Elderberries no 2 - all old and new berry babies welcome!

[HazleNutt]

New thread!

by feeds I mean bf, just to be clear. Am a little tired. Family leaving today, it has been loads of fun, but having the house just for us will be lovely as well.
V has not been sleeping well - wakes up in the middle of the night, feeds, but then refuses to go back to his bed and actually cries when I try to put him back there. So have had him in with us for most nights. I hope it's just the excitement of guests and that we were sleeping in his room, and not a 9-month regression.

Lol I have no idea how to drop the daytime feeds as I haven't attempted it yet but when you figure it out let me know what to do!

E's sleeping pattern has gone very strange recently. Up until last week she was reliably staying awake for 3-3.5 hours between sleeps, but over the weekend her awake time has suddenly jumped up to 5+ hours. This is not really a problem except it is too long for 2 naps and not long enough for 1 nap, so as a result she still had 2 naps and then wasn't ready for bed until 10pm on Sat and Sun nights, and then last night was really extreme and despite waking from her second nap at 4.30pm, she would not go to sleep for the night until 11.45pm. We were trying every tactic in the book to get her in bed from 8pm onwards but she was absolutely wide awake - no yawning, no eye rubbing, no grumpiness, nothing, so she was awake for over 7 hours!
So, as a result of her very late night, she woke today at 7am and I tried to keep her up for the day to get back on a more normal schedule, but she was clearly still knackered after only 7 hours sleep so went back to bed at 9.30am and is now zzzzz and I have no idea what time she will wake up.
I really hope this is a strange manifestation of the 9 month regression and she will go back to having shorter awake times again.

On a much cuter note, since learning to clap a few days ago she has become a clapaholic and claps any any opportunity. I have just been watching her on the monitor and she is even clapping in her sleep.

aww that's cute cav - well, the clapping, not non-sleeping. V is the same with waving goodbye, takes every opportunity.

Hazle our boys really are twins, M loves waving so much he does it all the sodding time. Sometimes he's so excited he uses both arms, which then means he is no longer waving, but he doesn't seem to get that.

His absolute favourite though us playing peek a boo - holds blanket in front of his face, we all shout "where has M gone" then he pulls it down and absolutely beams whilst we coo "there he is!". Cute. The other day I was not watching playing candy crush saga and I realised he had crawled to the radiator, pulled a towel off, and was playing peek a boo on his own facing the wall. It was very cute but I felt awful about him playing alone. Bless him he was so excited when I started to join in.

Cav M still can't clap his hands. He bloody loves it when we do so I don't think it will be too long - that's if he stops playing peek a boo for long enough...

Janey E couldn't clap until Saturday and then it just clicked and now she can't stop. She also now loves pointing at things at the moment. She's been driving us mad waving and peek-a-booing for a while. Thank goodness her waving has got much better as it resembled a right wing salute for quite a while, which could be a bit embarrassing when she did it to strangers in the supermarket. It's funny watching the evolution of it - she started peek-a-boo with us throwing a muslin over her face and pulling it off, then she would pull the cloth off herself, then she would pull the cloth over her own face and down again, then she used both hands to cover her eyes and the latest incarnation of peek-a-boo is her covering her eyes with one hand she has got lazy already. She seems to master fine motor skills much faster and better than gross motor skills probably because she's so fat. she can't seem to master putting one knee in front of the other when crawling and therefore can only move sideways and backwards. DH says's she's like a crab.

I am loving all these tales of waving clapping peeking babies!

W's achievement today has been a surprise 4 hr nap this pm (!) and this evening, going to sleep by herself - I left her in her cot chatting and singing to herself in the dark, resisted going in to her for a change and she conked out!!

Oh well done W

Wow. I is really hard to put down. She will feed to exhaustion, look like she is asleep and then wake right up when I try to put her down. She's very demanding at the moment.

Ooh well done W! I really should try that more with S although we've settled into a routine of fed to sleep at 7pm. Did she cry at all or just drift off?

Love the peekaboo and clapping stories. S's fave thing is still belly laughing. Everything is funny - daddy tickling her, mummy pulling faces or singing, mummy's horrified face when there's a massive nappy explosion...

L has learned to clap too, very cute except she always seems to do it just as you're trying to give her a spoon of food, messy! She loves waving at everything including the dogs but with peekaboo the blanket has to go over your face not hers, it's funnier that way apparently.

I don't know how I dropped day feeds, it just sort of happened so she has water and solids all day then bf at bed time and through the night but no milk at all in the day. I think as you up the solids they just sort of lose interest and if they don't ask for a feed I wouldn't bother offering. It worked for us anyway.

Now I just need to stop her opening kitchen cupboards and pulling her shoes off constantly for my next trick.

over here peekaboo works that way as well, you have to cover your own face not his.

