October 2012: onwards, upwards and rolling over?

[YompingJo]

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

A quick check in here - not fully caught up.
Cherry Tormented from eczema here - I use epaderm (almost hourly) aND SOCKS over hands. Advise to deal with it sooner rather than later

Yomping a wise mum of 2 uni graduates and a special needs teenager advised me - 'when you feel you can't cope, put them into their cot (or somewhere safe) and go have a cup of tea or a 5 min time out.' - Instinctively I know this is good advice
I read one of those emotional lectures about the crying baby who stops because they have learned no one comes. When you have more than 1 child it is simply not possible to always respond immediately. If it led to long term harm (maybe it does to mums) second and subsequent children would all have mental health issues.

Try the bennetton thing - honestly your hot press will be fab!!

Elpis the guilt at stretching the ties
DH has had developments at work which mean he will be away more so starting next week DS1 is booked in creche 5 mornings a week instead of 3. It is 3 hrs a morning.
I take DS2 with me everywhere except I had a visit to the gym this week - away about 90mins. Came home to baby screaming
You sound like an amazingly gentle mother - I am like you in that grandparents cannot help, Could any local mum do an exchange with you - I'll mind your Monday, You mind mine Thursday??
Would you consider an AuPair - they are like a big sister in the house, but they need a bedroom. There could be a live out AuP.

Oh yes Elpis- thanks for the Polyn O Pyret (?spelling?) tip - I am anxiously waiting a delivery. I have very little choices local to me.

Great day, massive morning nap, lunchtime sleep in buggy, afternoon nap where she went down fairly easily (afternoon naps are our nemesis), settled to sleep at 9... massive screamathon at 10 . No idea what is up. Ok upright, ballistic lying down. Went on for half an hour before starting to calm but still crying when last down. Now feeding her back to sleep but horrified that she might not sleep, or might wake every hour. I get so scared of sleepless nights when I think I'm about to face one. I also hate the screamathons when you don't know what's wrong. Mini yomping has 3 volumes of cry: a whimper/groan, a cry, and a batshit crazy, I'm-about-to-self-destruct scream that makes you think you need to get her to a doctor, then she farts and you discover it was wind, or she burps, or just stops and you never find out what it was. She needs to work on the whole crying wolf thing... not that you could ignore one of her meltdowns. In the middle of this one, she stopped and smiled, then carried on. Sometimes I could happily put her in a cupboard!

Fingers crossed for better nights tonight for those who need them. May the gods of sleep be smiling on you.

Yomping sorry but couldn't help but smile at image of your rascal having the audacity to grin in middle of screaming fit then carry right on :o Wishing you a peaceful, sleepy night!

Dilemma: to wake the bean or not to wake the bean? Normal pattern: bed at 10, wakes 10.45 for last feed, goes back to sleep for night. Tonight she went to bed at 10 and hasn't woken. I want to take some night nurse to stop my tickly cough keeping us both awake all night. So guess I will have to risk waking her...

Yomping I too laughed out loud at DD smiling mid crying fit........... Think I might want to put her in cupboard too!!!!!

I was an Au Pair. Love the description of temporary big sister!! Gosh that's exactly half my lifetime ago........ I loved that little baby like a sister indeed!! ( I was great with babies as a kid, think I've grown out of it 'tho!!)

Yomping sincerely hope your feelings of bad night were well and truly wrong! She had great day sleep, hopefully it helped her chill. X

Hmm. Apparently great day sleep meant she wasn't tired enough for great night sleep. Wide awake and blowing raspberries at me at 4am after finally settling at 11.

That's a bit ungrateful of me, isn't it? At least she slept. It's just that, after the great day sleeps I was all: "This is the night! This is the one where she will sleep for 12 hours straight through! Everything is going to be like clockwork from now on, we've cracked it!". Er... no.

Ach Yomping. Bollocks.

Omg. Only manage to keep up with facebook posts these days. But having serious issues with fb today so thought i would peek on here and i realize i have nearly missed an entire thread!

On the OMG front... Dh and I have had post birth sex once, am breast feeding and didnt use any protection and am nowfeeling very full and nauseated in the evening. Please tell me that is because of the crap i have been eating because it is awfully reminiscent of my first trimester.

Anyone else freaked themselves out into a pregnancy test yet? I may have to pick up a cheapie for peace of mind tomorrow.

