Caution! December 2011 babies can be hazardous to health, bank balances and carrot sticks!

[LittleMissFlustered]

We have had to drop DS cot bed down to next level as he keeps reaching up and grabbing his mobile almost ripped it off side cot last night by pulling down. Im guessing It's a little early for having done that as theres such a difference.

He had lentil and carrot soup for tea with a fromage frais for dessert after his strawberry massacre, then had 8oz for bed hopefully that'll keep him down though is so humid here I'll be surprised.

Tomorrow is dh first day on boy duty, he's taking him to PILs as cant face it on his own......should be interesting!!

Massive hug for air, if there is anything we can do to help, let us know. x

dsm, DS is having baby cereal for breakfast (moving onto Weetabix in a bit), pureed people food for lunch & a Petis Filous for dinner, 2 extra milks on top of the ones he has with meals.

figgy, yay! sounds like it's going ok.

aethel, I suppose at least you know now...but it's still vair shitty of her!

Oi, they'll probably find this thread & be all 'muuuuummmmm, why did you talk about my poo, you're so embarrising, worst mum EVER..I hate you!! Can I have some money now please'

BJR! Sounds excellent! Good on you for not just accepting the crap.

LMF,

If Italy win against Germany DH will look after DS for 24hrs so I can go to a mates...he already 'owes' me 12hrs for beating England.

Hope everyone has a peaceful night!

AWCH is this a new method of betting?

Glad you survived ok figgy, keep looking forward to Friday!

aethel that's awful of your childminder not to say anything, bloody good job you thought to text her! Hope you manage to get another one sorted out in time.

oi i like the idea of us still posting when theyre 14! I haven't looked at the video yet but I imagine it must be very cute! Eva has been commando crawling for a couple of weeks but is very close to proper crawling now. I videoed on my phone earlier for DH as he was at work, she started getting on her hands and knees yesterday and has now progressed to rocking. DH has Wednesday and thursday as his days off so I'm really hoping she'll manage it before Friday!

I made gingerbread dough with DS earlier, it's resting in the fridge overnight(the book recommended it) then he told me he's cutting out the gingerbread men tomorrow. We also need to go to homebase and buy bark chips to put in the chicken run.

oi you may like to know that my iPhone wanted to autocorrect gingerbread to gingerbaby!

Spoke too soon he's just been awake for a 15 minute screaming session .......why!!!!!! He's gone back down without food though just cuddles.

No fair I want him to crawl when I tried to do tummy time this evening with him on my chest he just threw carrot up all over my shirt...... That'll teach me

Thanks for the reassuring words for my friend, I will be sure to pass on your positive stories

Freya did some rather impressive break dance moves the other night. She rolled onto her front and was balancing on one arm with her legs and bum in the air. Hilarious

Am watching Lifers and trying to understand how/why the girls are visiting their father who murdered their mother (not an accident, he strangled her)

Ah I will treasure those moments when you lift them above your head, lovely play, giggle giggle, puke in your face.
seven GingerBaby! Thanks for that! It's lovely to be reminded.
And sardines to the cm aethel, she should have been in touch. You'll find a better one, and then your LO will become a child prodigy.

I keep meaning to say missree, I had an emergency cs and BOi latched on the same evening. My milk didn't come in til day 4 or 5, and bf was bloody hard work and painful for a while. - but that's all normal.i've been bfing for 6 mths now very successfully. BOi's stayed perfectly on his percentile line - about 80-85 since birth.
I think bf is down to your body rather than birth experience. Either you can, or you can't.
And there really is NOTHING wrong with ff! ( apart from it being a pain in the ar$e - sterilising/bottles/boiling water/mixing... - I just use the ready made cartons now i'm mixed feeding. I cba.)

Right well despite the 8oz he woke at 10.15 got him back down without food at 11 only for him to wake up at 11.30, dh did feed then I heard him chuntering at 3ish and 4ish until got him up at 6.45. He's now back in bed with dh and I'm drying my hair........work and night feeds suck!!

I got a full nights sleep. My second ever! But f didn't have any 'tea' yesterday so totally wasn't expecting it.

still totally random whether he sleeps or not but he's happy and chubby and rolling.

I went out last night! dBro bought me a ticket to the Hitchikers Guide Live Radio gig and it was great stuff.

for aethel's night out and hawthers sleep

DS isn't going to know what's hit him this weekend. After seeing me very tired and upset over the now frequent night feeds, DH has decided he's going to do cold turkey with DS. I'm not going to offer any more breast feeds so that DS learns bottles are the new normal. I'll just express when the boobs get painful. DH will have a fight on his hands though - DS is a stubborn little thing and has decided all bottles are evil, and won't even take breastmilk from one. I went to huge efforts expressing last night. I don't get on with my home breastpump. I never had problems using hospital pumps when DD was in, and would get 5oz out easily. Sat there for a good 20mins last night and only got 1oz out . And then he wouldn't even drink it.

