October 2014 // thread 4 // a lot of night feed chatting!

[sazzlehopes]

Welcome everyone. You're doing a good job by the way. Remember that.

Wow! There are loads of us! And moose the trainee programme - I remember it well!

Meanwhile, DS is fast asleep in starfish position while mummy watches TV in bed. (Daddy is on the work Xmas night out ). If only it was always like this...

Woo I'm a climate scientist!

I work in Biochemistry, just back from work's christmas party and sat pumping my boobs before bed, sexy!! Off to bed now, hope we get a decent night after DH had 4 hours of screaming, cue me "Have you fed her recently?!"
Night everyone.

I did biochem at uni but don't use it for my work.

Well as everyone else seems to be reducing the number of feeds at night, DS has decided he wants to go the other way and wants to eat every 2 hours instead of 3-4. Annoyingly he's only having a couple of oz, not a full bottle because he falls asleep part way through. I've been trying to cuddle him/ give him a dummy in case it's not hunger causing the waking but he's having none of it. This too shall pass.....

Hope everyone else is having a better night than us!

Environmental scientist here too, but working as a teacher for the last 6 years.

My child did NOT want to go to sleep last night. We were out all day a4 a family Xmas thing, so she was massively over stimulated hy hoards of other children/grandparents etc. Why my in laws insist on clicking madly at her, ormaking mouse hnoises as if she's a cat I don't really know (everywhere we went we were followed by a cacophony of wild clicking). Anyway, put her in a sling to walk home, she calmed right down and had a nap. I brought her to bed at 9,30 for sleep at 10... she was still giggling etc at effing midnight. Boyfriend had to jiggle her for ages to get her to drop off, and even then we ended up putting the sleepy head in between us in bed. Slightly awkward 5 hours sleep, but 5 hours none the less.

Thinking about Christmas and overstimulation etc is anyone going to put off starting a routine until afterwards? We are 8 wks btw

I'm not thinking about strict routines til after Christmas. He has a vague one of his own on the evenings anyway so we're happy to go with that for now.

Blimey, is anyone not a scientist? I feel like such a wastrel with my resolutely artsy education.

goats we had a similar night here for the same reason- partner's family Christmas thing, baby being passed around like a parcel, couldn't get her to nap properly, journey home on the tube, massive sleep refusal. To be fair, partner's mum is great and either I or she spent a lot of time upstairs tying to settle the baby to nap but I think it was just all a bit much. The great grandmother continued a horror though. Said something unrepeatably offensive about slings, kept telling me to just put the baby down and stop fiddling with her, repeatedly asserted that babies only need feeding every four hours, and whenever anyone new came to be introduced said "i was expecting her to be such a delicate thing, but she's quite fat really." Yes she is! It's good! She was very skinny at birth! Because her placenta was failing! It wasn't a good thing! Babies are not meant to have cheekbones! Sigh, double sigh.

Wow what a lot of scientists :D thats ace tatty ive always wished i had the skill to do something artsy :)

Babymoose has been asleep since 11.45 (granted we had full on boob rage from 8 30) so have sent dh in with his ranitidine to wake him up - what do the bf mums do if/when their babies sleep this long? Ive woken up with one very tight boob and the other has soaked through the quilt!! Should i be getting up halfway through to pump?

I was the same moose they do calm down after a few days. I've got a sickness bug this weekend and dh has been bottle feeding a couple of times to give me a rest. The result is very full boons so I've pumped about 400ml within a 12 hour period!

Wow lots of scientists ! I have a degree in forensic psychology but work in optics!
Baby Adams has a cold, a nice present from daddy! Been very sniffly but seems better today.
Everyone's routine seems different, hubby takes bubba from 11-3 ish and feeds expressed bm, I normally sleep and then get up and express around 2-3 then I'll take bubba back at the moment he has just been having one feed between that and about 7am so fingers crossed evening feeds are slowing down! Prob jinxed it now!

tatty I'm glad I'm not the only one with great grandparents that say offensive things mine made some not so nice comments on my post pregnancy weight and insists that if baby is crying it must be wind! Err actually I know my baby and 9 times out of 10 he's hungry to which I get the usual "he's hungry again??"
Whoops sorry rant over

Both grandmothers say things about 'she likes x...' to new people, while doing things that are visibly pissing her off. Touching her head for example 'this always works...' while Pip cries louder or shrinks away from their hands pulling a face.l

Sorry but I'm so glad its not just my ILs who do shit like this! They follow my babies round going "wooooo- ooooh" and clapping then assure me they must be deaf because they don't smile back. They've both been too thin (with passive aggressive reassurance of "never mind they might catch up once you give them a bottle", err I won't be thanks, and for 5 weeks early I'm chuffed she's 25th centile!), neither look anything like their Dad (said with slight but palpable suspicion) and yes that GP bingo classic " are you sure she wants fed again, maybe she just wants to be put down!"

