hello all, just popping in to pick your brains if thats ok!
i remember talk a while back re changing bags. I have a very crap/cheap one that i used for DS. I could do with something a bit bigger for when DS2 arrives, as i'll have 2 in nappies then, and i no longer use a handbag when out with DS, so whatever i get needs to be big enough to hold stuff for both DS's and still have room for my phone, purse, lip balm, tissues, brush, and my drink bottle as a minimum :) and ideally lots of pockets so that things aren't just randomly sat at the bottom of the bag like this one.
So what ones would you all suggest? what do you have, and would you buy the same again?
I scan this thread from time to time, and afraid i don't have time to name check properly other than to say i think you are doing an amazing job dream and i think you should be very proud that you are still EBF'ing your DT's and i hope that life starts to give you a break (and lots of sleep) very soon!!
Re some of your discussions, this may or may not help, but re sleeping, we tried dreamfeed using expressed breast milk with DS and it didn't make any difference to his sleep, the only thing that worked for us was letting him cluster feed until about 10.30pm each night, and from 6 weeks he'd then sleep until 6am ish. When he was 5 months old, in the space of 4 nights he suddenly decided he wanted to move his bedtime from 10.30 to 8.30 to 7pm, and it has stayed at 7pm ever since - so we moved him into his own room as it meant we had our evenings to ourselves then :) (so for 5 months we didn't eat together, and i ate evening meals using spoons as if DS wasn't feeding then he would be snoozing upright on me - he was terrible at transferring which we later found out was probably down to his reflux.) Until he was 5 months, nothing would get him to sleep any earlier, just how he was, but at least he (and we) got a good nights sleep when he went down at 10.30ish. We had a patch about 6 months where he started waking in the night but as he hadn't had a night feed since 6 weeks, we refused to give in as the hv said he didn't need feeding, so would send DP in with a bottle of cooled boiled water. Within a week, DS had realised there was no point waking up as he wasn't going to get fed, and if he did wake up, he would just settle back to sleep on his own. But this wasn't approved by most of the hv's, but an old school one said that she did it with her 3 and she said that its the only way to break a bad habit, and that it had to be DP who went in, as DS would smell the milk if i went in, whereas with DP, no smell of milk and nothing but boring water on offer.
To those considering using formula, i gave some to DS a couple of times when he had fed and thrown it up, fed from other side and thrown it up, and was screaming for more milk and i had nothing left and the resulting nappies made me determined to never give him formula unless i really had to, which was an added reason on top of the "breast is best" mantra and the fact that every week i could keep feeding him was saving us £10 that we'd have spent on a tub of formula. God those nappies were absolutely vile, and very loose indeed. Thinking back, when i had DS i thought i'd feed him to 6 months and then stop, but i ended up feeding him until he was between 14-15 months, and i only stopped completely because i was pregnant and it suddenly became very unpleasant to feed him. There was a lot of pain and discomfort in the early weeks, but i think this all went by 3 months, and i never had any pain at all from then on. And it was so convenient being able to whip a boob out when needed, never had to worry about making sure we had some with us in case we got stuck in traffic, no hassle washing/sterilising bottles etc. So to those having a bit of a wobble, if you can get to that point, hopefully it will be a pleasure for you from then on like it was for me (until then it was very toe curling at times, especially for the first few minutes each time he latched on, and the latch was fine as had it checked out, i do wonder if it's just that they have mouths too small to start with and the pain goes once they are a bit bigger?