March 2013: Smiles, sleep & excellent feeding.....the thread of wishful thinking!

[SoYo]

Well we may as well start the thread on a positive note before the grumbling about the little darlings begins!!!

stormy best laugh I have had in a few days reading your post. Given I haven't done any pelvic floor exercises if i'd been there I'd likely have wet myself! The joys of motherhood. Things are ok here. Food staying down, some napping, wet nappies but very irritable and won't be held by anyone but me... So I am officially exhausted with the exclusive feeding and comforting. Hoping we are through the worst ( but worried the irritability is fighting off a new infection) . Dh has declared he has a new cold from back at our house. Thank god he goes on a business trip to the states for a week from Monday so I can go back to my own house. I am royally pissed off. last week he insisted on being on crèche duty at church, I asked him not too as so any germs going around but he went anyway leaving me ith two kids to look after so like any other day as I didn't want the little one exposed to germs. Worse he gets cold and gives it to them and so we are all in this mess. He has sinus problems anyway and a constant cough so this just means he picks things up easily and spreads them around like the generous idiot he is. God knows why he voluterrered for crèche, he's not that great with hid own kids. Ok maybe that last bit is a tad unreasonable but as usual I am right. He went, got sick about 6 days later and passed it to dd and DS. Idiot, can't go to the states soon enough in my book, he'd do better to say longer than a week. Feels better to vent...

Ahhh my least favourite time of the day approaches... Nightimes.

Dh had the cheek to say he had a supersleep last night. Erm every night he has supersleep as i do the feeds whereas i havent had a supersleep for at least 6months.

Re: daytime naps. Ds sleeps for about 30mins. 45mins max. Learning from mistakes i try hard to put him asleep as soon as i see a cue that his tired. Once i miss that opportunity its bloody hard for hin to sleep. He has 2 naps am, lunchtime nap, 3 x pm. Of course that depends if we have visitors or not. He enjoys the attention to much to want to sleep.

Anyone invented a device to keep the dummy in place?

Mummy went out with friend last night for the first time. Mummy has hangover . Another big spider came during morning feed whilst mummy was tired and had a head like a brick and felt sick. Mummy won't dare drink three glasses of wine and a vodka shot again... On an empty stomach (big mistake).

Bless OH, he did stirling work looking after DS and cooking for me when I got back.

Bleurgh!

Leni a hangover is a sign of a good night. What is it with spiders? I had tiny one on the ceiling but waited til dh came from work.

Eig im hoping the worse is over for you and little Eig is on thw road to recovery.

Leni the night out sounds bliss, the hangover less so.

We're leaving the PILs & officially getting back to our own home tomorrow! DD has been poked at by her 3 cousins (2 of whom we're gorgeous with her), great granny, auntie, granny & grandpa who I suspect might be a baby whisperer due to his magical settling powers & is now a snotty, cranky, overtired mess. Plus the pup is also so overtired she's started growling so has had to be put to bed. Looking forward to getting home & trying to re-establish some longer sleeps & normality for us all.

Stormy I quite liked the general idea of baby massage but could never have kept a straight face in the classes I'm not very in touch with my inner earth mother so looked it up on YouTube & do it while lathering baby in something that smells like a piña colada!

Glad your OH found his moment to shine again Leni

I finally got LO to sleep by swaddling his arms in his sleeping bag... No, it's not one you see in the pictures but instantly stopped the exhausted sobbing and put him out like a light, poor mite.

Have DH at home for next couple of days which will be nice. And weigh in today at healthy child clinic - whoever was asking about hv etc, we were under mw for about 21 days rather than 10 due to feeding issues, and got our hv at about 17. Was weekly visits, now fortnightly for weigh ins (as he's not exactly gaining like a champ) sometimes at home or at the local clinics if it suits better. I also get calls and emails from the local children's centre who put me un touch with a local peer bf supporter amongst other things. So we are quite 'monitored'!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01slmh7
Hi everyone. I'll catch up properly later. Just wanted to sign you to yesterdays Jeremy vine radio show, second feature at about half hour in. About relationships post child birth. The lady called hetty or betty is pretty amusing :-)
Hope you all having good nights?

At nine weeks I think we might have just had our first laugh. But it was in dd's sleep. Very sweet! And I like to imagine what she's dreaming of. :-)

Wow we have lasted til 4.30am since last feed at 10pm. Lets just hope he goes back to sleep after.

Eco congrats on the laugh. Im sure she is dreaming of having a milk fountain.

Well, DH's cunning plan re not doing the nappy up too tight in case it was uncomfy for our poor tummy achey boy had the expected result. So I've just had to change wet nappy, baby gro and sleeping bag.

Will therefore listen to radio with interest tomorrow Eco!

We've had sort of gurgle giggles, but don't think they've been intentional yet, so still holding out for a proper one...

