October 2012: onwards, upwards and rolling over?

[YompingJo]

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

Dring???! Silly phone. Swing!

Oh god. Bad mummy emoticon. DS so difficult today. Have just had him in front of cbeebies for 20 mins so I can get anything done. This is a first. Frightening how content he is! TV is bad for babies' imagination and attention!!!!! I have been spouting this for years!!!

Right. In to pram for a walk it is!!

I hate people who come over and want baby cuddles, but they wear really strong perfume. I hate perfume anyway, it gives me a headache. but it leaves my baby stinking of stupid chanel or whatever for several days. I like the smell of my baby, I don't want her to smell of nasty sickly perfume!

I have some friends coming over tomorrow. is it rude to tell them perfume is banned? I might say it makes her sneeze or something.

Crazy i think you & I are in the same place on routines - so second timers are worse.

My wonderful au-pair has left after 3 weeks! She was a bit quiet for a few days and complained about a pain in her stomach. She has exams in june that she studied every free moment for. I came downstairs yesterday morning and she was very morose.I asked her if she'd like to go home and her face lit up. She left this morning to spend a few days with her DS in Dublin and then Spain Sat..
She has lined up 2 of her friends to come work in her place but tbh I'm in shock!

oh no lisbeth poor you! that must be hard after taking time to get to know her. fingers crossed maybe one of her friends will slot in perfectly.

I'm tied to the sofa - ds2 has been feeding pretty much solidly since midday thank goodness ds1's at the childminder today. just got up to get something to eat and he stayed latched on and fast asleep. now I'm thirsty. ah balls.

Huffle, similar situation here. It is just a phase! Power of positive thought and all that...

yomping and others - you have given me inspiration to do some self-settling practice - starting tomorrow I think I might try every other day. Is this crazy though - I worry a bit that if she gets very upset (quite likely) then will she have negative associations with the crib. I don't want to ruin the work I've been doing at night to get her to sleep better. Is it better that she associates her crib with night sleeping and has her daytime naps somewhere different?

olives I just make sure she's not upset when self settling. I mean I just pick her up immediately of she's very upset. if she's just a bit grumpy, I stroke her head and give her the dummy and she is then calm so I can walk away and then when I look back, she's looking sleepy.

the last 2 nights have been better and its the first time we haven't used Ewan the sheep. I've never found that that thing makes her sleepy, but since she stated trying to talk to it every night, I thought it was time to get rid.

a bit jealous of those of you whose babies nap in your arms. even though I have a self settling baby, I feel a bit sad that when I try to cuddle her to sleep, she just wiggles and tries to escape and then cries.

another difficult feeding day today. will this ever end? refused until 11am and then had 3 feeds in 2 hours.

Just back from yoga and long walk and there are zillion posts to catch up on, but first: we have yet another new skill - third in 24 hours!! She just rolled from her back to her front as well!!!

yay yesterday's discovery was that the knee bone is connected to the leg bone, and even better there are feet at the bottom! These babies are so exciti the moment!

And yay for miniyomping settling to sleep! and minilondon for having long sleeps

smorgs I have done the same thing putting DD down when got frustrated trying to get her to sleep and she was asleep by the time I came back. Needless to say it has never worked since

But I am in love with Ewan...turned 'i'm not going to sleep you stupid woman' into 'zzzzzzzzzzzz' Magic

Londonmrs no cuddling to sleep here... will sometimes feed to sleep but more often now is wriggling and thrashing before she's asleep.

Saw this yesterday in an email... explains the 4 month sleep regression (apologies if someone else has already posted it too )

www.babysleepsite.com/how-we-sleep/4-month-old-sleep-regression/

I think this might have been covered before, sorry, but how long do you do tummy time for?

thanks yomping & huffle. so glad u had self settling success, yomping. love the term 'assisted self settle' - that's def what it is. i also hate it when she cries. she had a melt down in the pram on a crowded bus today & there was nothing i could do to comfort her until a kind lady offered me her seat so i could pick her up & cuddle her. with the self settling i think u get better at differentiating tired grizzle from real crying, and when to keep going as the grizzles die down & u know they will drop off soon & also when they become more distressed & need to be picked up & cuddled. And there r shit times when it doesn't work & u feel like smorgs did. i had literally been trying to get her to sleep for 3 hrs the other day & was getting more & more angry & feeling more & more helpless & burst into tears & left and sent dp in to deal with her. thank god it happened when he was home from work. self settling is much easier now she can find her hands & suck them to self soothe. wooly, laughed at mr burns. babybeccus does this thing where she looks like dr evil's mini me

Anyone just see nursing program on itv?? This woman had home water birth. Room full of people. (?). In water for 20 mins. Baby came out in one push, hardly realised. Hardly broke a sweat. FFS. That's what I wanted. The birth, not the onlookers. ( again, ??????!)

Who would have known it? Cross grumpy baby likes sitting in his pushchair in house. Haven't seen him so contented for days (well not since stint with cbeebies this morning

Smile4me. Thank you, that is very helpful and all makes sense. Kept waiting for the 'how to' section.........! It did however reinforce my worries about not napping enough during day. I read with wonder when some of you talk about sleeping after 90 mins awake. DS has never done that, but I have never encouraged. We also kept later bed time after early was so crap. But he is changing.

