November 2012 - Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree, your ornaments are history.

[StuntNun]

Previous thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/postnatal_clubs/1917769-November-2012-The-last-few-first-birthdays-then-were-on-to-Christmas

I take back the no cruising comment, she's just shuffled along holding onto the sofa to try and wrestle a mince pie off DD1. Yes, she really is eating a mince pie at this time in the morning. The child hasn't stopped eating since she got up.

Lots of love to horsey and E. FX he is ok.

det how scary.

flouncy we have ALL thought those thoughts.

isles hope for your sake it lasts longer than Monday. Glad the new job is going well.

laughalot hope it clears up soon, otherwise get thee to a dr.

BP do you have a specialist ante-natal/post-natal offering at your hospital? I have a friend who has gone into labour at 30 weeks and they have taken her to your town. That must be terrifying.

Hi evil - hope you are all sorted in the new pad. If you would like any help or company let me know - DH is playing in a hockey tournament near you on Sunday 15 December so we might be in the area then.

YW rite of passage. Good that he didnt cry.

PR I didnt realise mat leave was so well paid in France - that's amazing. But the UK is amazing for maternity leave compared with the USA. Lydie when I was pg with DD, I had a big case on with a US lawyer who was astonished when my boss and I explained my entitlements.

pidj fingers and toes crossed for vvvvDP. What an exciting opportunity!

pass S luffs DD's babies - he properly cuddles them and makes little noises to them when DD permits him to.

Christmas plans are so nice to read about. We are at home then up to the midlands for the weekend after. Any east midlands quichsters fancy a post xmas meet? kyz? horsey (once E is all better)? Anyone else in spitting distance of there?

SS all done . Mine has arrived. Very exciting!

My DD was 14 mo when she walked. S has started with the wobbly, arms-out-like-a-zombie steps but is taking much longer to actually walk reliably.

Everyone apart from me is ill. I had a couple of important things on y'day followed by a networking thing so just had to abandon DH to puke while looking after ill DC. I didnt get home until midnight. He may be shite at getting up in the night, but he just bloody got on with it yesterday. He is very, very supportive and does SAHD duties and his own FT job so I can get on with focussing at work. I have moaned about him lacking initiative in the past but he is fantastic with the DC and at home, and I am very grateful for him. Especially at the moment - an awful lot of shit at work. I'm not directly affected but it will indirectly affect me and its very stressful.

Eliza I'd cruise for a mince pie.

Isles I see what you mean!

A better night though I think he reacted to a soy fake cheese spread as he was refluxy at first. Will give it a miss and see what happens.

PR they say barefoot is best for their feet and developing healthy walking. Not that it's helping J!

Oh that's a relief. I.m sure there have been threads on MN about the evils of barefootedness. Haven't been worried enough to google though. They have underfloor heating so am not worried about them getting cold toes :)

zamboni I don't know about maternity leave in France, I work in Lux. I doubt France is as generous.

Mat leave is good in Hungary too. 70%of your salary for 2 years than stat mat leave for another year but it's only £80 a month. I should get the stat mat leave but can't as I don't have O's Hungarian birth certificate. But I would never ever give birth here, no fucking way. You can swear at the nhs but you wouldn't if you would know what is happening here (only antenatal and postnatal care, rest is good here).

Of course PR, I did know that.

It's 20 weeks full pay which takes you to 12 weeks post birth, then six months on minimum wage.

20 weeks on 100% is pretty decent although I could not have finished 8 weeks before due date. I worked until 36 weeks with DD and could easily have worked until term, with S I worked until 37 weeks but knew I was having a section at 39, and only stopped working because I wanted a few days with DD and on my own whole she was at nursery!

Yeah the 8 week pre thing is a pita but the law...

No walking here. Costs along sofa but not at all holding hands

Evil great to hear from you.

Isle glad work is going well.

Lydi hope all works out ok for sis

PR how is lo cough?

Better sort out my SS or ill be the last one!

