October 2012: onwards, upwards and rolling over?

[YompingJo]

Is this part 5 already? Where did that time go?

wantan It's important to remember all the centiles are normal healthy babies but the hv will usually get jittery if they drop 2 centiles and use it to indicate baby not getting enough milk or some other problem.

This happened to me and my hv asked the gp to check her over (although in my case dd had not yet had her 6 week check which is all the gp basically did - I think just to check no heart murmur etc) He also ref us to be checked by a paediatrian but I think that's a bit overkill. Anyway hv also told to give formula top up, was reluctant to do this so saw bf support and did switch feeding, breast compressions, pumping after feeds and taking fenugreek! Did also start giving formula after gp and paeds advised.

Anyway in my case weight came back up pretty promptly, I'm still a little bit convinced it was just partly catch down growth and partly her recovering from the norovirus. Luckily the formula top up hasn't interfered with bf the rest of the time!

More than likely your lo will just start following the 2nd centile instead and its a bit of catch down growth so don't worry too much (easier said than done I know!)

squid dd has been doing that the last few days as well, also clasping hands and pulling on her fingers, so cute although my bro said it made her look like a mini Mr burns ....excellent....

DS has not had a nap all day! I've given him lots of opportunities. A couple of times he fell asleep but woke up a few minutes later. He woke at 7:30am (normal), it is now 6:15pm. He's so tired - grumpy and red-eyed, but won't go, not even when we went out in the sling.
He's feeding now, and I think he could fall asleep on me, so the question is do I let him nap now, so close to bedtime? Or should I just put him to bed super early and hope he doesn't wake up super early?
The last couple of nights have been a bit unsettled too, after a few weeks of basically sleeping through. He woke 3 times last night. I think he's having a growth spurt, there's one at 12 weeks right? He's 13 weeks.

Crazy that must be so hard, but I have to admit I had a little giggle at your DS1 giving himself a round of applause in the middle of the night Has been watching XFactor?!
Sometimes DS smiles and "talks" to me during a night waking and it's so hard because I try not to talk at night, but then I also try to always respond to his "talking". And so hard to resist those smiles!

Squid Bora, isn't their development fascinating? I remember the 6 week growth spurt - he fed like a monster for a couple of days and was really whingey, then suddenly he was like a proper baby rather than a new born, and could do loads more stuff. Hope I get similar rewards this time!

@ mini Mr Burns Wooly, excellent indeed!

Woolybob my biggest concern was that they would try and push me into giving formula when breastmilk is better for them. There's no evidence that my milk supply has dropped. I'm not sure why she has dropped but she is otherwise fine, apart from coming down with a cold yesturday.

wooly ds2 does that too! wrings his hands and looks either terribly anxious or totally scheming

Beccus, your description of how you get your dd off to sleep inspired me to try. In the day, she sleeps in stroller, sling or car seat and if she drops off on me and I transfer her to cot them like your dd she will wake pretty quickly. I have tried to settle her before with limited success and I am awful at tolerating her crying, I feel a physical need to pick her up whenever she cries. I'm realising that this is not all that practical however so I've decided to try to get her self settling once a day. And it worked today! She needed a feed to get her sleepy but then I swaddled her and put her in her cot with white noise and decided to let myself pick her up after 5 mins if she was not settling. But with a combination of patting, hair stroking and shushing, she was dropping off within 5mins.

Thank you, it was your post that made me try it, I don't feel that I've been mean to her or forced her to sleep (she was clearly tired) and I don't feel like I neglected her because I was there comforting her while she settled. I guess this could be described as "assisted self settling"! I'll let you know how long she sleeps for!

Well done Yomping!! I too was inspired and tried this morning! Caved after 3 mins and am now feeding again..,,,, this is despite half hour baby came off feed!! So I'm going to try again shortly......

Thank u lovely Beccus!

I want to add that the 5minute rule was only if she was grizzling. If she started proper crying that escalated then I would pick her up. I have some massive guilt associated with her crying, I don't think it's normal. I will do anything to stop her crying, to comfort her. DH can just hold her while she cries but I can't and when he does I find it really hard as I want to take her and comfort her myself. I feel that any crying is a bad thing and I need to help her. She has a tired grizzle that I recognize now and can manage not to intervene with because it means she is winding down, but other cries I have to act on. I met a friend the other day with a 6 week old and when the 6 week old cried she (friend) didn't seem to mind or get flustered, and she even laughed a bit (not unkindly) at the baby's purple face. Why do I get so very flustered when mini yomping cries? Do I need to try to calm down about this? Help!