Need to try harder. Not because I need a routine but because I feel my little man doesn't know how to deal with sleepiness in day time and it is making him cranky as hell. And this is relevant to age. I have so bloody many appointments and places to be over next few weeks but I am going to make the effort to keep on top of this.

And tmrw I have 2 appointments and a meeting for lunch!!! FFS.

Cheesy we do tummy for as long as happy. Needs to bd in good form first so none this last few days!! Might be 2 mins, might be 5!

huffle my lo doesn't usually know she is tired after 90 minutes! I just assume she is after reading that most babies are after that length of time so I pop her down and she usually settles. sometimes she isn't tired so I have to try again in a bit. she just can't be awake longer than 2 hours as she becomes impossible! here's what I read: www.troublesometots.com/are-you-keeping-baby-awake-too-long/
completely unfounded but it's a guideline that just happens to work for my baby.

London lots of grins and half laughs here too, but no rolling either. My DD doesn't like being cuddled much either.

Yomping DD has really bad dry skin too. Doctor prescribed cetroben for her- its much better than E45 I have found.

Oren and Cherry I am also denying ignoring the 4 month sleep regression!!

Huffle I had a flashback today of my birth... I was panting and walking like John Wayne down the labour ward towards the birthing pool room.. and who was in there? OH yes, a motherfucking group of women and men on a tour of the birth centre. No joke They all looked at me and smiled while I was riding a contraction out and were like.. err good luck. So humiliating.

Another fucking horrendous day here. I have absolutely no idea whats going on. She was dry, fed, settled, but would not, and i mean, would not go to sleep. She'd drop off for 5 mins, and then wake up again. All day. This is the girl that still sleeps for a good few hours in the afternoon- you can imagine the meltdown that nearly occurred. Thankfully wasn't as bad as the other day, but still very distressing. Even a car ride didn't work. Cuddles didnt work. Feeding didn't work. Just arrrrrrrrrrgghhhhhh! She's 9 weeks!! Whats going on!?!?!?!

Oh, and DD is addicted to the TV. I'm hoping that all it is is the flashing colours/lights and the voices. Must try and stop turning the TV on.. She screeams at me if she isn't facing the TV. Ugh.

sorry. feeling very woe is me today. its hard to have days like this when i am so used to her being good. i feel very lucky when i read some of your posts on here... most of you have much more difficult babies than mine!! sorry to be so unsupportive sometimes. i love you all, really i do. x

Thanks to lovely message from smileyhappymummy and whoever said I was superwoman. Had to go to dentist in Cambridge (I know - ridiculous when I live in London, but I trust him absolutely and he's very, very good) which meant a 6-bus, two-train, one-tube day with the preschool pickup too. Both of them were very good. DS lay on the floor of the dental surgery in his snowsuit and chuckled while DD sat next to him:

'WHO is a bee-YOO-tiful little BOY? He is PERFECT!'

[DS grunts and yelps in agreement]

'WHO is a bee-YOO-tiful little BOY? He is ...'

This was repeated at 30-second intervals during the session. Dentist drilled a hole in a filling because he thought there might be decay behind it. There wasn't.

DS is totally uninterested in rolling. But he is so fat that it must be a big effort to even lift an arm. He did pick up a cloth book yesterday, though.

Elpis that is the cutest image!!! I'd like an older DD to entertain DS thank you. Well done you. Such an epic journey......

Progress here is that DS fell asleep at feed and straight in to cot, no unhappiness!! ( aha u cry!! Is feeding to sleep really progress??! See all previous online articles on sleep associations....... ) WTF is that he woke at 12.30.......... Grrrrrrrrr

Mickey nice flashback. Made me think of me walking round for hours in my nice new purple dressing gown and matching slippers stopping periodically to grip whatever I could and tears streaming down face cos so many people could see me. . Perhaps your DD is acting the big girl and misbehaving due to telepathic link to all these older babies??

Enough of half exhausted banter, huffle, concentrate on feeding this child back to sleep.........

And thank you for all the lovely messages of support re bf. I'm not all that at all. I'm shocked at how stubborn I've been and am now telling myself that if I cannot overcome this hurdle enough may be enough.

X

mickey huffle bad birth memories are horrible. I have actually just started to move away from dwelling on my badly managed hugely painful induction cos I sent a letter of complaint which led to a meeting with the head of midwifery on Wednesday. She was really grateful for the feedback and confirmed that there were indeed procedures bit followed (refusal to give me pain relief beyond codrydamol, putting me a woman having a likely stillbirth in with me while I was making labour type noises) and they were great at involving me in ideas for how to improve their service. Two midwives who were responsible, including one who was downright rude (ie me: the shower is running cold, please can you show me how to work it? MW: I don't know, I don't shower here.) are going to be asked to make statements and be verbally reprimanded and given guidance on how to improve try a little basic compassion, you are in a caring profession

The wakeful nights since then have been way better as flashbacks have stopped! I hope you stop remembering the bad bits soon

Discovery of tonight - white noise calms babyfunch's crying, though doesn't send her to sleep. Helps a bit though, have been trying to settle a wakeful baby for 40 mins.

No babyLondon, 5am is NOT playtime. No, I don't care how much you smile at me and chat to me, I am going back to sleep.