My child was 15 days late and is still 25th centile. I'm probably doing everything wrong.

Has anyone else got insanely hungry since the weather turned colder? I wondered hoped if there is a biological reason excuse for my being such and enormous glutton.

Mine was 41 weeks and slipping off 9th :(

Splendide, Goats Lil is 25th centile adjusted (2nd otherwise) Jonas was between 2-9th. He eats like a gannet at 2 and is 9-25th. Some folk are just naturally slim. If there's not a feeding issue, they're likely to just be finding their line. The dietician reassured me that whilst big babies are encouraged in those regions where starvation is a real risk, its nonsensical to fatten babies up like turkeys in the UK. The human body has a finite number of fat cells, these are laid down in the first year of life, the more fat cells babies create the greater the risk of obesity in later life. NICE guidance for prems for example is to no longer feed them up and top up as standard because of the observed link between prematurity and obesity in later life.

I'm not remotely worried about it. My hv said she wouldn't weigh her for 6 weeks because all constant weighing does is worry people unnecessarily. Someone has to be on the lower centiles, and since my family is all pretty petite, I'm not surprised it's us! She looks healthy and is pretty content, so that'll do me.

And yes to no routine until after Christmas. We're moving t a small flat above my parent's garage while a load of messy work is done to our house, so no upstairs and downstairs, so I won't feel odd about putting her in her own crib for daytime naps - next room rather than upstairs through 3 doors. Hoping that by the time we get back home in mid Feb, she'll be sorted a bit more and I'll be happier to use a monitor during daytimes.

Boyfriend has just taken her downstairs and I can already hear clicking and mouse noises. Haha... sounds like a day down the asylum or something. What an un pc thought.

I'm not sure there'll be time to implement a routine before Xmas! We're going to be in a house with 8 kids and nine adults for a week so forecasting massive overstimulation. But so long as we stick to his natural bedtime of 8pm ish I hope we'll be ok, and I'm planning to enforce daytime naps through pram and sling.

I wasn't going to worry too much about routine and just see what we fall into naturally and what seems to work. We've got a bit of a bedtime pattern going that seems to help us get to sleep, but no set times.

Morning! We survived my first evening out without baby. Had work's Xmas do and was lovely putting on non-sicky clothes and talking to grown ups (talking lots about E and how I don't want to go back to work!!)
Apparently she wasn't impressed with the bottle, cried almost non-stop but was fast asleep when I got home at 11.45!! Had to pump and dump before bed but then got another 6oz before she woke you. Not sure if there was still alcohol in my milk but she didn't wake up until 10.30

Another un-scientific person here Tatty, I did linguistics and literature! Also don't use it much in my job except to get arsey over spelling and grammar
My MIL (the one who was a nun for a couple of weeks then changed her mind) is also of the "she wants fed again?? school" but luckily isn't too opinionated with other things.
We don't have any routine except taking H up to bed when we go and giving her a bath in the evening. She still isn't a very consistent napper but she at least seems to get 10-11 hours at night (broken up with a feed).

What is it about babies that make other women think they can make such unwelcomed assumptions / suggestions!! Had the same with my mum this week. Rage.

Well after the week from hell - heart murmur diagnosed, another major drop in percentiles a teary encounter with a horrid health visitore resulting in me putting an official complaint in - we may, MAY have had a breakthrough.

Realised that baby betty easily downs double the amount of formula at grandmas in about half the time. Thought she was just being a brill gran/ baby whisperer, but fealised she is giving her ready made formula and we are making up from powder. If this is the reason she has dropped about 50 percentiles, I will cry with relief and rage at simplicity of it!!

*visitor

I studied philosophy, and there's no way you can use that. I'm a writer now, albeit one who hardly ever gets paid.

How do people get babies to nap in the day? She's so grumpy if she doesn't, but I really struggle with getting get to sleep in the daytime unless it's walking in the sling, but I can't do that every day. She catnaps but getting a proper sleep is really hard.