March 06 The Arrivals!

[Frizbe]

Hi ladies, have created this to start our postnatal thread, so fire away!

Gothic, tis a shame, but totally understand, mine are not great in the car either.

Uni...you made jam??? Wow...I'm sure I've said it before...supermum I made jam once when i was a teenager. Picked a load of mulberries from our tree in the backyard, spent ages removing stems etc, then cooked it FAR too long and it went completely solid and we had to throw away the saucepan!

Subsequent attemps have been slightly more sucessful, but lets just say I'm better at lemon curd (although haven't made it since kids!)

LL, am glad your Tilly is a little older, Luie tends to push and shove smaller kids (to my shame , but plays better with older kids, especially when they are more verbal. Weird huh?

oh, LL, do nurseries have to let you use real nappies, or is it their choice? Yes, we stuff with microfibre cloths from asda!

ps, am selling a bath support on sales thread if anyones interested

Hi all, gona be quick as cooking dinner as well, can you smell the burning yet?
Gothic, sorry you can't make the meet up, but hopefully next time eh! we shall have to try and be nearer!
Nothing to report here, so just checking in on you all really!

aah yes hopefully will make the next meet up.
I'm off to tidy up the house now ad dh has cooked dinner adn I ought to do something

lol friz - sounds like me in the kitchen.

just out of interest, how much time on average do you think your d/h's or d/p's spend a day with your babes? my d/h adores seeing the wee one, but i am really concerned that he hardly sees her all week - a quick 5 mins here or there just doesnt seem enough somehow. weekends havent been much better either as he has been working irregular hours. it makes me really sad for her sake as much as his. she loves it when he does help with her bath, all too rarely.

needed to vent a bit - having one of those days, when you feel a bit like a single mum.

ah yes, those days Rom, tbh, my dh see's very little of any of the kids during the week or the weekends at the mo, as he's working flat out to try and stop me having to go back to 'proper' work, however he does catch dd2 in the mornings for half an hour (I've started making him take her downstairs if he's on a 7/7.30 leave the house start, so they can see each other and I can get a bit more kip and in the evenings he puts dd1 to bed if he's back in time...It's the 6mth mark that'll really make the difference, as that's when they click onto who is the primary carer/or if its shared care.

Astro, not sure about all nurseries but I checked before we chose that I could provide my own nappies. To be honest I don't see how they could refuse - what if a child was allergic or had really bad nappy rash? We had no probs but our nursery is FAB! By the way Tilly is small for her age but pretty tough.

Rom, we are really lucky as both DP and I are self employed and so work to a very flexible timeframe. He does brekkie with both girls at the mo as I am knackered - mostly due to excessive MNing rather than night feeds!!

Friz, is anyone off the Feb thread coming to Chatsworth?

We also do bedtime together at the mo on a kind of quick rota where one puts washing away/feeds Kiah etc. whilst the other does excema creams/books/last wee and stuff - I would make a crap single mum eh?

We too are really very lucky as DH is usually home in time for dinner, baths etc. (BUT...at the mo I wish he wasn't as hes often very tired and grumpy at the mo and it gets me down and upsets DD...usually hes great though)

Dh might see Ed for a few min in the morning if eds awake before 8 if so he will keep an eye on him while I have my breakfast. In the evenings hes home at 6ish unless its cricket night. generally I hand boy over at that point and don' t do much for him till bedtime at 7.30ish. I run the bath but dh baths him and dresses him and hands him back for a feed then... goes and cooks our dinner. hes a total star I'm very lucky and really miss him on cricket nights.
Admittedly Dhs idea of playing with boy does include watching TV together! But I think its Ok for mum and dad to do differnt things with him. We agree on how we do the the big stuff like calming him after bedtime.

your d/h's all sound like great dads . mine is too - he just needs to realize that this babytime goes so fast and is so precious.

thanks for your responses girls, its interesting to hear.

we had another day where he saw her only for a few minutes this morning today he wont get home til 9ish tonight.

Oh Rom, its hard when dh's are working long hours isn't it , make sure you get lots of vid/dvd footage of her as a baby, that way you can both always look back and make sure he's about at the 6mth mark, or else he may regret it!!
LL, not that I'm aware of no, it appears they're mainly all down south! I did mention it to some of the Notts girls tho, might go and ping their thread again!

Boohoo, Its my sleep-in morning (DH has taken DD to nursery for the morning) and DS has been up and 'chatting' (sounds like cats fighting!) for hours.

Hopefully he will go back to sleep soon and I will nap...

Unlucky Astro...

I had two howling babies on my hands earlier ;-( a friend was having her hair cut by my next door neighbour so i was looking after her 16 month old lad. after about 20 mins he became inconsolable, went and stood by the door and howled and sobbed. this set my lad off, so I had 2 of them crying their eyes out. not a lot I could do. visting lad was quite safe, just miserable, so i let him get on with it while sitting next to him with crying baby in my arms. Thankfully shes a pragmatic friend!
Those of you who have 2 full time, hats off to you, your braver than I !

sounds like you had your work cut out uni!

i agree, hats off to all you mums of more than one - cant imagine how knackering it must be with a baby AND a toddler. my mother had twins and a 3 year old - with no nanny and d/h who was away working abroad for months at a time. i am now in total awe of her since becoming a mum!

