Post-grad Brookers book in here!

[TooImmatureTurtleDoves]

Thread 2.

And I'd like to complain that after vast effort to get my 2,5 hours between feeds both my boys are screaming blue murder and colicky as hell :(

dream - thanks for that, it does make sense. I just find that different people say different things.. I remember a bf lady (nct) telling me that past first few weeks fore milk/hindmilk no longer applies. I've also been told that swap when baby comes off boob?? Grr. However, the days when she feeds really often she is more grumpy but when I leave her she gets hysterical and then won't latch on at all. I would do a lot for every three hours!

She also will not nap at the moment which is another issue entirely. DD1 stopped napping at 19 months (now 26 months) so already no toddler let up and now the baby won't let me have a break either! Unfair!

At 11 weeks she is much harder than ever.. also unfair!!

We have sff once so far post birth but ahem, avoided too's problem by ahem, swift action.. I quite liked it but the thought of expending that energy again puts me off a repeat...

And pomme, also not trying to tell you how to suck eggs or what you should fo with feeding, just passing on the L C' s wisdom fat lot of good its doing me

No it's great to hear advice but like you stretching out feeds seems an impossible task!

Me too pomme The LC said its not actually about foremilk/hindmilk, and that's old fashioned now and she's not meant to use those terms but the principle is the same and its easier to understand (maybe she thought I was even thicker than I am?!), don't let them.swap boob if they want more after say 30 min (.ha! 30,min ages in our house!). She said if you can chuck them.in car/ buggy and they go to sleep they weren't really hungry, plus fussing/ not latching well after a short time is another colic type behaviour showing they're not really hungry. Loads of it fits my duo, particularly Ben :(

Naps. Gah. Poor you, I had a 'mare with them til DD 9 months, walked her in sling for every one til then (or car)... So I'm no help, I have no good skills there. 19 months is so young to stop napping, she must be a ball of energy

Yeah, buggy is my only way of doing it, its seemingly impossible to stretch them out atm and we have hours and hours of crying a day anyway, I'd say 4-5 minimum :( :( (& that's not leaving them, its trying to comfort unless I'm stuck nappying the other or something)

Oh Dream, that sounds terribly upsetting. If I had to deal with two crying babies for 4 or 5 hours a day I would be in the depths of despair and begging anyone to adopt one help. Is there anything that comforts them? It sounds as if your confidence is being shattered. You are not failing them - you are doing everything you possibly can to calm them down and make them happy. You are SuperMum!

Pomme, there is no way I get 3 hours between feeds in the day, unless we've managed a long nap - which is rare. Maybe 2 hours if we went for a long walk and then she stayed asleep when we got back, or if we've done a lot of driving and she's slept in the car seat.

I have hardly cooked at all. I try to get DH to do it instead. This is usually successful because he likes cooking, but if he doesn't want to then we wind up arguing a lot because M feeds so much in the evenings that it is hard for me to cook. Today I bunged two baking potatoes in the oven one-handed, and then DH walked M around the living room while I made green bean hummous, put it on the potatoes and added goats cheese. I think DH struggles with the relentlessness of parenthood - it doesn't matter how tired he is, we have to eat, and that means he has to either cook or else play with Bean so I can cook. He's got no energy at the moment and it means I have to nag him to help me or we'd go hungry.

too the only way of comforting them is the boob (or car or buggy, not always/ usually practical with DD). Which I've been told is worsening it :( . We walk with them, 'tiger in the tree' them, have them over shoulders, on tummies on laps, wind and wind and wind some more... Nothing helps much or for long. Oh- tried dummies too, they spit em out. Surely you've spotted my many despairing posts?! At least evening is the constant and its either morning or afternoon so far for the other scream-a-thon, not both. Surely it could never be both...?!

My dh also hating the relentlessness, esp as its always one baby each every second both aren't on the boob all evening. I hear you on the nagging.

I think you've hit the nail on the head Too with description of the relentlessness of it. I think DH would cook if he was ever here but I genuinely can't remember the last time he cooked. Very occasionally he'll help me chop something, but cooking the whole meal? Can't remember. He likes cooking too so it's not that he doesn't want to.

We've been really lucky that as a general rule ds2 will settle quite easily in the evening - completely different to ds1 who used to take the whole evening. DH used to manage to get home to cook at this stage with ds1 but it just isn't working out this time . But tonight I just had to leave ds2 to cry a couple of times to cook - it was our tea for tonight and ds1's for tomorrow so I just had to get it done.

Ds2 does more and more seem to like a good old fashioned cluster feed over DS1's tea time / bed time routine - that's making it a bit hard and ds1 gets a bit of a raw deal. Ds2 has the noise card which kind of makes it hard for ds1 to ever 'win'. I'm pretty certain that a crying backing noise takes the shine off the bedtime story for him....:

Dream I have no idea how you get from day to day with not one but two that are hard to settle. I would literally never eat I think! You are, as Too says, supermum!

