September 2014 - Into the new year!

[RedToothBrush]

Shiny New Thread for a Shiny New Year.

Nazly, has your doctor not given you any advice on weaning??

So, I tried to feed on the usual 3 hour spot….80mls and the screaming heebie jeebies later (that was just from mother) B is asleep on his beanbag and I'm a shell of my former self. HOWEVER. I have decided that most of the time he throws up when I've done the "come on, you know you want more" thing (he clearly doesn't), and also perhaps he doesn't want feeding 3 hourly anymore. So I am going to wait for him to go nuclear, then check nappy, check he doesn't want his dummy and THEN feed. And we shall see if that works. I've never been good with change. Babies change ALL THE TIME!!!!!!!

Not just babies holls. Toddlers change all the time. Children change all the time. And I've got my 10 year old daughter with the beginning of puberty, so all manner of change there too.

Over feeding might be a good call there. You have excellent intuition.

AAAARGH!!!! CHANGE

Soooo. I waited till he seemed hungry and he had 160ml. then went in bouncy chair and had another 60! so am now on a feed when he is hungry thing. Taking him to gp just to get him checked but I feel happier now he has taken a bigger amount happily. if that makes sense?

Feeding on demand is the easiest way. Makes sense to me. Good luck and finger crossed it works for you both.

Nazly - Are you going to leave weaning early and wait until 6 months? Hope he starts feeling better soon.

Holls, feeding on demand is actually easier. You'll have a fair idea of when he'll want food soon enough - DS tends to have certain times of day rather than 3 hour or 2 hourly which are pretty regular. So its plannable to an extent anyway.

HOWEVER you'll still get times when he's fussy and you think he'll want a big feed and only has a small one. He tends to have one big feed a day, but its completely random what time of day that will be.

Plus as fate says he changes. His pattern has changed several times since he was born which has thrown me a little each time. Especially when DS hasn't appeared too hungry. Even if he doesn't appear to be too hungry I will tend to feed him if its getting to 3 and a half hours since he last had anything through the day.

He seems to have added a feed during the night again recently which it a pain in the bum, but fortunately for me since he will now take that breastfeed its less painful than it could have been. And he has slipped into a routine of wanting a bottle during the day, and breast first thing in the morning and last thing at night (he simply won't take the other at the 'wrong' time unless he's utterly ravenous. No idea why the preference). Its lucky as it is pretty ideal for DH and I really.

You'd think it was all the same, but nope. He's definitely fussy.

Oh and he tends to have 'hungry days' or 'pooey days'. Never the same day. Today is most definitely the latter complete with explosion. He's also mega clingy and sleepy today. Which is a pain in the bum as I needed to get stuff done today and he hasn't let me put him down.

Molly has certain times of the day she wants to eat too, which tends to be every 3-4 hours, but if she has got up earlier or later than usual she always seems to go less time or more time than usual between feeds so she ends up by the end of the day back to her 'normal' feed times.

How are people doing with bedtimes? When she was a newborn and there was really no distinction between day and night we just used to take her to bed with us when we went to bed around 10pm, which I know others of you did too. Now, she sleeps through and doesn't have night feeds (touch wood) so I need to try and establish a more suitable bedtime.

At the moment she is just napping and not going to bed properly until around 10 with us most nights, usually not settling properly until 11ish. The nights I have tried to take her a bit earlier (between 9 and half 9 is probably the earliest) it still seems that she takes until around 11 to settle. She used to therefore sleep pretty late (sometimes as late as around 10am!). She has now started to always wake around 8am, so would think an earlier bedtime would be more natural for her, but apparently not!

It's because DP doesn't get home til 7pm and then we have dinner and I only then get a chance to shower. Add that to trying to have a little bit of evening together and watch Eastenders and it's 10pm before you know it! I have always waited until he gets home too to bathe Molly as it was impossible for me to do by myself initially post C-section and he still worries about me doing it now. She's in the munchkin inflatable duck bath now in the big bath so I don't have to carry the baby bath and can manage so will start doing it earlier by myself.

Of course I don't mind sacrificing the soaps to take her to bed earlier, and I know that eventually I will be able to put her to bed and then have a bit of evening but with it taking quite some time to settle her for bedtime it's certainly time for me to go to bed once she is down! Because she sleeps through she does seem to know this and like a particularly big last feed, but sometimes even feels the nap in the middle of this, but if I try and put her down before she has had enough, I know about it!

I was thinking I would try and gradually make bedtime earlier by 20-30 mins every week until she was down to a reasonable bedtime ready for when she moves to her own room in a couple of months (though saying that it hasn't worked so far!). I think going straight for an 8pm bedtime just wouldn't work. I would really appreciate all your thoughts! Sorry it's such a massive post!