Uni, I can sympathise with you there! sometimes you just have to let them wail (even tho it sounds bad at the time)
dd2 tried carrot for the 1st time tonight, lets say she was unimpressed although I did manage to get a second spoon in! she flatly refused a third, shall mix with apple or sweet potato next time
Have also upset her tonight, we moved her into her own room today, and she's not happy (better now than later tho!) took an hour to get to sleep, with us going up every 10 mins know she's ok tho, as she'd calm right down as soon as she saw one of us, so she is just trying it on really, hope tomorrow night is a better put down tho!

friz - better luck 2moro nite! how many weeks is she now? is it 18 weeks? i have been sleeping in the nursery since we moved (on a mattress on the floor!) as we dont have black-out blinds in our master bedroom yet - the one good thing about this is that she knows her own room! i had intended to have her cotbed in our room but havent got round to it and now it seems crazy to unsettle her as she knows her nursery. plus d/h snores so i reckon i am getting more sleep even with the night feeds, lol.....

ds likes (well he ate tonite ) carrots and potato

We have had such a bad night so far. DS seems to be getting worse and worse at setting in the evenings - wants endless sessions at the boob and falls asleep then wakes as soon as I move. Then when we finally get him into his cot asleep he goes for about 20 mins then wakes up screaming until we pick him up for a burp, This goes on for up to 2 hours every night. I feel bad complINING AS HE ACTUALLY SLEEPS OK (woops) once he finally goes to sleep properly (ie wakes at 5am then 7am), but its really starting to get me down as we have NO evenings, putting the two kids to bed takes our whole night, then we wash dishes and fall into bed at midnight.

Today I resolved to have some day naps but he did some screaming today as well. I just have no idea what to do for him - he seems to be in pain when he screams.

Sorry for the rant, it was just such a bad day, DH ended up coming home from work as I was in tears on the phone.

Any sugestions welcome.

Astro {{{BIg HuG}}} hope you get some sleep today, ignore the dishes till you run out;-)

Ds didn;t settle easily last night, but I'm blaming teh tele sales bod who phoned JUST after he was in teh cot. I had a right old rant at them as its about teh 12th time that company have phoned us and teh answer is still "NO, I DO NOT WANT ANY MORE WINDOWS, I HAVE PLEANTY ALREADY" Last night I demanded to speck to a supervisor, who admitted that even if I said "yes" I would still be on the list of peole to call as they have no system for removing nubers from teh list! We are already signed up with teh telephone preference service, but that takes a while to work.
Boy is currewtly doing his best not to nap, in his cot chuntering away. ratz, he was asleep on the boob, but woke as I took him down to teh bedroom. Thaink I need to go and get him up again. Maybe the lunch time nap will work better.

{{{{Hugs}}}} Astrophe, have you tried burping him in his sleep, once he knocks off the boob? I try to do this with dd, before putting her down, and it quite often works, this could save the screaming n waking?? (as you said you then burp him, so could be the wind waking him?) or do you think it could be teeth?? if so, add calpol n nurofen, n don't think your a bad mother for drugging your child cause your not! you're helping them out.
DD2 tried to yell tonight, so I popped up and stuck her mobile on (given to me by a friend today!) this calmed her enough for her to chew her fist (teeth again) and then after 5 mins, dh crept in, turned mobile off and she's drifted off to sleep and phew. Sorry if your not having such good luck out there tho...
Sounds nice Gothic! we tried a packet potato freebie again tonight, and dd2 turned her nose up at it this time, so I peeled a pear, mushed it thru the sieve, then it was too runny/water! so I chucked in a bit of breakfast porridge and she loved it, so think it turned out, orange, banana and pear flavoured!

Astro sorry you are having probs but at least you know it'll get better being a second timer eh?
We had a bad bedtime on Tues as moved Kiah into Tilly's room as she is too big for the crib. They both kicked off until all went quiet at 9pm - Tilly had climbed in the cot to 'hug' Kiah!!Anyway they have settled now - Kiah just needs a bit of whinging time whilst we do stories but that's OK.
Had a massive shock yesterday as was at my mum's waiting for her to come home and watch K so I could do some urgent work when my sis and bf just walked through the gate. Home from a year's travelling 5 weeks early!!! They'd had enough of the wet season but pretended they had come specifically to bring my Fluconazole for my boobs.VERY pleased to see Tiily and meet Kiah and lovely for us all to have them back.
Astro/Friz - where are we meeting on Mon?

Thanks for sympathies all. Tonight was better, DS fed for about an hour then stayed asleep when I extracted boob from his mouth! He has woken once screaming but DH picked him up and he went straight back to sleep...oh, there he goes again, DH has gone up to him.

We do try and burp him before putting him down, but he wakes again anyway. I've just read a load of archives on Silent reflux, so might look into that a bit more. Had thought he might be hungry, but sleeps well enough at nigh,t and no sign of teeth yet.

Makes it very hard to leave him...have not had a night out since he was born. Today is our 4 year wedding anniversary so DS's Godmother is coming to babysit them tomorrow night. I hope it goes ok and we don't have to come home early...she is very capable and has her own DD.

As for being a second timer LL, well I'm seeing more and more how easy DD was with feeding and sleeping! Now I finally understand what the baby books mean by 'arsenic hour'(s)!

I think we are meeting at:
Chatsworth (not sure where? Cafe? Farm?)
at 11am
On Monday.

How on earth do we recognise each other? Have you both been to meet-ups before?

Oh LL, love the story about your sis and bro in law! I did that to my folks when I went back to Aust after doing a GAP year here...lots of fun to pop up early! Must be great to see them!

And LOL at Tilly hopping in with Hiah...we haven't been brave enough to put DS in with Luie yet, with the poor sleeping...Actually her room is like a cupboard so not sure he will fit anyway! I think we will be saying goodbye to our study.spare room in a few months!

Sorry...'Kiah', not Hiah...typo