These babies are going to be calm, easy and sleepy at all the right times, and we're brooking no argument about it!

[Biscuitsandtea]

In here ladies - the other thread was getting full up so I thought I'd better start a new one.....

Will do some links to / from this thread but in the meantime please make yourselves at home

DH is trying M on a dummy. I did suggest that he do the driving, but he wasn't having any. M is lying on a cushion on the living room floor, watching Jonathon Ross and playing with the dummy. [hhmm]

Dream, Brooking for the DTs to go to sleep quickly!

Oh no Dream poor DD. I'd have to say something to the nanny. Not in a confrontational way, just a pointing out that if DD cries like that, it does mean she's hurt herself.

Too I'd be tempted to leave DD howling on the bed right next to DH. Bloody men. I did laugh at her watching Jonathan Ross though.

I just woke DD for her dream feed and found her facing down on her tummy fast asleep. This is a new one on me, should I turn her over or is it safe to leave her like that?

scarlet hope you figured out what to do. I think once they cab put themselves on their fronts its a bit academic putting them in their backs to sleep as at some point they will flip over again.

too at your dh. Hope he didn't have to wait too long to be seen in a and e after you (hopefully) lamped hum one after that last comment :o

dream I'd definitely say something. You need to be able to trust your nanny to evaluate the situation properly

at Hawthers. DH escaped unscathed because he did eventually manage to get M to go to sleep. Took until midnight, but that's still better than 1.30! The dummy attempt was quite promising at first - DH put M back to bed with the dummy and she was quiet for a good 15 minutes, then started howling again. I went through and gave her back the dummy, but this time she wasn't fooled, spat it out instantly and yelled. DH suggested something he'd seen on Supernanny where you sit next to the cot, so your child knows you're there, and just let them howl. He said it was a 2 year old and they cried for 40 minutes. I refused to try this - there's a big difference between a 2yo knowing you're there and crying anyway, and a 7.5 mo crying. By this time it was maybe 11.30. I went off and had a bath, having made him promise not to let M cry, and I could hear him singing to her, then whistling, and then it all went quiet. I came back through to find him humming quietly and M was conked out on our bed. Result! Transferred her - she opened her eyes so I fed her, but she was really sleepy and went down without a problem after a few minutes of feeding. She woke up again at 2, 4 and 6, mind, but didn't get up until 9.15!

How did you get on, Dream?

Too you do know the clocks went back and we haven't got to 9:15 yet?

too - as biscuits said the clocks! The first person that says anything to me about an extra hours sleep gets a kick. When you have kids it just becomes The Longest Day in the Year.

too - I have done a version of the cot thing with A. Not for 40 mins obviously but for 5-10. When I know she's tired, in bed with dummy and monkey then sit by cot. I sing and (bizarrely) rub my hand along the idea of the cot, inside the cot the movements getting slower and slower. I sing louder if she starts crying so my singing is louder. It has helped her self settling. Also love her enjoying some Wossy!

Feeling better today. Bar the 5.30 wake up had a bit of sleep last night, had a lovely take away with my friends last night and dh is pretending today is my birthday (as we're both working tomorrow so everyone needs to be up and out by 8am) so have been a bit spoilt.

A does seem to be improving. The past 6 days she seems to have howled day and night at me and my breaking point was very nearly reached. 4 hours broken sleep is hard, especially with one of just 2 hours thrown in. How are you so nice dream?! under 6 hours broken sleep i am such a bitch and i get really sweary too.

dream - sorry forgot to say YANBU! My biggest issue would be that the Nanny therefore wasn't focused on cuddling and calming your dd. That's the thing about the nursery I use, cuddling is a definite staff policy (even if cuddled child is still wailing in their arms), I have never seen a child wailing and being left. it's why I overlook some other things they do. All childcare is compromise but I would find being uncaring the worst thing.

Also a bloke at dh's work has baby twins now and dh reckons he has never seen anyone look so tired!

[hblush] I totally forgot about the clocks going back! Thanks Biscuits! Oh goody, that means we have an extra hour to get ourselves sorted out before the swimming pool starts its Family Fun Session at 2. I want to take M swimming before the pool gets overrun with kids enjoying the last day of the tattie holidays and leaping on and off giant inflatables.

By the way, I am terrible for forgetting about the clocks. The worst was my last day of work at a coffee shop when the clocks went forward - I arrived at, I thought, 9.10, so slightly late, only to discover that it was 10.10! Oops. And the time when I had been out clubbing in Paris and we were waiting in an all-night cafe for the Metro to open at 5am so we could go home. We waited and waited and waited and it suddenly dawned on us that the clocks had gone back and we had another whole hour to go, so we gave up and spent 40 euros on a taxi.