I could happily have worked up until 38 weeks or so as I was perfectly fine sitting behind a desk on the computer (providing I sat on my bouncy ball and went to the loo like every hour!), but he had other plans and turned up at 36 weeks on the nose. Bit of a surprise and nearly put the kibosh on my MA as we scraped qualification for it by 2 days only. Wah (You need to have a certain number of weeks of freelance in before birth to qualify in any tax year. Whilst it's technically based on due date if the baby arriving means you couldn't work after that point it is discriminatory against those who have prem babies).

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I do love him dearly but I just wish he would bloody sleep!!!!!!!

Kitchen is slowly coming together. I have units and a floor and a cooker, micro and hob and fridge freezer. Sink is in but not plumbed in yet due to 'issues' so have a plumber coming tomorrow.

My j is nowhere near walking or talking. He can say mum but I don't even know if it's meant for me and his other favourite noise is 'bit' but that's just random.

GT and Flouncy sounds like our three are about the same walking wise. J can cruise quite happily (usually food motivated like Eliza's E! he comes to rob my dinner after already having his own), but if I hold him by his hands, at most he does one or two 'jumps' rather than steps and then drops down to the floor and off to crawl, he thinks it's hilarious being held upright and 'walked' by the hands but his wee sparrow legs are too weak and he knows he can go faster by crawling. He can cruise like a good un, goes at a fair pace with the baby walker but he has only stood unsupported like once or twice for a matter of seconds so I do think it won't be this year that he's walking.

I'm kinda glad as I was worried that it would happen when DH was in the Falklands and he would be devastated to miss it. (He's a big ol' softie). But He's 13.5 months actual 12.5 adjusted so it's hard not to worry. I try not to worry about it as he's had so many setbacks with being prem, and jaundice, and his fecking awkward diet, and evil bastarding reflux and being so tiny but it's hard not to especially as I know the paed must be concerned about his growth as she's upped his appointments to every six weeks (this is after waiting 10 months for the first one!!!) lets face it you don't get six weekly appointments with a paed on the NHS unless they're worried.

But folks seem to think that they have free rein to point out how wee he is when you wouldn't go up (or I wouldn't!) to the Mum of a big baby and go 'cor what a fat one he's gonna struggle in the future, what do you feed them chocolate and crisps?' but I'm always getting admittedly stupid and uneducated folks coming up to me assuming J is a very advanced months younger baby because he's very chatty and dextrous but very wee. When they find out he's one people often hint that it's BF that has made him small and assume that if your baby isn't on the 90th centile there is something wrong. I also know that I shouldn't be comparing him to FF babies as that's a totally different growth model and given he won't take very much at all of his nutramigen I know that switching to FF would not help with his growth at all as he'd just be losing a source of calories perfectly tailored to him. At least with BF I know he's getting lots of calorie rich milk every day.

I know that everyone complains about the pressure to BF before you have your baby but trust me the pressure not to, once your LO gets to one is much more overwhelming. Every Ned and their long lost pals think its ok to have a say. Maybe it's related to Mummy guilt and not wanting others to visibly continue what you struggled with? Maybe it's just Little Britain. But sheesh....

Woo that was more of a rant than even I was expecting.... Sorry!!!! am not looking forward to trying to argue a calcium supplement out of the doc this afternoon for J. It's like trying to pull f*cking teeth.

I'm not sure there is a big difference necessarily between the weight of ff and bf babies, I mean once solids come in (the first few months of course there is as ff babies don't need to worry about supply). DD1 was born on 98th centile, and other than a weight drop when she was ill last year stayed on it pretty much. I have been criticised since she was born that she is too fat, sometimes by complete strangers but more often by people who should know better ILs and CM and nosy neighbours . With comments just like your jokey one above. Less so now she is growing and losing her puppy fat, but as soon as people find out she is only 2, no the 3+ they expect the comments still come.

If people think being on the 90th centile is the norm they are bloody stupid. And it doesn't really matter anyway as long as they don't go up or down the chart too much.

The 'natural' course of bf'ing is anything from 9-36 months. Sometimes they stop of their own accord, others continue.

