March 2013 - time to wrap them all up in tinsel

[StormyBrid]

Old thread here.

worse we're like Plonky on the timings - we keep mealtimes and milktimes separate. I spotted something in Evil Baby Whisperer that suggested around this age milk should be at the time you'd give a snack. Thinking about it, that's pretty much what we do - milk at the crack of dawn, 11am, 3pm and bedtime, food at 9am, 1pm and 5pm. It seems to work, and Fartypants is definitely in the process of reducing milk herself. Those middle two feeds, she's having about four ounces now.

How is the worselet on mush? Does she show any preferences? If we were sticking with baby led weaning we'd be getting absolutely nowhere. Savoury mushes, she'll try a mouthful then get distracted by the cat. Fruit mushes, she practically inhales. For a reduced stress option, can I suggest getting yourself to Asda? They've a hell of a range of cheap fruity mushes, and then at least you're not having to throw away purees you've spent hours lovingly creating.

Incidentally, six month old Molly may love her porridge, but all that means is that Molly's a total weirdo - porridge is vile. It's weetabix all the way round here, with mashed banana in.

eco hang in there, it does get better. How long until 37 weeks for you?

I am thanking my heathen gods we don't have crawling yet. Nappy changes with rolling are bad enough. Especially when it's a particularly horrific one.

Morning. For those in need.

I have turned into a Star Trek empath since DS was born. Any news story involving children, and even some which don't directly but do cover degrading the planet, early mortality etc, and I'm away. It's embarrassing, it's like all my emotional walls are broken.

First taster at nursery yesterday. Just 40 mins but he was fine. I mean totally fine. Just didn't want to give back the plastic ball with a bell in fine. I may be an empath but separation anxiety hasn't yet hit DS too hard it seems. Which is a good thing and will make it loads easier but sort of makes me feel like a bad mum anyway because it seems the hormones always work that way

Loads to do today. Not sure we'd get it all done on a pre DS day but now we need to boy wrangle, cope with the horrid weather and do Christmas... Wish us luck!

Good luck pudtat . I have to go last minute
shopping so feel your pain! Leaving the boy
with DH tho

gerry for you but glad you are feeling
better. Have you spoken to him about how
you feel? You're right that DD won't remember
but obviously you will. Hope you're doing ok.

something many congrats on the new job!
Great news. Too early in the day for I
Suppose but hope you had some yesterday.

eco bet you looked great and the old bat
was most likely jealous. .

We haven't progressed to standing in the
cot yet (lazy!) but sounds like a pain!!!

pud great news about nursery. Best childcare arrangement is always one where you are happy that your DC is happy. It makes it lots easier to enjoy the time spent working without worrying too much.

Sad to hear of so many bad things happening to children. As many of you know my DD1 died and so in the context of this discussion I am sure you can appreciate why I don't tend to focus on the hard bits of baby rearing, why I embrace the self-sacrifices totally even at my own expenses and why I try my best to focus on the positives. It's awful but when I hear that someone's DC is very ill I always thing - lucky then, their DC is still alive as I would give anything for that. Losing a child is a dark place to be and DD2 really is a shining light!

eco you boss sounds plain awful - sad that such things happen in a workplace in this day and age. Guess it made your decision to move that bit easier!

Standing in cot sounds tricky! As DD won't ever be in a cot I am hoping this issue will be delayed as nothing to pull herself up on until she can move out of bed herself. We shall see but thankfully she is far from crawling yet and her bottom shuffle is slow progress.

Apologies for the many typos in my last post - very sleepy brain!

Rainbow if hearing of other peoples ill children makes us grateful for our healthy babies I can only imagine what the loss of a child would do. Of course your dd is a shining light - my mum also lost a baby (not miscarriage) before dsis and I were born, and a close friend lost a month old baby to SIDS a couple of years ago. However, we're all different people and have different 'styles' of parenting. Or no style at all and we're just taking each day as it comes. I'm not keen on the insinuation that we don't make similar sacrifices for our babies - we all do, and some of us find parenting difficult. But we get on with it, all of us, regardless of whether we cc or co-sleep etc.