A friend sent me this today:
" tidying your house when your children are growing, is like ploughing snow, whilst its still snowing!"

Urrgggh. Rubbish night here. It took me ages to get to sleep then dd was making grumpy noises in her sleep from about 3. She shouted for a feed at 5 and is point blank refusing to go back to sleep, avoidance tactics so far include hiccups (probably not strictly intentional to be fair to her) spitting out dummy and then shouting for dummy, looking at me and laughing, and making herself gag by trying to get her entire arm in her mouth. Today is going to be a long day.

DH survived the night. He is 'ill'. But this illness only seems to materialise on weekday evenings. He is not ill for beer festivals, or barbecues, or lovely sunshiny walks. But he is ill for bath time, bedtime, dinner cooking and house tidying. He is not ill for making a mess, but he is ill for clearing up after himself.

This sounds to me like the perfect illness and I'm really hoping I catch it.

Ah, tis the day of rubbish DH's by the sound of it. I am getting irrationally irritated with mine. Obviously I am not showing this... oh no.... not so much as a stabby look in his direction. OK, maybe one... His crime, well, hmmm, setting the alarm for 6am, when he didn't need to leave until 7.45am, and then spending the interim stomping round the bedroom seemingly intent on waking the small smelly person. Early morning is the only time in the entire day when I get to marvel over the wonder that is a sleeping baby, in a cot, not my arms, hence every unnecessary stomp sends me somewhat twitchy. However, given his inexplicable skill at settling her at night I guess he has an open licence to wake her when he wants

Pud - glad to hear the poonami finally made an appearance. Less glad to hear of its wide distribution. Tiddler also eased her colic somewhat was an equally impressive evacuation, timed cunningly for half way through dinner. Bless her little cotton socks .

Plonko - the travel cot is better than expected. Not one car picture on it. Result! A Mamas and papas one, cheap but serviceable, although I'm not entirely convinced by the 'extra thick' mattress. Extra thick compared to what? A hessian sack?! A contingency plan will probably be required or DD will end up with not so much a flat head as a massive great dent.

Oh, grrr.... no time to name check as the builders have arrived. H*ll. There is nothing I love more than sharing my kitchen with a squad of men and a lot of mess.

Sadly I had to deal with all the leak but none of the poo... Just very wet. Reassuring that he's still not dehydrated, but even so...

Mind you, weigh in day today, so having got this far I'm now kind of hoping he waits til after he's been on the scales as its got to be good for an extra few ounces!

Baby massage for constipation: rub one hand from the left side of the tummy to the right. Also, with the right hand, rub down the right side of the tummy, then over the belly button and down like a 7, then right over the belly button like an upside down u. Apparently this only works if you also repeat "I love you" while doing it, and you mustn't forget to ask the baby's permission before you begin massaging. (As ours can't verbally consent yet the man's decided he'd better not risk any baby massage until she's at least big enough to nod). One of the midwives told me about the tummy rubbing way back when DD was a week old, so it's probably not entirely bollocks.

KF duct tape for dummies. Although we did decide it's probably child abuse. Depends how desperate you get. It's not that long until they'll be hopefully finding their thumbs, so take heart. The dummy return dance won't last forever.

SoYo I quite like the idea of baby massage too. I could just do without the reflexology parts! Thinking I'll probably work it into the pre-bath routine, unless she's too screamy then. Really does need a bath after being covered in chip fat.

pud how are you doing for growth? We had our weekly weigh in yesterday. A measly two ounces gained.

We haven't yet had anything that's unmistakeably a laugh in response to something. But we've been having gurgles that sound like laughs. Just very delayed reaction laughs.

We have an exciting day planned, assuming it stops raining. We are going to the furniture charity shop to buy a working chest of drawers for DD! And then I'll be able to put all her new 6-9month clothes away! Including a most awesome brightly coloured wool coat with a pointy hood from Peru. Can't wait until she's big enough for that. Her dad's a bit horrified, she's going to look like a hippy.

We incorporate a bit of baby massage after bathtime with a special natural besswax cream. Only do her legs and feet and rub a little on her cheeks and chin. We always lift our hands up in front of her face before starting as a way of starting that communication about whether she is happy for us to do it. She can't understand yet of course but its like the beginning of all of language skills - starts with repetition. It also mean she starts to understand that rub down is part of the night routine and also to get her to take a sniff of the cream as its only used at bedtimes. Our bedtime routine also involves shutting the curtains together and switching on a blue light from the moment we come upstairs to get ready. We then get a bath, rub down, get into proper pjs, cuddles with daddy, offered food, then tucked into bed by mummy and then daddy always tells a story lying down next to her. DH generally then moves out of her line of sight but stays till she is clearly drifting off which usually takes no more than half an hour. Works really well and we have no had any crying att bedtime for weeks and she now always goes down to bed awake and seems to self-settle. Just hope she keeps it up!