(still asleep... 20 mins and counting!)

wooly that is hilarious! Smorglet definitely has a 'plotting world domination' kind of look when his hands come together!
squid that's ace Jess is doing it on demand! Mine did it again this morning, but having watched him again I'm pretty sure it was just him losing balance rather than intentionally rolling, but hey. He looked pretty shocked when it happened and we have a tiled floor under the playmat so he kind of bashed his head too Cue lots of tears.
cherry poor you, yes sounds like the good old 12-week growth spurt.

Urgh, I had to wake him from his mahoosive nap to feed at 7pm so bath and bed were later than usual. I tried to do a nice relaxing baby massage but he was really energised and almost backflipping off the changing table. Then DH dressed him for bed too roughly and he had a meltdown and took ages to go down and woke up just as we sat down for dinner. Up again at 2.30am, 4am and 6.45am and has been alternating between really whingey then furiously energetic all morning. Luckily having a nap now. I have a neighbour coming over for coffee who I was email-introduced to and have never actually met before - how do I make my house look clean and normal and become a Stepford Wife in super quick time?!

By the way, someone was asking about dry skin a while back? Was it you livvy? I think Vaseline is more of a barrier cream than a moisturiser, so I wonder if it would work? I was given some heinously expensive Keihls baby products as a gift but they are really good. The Nurturing Baby Cream for Face and Body is great for his little dry cheeks.

Loving all the goings on and successes re sleep, self settling, rolling and feeding! It's so interesting to hear about the slightly older babies...think ds is one of the younger ones in this group so to hear you talk about rolling is wonderful - I can literally hear the excitement in your posts and pointedly ignoring talk of four month sleep regression

I'm on a train into work for lunch with colleagues and ds meeting. Feel very nervous which is ridiculous. But what if he cries? It's a big US corporate and very stiff and regimented. Can feel the nervous sweat forming already. Plus I think there's been major goings on and I have a new manager. Joy.

Oh tip for dry skin - coconut oil. Its the elixir of the gods! Has to be 100% pure though and cold pressed. We use it on his bottom instead of talc. Or sweet almond oil - both are great for dry skin and can also help prevent thrush in their mouths.

yomping please don't feel bad, I think it's inbuilt in mums to feel anxious when their baby cries. It's what helped them survive when we were out in the wild. But life's not like that anymore (luckily) and I do believe that once you can read your baby's cues and can tell when they just need to sleep, and they are clean, dry, warm and fed, then it's OK to leave them for short periods to see if they will drop off by themselves.

I was furiously bouncing on the Swiss ball trying to get Smorglet off to sleep the other day while he was flipping about in my arms like a wet fish. I knew he was just tired but there was nothing I could do to soothe him. I was getting more and more upset feeling like a failure so I had to put him down in his basket and step outside just to calm down. Then it occurred to me that when I'm upset I just want to be alone, so I said to myself I would go and brush my teeth and come back in 5 minutes. He wasn't just wingeing, he was crying. I couldn't even look at myself in the bathroom mirror. But in less than 5 minutes he was silent. I crept in and he was awake but calm so I left him and 5 minutes later he was asleep. I had mixed feelings afterwards, but I've since realised that he is just growing up a bit and becoming so aware of his surroundings and people and stuff that he sometimes gets totally over-stimulated and just needs a few minutes alone. Other times of course he just really, really wants a cuddle.

Thanks for the tips beccus, great it's working out for you!

Yup smile4 babyfunch likes to start her day at 4. actually 3.15 today, though DH took her 6-7, lovely rebbon that he is, and I napped when she did from 8-9. She appears to have the ability to stay awake for hours at that time of day which worries me a lot. Last night we tried moving bedtime from 7 to 10 by allowing a longer afternoon nap, then playing while we made and ate dinner. First waking moved from 12:30 to 1:30 which is a start, and I hope for further progress tonight. Only problem is DH falls asleep around 8pm on a good day, earlier if a bad day, so is not much use for bathtime duties. I will be working on this!

huffle my DH is going to be in charge of weaning too. We are looking out for signs that she is ready over the next 2 months but plan to wait to as close to 6 months as we can. I have asked him to research blw vs pureed but he loves cooking so I suspect will be doing at least some pureeing. I hope we end up doing a bit of both, rather than putting a label on what we are doing.