Sorry to hear about your difficulties Nazly and Holls. Hope things get easier soon for you both. xxx

Thank you for your nice messages yesterday. Me and DH had a slightly heated discussion last night in the end about him not doing any child-care, and I told him I am getting desperate for a break from Jessica for a few hours and resentful of the fact that whilst he still has loads of time to himself I don't feel I have a life anymore outside of Jessica (a bit clichéd but hey hum). I also admitted I felt that he is using his surgery like a bit of an excuse now since he is able to do some stuff and even have sex his stated inability to change a nappy or give her the odd bottle is wearing a bit thin. I think on his part he feels I'm not appreciating how much pain he is still in even though he understands my frustration. I think we both kind of accepted that we're both frustrated by the current situation and that hopefully in a few weeks time things will be better. However I think the message sunk in. He actually got up with Jessica this morning so I could have an extra hour in bed (appreciated because I was up quite a bit in the night with her) so that was good. I kind of feel all I do on here is moan about him sometimes and it's a shame because he does have a lot of good qualities. Am going to try and focus on getting through the next couple of weeks and hopefully then things will start getting easier. xxx

Lilone we had the same thing with Jessica. She wouldn't settle until gone 10pm most nights. We started putting her to bed a few minutes earlier each night (literally 5-10 mins earlier than normal) and slowly sneak it earlier and we are now at a point where we take her up at 8pm for last feed etc and she's usually asleep by 8.30pm now. It took a few weeks though but has been well worth doing. xxx

lil - what does Molly do in the evenings - is she awake or napping?

Felicity has a proper bedtime of 7.30pm and has done for several weeks now. This bedtime developed itself though, I didn't do force it.

DD would feed somewhere around 7.30 ish and after that would nap downstairs with us. When she was younger she'd maybe sleep for a bit, wake for a bit, sleep for a bit, and so on until I went to bed.

By about 12 weeks old she was having the 7.30pm feed and then sleeping solidly until we lifted her to feed her again and take up to bed. So since she was sleeping from 7.30, we started putting her upstairs for bed then.

She has bath, massage on my bed, sleepsuit and sleeping bag on, feed, in cot with dummy in some time between 7pm - 8pm (depending on when her feeds fall). We then wake to dreamfeed when I go to bed and she sleeps from 10.30pm (ish) through to 7.30am (ish) with no feed.

KitKat - celebrate the small wins, an hours lie in this morning is great. I this I would suspect he is using his back op as a bit of an excuse now if I was in your place. He may need an ego massage with regards to childcare though - he may not feel confident in what he is doing and so needs to go through a process of learning to develop his confidence in parenting.

Red - Are you still expressing several times a day?

Bedtime.

DS was napping through the evenings. But we are lucky if he has one nap between 6 and 10 at the moment. We have something of a similar situation with DH generally not getting home until quite late. I find that DS wants to spend time with his Dad. DH has come home early today and DS was in the middle of a nap. As soon as he heard his Dad, that's been it. He woke up and has been after attention.

He also isn't going to bed until 10 - 11pm. I've tried making it a big earlier as I've wanted an early night, but he's not had any of it, mainly because he has wanted another feed.

In the mornings, he wakes when DH gets up at 7.30, or when I get him up at weekends at a similar time. I find if I don't, he ends up staying up even later as his feeding times go to pot. He has breakfast then goes back to sleep until about 9.30 - 10am.

TBH I've not given it much thought at this stage about his bedtime. At the moment, he seems happy and it suits us. I'm mindful that our pattern of putting the baby to bed at 7pm, isn't something that tends to be done in other parts of Europe (you'll see babies and toddlers out until 10pm or late regularly in Spain for example).

I figure that he'll change when he's ready, like with the feeding. I think from what I've read, his naps during the day will reduce naturally too.

I think babies have much shorter sleep cycles to adults. Something like 40mins opposed to 3 - 4hours. Even during the night babies don't 'sleep through' as we term it. They repeatedly sleep, then wake and resettle.

I dunno, I think to an extent at this point sleep and babies is almost like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole and our way of thinking about it, is completely out of step.

But then I'm a FTM so I'm possibly spouting bollocks and I am prepared to be told different from someone who knows better!

Yes 3 to 4 times a day still fate.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the European view of siesta and late night. Especially if this is your only child. More difficult with other children to factor in.

Babies and toddlers just need plenty of sleep over 24 hours, so it doesn't so much matter if they have a late night and more daytime naps when small.

