October 2014 // thread 5 // baby's first Christmas

[JeannePoole]

Welcome back!

(Dear greetings cards manufacturers: 'Baby's First Christmas' does NOT necessarily have to include Baby being liberally sprinkled with glitter from your shoddily-made merchandise.

Except that, as I'm rapidly discovering, it does.

Thanks all. His tongue is too far back in his throat to have the movement needed to BF sadly. He's being tube fed at the mo.

fate I agree it's definitely good that it had been picked up now and I am v grateful ours was diagnosed antenatally. I thought you couldn't breast feed with cleft lip or palate until the nurses told me otherwise. Obviously it's not the same for every case, but I was thankful that the nurses gave me hope. My friend's little boy is lucky enough to be able to breast feed her boy with palate only by feeding him upright straddled across her knees.

yellow sorry to hear about your friend. I can ask around at clinic for more info next time if you like? My mum is a dentist in a maxillofacial ward so she should know about PRS. But be reassured all the lovely little ones I've seen in clinic are thriving and well! Little mischief makers some of them!

She had so many scans I'm really surprised it wasn't picked up antenatally.

Yellow sorry about your friends baby.

Interesting to hear all the tips for getting them down in the evening. I'm going to try next week I think when all the new year stuff is over. N had his jabs today so going to check he's ok first before I go too crazy with a routine... Especially as we've been having the worst nights recently. Hes waking maybe 4 times and Im just too tired to try and get him down without feeding...he can't be hungry? He also is going back to sleeping on me and transfers to the crib aren't successful. All in all it's pretty hard going at the minute. I realllllllly hope itsa12 week thing and we go back to 1/2 wake ups soon. I'm Broken!!

sazzle is awful isnt it, we had a week of brilliant sleeps before his 8 week jabs and i think its ruined me as i just cant cope now.

betty i feed him in bed lying down at night so im not really holding him as such, he just snuggles up. Its really annoying as he likes to have a good chew on the boob once hes fed so i cant always tell how long hes been properly asleep. 15 mins used to work but i might try a bit longer tonight :) dh is already moaning about his lack of sleep so i might not even get my hour off tonight. I wish there was a baby technical guide "10 fool proof ways to lift a sleeping baby" lol
Good news is his weight has picked up a bit since last week so the domperidone must be helping :) just hope the gps dont try and take me off it after a few weeks!

Inconsolable crying here today when awake. Definitely has a cold (although went for a long walk in the cold which seems to have helped clear her nose), but is generally out of sorts. A what point do you calpol things? For all we know this cold might come with a horrible headache or something. She hasn't a temperature though.

Thoughts?

Babymoose has been snotty and grunty for around 10 days and ive been giving him calpol, his temp hasnt been over 37.5 but his head feels warm which it doesnt normally so that was my reasoning for giving

Goats id prob just give one rose perhaps just before bed in case it's difficult for her to go to sleep... But really without a temp I'm always reluctant to use it. Maybe see how you fair tonight and if it's a nightmare crack it open tomorrow?
Wonder yes it was just after the 8 week jabs here, or coincidence or when I introduced dairy again. Who bloody knows. So know he's had his 12 week ones and due the next set in a month so I'm not holding out too much hope for sleep for a while yet... Bring on the caffine!

Sorry to hear about the poorly babies :(

I've just got back from the hospital - A was referred for slow/ non-existent weight gain. Good news is that he's gained some weight! 250 grams in 6 days so really much better!

Got some really odd advice though I think. Doctor said the weight was because the baby had bad habits and fed too often. He said to limit time at the breast to 30 minutes every two hours then stretch this to every three hours as soon as possible. So I should adress lack of weight gain by feeding him less?! Also he seems to not believe the tongue tie made any difference. Oh well! I think I'll just continue as I am.

Haha, you could give her a glass of rose, or a DOSE of calpol... Whatever. Damn you autocorrect
Perhaps you could have the wine instead- silly to waste it on the kid.

Yay lets all have rose instead :D

Goats I do give calpol without a temperature if they are clearly unwell and unhappy. As adults we don't just take analgesics to reduce a fever, we take them much more commonly to reduce pain and as you say baby could have a headache, earache etc without a fever. I'd rather one extra occasional dose of a very mild painkiller than leave them in pain unnecessarily. Lil had one dose the night of her first jags as she screamed every time she was awake, and has had none before or since, so I'm not exactly drug happy but as Mummy its your call if you think she's in pain. She had her second jags today but doesn't seem so troubled by them so I'll leave her without calpol I think. By the time they're cutting teeth I'm sure we'll all be dosing them up regardless of fever or not!

