September 14 babies - bring on the weaning!

[KitKat1985]

New thread for the Sept 14 babies. :)

Toys - obsessed with pressing buttons. Loves his baby flashing piano , also took a liking to using his feet so has a foot piano so loves that too.

I'm not weaning till 6 months and going straight to finger food so don't need to express for purée as someone asked about. Seems like a easy way to wean so I'm gonna try that.

He won't take bottles at all so I tried him in a sippy cup the other day as he turn 4 months and to my shock he took to it straight away and guzzled half a cup full by himself . He has had hand to mouth coordination for a wee while so I think that has helped. So that was a nice surprise means I might get a wee break from him for a hour or two as can leave him with a cup of expressed Breast milk. He still wakes 1-2 hour through the night for feeds so even a hour away will be welcomed. So if anyone else has a BF baby who would not take a bottle maybe try a sippy cup

I used the TT free flow cup .

We have a music box that we use to distract DS if he's getting agitated during a change / getting dressed. He goes from screaming to calm as soon as it starts. He loves the music & watching the lion & zebra spin round. He has also taken to playing with the pack of wipes if I leave them within his reach, this morning he was trying to roll over to reach them, not ideal on a changing table!

In terms of toys his favourite is a little soft stripy cat with a rattle in that cost about £3 for two from Ikea. He also has some teething toy keys he loves. He still really enjoys the lights & music on his play gym but his favourite thing is looking in the mirror at himself!

Hi all

I realise chat has moved on from co-sleeping. But I co-slept in the hospital on post-natal ward and no one said a word to me about it (in either a positive or negative way) I may have throttled someone if they did though.

I wasn't aware co-sleeping recommendations varied from area to area?

Nice to see some new people on the thread

I think they were pretty relaxed about co sleeping here. I think cow's milk is ok when mixed with food for weaning, but their main nutrition comes from bm/formula. I am waiting until 6 months unless ds grabs some food off me and stuffs it in his mouth. I find thr preparation and clean up a real faff and will delay as long as possible

I'm in the 'delay it as long as possible' camp too Beccus.

I also have one of the youngest babies on the thread - still a minimum of 8 weeks until my DD starts solids. I may wait longer than that.

Long may my lovely milky baby snuggles last

I think our babies are the same age Fate. I'm also waiting as long also can & am planning on going down the baby led route so no purées planned here

We worked out DD will be 6 months just before Easter (born 26th Sept). Her first food may well be a piece of Easter Egg chocolate!

I'm certainly not in a rush to either!

Someone else mentioned going to one too I think but my children's centre (so I assume others) hold sessions on weaning so that may be worth looking in to as would probably have the most up to date recommended info in terms of do's and don't's. Mine is on 2nd March which is just a bit before Molly turns 6 months on the 15th so planning to go to that - HV highly recommended it.

In other news we have booked centre parcs for a week in March. So excited! Now, there is hardly anything Molly is old enough to do but paying for what there is will already cost a small fortune so the cost for people with older children that can actually do things must be astronomical!

Ohh excited about Centre Parks for you lil. Is it the Sherwood Forest one? (that's very near me).

DH and I are looking this week to book our summer holiday. An actual nightmare to fit in between Guide camp, Cub Camp, grandparents sleepover with cousins and Beavers sleepover. We are effectively tied to only one possible week in the summer holidays that we can go.

We are hoping to find a cottage on Isle of Wight this year.

Baby led seems ideal but only if you are in no rush to get anything into their tummies for sometime to come and are not planning to replace any feeding. And I am pretty sure you ladies who fancy blw are in no rush.
My plan is a mixture of both.

Can I make a suggestion here, can you explain any playtime you may have with your LOs even if it is really simple but your lo seems to enjoy it? I am after simple ideas for playtime. (Also maybe say for what age the play is good)

I start with one: we play shadows with my little reading lamp; I make shapes with my hands and sing along and put ds so he faces wall. He loves it. We started it around 3m. He still likes it.

Thanks for the new thread KitKat

Toys - A's favourite toy is the £2 survival blanket. I lie or sit him on the carpet and cover him with it and he just rolls around and crinkles it with a big smile on his face. He also still likes his play mat, but seems to prefer the rings that are hanging off with no toys, he trys to get them in his mouth haha.

Playtime - either involves me helping him play with the above or one of his 'button pushing' toys. The thing that makes him giggle the most is when I sing to him (face up against mine) and dance him around. Not sure if its the dancing or how bad I sing though haha.

Weening - I hope to put it off as long as possible, but will doing a mixture of BLW and purees, but mostly BLW for now I think. He is 21 weeks now so will be starting fairly soon (eek). Our childrens centre holds a babys first foods class, which I will be going to next week, they follow this up with a 6 week (I think its 6 week) Messy Munchers, which gives some ideas for suitable foods. You can feed the baby in the group with the samples, so I will be signing up for this too as I think its a good way for the baby to try new foods (especially as I am quite fussy and I don't want A to grow up like this!).

Which centre parks Lil? We are hoping to go mid september to the one at Penrith - hoping my parents will also come for a few daysand help out as its very near where they live!

