September 14 babies - bring on the weaning!

[KitKat1985]

New thread for the Sept 14 babies. :)

Red we had the same problem. I took his 6+ ones to a lovely lady who sewed extra press studs into the arms.

sleepless - I had wine at lunch which was fine till B took an interest in my glass...!

sorry for the drip replies! bit worried about b not getting enough liquid - he has dropped the amount of milk he has now he is on porridge, 2 veg lunch, veg and fruit supper, and I offer water but he takes v little. if he was thirsty he would have more wouldn't he?

Omg AF arrived back today after a glorious 15 month absence! I'm a bit surprised as im still bf about 6 or 7 times in 24 hours but she is eating solids top so I guess it was inevitable. Typically AF arrived on swimming lesson day but I didn't realise until I after swimmimg. I think I got away with it though lol.

How do I tell if J is constipated or not? since weaning is beginning to become more established her poops have become solid but not pellet like. Still squishy but most definitely solid. (Sorry tmi!) but she does a couple at least a day and they're quite small and I can see her pushing and going a bit red in the face doing them. I offer her water at every meal numerous times. She has some but not loads. Hmmm!

E really wasn't taking water out of a cup so I gave it to him in a bottle this afternoon and took an oz which to me is fab.

top E is much more strainy now he is on solids but seems fine over all!

b is also more strainy and his poo varies from a bit runny to solider....nice

R goes bright red and grunts every poo! I just thought this was normal?

DS also red & grunts when he poos. He also likes to hold my hand for reassurance when he can! However he has now caught me out on a couple of occasions & we've had some stealth poos with none of the usual signs.

We've had slightly softer poos, think it's one of the many signs of teething we're currently experiencing.

Red not sure why weight is important in sleeping bags, we have a 6-18m grobag and ds has been in it for such a long time, definitely before he was 8kg and it has been excellent, no problem at all.

Team it is all interesting , he used to have expressed milk from bottle but I stopped expressing only 2-3 weeks ago and so have not been using bottles in the last 2-3 weeks. Then we started offering him formula in the bottle, which he didn't take. After a few times when I was leaving him for a meeting I expressed for him, but he didn't take that either. I think he associates bottle with formula now and just firmly purses his lips.

I am going to give it a rest, but he has half days nursery next week which makes things complicated...

Ds loves his water. Can't get enough of it. I Constantly worry if he is filling his little tummy with water instead of milk.

Holls I have read they should still get around 500-600 ml milk every day after starting solids. Does he take that?

Jessica has never strained to poop before now. They usually were poop explosions that were very audible lol. Not much effort required on her part. When she was ebf her poop even smelt ok, DH thought it smelt buttery! Now it's more whiffy. It is nice not needing to use millions of wipes though hehe.

Aaaaagh :( looong night with poorly baby :(

Whats wrong with him naz?

I woke up to a ds who was playing with cotmobile lol
so thought may as well feed him too

Sorry to hear about your bad night and poorly baby Nazly. How is it going with your work now? Is he any better with MIL now?

Does anyone know when the sleep regression phase ends? I'm at near breaking point. At Christmas time she was only waking once, or maybe twice a night, but we seem to have steadily gone backwards since she hit 4 / 4 and a half months. Plus she seems to be starting her day earlier and earlier (6.15am this morning, it used to be about 7.30).

Sorry baby is poorly Nazly.

Kitkat, I'm feeling exactly the same!

Tried putting DD down earlier, but it made no difference, other than a far easier bedtime. Think I will continue with the earlier bedtime. She's fine until about midnight, and from that point on she wakes every 30-45 minutes. She tends to feed three times through the night (around 10.30, 1.30 and 4.30), so the waking isn't hunger. I put on the mobile sounds, dummy in and sometimes also sush and stroke her head. Rarely do I need to get her out to settle her.

This morning she woke at 5.30 again. I couldn't settle her at all, but she didn't feel ready to wake so I thought I'd try something different, so I brought her into our bed. She did cat nap until 6.15, but DH said he thinks it is a bad idea to do that. Now she is used to sleeping in her cot, he thinks we shouldn't confuse her by bringing her into our bed. I do kind of agree, but I really need want her to sleep until at least 6.

I don't know what to try next. HV said to just struggle through until she is six months, and get her onto three meals a day quite quickly, which apparently might help her to sleep better at night. I'm not convinced that will be the miracle cure, so I do want to try other stuff in the meantime.

Any other ideas as to how to get her to sleep without waking between her feeds? I guess it is a self settling issue? Or am I looking to the wrong thing here?

Argh! Just put DD down for her first nap, which is normally a reliable hour. After 30 minutes she woke and I had to take her out and cuddle/rock her back off to sleep.

Please, please, please, someone help me get this sleep deprivation torture device to sleep longer than 30 minutes! DH and I can't go on much longer like this

Oh Team it sounds really rough for you right now! Do you use white noise at all? I couldn't do without it for daytime naps. Not sure on what else to suggest though really!

Nazly - This could be a long shot but with expressed milk perhaps you could open the bottle and let him smell it before you offer it? Maybe then he may be a bit more receptive to expressed milk in a bottle but not sure on the formula. As he likes his cup for water and used to take bottles for expressed milk it certainly seems to be the taste of formula he doesn't like. Have you tried mixing breast milk and formula? Perhaps you could try some formula in his food - baby rice and cereal etc. to get him used to it?