Once you have a three year old going to nursery or certainly a five year old going to school, then the child needs to have enough sleep at nightime, which means an early night. Unless you decide to home educate, in which case you can work the day as you please.

Read some of the sleep threads and it is not difficult to tell how easy sleep patterns and sleep associations are to develop and how very difficult they are to break.

A wilful 'spirited' 2 or 3 year old will definitely be more difficult to mould into the child who goes to bed early and sleeps well, compared to your 4 month old baby. Especially if that child has spent all their life being up with Mummy and Daddy getting special attention in the late evenings. In you are happy to deal with this change later though, then enjoy it while you can

Red - How much do you get off each time now? Must be loads now he's older.

I was getting off about 1300ml before he started breastfeeding. Now its more like 850mls plus breastfeeding. I get off more than I need. Yesterday 520mls went down the plug which felt so wrong. But the freezer is full.

Ideally I need to think about reducing how much I express, but I've decided to just leave it now until he starts weaning as I don't want to mess up and end up not having enough at this point. Plus yesterday it was just so uncomfortable I ended up expressing to relieve it rather than because I needed to.

I think that stopping is probably going to be as big an issue as starting was really.

I think there's about 10 days supply in the freezer so, we've hit 5 months EBF in theory. Back in October 4 and a half weeks sounded like such a long time but now it feels like nothing. I guess I'm just so used to the routine of it now.

Re: Sleeping. That all makes good sense and is definitely worth pondering. My real worry with that, is as much about convincing DH and what he wants as much as what DS might need. We are only having the one child too. I think he will find it difficult getting in late if DS goes to bed around 7pm. However he's just accepted another job so it remains to be seen what his hours will be like in a couple of months time. Things might change from what they currently are. At this stage though, seeing as I can't get DS to bed before 9pm despite trying, I think I'm just going to play it by ear and see how it goes for a couple more months.

We started a bedtime routine on New Year's Day & it's worked really well. DS was sleeping downstairs after his tea time feed then be awake for an hour or so before his last feed & then we'd put him in his crib for the night. Initially we changed it so he went up to his crib after the tea time feed so he was getting better quality sleep & we were getting a bit of an evening & he took to it really well.

Bedtime for us is now change, baby gro, bottle, story & in his cot for 7. We do bath every other night so he doesn't always associate bed time with a bath so if we are out somewhere we can still do the routine & he still falls asleep at 7. He's so used to it now he starts rubbing his eyes etc by 6.45 & is very grumpy if you're late starting & it's only just 3 weeks since we started it.

Having a bedtime really helped with the transition to the cot. Dp & I get to eat dinner together once he's gone down & we have our evenings back. Dp is often back from work late so doesn't get to see him but he gets DS up & spends time with him in the morning.

Glad to hear that the slowly slowly method worked for you kitkat, hopefully will work for us too in the end! Hope things do improve for you and you get a little break from Jessica, it is needed sometimes!

I agree fate that it would be far more difficult to change her sleep habits if she was older which is why I want to get sorted now. It did use to suit us more than it does now as she doesn't really nap during that time and just gets over tired and angry now! I also end up staying up late to read etc just because it's the only time I get to myself! I do love the bedtime cuddles though...

Topsy - that's good to hear. How long does your DS sleep from his 7pm bedtime?

We are at a 7pm bed time to. However what happens after that is so inconsistent I never know what kind of night we'll have. On a good night he goes to 1am. On a bad one, 9.30/10 ish. And again on a good night will wake for a feed at 4 hour intervals. On a bad night, 2 hour intervals. It's so unpredictable. I really thought he'd start to settle into a pattern by now. He was in a pattern until we moved him into the nursery about four weeks ago. And he's had a cold since then so it's all been messed up.

We do 6.30pm bath, then feed, stories and bed. Hopefully get B down by 7.30ish….however tonight different as he produced POO NUMBER 3 OF THE DAY at 5.30 so I did his bath then!! He is currently having cuddles with DH which is nice for both. Touch wood he goes through to about 7am but does stir in the night and need his dummy reattaching!!

Can we talk poo for a mo - yellow, grainy?

That sounds normal to me Holls. Disgusting thought - I have sometimes wondered what the grainy bits are. I mean, since Jessica doesn't have any solids yet, how can there be solid bits in her poo?!?!

We get grainy ones too sometimes Holls.

DS normally sleeps through until 6ish but will grizzle once or twice in the night & I just have to pop the dummy back in but he's starting to settle himself at the moment so hopefully not too long & I'll be able to sleep through until 6ish too!