Off to get him weighed this morning. Expecting another drop down the percentiles. Will see what ideas HV has about getting DS to eat too.

Morning all!

I'm knackered this morning, went to fil's house for a family dinner last night and didn't get home til late. DS was very good considering he was up 3 hours past bedtime. It does pee me off that we had to keep him up late (too much going on for him to sleep...I did try), but at the same time I guess I can't be too rigid about routines!

FIL did irritate me a bit with his well meaning concerns regarding weaning....what are you feeding him? He can't eat that! It's too big, he'll choke! He's too young to eat what you're eating! Are you still giving him milk? How much milk are you giving him? Are you playing with him in the day?

MissRee I don't understand the mentality of that at all! I want nothing to do with my dad after the way he treated my mum and half-brother and he didn't even hit them, although he did hit my step-mum, so he is that type of arsehole! I think maybe it's a form of Stockholm syndrome?

Great news Hawthers sending "do it again tonight" thoughts to your LO! :)

On the breastfeeding guilt, the more I've read on MN, the more I've realised where I went wrong, e.g. Not waking DS up to feed, too many visitors, not enough time lying in bed with boobs out with DS. I'll give it a shot next time round and I think I'll have more chance of success, but I'm certainly not going to make myself feel like shit again! I do feel sad every now and then, but DS is very healthy and happy, so I'm really just feeling sad for me than for him.

I do think there is some great advice and support on MN, but some threads make me feel awful when you get people being nasty about ff and saying the mum didn't try hard enough, no reason why anyone can't bf, ff is poison etc! Never come accross anyone that rude and nasty in real life (unless they think it but don't say it)! It is one of the things that puts me off MN!

Air Hope you are okay this morning?

Well another good night here. Sorted some wedding stuff too this morning - its all coming together now

I've just put tonight's dinner in the slow cooker - BBQ Coke Pork. It smells delish, let's hope it tastes as good as it smells in 6 hours time!

Hi thanks everyone

I'm fine kind of

today's to do list

Take air to school
clean kitchen
write cv and apply for jobs
Start giving Hope ff and pray she not allergic
Laugh at ex who wants to get bigger house so he can live with us but have his on bedroom lol so not going to happen hahahahaha

Air good to hear you're doing OK. Stay strong. You know where we all are.

Weigh-in wasn't as bad as I thought. DS is now 19lb 4oz and seems to have settled a bit above 75th percentile for the last couple of months. HV gave good advice on weaning. She said if DS hadn't taken to spoon feeding by this age then he wasn't likely to, so suggested ditching the purees and going pure BLW from now on. I explained that DS had the same reaction to sticks of food as to purees (spit them straight out and pull a face) and now eyed anything that I put on his tray with suspicion. She asked if he'd been teething and I confirmed that he had but that the teeth were now through. She said it sounded like he's now associating putting food in his mouth with causing him pain, and that we need to break that cycle. She suggested giving him some nurofen 30-45mins before eating so that gums aren't sore when he eats, and to keep that up for a few days.

I just tried and amazingly DS gummed away at some toast and cucumber quite happily . I don't think anything went in, but it's a start!

Next for the horrors (for DS and DH) of cold turkey on the bottles at the weekend.

Hey kate we can cold-turkey together! dS is having his last officiale-feed
Saturday morning (school fair is that day, I may well give him a sneaky feed there as will be easier than expressing). The rest of the weekend is marked "hermit as A onto bottles" so that we don't commit to going places where I may be criticised/guilted when he's wailing for boob :(

I think we have the childcare situation sorted, tried another local one who I have used before when the DDs were tiny: they have a space! One day their available timing is a bit tight (read i may have to go in to do paperwork on my day off :( ) but they will put him on a waiting list and if someone else changes time I can have it. They are sending me their bumpf but we were v happy there before so unless
The fine print says "if you pick up late your child will
Be sold on ebay", then we're in!

Ps baby steps air, take it one day at a time, you know where the thread is xxx

And I totally know what you mean about "blaming" posters/threads cherry, best thing is to find the more rational parts of MN and stay there. I rarely vrnture to the weaning threads, as I often want to at the posters on there. One poor soul started a thread about how she was exhausted and thinking of starting solids for her 5 month old in case it helped him to sleep and was immediately jumped on by several posters who started berating her and saying he wasn't ready for food etc without appreciating how knackered she sounded... There are certain threads where people bang their drums rather loudly, just try not to let it get to you....

and this series of posts is brought to you by Mr Clingy, who is making the most of his last few days (muah ha hah) of nailing mummy to the perch....no guilt this end at all, no siree

We had one of our most unusual nights of Freya waking, pulling dummy out and singing to it last night. This then leads to the "dummy dance" whereby she pulls it out/cries, I jump out of bed and put back in . It's strange, she usually doesn't wake at all at night! Let's hope it's not a new sleep pattern - that's the last thing I need for going back to work in 3 weeks

I rarely venture to other parts of MN - I'm always too shocked at overuse of the "C" word

aethel and cherry I know what you mean - sometimes people are really forthright about things like starting solids at 5 months when you think, hey, they're not talking about solids at 5 days, back off a little!

