS would have to settle him) after a week or so we went back to co-sleeping when he woke and he didn't once try and nuzzle. Finally evicted him a couple of months ago! As Esk said, it sounds very easy but we had our fair share of tears (on everyones part!) and wondering if we were doing the right thing (as far as napping went - if DS hadn't given up BF I wouldn't have pushed it.)

[nickelbarapasaurus]

you were lucky, then! (with the stop offering thing)
i tried that with DD because i was actually quite busy and the way she howled you'd've thought that i was garotting bunnies in front of her.

you do not deny DD real food.

[vallinnapod]

LOL!!! DS is like his daddy, he is just not fussed by food or milk. He will have either if it is put in front of him but he has never got upset if I have been out shopping and been late with lunch or tea. Clearly none of my genes there....!

[FeijoaVodkaPlease]

Val tonight I had a rummage in DDs mouth while she was cleaning her teeth and she is cutting BOTH bottom molars. ARGH. She's had the runs all week in reaction to the MMR (I never knew diarreah was a measles symptom! I do now) and now this. Thank goodness there is an amber teething necklace in the post already.

DD knows the sign for milk and isn't afraid to use it. Yep there is no way I could casually stop offering boob! She's nearly 13 months and I just don't know how much longer I want to continue.

Nickel Have you ever seen the bunny suicide books? Your post put me in mind of them for some reason...

[nickelbarapasaurus]

2 years by who recommendations.

i watched supernanny the other night, and where normally i laud and praise her for everything, she did have a and moment from me when she's persuading heavily this mum of an 8-month-old to stop breastfeeding.
now, the 18-month-old couldn't get to sleep without a feed, which isn't a bad thing at 18 months! but it did include naps.
an 18-month-old should still be BFing and it was wrong of supernanny to interfere with that - she should have been up-to-date with WHO guidelines and suggested to the parents a different bedtime routine, maybe, so that the child has her evening milk and then goes to her own bed, rather than forcing the mum not to feed the child anymore!

those bunny suicides are hilarious

[Eskarina]

Val - we've got the britax eclipse. I looked around at all sorts, including group 1-2-3 hybrids but having used it for a few weeks including a longer journey I'm glad we went for a simple group 1 seat, purely due to the recline. Dd slept on the longer journey and I was really glad she could lay back then as if sitting upright her head did loll about a bit. Don't be fooled by some hybrids that claim to recline - usually you have to completely remove them from the car in order to do so, whereas dd's can be done with one hand whilst driving


Cc/fvp have you tried asking on the sleep or weaning boards for any help on stopping bf? I've heard of don't offer, don't refuse as a technique (which I suppose I did really - just breaking the habit of responding to a prolonged cry with boob when actually cuddles might suffice) but I guess if mini-fvp can sign milk you might not get so far with that. Is there a pattern to the feeds that you are prepared to do? Maybe you could stick to those and phase the non-core feeds out? Then switch to formula/cows milk for the core feeds gradually? And respond to other crying with cuddles rather than milk?
You've done really well to feed for this long.

[CuriosityCola]

Ok, quick update.

Have started the don't offer, don't refuse thing and it's working surprisingly well. Also started trying to put ds in his cot again. If he wakes and cries I pick him back up. Managed to put him back down three times last night, before co-sleeping the second part of the night (dh pulled him in with us and I never even noticed).

Tonight he went down after being rocked to sleep. He woke after 30 minutes due to a poonami, managed to still rock him back to sleep and then pat his back when in cot.

This is not my child! Going to continue the rocking and patting and see how we get on. He hates his cot usually so any crying (or fussing as the books seem to call it) and he is picked up. Think this is reassuring him.

Decided to stop breast feeding at a year as its not working for us as a family any more. It sounds awful but I just don't enjoy it. I need my body back and he is such a terrible feeder I don't want to show my boobs to everyone in Edinburgh any more. One year is the earliest I can rationalise that I'm not a terrible mother for stopping. I don't think others are wrong for stopping before then, it's just I have continued through guilt of not having a good reason to stop. Dh and I discussed it and I think I have maybe been verging on Pnd. I was just so worried about failing him.