I can't find my hairbrush. I have a giant woolly matted bit of hair at the back and I looked everywhere and I still can't find it. Harrumph. I should have more than one hairbrush but they've all gone walkabout, apparently.

at the bloke at Pomme's DH's work!

Glad you're feeling better today, Pomme. I get sweary and stabby with v little sleep also. And teary. The dog tends to come in for the brunt of it while DH is at work, and then I move smoothly onto abusing DH instead, or weeping on his shoulder. [hblush]

poor DD dream. i think you will have to tell nanny what happened, at least she'll hopefully check in future. :(

sorry to hear about more non sleepy babies. I'm sure when they all get to and pass the 9 month non sleeping phase, there will be calm in brooking land. if not before.

DH has pretty much never settled R to sleep. maybe a few times when tiny. he hasn't ever had to try really, he mostly falls asleep feeding. if he does need rocked it's me that does it for some reason.

i think his back up plan is walks with the pram or backpack carrier, might not be ideal in winter weather though. he can always load them both into the car i guess!

DS1 had his first nap in over a week yesterday, yay! also had lovely friends over to visit in the afternoon so was a good day.

this is our last day 'off' doing things for a week. between playgroup Halloween thing, both sets of gps on different days, visiting work for meeting with boss...argh.

Mum was telling me that when we were tiny, Dad used to get on the train to college after a hard night twin-juggling and fall asleep as soon as the train pulled out of the station. He'd be woken up by the conductor at the end of the line in Aberdeen with his arms cupped in baby-holding mode! Luckily the end of the line was where he was mean to be.

pomme I am a horrible sweary, stabby person most of the time.... . Especially after 45,5678 wake-ups...

Bloody fucking hell. I have been up for 2 hours rocking, singing and feeding in the dark. M is now wider awake than ever. I have given up, come back to the living room and put the lights on. She can bloody well amuse herself in her playgym if she won't go to sleep. Oh, and before then she slept 8 - 10.40, before I went to bed, then slept for an hour, fed for 10 mins and slept for another hour. So tonight so far I have had two hours sleep total, 10.40 - 11.40, then 11.50 - 12.50. Apparently my brilliant plan for keeping her up a bit later than usual to stop her waking up for 3 hours at 10 has backfired and instead of waking up at 10 she woke up at 1 instead. Gaah. And it's a school night, so I can't really get DH up. If he has the gall to moan tomorrow about disturbed sleep (I could hear him tossing and turning while I was singing endless lullabies) there may be murder done.

Anyone got any particular sleep books to recommend? Pet, didn't you have a good one? I can't remember what it was called.

M is doing her best to make this night-time interlude interesting by producing the most disgusting nappy to date. Luckily it didn't escape the nappy, so it could have been worse, but my God, the smell...I'll spare you the rest of the details.

too its horrible isn't it. If I mn with s baby even half awake they wake up fully, hence my night silence nowadays, but I'm usually there with you... S still on old time. His early morning poo has moved from respectable 6ish to 5.... And he is super wide awake. I have accepted this is it for sleep, and I'd been up loads with B too. FFS. Be toddler o'clock in no time too .

I have the no cry sleep solution. It's ok, all about routine and gentle ways of prolonging sleep. Didn't really help me with DD, but reassured me we were doing everything right iykwim? Though she was an.angel sleeper from 3 months, but I was fairly desperate by then
^^ only in comparison mind, one baby disturbing your sleep is still hellish, but better than trying to carry, feed, rock, soothe two... Especially now they're heavy, can't carry both for long.

Most of the sleep books say bedtime between 6:30-7:30, self settling, don't feed to sleep (no cry sleep solution says as they're just dropping off, take your nipple out of their mouth, if they root, let them latch on, but then repeat, and you persevere til you're putting them down awake but drowsy- a state I've never achieved) . Incidentally, I've put mine down wide awake, with comforters and white noise, and 5 out of the last 7 nights they've gone to sleep. The others I've fed/ rocked etc. Seems to help if they fall asleep themselves. But then again I always fed DD to sleep and she slept through. All babies are different!

So, what a long ramble about sleep. My mission today is 1. Try not to be such a cranky cow as yesterday 2. Dentist appt for poor DD who's chipped teeth seem really sensitive 3. Try not to be such a cranky cow!!!

Nanny today as she swapped her days. Will tell her about the tooth. I do think she would have comforted DD pomme, but DD won't let anyone but me comfort her atm sigh . It was the defensive, immediate ' she didn't hurt herself' insistence that's really got my back up, grr!

Hello to everypne else, maybe I'll be less ramble-y and more coherent later?!