Tried 6.30 bath for babymoose instead of 7.30... fed ok, fell asleep on boob, tried to move after 30mins... instant screaming :( booo to non sleeping babies!

Crumbs one of the CMPI babies from my last post natal thread has been blue lighted to hospital today after an anaphylactic response to the cheese his grandmother sneakily gave him. She'd been all eye rolly that any baby could be allergic to milk - not now I'm guessing! I would probably actually kill MIL for pulling a stunt like that

Is he still hungry when you put him down, do you think? But falls asleep before finishing because he's all comfy and snuggled? What if you tried to out him down the minute he falls asleep, then put him back on the boob once he starts screaming until he feeds some more and repeat til he's full?

Mine is no picnic, by the way; just trying to think of suggestions

Oh my god yellow that is terrible! Hope she feels extremely guilty

splendide

I can only give you anecdotal advise from me breastfeeding my own children (and I am not The Oracle or anything), but noticing the difference between when spaced out feeds are needed and when cluster feeding is needed is an important breastfeeding lesson.

For normal 'every day' feeding I would generally aim not to breastfeed baby if she becomes fractious within an hour of a good feed, stretching to two hours (where I am now at 12 weeks) then 3 hours. I would assume there to be another reason for the crying - if not nappy then it will be sleep. So upon crying my focus is getting baby to sleep, not feeding.

But that said, sometimes you 'just know' that baby does need feeding, even if it is straight after a feed. For example if the feed was short or did not have deep sucks. Or if you cannot settle baby to sleep after a nappy change then you go back to the assumption that she needs feeding.

I have no idea if this is correct breastfeeding advice? But it is what I have always done. I only sit cluster feeding constantly if baby is very unsettled and will not sleep.

yellow thats bloody awful! I kept having irrational fears that my mil would try and give babymoose normal formula :s i think i would have killed her if she'd done that :s poor baby and poor mum! Its hard enough this CMPI without people interfering

Babymoose was absolutely zonked, really floppy, dh picks him up he wakes up! Could he be picking him up wrong? Am tempted to give your idea a go betty cant do much harm can it :)
I need to make a soft squishy warm booby soft toy he can snuggle in bed i think....i cant keep doing this everynight until he eventually stays down at 5am :s

fate this is a really daft question, but how do you settle yours to sleep? Weve only just got awake and content in the day as opposed to awake and screaming but as soon as we head for bed day or night he just goes mental and im desperate for some ideas!

My DD may be older than yours moose (she's coming up to 14 weeks) so may be at a different developmental stage.

I am currently transitioning from bouncing in the bouncy chair to sleep, to laying DD in cot with dummy and letting her drop to sleep herself.

Up until a couple of weeks ago all sleeps began in the bouncy chair. Now I try to lay her down in her cot for each sleep and she drops off (with the aid of a dummy) about 50% of the time. If she screams, she goes into bouncy chair to get to sleep. She's 3 months now, by 6 months I'd be expecting her to settle in cot with dummy for all sleeps and should be getting rid of the bouncy chair.

There's a acronym thingy for what I do - the EASY method. Basically it just means you develop the routine of feeding for when baby first wakes up, not when baby goes to sleep:

Eat
Activity
Sleep
You time (when baby is asleep and before you feed again)

That's helpful Fate (both posts).

I'm currently sitting terrified as A has conked out at 8 and is still asleep. Normally he doesn't sleep till 10/11 so I'm assuming he'll be up at midnight instead of 4! But I can't keep him up all evening can I? He should be sleeping 12 hours at night shouldn't he (with waking for feeds) so I guess I need to just go with it.

God this is hard!

Thanks :) hes 11 weeks, so not far off, i just hate it when you get a few good nights and then they bugger off forever! Am half wondering whether its still the after affects of dietician telling me to trial dairy making him not sleep as deeply, either that or dh has lost all ability to pick him up and move him

There is no getting away from the fact that parenting is bloody hard work splendide. It is for everyone.

Yellow makes a good point goats. Go with her calpol advice we do take pain relief for things other than just fever. Hope pip is ok.

And yellow that is shocking. How dare someone think they know better, especially a family member. That is one heck of a scary way for a Grandmother to learn a lesson in not interfering.

She's very weird today. Just so LOUD - both happy and frustrated noises, and swinging rapidly between the two. Ear piercing stuff. She slept between 5 and 8, which seems to have taken the edge off stroppy, but is definitely unusual. In bed with her now - bowl of water with olbas in the corner. Won't use calpol unless she's clearly in discomfort during the night. Hopefully back to normal tomorrow, today was exhausting.