On the other hand...I did see a post on my friend's post-natal thread that said "I couldn't BF my baby in the hospital, my milk didn't come in when he was born, they showed me how to hand express but it was only coming out in drops, and he was so hungry again just two hours after we got onto the post natal ward that we are now bottle feeding him and he's much happier."

I also had a friend who sent me an email 10 days after giving birth saying that she had reluctantly given up breastfeeding because when he was weighed at one week, her baby had only put on 1lb since birth and that "proved" he wasn't thriving on her breastmilk and needed formula.

I'm no BF dogmatist, DS has formula at the moment and a whole week on bottles when he was 6 weeks but both of those stories made me really as they both wanted to breastfeed and were let down by a lack of support and/or completely incorrect information.

I think I'm going to ask my Mum for a slow cooker for my birthday MissRee - your post reminded me :o Such a good idea as it can be prepared in the morning (when DS is at his best) and ready when required! Plus I think we will have to have two dinner times, one for DS and one for me and DH. Yes and I don't like the c word being used so frequently! I'm no prude but it's just a horrible word! I read a thread the other day where people were being called twats for putting a baby on board sign in the car....couldn't believe how people got so worked up over something so trivial...

Air didn't catch your thread but am taking a guess that you've split up with 'D'H? Hope you are ok. Just take one day at a time. X

That's a good weight Kate and useful info about the eating solids and teething.

Hope all these babies get the hang of the bottle, I'm sure they will!

Glad I'm not the only one Aethel and Tyelperion I'm going to try to go straight to all talk topics rather than going via active conversations with the aibu threads and wheelchair v pushchair threads as well as bf v ff....no point getting aggravated unnecessarily!

On the bf topic, I do think more information at antenatal classes would be good about getting bf established and a realistic idea of what to expect. I did think it would be easy as it's natural, but it certainly didn't feel easy or natural to me. I think as well more time spent in hospital afterwards would be helpful (to me anyway) as then you don't have too many visitors and they can't sit on their backsides watching you struggling to change a nappy etc, plus you'd have more time one on one with the baby and could brazenly lie there with your boobs out! Plus, there would be (hopefully) professional support on hand at any time of e day/night!

I did have a really good chat about it with the gp which made me feel a lot better, but it's nice to talk about it on here too. I don't think DH gets why I feel sad about it sometimes still. I did get help from the midwives but DS really was determined not to latch on...little bugger! At least he got some colostrum and we saw he had white liquid in his mouth so I think I successfully managed to breastfeed him twice. I expressed milk twice a day for two weeks as well, but eff me that was massively time consuming for next to no milk!

Sorry for the huge post! DS is currently on nap number 3 today and I'm bored of housework:o

cherry your post reminded me that I want a rice cooker for my birthday, as we eat so much rice and I make congee for DS for breakfast. I'd like to get one that does all kinds of grains as we have now fed DS millet, barley and quinoa and he likes all of them.

I think re breastfeeding I knew that my mother had had a hard time so I was expecting it to be a battle. I also was lucky that apart from my parents, who didn't mind me lying in bed with the baby all day, we didn't have any visitors at all the first 10 days - that was really helpful. Talking to others is so important as it normalises the experiences - just look at the range of options on this thread alone!

And I haven't seen mrsbuggy for a while but the posts from her and aethel and honey and others on this thread throughout my pregnancy were so helpful getting started

Bah- off tonight for a conference, so speed-posting. I'll be back in time tomorrow for DS's 7pm feed I hope, but it'll be pump and dump for the 11pm and 7am feeds.

People do get overly worked up about every aspect of child-rearing (and let's face it, pregnancy too). The information on bf should be there, people should be given the support needed, and then it's their choice/what biology forces on you. I found myself in the same position as you tyel, no visitors for ages, and think that really helped me too.
There are some right numpties who are totally OTT in life, and sadly some of them make it onto here (MN, that is, not the thread, we're all uniformly marvellous, natch ). I think in the main MN is a great resource, and I just lurk 'n' tut....

Good luck on the cold turkey kate and aethel- it'll probably be tough all-round for a couple of days, but then you'll be free!

Keep going air, it sounds like you're having a tough time of it, but you'll pull through with your DCs.

Off to brush teeth, and generally get ready before feeding DS, and then wait for my lift to the outskirts of Coventry...oh, the glamour! Why can't I go to glamorous places like Oi? Bar that last one in Germany though, that sounded grim!

Omg porky perfection! Definitely worth the 8 hour wait!!!!