Alex I am a bit jels of your laughing baby. DP heard W laugh for the first time properly today. I reckon it's your nice payback from the universe after having to endure all that reflux crying.

I really like that quod - it was worth all the anxiety just to hear her laugh now.

Although surely I also deserve sleeping through the night? Are you listening universe?

By the way, has anyone got any tips for early risers? S has been waking up at 6-ish but this morning started the day at 5.15am! She goes to bed at 7pm but I quite like that and think it's a good habit. I'm trying to feed her only once overnight but then even if I feed her when she wakes, she's wide awake for the day from that point! I'm not complaining as sleep generally much better than that really rough couple of weeks we had.

alex, H went through a phase of being up at 6, I didnt really mind as I got so much done. I draw the line at 6 though, if H wakes earlier I treat it as a night wake, i.e minimal eye contact, feed/resettle, back into bed. If he gets up too early he gets really grouchy as hes too tired. I wouldnt worry too much about trying to change it as they change things themselves so often. H now goes down at 8.30, used to be 9 but he brought it forward, and is up around 7/7.30 most days, although I left him in his cot this morning and I think hes drifted off again as its very peaceful.

Finally had a better night, he slept 8.30 - 2am, when he stupidly did a poo took till 4am to get the little rat back to sleep, then woke at 5.30 but just needed a hand on his chest to send him to sleep again, then the stupid dog woke him at 7.30......even though it was still a bit broken it is so much better than waking every 1.5 hours that we had the night before. I did the first 1.5 hours of the cav special and then passed over to my OH as I was getting grouchy and I think he picks up on it.

My tip for 6am wakings is that that is daddy time :)

DH asked me if I wanted to go to the spare room for an extra couple of hours and I said no! I just lie there listening out in case she cries and then run in to help because I feel bad for leaving him to deal with it when he's had pretty much the same sleep I have. Something wrong with me I know!!

And now S is smugly napping in her jungle swing while I'm wide awake!

Alex if S is an average 6ish month old baby she will only need 11ish hours of nighttime sleep despite what GF and/or other sleep trainers will have you believe, so it's a trade-off over whether you value your evenings more or would you rather get up later? Have a look at Baby Sleep Requirements and this evidence-based study that shows average babies at 6 months need 11 hours nighttime sleep and 3.4 hours in the day, although it is only a small study there aren't that many evidence-based surveys available to compare, but IMO anything evidence-based is better than unsubstantiated figures which baby sleep 'experts' have plucked out of their arse. And it is seemingly accurate as you say S is generally getting up for the day 11 hours after she goes to bed. ISIS agrees that 6 month old babies need 13-14 hours total sleep per 24 hours but anywhere from 9-18 total hours is within normal range.

I recorded E's sleeping for a few weeks and worked out she needs a below average amount of sleep damn it. She is an average daytime sleeper but the most sleep she's ever needed at night is around 10.5 hours even now at nearly 10 months, so we try to keep her bedtime around 8-8.30pm so we can still have a little bit of an evening but don't have to get up ridiculously early.

Mines never been in to sleep much either, particularly in the day, stupid broken baby. I mean it's all right all this clapping and waving and kissing but why can't they learn something bloody useful like sleeping?

Mine has also started randomly biting me, which with the amount of teeth she's got bloody hurts. The little charmer comes up to you, wraps her arms around you, leans her head against you all cute cuddles then tries to take a chunk out of your arms or leg.

She's also after months of eating virtually everything as finger food decided that she doesn't want to feed herself any more. Food gets squished between her fingers then flung off the side of the highchair for the dog. She rejects all of my home cooking and foods she has always loved before in favour of bloody pouches of indistinguishable puréed spoon fed goop

I've not had a decent nights sleep for nearly 18 months. I'm GRUMPY goddamn it and I haven't even got a stupid useless man around to help.

Finger foods are not a success here, and V doesn't even like lumpy purees. He should be able to manage soft foods by now, almost 10 months old, right? But then again, all children will start eating normal foods eventually, so I'm just trying not to worry about that.

Easier said than done though. This is one thing I really don't like about motherhood - the worrying and anxiety. I used to be the most relaxed person ever, but now seem to be constantly worried about everything and unable to relax. It's exhausting.

I'm with you on that one hazle. I find all the worrying so tiring!!! I'm constantly thinking a she's cold / hot / hungry / too quiet / too whingy / has something on her skin / not eating enough... The list goes on and on. I hate it

So with you on the worrying! I find it really hard to draw the line at where good maternal vigilance slips over into unnecessary anxiety (I suffered from anxiety after my MC and had some CBT to help, so am quite aware of the distinction between productive and unproductive worrying). Has anyone found a solution or is it just the mother's lot??

I never worry unproductively. Nope. Wouldn't catch me licking a stale piece of crayfish that's fallen out of a nappy.

I dont think I'm very good at this mothering lark, you all seem a lot more maternal than me