We started on Lactulose yesterday morning (2.5ml twice a day) so we just had our 3rd dose this morning. Nothing yet! When I spoke to the HV about it she mentioned that babies poo less as they get towards weaning as they are taking more nutrients from milk than before so there's less waste so now I am worried I should be weaning her but hadn't planned to start for another 3 weeks, which would be the weekend she turns 6 months. It's funny - the NHS and all the HV's i've seen have been very adamant that weaning should not start before 6 months (the same relentless way they go on about bf) but everything i've read about the subject states that it's recommended weaning begins at 6 months but actually all the information they give really assumes weaning begins between 4 and 6 months and say that by 6 months they are already starting to lack nutrients they need. This parenting stuff is such a minefield. From a practical perspective, we are going to Centre Parcs in 2 weeks so I thought it would make a lot more sense to wait until we got back to start rather then start for a week or 2 and have it all get messed up by going away! It's still my plan I think.

Not been on for a few days but just caught up on the thread!

Welcome back ILove - sorry to hear your boys have been poorly.

Hope you lo is ok Nazly.

Sorry to those of you who are suffering from lack of sleep. I can't offer any advice I am afraid as A likes his sleep. He has woke a couple of times over the weekend but the reinserting of the dummy has worked with him. I haven't done anything special to make him like this either, I am just very lucky I think.

Thanks to whoever suggested the olive oil for the cradle cap btw, I have been using it for about 2 weeks now and it is clearing up lovely!

Lil, I do use her rainforest sounds, but might try proper white noise.

Lactulose can take a couple of days to work, so hopefully it will start to works soon.

team & kitkat, we are getting by only because we are co sleeping - cot's side removed and next to the bed. I never wanted to co sleep, but needs must. Lewis up at 10, 12, 2 & 430 and fed each time. up for the day at 615. he can usually self settle so I dont think that is the problem, either....gonna see if he is ready for solids again, fingers crossed. but he is only 23 weeks

Oh dear Team. Your DD sounds like she is worse than Jessica at the moment (who to be fair is largely waking for feeds) and I know I'm struggling so can only imagine how you and your DH feel. When Jessica was younger we found playing womb noise all night long helped Jessica settle (I left my phone next to her in her moses basket with the volume just high enough so she could hear it but not loud enough to disturb me and DH). Is it worth trying given that it seems to be more of a comfort than a hunger thing with your DD?

Lilone I agree the advice on weaning is conflicting. My own HV said not until 6 months but at my post-natal group they said between 17 - 26 weeks as long as they were showing the 3 signs (able to hold own head up when seated, putting objects to their mouth and loss of tongue-thrust reflex). At one point she even said to start weaning by 6 months as oppose to starting at 6 months. After some debate me and DH decided to start Jessica at the weekend as she is showing all 3 signs and is 23 weeks now. Am only doing one 'meal' a day though and just sticking to mashed fruit, veg or baby porridge. After a couple of weeks will work up to two meals a day and then three a couple of weeks after that. And once she hits six months will start to introduce a bit more variation in food. I have to say she isn't massively fussed about food at the moment, more confused! I'm hoping it'll help though with getting her off breastmilk and it's my goal now to find a way for bottle-refusing baby to quit breastfeeding as I'm sick of it. She's starting to get the hang of using a cup so wish us luck! xx

Sorry x-post with a few people!

Sorry to hear of everyone having sleep struggles. un/fortunately Z is okay through the night but hardly naps! I'm really struggling with establishing a nap routine for her - she's very erratic with daytime sleeps and usually only manages 30 mins at a time, I've had days where she's only had one such nap, and on those days I usually crawl into bed myself after I put her down (8-9pm) and end up spending v little time with DH :(, which I feel bad about too.

On the v odd occasion she'll sleep for an hour if I'm lucky. I think I may need to start popping her in her cot perhaps? Any advice is welcome :)

Kitkat I'm also really confused by all the weaning advice.
When I went to the weaning session held by our HV (which ended up being a one-on-one, 10 parens invited and only DD and I turned up!!) she didn't bang on about waiting until six months too much but was very clear not to start on any food before 17 weeks (4 months)

From reading everyone's posts it sounds like there's a lot of advice to wait until 6 months which confuses me as all the baby food companys have foods starting at 4 months (stage 1).

we've gone with waiting for the 3 signs and started two weeks ago now (DD was 5 months on Friday), with one meal daily for about a week and now up to two meals (b'fast and dinner) for the past week. DD has liked everything so for apart from the pureed brocolli (don't blame her!) and gets very excited when she sees a spoon of food heading in her direction. She seems to have dropped her daily milk intake though by one feed (7oz) in total but is still managing a total of 28-30 oz daily (800-900ml). Not sure if I should be a little worried about this ?

zanashar I think food companies say from 4mo because that's the earliest they're allowed to and so maximises their selling time if that makes sense. I'm putting off weaning for as long as possible, simply because of the faff; milk is so easy compared. I also am dreading the mess

We've gone back to not sleeping as well, used to just be up once a night, now it's bed at 7, up at 9,11,12,2,4 and up for the day at 6.30 this morning. I had lectures at 9 so am a complete zombie atm.