Sounds like some interesting thoughts from the LC visit. Although some of it you must be thinking 'yeah? You try it love!' I guess it gives you a few ideas to have at the back of your mind but I can completely see how paradoxical it is that more and more feeding is both making them more unsettled and also the only thing that will settle them . There just isn't a way out of that one. Especially not when you have dd to attend to too. If you're in the situation where they 'might' settle if you popped them in the pushchair and walked them, that's not much help if it's dd's tea time for example is it.

Oh, feeding finished. Tonight not as good as last night (Dream I too was at such a big sleep from one so spotty!) I think he'd worn himself out from such a difficult day. I could have told you at 8:01 though that we weren't going to have such a good night tonight!

Still, you know DS2, if you wanted to, there's still time to surprise me with a big sleep? The night is young......

The feeding them stops the crying temporarily but i guess doesn't 'settle' them as they come off crying. But yes, I have enough crying without depriving them of boob for hours, though I am trying. No difference in their colic so far though :-s

I have the having to leave one crying way too often for nappies etc biscuits . Bit rubbish, but you do need to feed the other members of your family too.

Oh back to LO's in the bath. DD, just before I had the boys, had one of those incidents in the bath. She is boundary pushing with all the sense of a young toddler . She kept stepping off or sliding off the bathmat despite being repeatedly told to stay on the mat, where she was when i turned round to put toothpaste on her brush. Heard a splash (though not a particularly enormous one), turned back and she's off the mat, must have slipped from sitting (as not enough noise to have fallen from standing) and was lying on the bottom of the bath looking shocked, eyes wide open, mouth open and not trying to save herself. Clearly would have drowned. So 18 months, highly unreliable, just turned 20 months, maybe slightly less so but constant unwavering supervision needed, but she could play upstairs ok for a bit. Her 'helping' may not be so helpful atm... Going to try some more of your bath ideas soon!

Dh being a grumpy arse tonight. I've had 2 hours sleep but now he has just announced he's too knackered to do anything else, I've been asleep and stropped off to box room for the remainder of the night.

scarlet what a fab mum, long may her helping last!

In other news, today I got my three out of the house for 9:45 by myself to go to playgroup. Admittedly I might not have managed had dh not gone to work an hour later than usual (very rare!) & got DD dressed and started her breakfast, so i only had the twins to feed and change nappies and breakfast for DD to be finished. Plus if it had been a screaming morning it may not have happened but still...

I'm so tired.

Go to sleep S. Stay asleep B. Please.

Can I just scream for one minute?! If not-so-D H doesn't stop waking me I'm going to have a meltdown! He keeps coming in and waking me up with stupid questions when DD doesn't need feeding. He woke me at 10.30 today even though he KNOWS I can't get to sleep during the day and he knows I only went to sleep at 8 after a long night up with Autumn. So that's it, now I'm up for the day, on 2.5 hours sleep. I could've slept through from 8 to 12 at least, but he just had to wake me!! Even though DD is asleep!

I am so tired I could scream!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I pretty much did scream at him, and he just said "I don't see why you're so upset". The guy who didn't have to look after Autumn until 8am can't understand why the person who's been up all night didn't want to be woken?! ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Sorry, rant over. Thanks for letting me vent.

Obviously this isn't on the scale of Dream coping with 4-5 hours of crying a day. Poor you! Sending lots of hugs your way! Just remember you're doing an amazing job!

Oh Dream, I didn't mean to upset you. I had some sort of hare-brained idea about starting with eg walking the twins in pram and then working backwards and drafting lots of assistance to walk twins for you at any hour of the day or night. It made more sense in my head than it does written down. What about sending the twins out with your nanny-person for a nice walk about 3 times a day?

Grrrr at your DH Scream. My DH always assumes I am not tired if I cannot sleep

Awesome effort at getting out of the house Dream - well done to all of you :)

And I meant to say well done to Team Scarlet on DDs weight gain - another excellent brooking effort :)

Scream, that must have been infuriating! DH would have got v short shrift from me in that situation.

Biscuits, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I take my hat off to you and all others who have a toddler to deal with as well as a baby (or two babies, as the case may be). It must be really hard to have a hungry toddler to feed as well as a howling baby.

Dream, what a scary bath incident! I would be petrified about bathing after one of those.

I kind of see what the LC meant with the feeding...sometimes M will want to feed and feed even as she throws up/flails/wails/generally looks windy. I try to walk her around the room for a bit to give her wee tummy a break and the milk a chance to go down. I think once she really starts to throw up then she's overloaded her tummy and I should make her stop for a bit. It takes a lot of energy to enforce, though - I always get tired of walking before she does, so I go and sit down again and then she wails and I wind up feeding her again - it's a vicious circle, especially at night when you're tired and it's not practical to bung her in sling/pram and go for a walk. Walking around the house gets old very fast. And walking twins would be exhausting because they'd be double the weight.