So, what time would you think it would be appropriate for a baby who was up between 1 and 5.20 am to get up for the day? 9? 10? 7 fucking o'clock, that's what. In total, I have had 3.5 hours sleep - two individual hours, followed by an interlude of 4 hrs 20 mins, then another hour and a half. I tried to feed M back to sleep until 7.30, but she was having none of it. Then she peed over herself and the carpet while I was changing her, so she had to have a whole new outfit. Gaaah. Is it naptime yet? I am going to go back to bed when she naps.

Having had the above rant, can I now say Dream, how the hell you do it with two I cannot fathom? And with a toddler so you couldn't go back to bed even if you did manage to get both DTs napping at the same time. You are AMAZING.

Thank you for the info re sleep. M goes to bed okay, she just wakes up again anywhere between 3 and 8 times a night (some are before I go to bed, so I usually don't count them) and has to be fed back down. I do always feed her to sleep, though, and I think self-settling has gone. If she was awake in the night after feeding I used to be able to put her down and go back to bed, and she would coo and giggle and fall asleep in her own time. Now she howls as soon as I take one step away from the cot. This new "I think I'll wake up for a nice long session after my initial sleep phase has passed" hell is new, though.

Dream, I meant to say, good luck with your nanny and the tooth story!

Seconding what Too says Dream - you are AMAZING . I'm not sure that's a great reason for not MNing overnight though - surely you don't have anything more pressing to do when (if?) they are both asleep? [hwink][hgrin]

Sounds like a nightmare at Too towers [hsad]. Hope M lets you get a decent nap later.

DS2 is also not sleeping so well - he was up and down between 4 and about 5:30 during which time I must have had at least 5 or 6 failed transfer attempts but this was a vast improvement on the previous two nights.

As of last night I've really been trying to not feed him back to sleep. So after the 5th failed transfer I was thinking we were just going to be up and down until I gave in and fed him (in my head I'd decided I wanted to try and hold out until 5:30 am) so actually had he woken again I was going to feed him the next time but at 5:30 he went back to sleep until 8:30. And at that point I woke him up because I wanted to feed him due to sore boobages! (honestly there is no pleasing me [hgrin]) I also wondered if maybe if I kept to a bit more of a daytime schedule if that might help him sleep better. I'd been feeding him earlier and earlier over night and then letting him sleep until he woke at 10am or later but then struggling to fit in meals and milk feeds before bedtime and around going out etc so I thought maybe it would help if I got us back on to a bit more of a normal day

Oh and Scarlet we finished season 1 of Homeland - very good indeed and thank you for putting me on to that! Looking forward to carrying on with season 2 now

Where is everyone?

Good question! It's dead in here today.

DH took the afternoon off and came home to give me a break. He said he would take M swimming and I quite wanted to go too, so in the end we both went swimming and then went out for lunch at a really nice new brasserie that we've driven past but never tried before. Mmm. Still shattered, though - might go have a nap before dinner.

Any suggestions on how to help my 3wk old DD with a bunged up nose have been using a Karvol room vaporiser the last two nights and olbas oil on a tissue near her during the day. She's not a happy bunny and I don't really know what else to do to help her. Yesterday she produced some delightful phlegm stuff but today nothing. She is still sleeping kinda but doesn't sound happy.

Awww poor dd Cakes

Ds2 had a cold really early days too - mostly he ended up sleeping upright on me and DH in turns - we would do shifts to sit up with him

The other thing you could try is blocks under one end of the cot / crib? Don't know how steady that would be if you have a Moses basket? Suppose it depends how you're set up? Ds2 has cot blocks in currently as he's sporting a cold.

If you couldn't put anything under the crib then you could try a blanket folded up under the head end of the mattress I think to raise her up a bit? Doesn't Dream have something under the mattress for one of the twins or something?

Saline drops are the best. They are probably pretty horrible but give good relief after the initial unimpressedness. It loosens the snot and helps with colds I found.

We were busy carving a pumpkin and now we are doing tea.... Have decided not to stress about the food as I read a parenting book and seems our stressed out approach makes it worse and thinking about it I don't think he really eats more when we're getting wound up so the only difference is my heart rate and blood pressure. See how this approach goes...

Oh yes the drops are good too. And we had an aspiration (otherwise known as the snot sucker)

Sounds v wise Hawthers on the eating thing. Ds1 was the same that for the last 80% of the meal he consumed v little and it made no difference whether I ignored him or got stressed or whatever.

In the end the only problem was the fact I just didn't have that long for the meals. We used to have to leave at 12:15 for pre-school and I started off giving him his lunch at 11:45 and it would get to 12:15 and he would still be saying he wanted more sandwich. So we were starting lunch at 11:30, then 11:15 and there was still the same amount of sandwich left! So in the end I decided it was just silly, we couldn't spend all morning having lunch so we had to draw a line in order to get to preschool.

Aspirator not aspiration.

I have no aspirations....