Ds thought the best way to start his day would be to start laughing at 6.30am. I might have had a sense of humour failure.

Worse the only way I get anything done is by embracing independent play. Haha! As ds is still rather immobile he's content to sit and play for 30 mins. And DP always does bath time, which is when I cook dinner. Mumsnetting gets in the way a lot though.

plonky not sure where you got any insinuation from - bit hurtful that you would turn me saying the positives that I found came out of the death of my child into something negative. Of course we have different styles of parenting - all I was pointing out is mine was influenced by something I hope you never have the misfortune to experience yourself$ it changes you for ever. Hmmm ah well

Actually just ignore my posts - I don't want to introduce unhappiness here in the run up to Christmas. I am sure these are all my issues! Off to watch DD reading with daddy - never fails to make me smile. Hope everyone has a good day!

Rainbow this bit 'I don't tend to focus on the hard bits of baby rearing, why I embrace the self-sacrifices totally even at my own expenses and why I try my best to focus on the positives' is what I meant. Of course I can see why you do the best for dd but we all do our best. I didn't mean to upset you.

Thank you for all the congrats shattered I certainly did have some last night (thanks for the pud very much needed) Had a bit of an old school reunion and didn't buy a single drink DP is making me go food shopping now though. Eurgh,

Christmas was tackled in one day yesterday. DP and I both went our separate ways for the day and it was just assumed that I'd take DS. My inner feminist is raging! stormy, plonk sort him out for me!

eco that's like my staple dress code...what must the world think of me? bloody ridiculous!

We have standing up in sleeping bag too. Never watch him get back down, I assume he just bodyslams!

plonky it's my way of saying I count my blessings a lot (every second in fact) - just as betty said further up on the new of the ill newborn. Whenever the toil of parenthood starts to get me down, I get a sharp reminder I am lucky to be where I am - it influences your choices. I know I would have been a very different parent if I had never experienced death of a child. Bah can't resist defending myself even though trying to stay positive today!

something my inner feminist joins in with you! Mind you DH does have the massive disadvantage of no breasts in our case but beginning to be less of an excuse now that DD pretty much eats food normally in the day.

I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from, and granted I haven't explained my emotions well. Ok. I'm genuinely sorry for your loss. I have seen a friend lose a baby and the ongoing anguish he still lives with. He is the opposite to you and finds it very hard to focus on his other child (much older) because that is his nature. Luckily he has a fantastic wife who props him up - undoubtedly you and your dh provide similar support for each other. Since DS arrived my mum has spoken a lot about her early labour and subsequent loss of a baby girl in 1980. With the perspective of hindsight she is very philosophical about it (she wouldn't have had me or her first grandchild if things happened differently) but she's still cried on me about it 33 years later.

I digress. I think we're coming at this from very different perspectives. Obviously we had kids for different reasons and it sounds like you've really blossomed into a mother. I could never do what you do - cosleeping, babywearing, full term breastfeeding- for a number of reasons. I put DS in his own room at 4 months (hello guilt) because he needs darkness and silence to sleep, and he's fidgety as anything. He was breastfed for 10 days (enormous ongoing guilt, sense of failure). I went back to work before he was 8 months old because I was, literally, going insane at home. I don't know where to begin with that one. And I tried to break up with dp twice after ds's birth because those two boys are my world and I feel I've failed them at every opportunity.

So it was not a shock when I was diagnosed with PND. I put a brave face on and every day try to feel I'm making the right decisions, that I'm capable of this. Can you see now how occasionally I might lose the ability to detach myself from what I see in posts like yours?

I really don't mean to cause you upset, as I'm sure you don't me. But. There's that guilt, and I can't match up to mothers who make such sacrifices and do so well.