If feeding causes as many issues as sleep then DH may find himself a single parent as I will be carted off by the men in white coats!

Thanks all who have posted about routines and settling, I was inspired to move bedtime later having seen how early we were doing it, and will definitely have plenty of chance to try all the wonderful settling ideas! She often settles for naps after a short cry and settles beautifully at bedtime in her cot but is a nightmare to settle at night wakings.

Hope you're all having lovely days

45 minutes of sleep before she woke up full of smiles and very pleased with herself!

She has either had a cold or a bad reaction to jabs, or both, but either way I can heartily recommend these tube snotsuckers nasal aspirators. They are much much better and more fun than the useless bulb shaped ones. A bit of breastmilk up her nose (or saline drops) then a good suck with the tube and she can breathe much more easily. (She does not enjoy this procedure but she agrees that she feels better afterwards!) This helped her to sleep much better last night after she hardly slept the night before because she kept waking herself up by snuffling loudly. I also put a dab of Boots baby Vicks type stuff on my boob at each feed so she would inhale it as she fed. She is a lot better today - she was listless and sad yesterday, lots of red eyes, face rubbing, sniffing, sneezing and high pitched crying and a temperature.

Poor mite, horrible to see her like that, makes me realise how happy she usually is now (apart from bad teething days ) compared to how she was for the first 10 weeks. The Colief is definitely helping lots too. My medicine cabinet now has more stuff for her than for me!

I have been going to some group CBT workshop sessions to help with negative thinking, control freak tendencies, failure to give myself a break and difficulty managing my temper and frustration, and I'm actually finding them really helpful, despite initial feeling and misgivings.

I am dangerously close to feeling like I can cope with this parenting business at the moment...

Smorgs it was me asking about dry skin - thank you for the recommendation. I'll try some baby moisturiser on mini yomping's face. She also has little patches of dry skin on her legs, the nurse had a look when we went for jabs and said it's eczema.

Yomping, I feel the same when DS cries but I've been forcing myself to stay calm by reminding myself that I'm doing everything I can. As in he's clean and dry, just fed and in my arms so I can't be that bad, and he just needs to cry for a bit. Luckily, he cries himself out quite quickly.

Was going to say the same about Vaseline Smorgs, but maybe in this cold weather it could be put on cheeks before going out to protect them, as well as moisturising with something else morning and night.

I'm ignoring sleep regression too, Oren
Hope your lunch goes well, don't be nervous - you're doing great!

Centile question - on my iPad app DS's line is above the 25th line, and below the 50th, so do I say he's in the 25th centile? I have no idea.

He's still not sleeping

wantan if they're anything like my hv they probably will! I'd go prepared with a plan to improve bf/top up with expressed and excuses (like the cold) just in case if I were you! Good Luck!

We are trying to improve self settling here too having been terrified inspired by the link angelico posted. Some limited success feeding to almost asleep if she finds her thumb but dh did get her settled once in the evening with the shush pat thing so I live in hope!

so dd slept from 10pm til 7am without waking. for the second night in a row. my painful letdown reflex however awoke at 2am and then 4am. had to get up to pump at 5am because I was in agony. still at least one of us slept!

yay for all the genius babies rolling over! no rolling here. we still haven't had proper laughs although we get lots of big grins and almost-laughs. I have to try really hard not to compare development with all you lot. mine's one of the youngest,.. and they're all individuals, right?

The worst is the sudden emotional type crying with the pouty lip, this is the only time dd properly tears up and the crazy thing is she can be really happy and smiley then just suddenly start. Fortunately usually just suddenly switches back, crazy baby.

cherry the centiles are the lines so I guess you describe it just like you did - between the two!

Thanks Wooly, they can suggest FF but considering I have a very stubborn little bottle refuser I dont think I could anyway.

Thanks Wooly.

London, DS did a small chuckle once a couple of weeks ago but nothing since and no sign of rolling. I think they're a similar age?

London, Cherry, were the same here. Big grins and happy noises but no laughs. DD was 23rd Oct.

Had a good night last night, sleep at 10pm, woke at 4am but dummy so sorted that, finally awake at 6am, feel like a different women

Injections this afternoon

We have such a major sleep fighter here. Even the dring didn't work this morning. Spell in cot with grizzlies turned to screaming very quickly. In the end we went out in car and still took 10 minutes!!!! Wondering is this a phase or just a new chapter!??!!!

No rolls here Londonmrss. 14 weeks. Plenty bum in air so maybe soon!