Jessica loves 'flying' at the moment Nazly (I.E, we support her body and hold her horizontally whilst we lift her up). Also she loves it when I pretend to eat her! - I put my face to her tummy and make munching noises (sometimes whilst I tickle her). Finally Jessica likes it when I sing to her - 'real' songs more than nursery rhymes. One of her current favourites is 'Who Let the Dogs Out' as she likes it when I do the dog barking noise. It's only just occurred to me writing this down that I may have gone bonkers. It's worth it to see her laugh though!

Oh and favourite toy hands down is the Lamaze Freddy the Firefly toy - she loves it! x

Re: Co-sleeping and research.
I learned some time ago that most health recommendations are utter bollocks in real life unless you read up on the subject in great depth and learn what the most complex risk factors are and then use those in combination with this thing called real life. Co-sleeping is very much one of those most guilty of this.

Playtime is bouncing. Anything involving bouncing. On his feet. On my knee. On my lap. DS likes other things, but this is the one he demands. I'm exhausted!

He likes his baby prison as it has a bouncy floor and looks of toys he can shake and then throw at the walls and not wait until mummy picks it up for him again.

Oh and on the co-sleeping risks I've read that if you take out cases where the parent was a smoker, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs (especially anything sedating) the risk goes down like 80%.

The problem with the current advice is that if, like Jessica (especially when she was colicky), your baby just will not sleep on her back in her moses basket, (as she just wanted to sleep on me or DH, and I tried quite literally sometimes for hours at a time to get her in her basket), then the only options are:

1. Neither parent or baby sleep.
2. You co-sleep. And there's only so long anyone could tolerate option 1.

So yes I've co-slept with Jessica too, and whilst I would rather that I hadn't had to do that, I physically didn't know what else to do after weeks of not sleeping and I was losing my mind. My health visitor even went as far as to say that babies with colic won't settle on their backs (as it makes the stomach acid / wind issue worse) but still wouldn't deviate from giving official advice about putting her to sleep on her back in her basket. As a nurse myself though I don't blame her, as the risks to her professionally if she had advocated co-sleeping and (god forbid) anything had happened would have been horrendous.

Ah KitKat - A loves the flying thing too. Just be careful. I did it to him quite soon after he had a feed and he ended up being sick all over me! That wasn't fun

He also likes being eaten!

I think having babies does make us bonkers for a while. I was dancing round Asda earlier to keep him entertained. Must have looked great to any one watching lol

Must have looked great to any one watching lol

I have spent years 'rocking' shopping trollies in supermarkets. I usually do it subconsciously without realising, like it is a pushchair.

Okay I give up, Jessica won't nap in her cot. It's impossible. I'll just have to hope that as she gets older she's not so fussed about napping on me.

Assuming Jessica sleeps OK in her cot at night KitKat, it will come for daytime naps too. Maybe she's just not ready yet. I wouldn't lose sleep over forcing the issue (no pun intended!)

There are a couple of baby Jessica on here, it's a lovely name. Will you call her Jess or not shorten it? I really like Jess as a nickname. Love Jesse for a boy, but it has too many Billy Connolly "Ay ya great big Jesse" connotations. Jess for a girl is really nice though.

Toys...bs godmother did him a discovery nix - bubbles, light up balls, ribbons etc, he loves having the ribbons stroked on his face! He enjoys his jumperoo and the Lamaze toys. Today he swallowed something...trip to minor injuries who were really relaxed and said not to worry! Must have been a piece of fluff from his teddy as he hadn't had hold of anything else. I saw the stuff on his tongue but couldn't get to it.

Glad he's OK holls. Our babies are getting to the age where they will pick small stuff up and put it in their mouth if they find it.

At least it was his mouth where it just goes through and comes out the other end. DC2 got a bit of bath sponge stuck up his nose. Funny until we realised it needed a general anaesthetic to get it out because he wouldn't sit still for the doctor. He was a bit older to be fair, 18 months or so.

Kitkat, DS WILL not sleep anywhere but his push chair, the chair or me/DH during the day. And he's becoming harder and harder to do that latter to compound the problem. He's good with his cot at night but during the day he won't have it. I've spend an hour this afternoon just trying to get him to nap at all as although he was turning into an overtired monster.

HV say absolutely no to cosleeping here. However i did Co sleep with Jessica from 5 am ish till 8 am ish this morning. She fed twice but I think I fell asleep while she was feeding. I never did it until last week when I was feeling poorly one afternoon so fed her lying down and just fell asleep with her. So now when im desperate I'm going to do it as I hate what sleep deprivation does to me! It's awful. I'm still nervous of it but a little less so now she's bigger.

Zana- I'm following the Annabel Karmel weaning book. I think it's pretty good buy have nothing else to compare it to. Gave Jessica some apple purèe today but she gagged and cried lol. It's probably a bit sharp tasting. Gave her some porridge at tea time and mixed a little apple in that instead which went down better!

Nazly - I have expressed a bit of milk to mix with carrot purèe but you can use water instead usually.

Fate and Cumbrian - We are going to the Woburn Forest Center Parcs, its the closest one to us.

Fate - Cottage on Isle of Wight sounds fun, I'd like to do that at some point too. Went with school when I was younger and really liked the place and the little lodges, didn't like having to do all the school organised activities! I would enjoy it a lot more now!

Playtime - I do the Jaws theme tune game too. Ella describes it much better than I would have! Molly also likes me holding her hands while she is on her playmat and rocking her side to side.