Something am yet to crack this problem. Beyond giving him no option and leaving him to it for the day I don't know what to suggest. Does he feel looking after DS is too much pressure?

something when you say it was assumed, do you mean he assumed and buggered off? Or did he assume and try to bugger off, whereupon you stopped him and said, "Excuse me, but when did DS become my sole responsibility?"

Plonky given how well your DS is doing, I'd say you match up pretty well. Nothing wrong with doing what keeps you sane. I've said it before and I'll doubtless end up saying it again: if your baby will be fine either way then pick the parenting option that suits you best and know you did the right thing.

As for this standing up in the cot thing... We have yet to witness it, but as DD has no problems sitting down I'm not sure we'd know about it if she'd started standing up in there. She bends her knees a bit and plonks her arse down. Always amuses me.

In other news, we have achieved commando crawling from one end of the living room to the other. The wondrous tempting shiny that got her moving? The laptop cable.

plonky totally understand where you are coming from. Our parenting choices are the right ones for us and we all make sacrifices no matter what approaches we adopt and it's not about matching up to anything. As for work, I was working from when DD was 6 weeks old (albeit she was usually in the sling while I did in the early days) because I definitely needed it to stay sane! No judgement at all. Thanks for your kind words re losing a child. I will cry everyday because I miss my DD1 so much but it's amazing that you can find a way to live and move forwards as I am sure you will from the tough time you are having now.

Rainbow, Plonky you are both wonderful mums.

That is all.

x

I think we're all pretty t'riffic actually. To all of us.

Ooh, baby prison arrived today. Duly erected. Great so far...

I agree with pud and worse. We are amazing mums,partners/wives/girlfriends, friends, women, sisters, aunts etc. Just amazing overall.

pud have you got the approval of the baby prison? I suppose love it or hate it has to be used. Ds hates it.

I have had a crafty day today. Finished off my soaps and chocolate. Then I made gingerbread men whom have yet to be decorated. All this in between feeding, changing, bathing, entertaining ds and not to forget prising him away from my kitchen cupboards. Im shattered.

Sounds busy yummy! I nailed Christmas
shopping in an hour thank goodness as the
shops were getting Busy...

rainbow I had no idea about your loss
I have no idea how you would come to
terms with something like that. You must
be very strong. How old was your lovely
dd1? Just the thought of anything like that
happening to DS is horrendous.

plonky to your PND. How are you
doing these days? Good that you are
getting it treated. I agree we all have to do
what works for us. My HV managed to
make me feel guilty when DS was very
little even though I was feeding him
so please don't carry more guilt
around. 10 days of feeding is great and not
to be dismissed. I also couldn't co sleep as
I was terrified I was squash him and got no
sleep at all. We all do what we think is right.

for all of us wonderful ladies

I was trying to stop myself posting this but I can't and I think I may have to take a leave of absence after.

Rainbow, I am truly sorry for your loss, and I think you must be so strong to be able to be so positive after such a terrible trauma and the loss of your lovely little girl. I cannot imagine what you have been through and I hope to God I never experience it. I do however think you can sometimes make those of us that do vocalise our worries feel even more guilty and saying that my wonderful friend is lucky is a step too far. Obviously it is good that her lovely boy has been born alive but she is far from lucky. Every day they find another problem, he is only out of his incubator when he has to endure yet another invasive test or procedure, she hasn't been able to hold him and there is a good chance that the first time she does will be because they have removed him from the incubator because the prognosis is so poor that nothing else can be done. None of this is lucky. It is a tragedy. It may not be as horrifying as never being able to hold your baby alive but it is not lucky.

I'm sorry to drag down this thread that has been so supportive to me and I am sorry if any of you feel this is unwarranted but for me this had to be said.

DS seems quite happy with it at the moment. May not last but not much choice - this house is hard to baby proof!