I think whatever you do there will always be people who think they know better and that you should listen to their unasked for opinion. People are surprisingly judgemental about the strangest things - right down to the smallest detail. Just look at what people on mn get worked up about. I was asked by another mum at nursery why LO was wearing brown boy socks and my answer being that they were warm was met with a sneery look.

But yes the comments you remember are the ones that hit a nerve for some reason or other. The woman in the supermarket who tried to take dd1's dummy from her mouth (quite a while ago now but I happily admit she still likes a dummy when winding down) and made a quite frankly nasty comment about it will probably not forget my mother tiger reaction for a good while yet.

yw I got load so comments about j being so big when he was to all intense purposes fat. No one would believe he had never had a taste of food in his life and that I was all just breast milk. They assumed I over fed him on solids especially when he was 6 months plus. It is nice to have him fit into things the correct age range now and slightly cheaper than replacing his clothes so often! What size does J wear as I have a bunch if things I'm going to be getting rid of as I can't face listing them on selling sites. If they'd suit you then I'd love you to have them?

As for the walking. I'm not bothered one iota. They all do different things at different rates. My daughter was born end nov 09 and didn't walk until beginning April 11. I wasn't bothered then so reason to be now. She was an excellent communicator and spoke in sentences very clearly very early. The nursery commented on how unusual her speech was as it was so good. So they're all different. We as adults are all able to different things so why shouldn't kids be the same.

DH has just been sent out for a Burger King for me. Kitchen still 'in progress' and as such we have bugger all food in and I'm hungry!

Hello all. Tired today. Meant to have a day off bread but have just scoffed three slices of a gorgeous bread with cheese And bacon Baked into the top and two mini mince pies all *eliza's fault since she just mentioned mice pies

o is cruising an definitely not walking. If you leave him standing on his own he thinks about it and then very deliberately sits down. He is too scared to try.

Thanks all nice (!! well not 'nice' but YKWIM) to know the general public at large feel the need to comment regardless of which end of the size scale they're at. In the docs waiting room just now an old boy clearly decades past his baby days commented on what a big lad J is - clearly revealing his ignorance of the babies but I could have kissed him ! I think I'm worrying and projecting as after Christmas we're off to see the in laws and all three babies on that side have been FF and 90th + centilers (one to the point his eyelashes had started growing inwards!) and their perception of average is a bit skewed they also all had v bad experiences of BF so are quite vocally anti it. When they see the 2nd centile BF bear I'm sure there'll be comments as to why a bottle would be best .

Flouncy that's so kind thank you. He's in 6-9 mostly (some 3-6 tops) and some 9-12 depending on the shop. I'll send you some cash or something nice for them as if nothing else, he has been very cheap clothes wise!

Well DD1 isn't big because of ff - I don't think she ever drank more than 27oz in a day and mainly hovered between 20 and 25, which is a lot less than many on here. Her dad and aunt are both over 6ft though. I wasn't expecting to birth such a bruiser. LO is on the 50th centile I think, fed exactly the same way. Lots of it is genetics :)

I've been getting muscular type pain round about the c section area. Anyone else get that?

Btw. O is on 25centile, DS1is on 91st they both eat well and they were both 9lb. Go figure. I think it is all swayed by DS1 s enormous head. Means nothing, healthy child is main thing.

Oh and both ff but DS1just 11 weeks of bf.

LO coughing but not much. Slight whistle occasionally when she breathes but she's not wheezing or having any trouble breathing or eating. Will keep an eye on her. If they hadn't mentioned the dreaded b word yesterday I wouldn't worry in the slightest.

Thanks for al

Oops, try again!

Thanks for all the well wishes. Got in to se a dr this morning and I have rotavirus which according to Wikipedia is a children's disease . Was prescribed an antibiotic spray for my ear (which is still so painful, I think it's the constantness of it that's getting me down, at least you get breaks from labour pains!) and Diaoralyte for my dehydration which is gross to drink

At least work were good about me having a sick day on only my second week back.

Will catch up properly when my head isn't trying to explode...