Rainbow that's exactly the same routine we do. Unfortunately my beautiful stubborn girl is of the opinion that massage/stories/being put down is all well and good but it certainly isn't the way to sleep....no, no, no, Feeding/rocking/singing until you're asleep in someone's arms and therefore forcing them to do the transfer dance is the only way to sleep! What a madam!

Ah I was going to suggest the duct tape thing, but Stormy beat me to it.

Our bedtime routine involves bathing him, quick massage with nasty barrier-forming baby oil, back downstairs for a bottle in front of the telly (bad parenting points, especially as its nearly always The One Show ) and then we pop him in the sleeping bag and put a horrible chimey nursery rhyme songy thing on. Well, DP does it 9 times out of 10 while I cook dinner/open the wine. Same routine for nearly six weeks now and its easy enough to replicate when we're staying with parents or have guests.

Stormy where did you get a pointy hooded coat?! I think DS would look awesome in one.

I'm spending today going through the study/soon-to-be nursery so I can paint it and slowly move all the baby gubbins in there. Well, that's the idea anyway, but I'm sure DS has other ideas, like breaking wind in the most dramatic way possible.

Also, I'm thinking of selling on my (barely used) reusable nappies. Really, really not getting on with them even though they're lovely and soft.

Morning all. After weeks of DS going to sleep from 9-4 ish last night he wanted feeding at midnight and 2am. No idea what changed hoping this was a one night only thing though as doing that on a hangover when I badly needed sleep was awful! That'll teach me eh? Even when he wasn't crying I could hear him gagging on his own hand and thrashing about, re-enacting his day through the medium of interpretive dance.

We've started weeing through the nappy now, still using Gpants with super thick liners or Pampers size 1 (should he have moved up a size yet?)

Some crazy hand chewing here today, no napping, far too alert for so little sleep!

Finally got OH to order the new Cosatto buggy with the skull and crossbones design - over a kg lighter than what we have and requires no fecking around other than reclining, well fx not anyway.

Leni how big is your boy? We've been on size 3 for a good three weeks now! We've never managed more than 3 hours out of a reusable, and have always used disposables at night.

Hope the new pushchair provides the solution you're looking for. I really wanted a Cosatto Giggle but DP thought they were too girly - but our travel cot is an awesome Cosatto Moon Unit one. I have been judged for having a forward facing Maclaren XLR from the get go (apparently it's not fair to put a newborn in a five point harness, and I disturb him too much transferring him from car seat to buggy) but I love it. Lightweight but sturdy, he's got lots of room in it, can go on aeroplanes, no faffing with bits that come apart, and it's perfect for the hills round here. And as if DS cares which way he faces - he's mostly asleep in it anyway!

Is that newborn size 1, leni? Try the pampers babydry overnight, we're finding them brilliant. As for when to move up a size, depends how they fit, I suppose. There's a weight range for each size on the side of the box too.

plonko we're forward facing too. DD loves it, she likes to see what's going on. The hooded coat was actually bought in Peru and came to us via the man's Brazilian stepmother. But there's a vegetarian cafe round the corner that sells hippy clothes, I shall stick my head in and see if there's anything similar and get back to you on that one.

Meanwhile, Fartypants has woken up, and told me in no uncertain terms that she is wide awake and definitely not going back to sleep, and is now on the playmat grumbling because she's tired. Daft child, just sleep then!

Hey leni, we are on size 2 here as well. We are both still alive, me barely, and little one is showing signs of new cough but is eating well and we have had a run of wet nappies. Mummy just has to keep going one step (or boob) at a time and keep chanting " this too will pass".

Whoever suggested wonder years book, it's great, bought it on my iPad and been reading with interest! Little one worked out how to pull the lion on her bouncy chair to make a noise and started cooing at it so must be on the mend..... Surely as I can't take much more....

stormy this is a conversation I often have with dd. "yes, I know you're tired. Yes, I'm tired too. Well then why did you wake up after 35 minutes? If I had the luxury to sleep whenever I pleased I certainly would not be awake now".

Those looking to extend naps- anyone tried "wake to sleep"? The theory goes that just before LO is likely to wake up, for us a very reliable 35 minutes, go in, pick up, and then do whatever you do to get them to sleep (for us some fairly vigorous rocking and bottom patting) until they're asleep again. Avoids them getting to that stage where they're completely wide awake, and in theory starts another sleep cycle. After a few days of this they'll get used to it and just do it themselves. Will try next week when I'm less busy and have time to go up and down the stairs every 35 minutes.

Vj, that is what I am doing here, one of the nurses suggested it to help dd through her illness, it's very effective , they suggested leaving her in cot, turning her on her side and rubbing her back...

As I have to leave a 2.5 hour gap between feeds to prevent stomach issues this helps!