Right, DH and I are gearing up to get to M's kidney consultation at 2.15. I need to finish hanging out the washing and then feed her so that once she falls asleep in the car she should be good for a while.

Ooooooo I also meant to congratulate Scarlet on your DD's weight gain - well done!!!

Too the situation you've described with M perfectly matches A as well! She will be mid-feed and suddenly start coughing at the breast, I can see her bring up a little sick and swallow it back down because she HATES actually throwing up but she will still scream if I take her away from the breast and try to give her little tummy a short break. Luckily A only feeds for 5 minutes anyway, so I usually just let her finish and then spend ages winding her.

By the way, my imw recommended sitting on the gym ball and using that to bounce/sway/rock the baby. It makes it easy to get into a soothing rhythm for the baby, and uses less energy than actually pacing around the house. I tried it out last night and it really helped us both although she still didn't go to sleep

Need to stop MNing and get ready for my hectic day filled with visitors. Can someone please remind me why I thought it would be a good idea to have two sets of visitors the day before my DH will be working, so I have to do the whole night shift by myself tonight and look after DD all day tomorrow by myself as well? All on 2.5 hours sleep. Clearly this was one of my genius moments

Oh yes, I meant to say what a fight ending bath thing with DD Dream - just goes to show how much supervision and vigilance is required!

Too that sounds familiar with the walking around thing, then you get tired and sit down and it all starts again! we've had a lot of that today! And I just can't get my moby sling thing 'right'. Am going to a sling meet on Monday all being well so they can help me with it . What sort of along do you have Too?

And brooking for a good kidney appt for M today - good luck! xx

Fight ending? frightening even.....

We've got a BabyBjorn but I don't use it indoors as it feels a bit too big, sort of... We also have a Premaxx one-shoulder sling but so far she seems to be too small for it - her chin goes down on her chest and she slides down to the bottom, so I've never done more than try her in it and then take her out. I'd love a Moby type sling but am too scared to spend money right now - I have 1 more normal pay cheque and then I go onto the dreaded SMP and we probably run out of money by the middle of every month

Scream, that sounds v stressful. Make your visitors do all the walking around bouncing A for you! Will try out your ball idea, thanks!

too just been recommended a sling site- lots cheaper than Moby or similar. will link when not on phone! have been to see our local sling expert (she freely admits to being a bit obsessed) and seen her collection. she gave me links and info, will pass on if anyone interested.

more later, away to change DS2's 900th poo of the day. wee bum is improving and another 11oz gained this week so all pretty good here.

brooking for settled wee babies and more sleep sometime!

When i say hard to settle my boys, I guess I mean hard to settle Seb who is less colicky and will briefly calm with walking and jigging, but impossible to settle Ben. He cries no matter what I do.

jaggy, I'm after another sling, I'd like any info.

Also glad of sling info Jaggy.

Dream have you got a moby already? What makes you want a different one? I presume as you used it with dd you wouldn't be having the 'how much material? I just can't work the flipping thing' issues that I'm having

Is there such a thing as a twin sling?

Doh, hit post.

So glad ds2's bum is improving. Poor little thing. Must be the week for it, DT1's is looking better too.

scarlet, yay for growing that baby of yours!

The LC said evening cluster feeding was normal. Just not all morning/afternoon too. I do try and space them by 10 min, even before i saw her, but she's talking about another hour or two for me . They stop feeding to cry, go back on, feed some more, I take them off to wind them, they cry, I walk them, they cry. Bloody colic.

too I paid £ 15 for my moby second hand.

biscuits, I got the moby after DD to try n get both twins in. With her I used a baby bjorn active then ergo baby. I can't work the moby with one! It's hopeless if you're out too as you'd have to put it on in the house before going out if you're driving as there's so much dragging on the floor getting filthy if you do it when you get there I've found. Hmm.

There's the weego twin sling which goes up to approximately 6 months but i don't have one.

Wowsers so you could in theory use the moby for both? Eeeek! I really can't get the hang of it for one! If I use the newborn hold with legs tucked in in the foetal position, DS seems to tall, and I've tried the kangaroo hold but just don't seem to be able to tie it tight enough. I guess it needs practice but it's hard to DS for me to just keep trying! Especially when the aim is to stop him from crying, not keep putting him in and out etc! I could practice with a toy but we don't have anything as big as DS, or heavy, or wriggly

Tentatively I like the look of (I think) the ergo and Mei Tei (do they look similar?). I also have a Baby Bjorn Active but might start using it when DS is over the CP.