Solstice blessings to everyone. Today is the shortest day of the year and from now on we gain 2 extra minutes of sunshine each day….that’s nearly quarter of an hour a week for the foreseeable! We celebrate this day because we’re earthy hippies and we so appreciate the natural world around us and what it brings us, including sunshine to wash over our faces which for me is like some kind of sanity improver. Today we have been down to an ancient forest for a good old stomp around in the rain with friends and their dog and our children and then to a pub to eat wonderful food and exchange presents (including some of my baked goods which look like nipples but more of that later perhaps).

The more pagan types would say that Yule is about peace, love and harmony. I don’t think that anyone on this life-supporting brilliant thread (that is going to be my constant when I uproot and move to bloody Bedfordshire) is in any way bad in how they raise their child or in what they say on here. We may however suffer the perennial problem of the written word not quite reading right and matching what we meant to say, what with the lack of facial expressions and tone etc, but I don’t think that we are meaning to offend each other. We may just need to have a think about how what we say might be understood by everyone on here. We all know each other pretty well now so we know where the sensitivities might lie. We know that Plonky is dealing brilliantly with PND, we know that Rainbow is dealing brilliantly with the death of her DD1, we know that Betty deals brilliantly with her lack of sleep, we know that Worse deals brilliantly with DD’s lack of food enthusiasm, we know that Stormy deals brilliantly with endless demands to walk around the house. As Worse and Yummy and Shattered said, we are all doing a pretty awesome job. And it’s a bloody hard job we’re doing. Let’s use this returning light as a good excuse to try and be sensitive to each other both in our reading and writing (but let’s try and keep saying what’s on our minds because that is refreshing and useful). So, from now on, no comments about how awful Dunstable is please

Actually Rainbow I'm very sorry I wrote that. It did upset me but I am certain you didn't mean to be callous or hurtful, it was just a poorly thought through comment and we are all very guilty of that at times. I'm sorry, I should have kept that to myself.

Lets all just remember how bloody well we've done to get these babies and us through to their first magical Christmas! I bloody love Christmas, I've just mulled some wine and put some extra fairy lights up and after dinner I've got a pot of Hestons Christmas pudding ice cream to accompany some present wrapping! This should be much better than painting the bathroom which is what I've spent the rest of the day doing.

I'm on my phone so can't scroll and name check but I hope everyone's ok.

Cross post Eco but you're so right and have just affirmed why I'm right to take my comments back.

Happy Solstice.

Betty you are lovely and that sounds lovely. Can I come and dive into your ice cream and help? I still have family presents to wrap and DH has threatened to take ecobaby off to do a big shop tomorrow whilst I get some tunes on and settle down with my cup of rooibosh in my Christmas mug to get it done. Bliss!
I meant to ask earlier:
Pud do your nappies look shite literally now? I am fed up with drying them indoors. We have bamboo so it takes too long in drier (defeats the object) and there're not enough warmth for drying on the line so we use the airer and they are clean but stained. I may be losing my will with them. Can you tell me how you are getting on now winter is here please? Thank you!
Rainbow by moon cup arrived. Yikes! It's mahoosive. I have just had a very heavy post copper coil period and it would have been very useful but I just got ikked out by the thought of trying to get it in. Does it not kind of 'clag' as you try and put it in. Sorry for TMI everyone else. Surely you don't need to lube it? Any tips for a rookie? Thank you too.

Lovely post Eco, pretty much sums up how I feel. I think we have made ourselves a pretty unique corner on the internet, that is refreshingly free from nutters, stirrers, the professionally offended and trolls. I like it here, so please everyone stay or I will miss you

Lovely (?) weather here today, torrential rain, gale force winds, hail and huge big puddles. So I went for a run. I love running in the rain, it's probably my second most favourite thing after outdoor swimming. If one is going to get voluntarily hot and sweaty having a cold shower on hand can only be seen as a bonus.

Not much else to report, so I'll wish you all quiet sleepy nights, and cross my fingers for one myself.