Very self centred post, sorry!

[CuriosityCola]

Not a very quick update either!

[nickelbarapasaurus]

babies who don't like to sleep are a bit of a nightmare, aren't they!


I hope you didn't think I was being judgey when I asked about why you were stopping - you have done amazingly well to get to a year, so you should be proud of it :)
(it was more checking that it was you who wanted to stop, not society in general )

the last 15-16 hours of my life have been:
scratch
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
wail wail wail wail wail
eat eat eat eat eat eat eat
bite a bit
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
rub rub rub rub
wail wail wail wail wail
eat eat eat eat eat eat eat
bite a bit
scratch scratch scratch
moan whinge moan whinge moan
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
wail wail wail wail wail
eat eat eat eat eat eat eat
bite a bit
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch
rub rub rub rub
wail wail wail wail wail
eat eat eat eat eat eat eat
bite a bit
scratch scratch scratch
rub rub rub rub
scratch scratch scratch

[nickelbarapasaurus]

please note, that the rub rub rub might have happened while sleeping, or while not sleeping. or while pretending sleep is not required.
or resisting sleep.
or fake sleeping
or feeding.

[FeijoaVodkaPlease]

Well done getting DS to settle at night CC. Sometimes we just have to bite the bullet and get through the hard stuff. Also you have done amazingly well bfing to a year. If it helps when I stopped bfing DS at 8 months I felt it improved my relationship with him immensely. I had always had a hard time with feeding him immensely and removing that stress relaxed both of us. DD is a dream to bf however which is the only reason I'm still going.

I've been doing the don't offer thing for a while. She only feeds morning evening and night too. Sometimes miss greedy will ask before dinner and I'll explain she'll be eating soon and she can have her milky drink at bed time. I was wobbling last week because feeding had become painful. It turns out I have a yeast infection. Annoyingly just as the meds for that have kicked in I woke up this morning with another blocked duct. (grr)
However after a couple of bad nights (2am poo anyone?) she slept through again last night. I have been making much more of an effort to stay awake and put her back in her cot once she has feed. I think she is realising how much more comfortable she is in there :)

[CuriosityCola]

Don't think you are being judgey at all Nickel. It's more that I'm embarrassed to not have a non-selfish reason to stop.

Ds is sleeping in his cot again this evening and went down really easily. He has been in a good mood during the day too . Either I have cracked this parenting malarky or it's the calm before a horrid growth spurt. Tonight I put him down half awake, patted his back while he had the fixed stare and then he drifted off. No crying...again?! Just need to do the same Fvp and try to stay awake during the night to put him back. I just get mole eyes and want to sleep and he seems to get more cuddly during the night . Poor dh keeps ending up with no room though. Ds nudges and prods him until he moves.

Nickel I hope your little one feels better soon. This is hard enough without a wee poorly baby. Are the doctors being helpful?

[CuriosityCola]

Meant to say...thanks for sharing Fvp. I see my friend feed her little boy (same age as ds) and he loves it. He lies across her lap, completely focused on his feed and then when he is done, he is done...all happy and content. Ds was hungry, but might miss something...on, off, on, off...might want other boob, no prefer this boob...on, off, on, off...what can my hands reach while I'm feeding...pulls my hair, stretches my top or worst of all tries to grab other nipple, during all this he would kick continuously and try to crawl around on my lap (as good as any time to practice). Every bad habit under the sun!

[nickelbarapasaurus]

dd is like that when she's itchy.
i have to hold her upper hand with my hand and clamp her underside arm with my elbow.
if she pulls off twice, i put my boob away.

[CuriosityCola]

That's what I used to do, but he was feeding all night to make up for it and there just isn't enough room in our bed anymore. Plus he was grinding his gums on my boob

I know I have said this already, but I was just watching him sleeping in his cot and thinking this is not my child. He has gone from being a Velcro baby and very demanding (shouting) to really happy and funny at the moment. It's really unnerving