Beeble, I had to take the morning after pill a few weeks ago Anna I've fine one pregnancy test in the last few weeks. Negative, thank fuck. Doesn't help that my period came back in the middle of December, then I haven't had one since.
Only advice is get a test dine them get a contraceptive plan sorted! Unless you want a small age gap...

Baby had decided 5am is playtime again. I'm trying to explain to her that it isn't. When she's like this I tend to just leave her in the cot happily chatting away to herself and only give her attention if she sounds upset, which she never really does. Is that bad? She usually settles herself eventually and I don't want to give her daytime signals until 7am and ideally later
Arse. Fed up of doubting myself.

And still awake 2 hours later. Onto second feed to settle her. Great...

Hey Beeble! Eek! Hopefully it's just tiredness and eating badly. But........ You need to go pee on a stick, woman!

Wish my baby woke happily! Awake in cot = waaaaah! Lift me!!!! I'd happily let her gurgle and play til waking time. She will get message. DS wakes up about 6. Cries. Take him into bed for another feed and here he sleeps til he wakes. Well, for past week anyhow. Up 3 times before this. 1ish, 3ish, 5ish. That's been pattern since the hideousness settled. Manageable. Hoping they will seamlessly melt together. But hey, who knows what next night brings?!

londonmrs DD also lies quite happily talking to herself in cot in middle of the night. And at 5am. I leave her and go back to sleep. Much easier since I evicted her from our bedroom. If your DD's unhappy you'll know about it

londonlivvy for your awesome night

yomping do you get full on thrashing about and almost headbanging with DD's 3rd level cry? I'm almost happy when we get to that stage cos I know hope to hell she's about to run out of steam and fall asleep (this is on my shoulder not in cot!) We've had the smile mid total crying meltdown session too! Babies are just weird

huffle yes my friend just dropped one feed at a time until she just got to the am and pm bfs only. Did it quite slowly though (like over a month). I think if you find mini-huffle waking for extra feeds in a growth spurt your boobs will probably adapt, and if not you can always give formula if you're doing that during the day too At least you know he takes a bottle so don't have to worry about that too!

angelico hope you are feeling a bit better

cheesy some of DDs biggest screaming sessions have ended suddenly with a huge fart who knew gas could be so troublesome

DD now has both lower incisors, well they're all of 2mm at the moment, but still! bought her first toothbrush today so now an extra chore for the bedtime routine! I guess they need brushing after feeding, nut that would wake her properly up again.... arghhh decisions! And my manager wants to know if I'm definitely coming back to work... The boss was such an arse (being very polite ) about my mat leave that I don't really want to go back, but haven't figured an alternative out yet. hmmmmmm

Wow. DS has just went back to sleep with help of, wait for it........ A dummy!!! DH thought we should hav another go last night as he is sucking hands SO much. Clever DH.

huffle without a funny my dd wouldn't have slept since the day are was born! she shot it or as soon as she starts to drop off but it does relax her to allow her to get sleepy. Am driving weaning her off it, but for now... it works so I'm sticking with it. Only problem is she now can take it out and hold it in her hands... then she cries because she wants it back. Sometimes she almost gets it back in, but it goes in backwards which confuses her abs wakes her up.

*dummy

London all the sleep sites I read (bloody nobber) say to start weaning off by about 6 months. Feck that. Don't see toddlers with dummies for no good reason!!!! I know there are lots of cons but this child needs soothed!!! Never worked before, not counting my chickens, but I'll try it! 2 more dummies just popped in their steriliser, just incase!

Thanks Smile. Switchover begins tomorrow!

I need to do some research on amounts. I know there's lots of info out there. Problem is he is so unpredictable at minute and these extra night feeds hav put a spanner in works. He was on 8 feeds in 24 hrs for yonks, went right up to 13, now been 10 for most of week. (Thank god for the bloody app....) So not sure which figure to use for feed frequency.

Off to find out!

I can't keep up these days!
We're going through another stage of no day time naps at the moment. I've been doing everything I can think of, but nothing's working. He finally drifts off after much effort and crying but will only stay asleep for a few minutes then it starts all over again.
I'm spending all my time settling, my back is killing me and I feel like a zombie. Then I feel guilty because between the whingey tiredness and the hours of settling, there's no time for playing or fun. And I'm finding it really hard to keep my anger in check. There's just no reason to it.
I've tried giving up if he doesn't sleep within a few minutes, but that was the day it took nearly 4 hours to get him to bed. He won't even sleep in the pushchair.
He's never been one for falling asleep on me, but I could feed him to sleep then leave him on me if needed. Even that's not working, his eyes never fully close!
Oh well, tomorrow's another day, it's just a stage, blah blah blah.

Huffle, you've inspired me to try a dummy. We've not used one til now, but he's also always got his hands in his mouth.
Well done for making the decision to switch to formula. I've been thinking it must be so hard to pump for full time work, I'm not sure there are enough hours in the day.

Smile, I know exactly what you mean about sometimes wishing for level 3 crying so they run out of steam quicker!

Elpis my mum was a member of a babysitting circle too. Great idea, and no money involved. You definitely deserve a break, have you had a look on the Mumsnet Local for your area? I've never tried it, but they may have something.
Are you sure your DH wouldn't take over for a bit? Mine also works very long hours and has a lot of extra pressure due to me not really speaking the language, but he really wants to be involved. We're getting into a bit of a routine of me doing my own thing for a few hours every weekend.

Lisbeth & Yomping, the steroid cream from the doctor has worked like magic! Thanks for all your help.

Still no rolling, too busy not sleeping...

Cherry is your ds going to be bilingual? how are you doing it? we doing one parent one language, but it's hard to get enough exposure to dh's language so I tend to have France Inter radio on a lot.

Bit of a scare last night - the Angelcare monitor went off for the first time at about 04:00. Just the 15 second warning light. It is amazing how that sound sent me from sleep to practically in cot within 2 seconds. Bean was breathing but it was the most shallow breathing imaginable and she must have been doing it a while for the alarm to go off (it has never once given us a false reading and even the faintest movement in cot triggers it, normal breathing does for sure). I was actually really happy we had the alarm. I semi woke her and she went back to breathing normally. I know one of the theories about SIDS is that they go into such a deep sleep they actually just 'forget' to breathe, hence why keeping them in same room and making noise is supposed to help stop them from entering deep sleep (yay ). She was in a really deep sleep - I never woke her at 11 for her feed, just let her go through, so she must have been tired.

Anyway, happy ending. She dozed for a further half hour, had her feed about 04:45, then joined the other beans in having a satisfying conversation / bubble blowing session with her rabbit toy while I lay in darkness smiling and trying to sleep... She seems fine this morning so hope it was just a one-off!

Bloody hell Angelico, I'd have shat myself! Thank god for the monitor.

London, yes hopefully bilingual, though I've heard it's actually a lot harder than you'd imagine.
The plan is OPOL, but for some reason DH keeps speaking to him in English!! I'm trying to stop that before it becomes habit. He doesn't even know why he does it.
I hope we'll get quite a good balance though, as the parent he spends most time with (me) has the second language IYSWIM. Often here it's the other way round, so much harder to keep the English up. He'll probably be a bit behind when he starts nursery, but should soon catch up.

DS also wakes up before me (or before I acknowledge I'm awake) in the morning, and entertains himself for a while - babbling and sucking. Then when he eventually catches sight of me he's all smiles. One of the best bits of the day!

We're trying the dummy. I put it in, he sucks away dutifully. I walk back to the table, look over at him and the dummy is somehow about 2 foot away while he smiles innocently. It seems he prefers his hands.

I've decided not to do any "settling" tonight. If he sleeps he sleeps. We shall see how I feel about that idea in the morning!

London best of luck for the move and enjoy all the space when you get there! I miss London a lot less than I thought I would, having lived there 10yrs, and now when I go back I'm amazed by the sheer number of people and how pushy and rude they are! I've turned all country bumpkin!

elpis can sympathise on the longing for space. I've been away from both once, to get a haircut. going again tomorrow. I also have no family to help, it sucks. keep telling myself it won't last forever.

but today I've got a seriously short fuse and a baby who will not stop crying. poor ds1 isn't getting a look in. I hate it when I just have to leave ds2 completely hysterical to deal with ds1 but I've had to do a lot of that this morning, but only for the absolute necessities for ds1 - he's had no nice play time with me at all, just grumpy snappy mummy with screaming baby I feel very guilty today.

didn't help we went to the supermarket this morning and ds2 did a massive poo on the way there which I had to change in the boot of the car. then ds1 spent the entire time trying to rip everything open and climb out of the trolley.

back to online shopping for delivery I reckon. what was I thinking??!