September 2014 - 6 months already?!

[holls2000]

new thread!

Cookie congrats to your SIL. :)

ElllaBella - well done to you and your DP. That's excellent weight loss!

Team - I did a similar thing recently. The UK sun always catches me as I never really expect it to be strong! You are definitely not a bad mum!

We are also in the SE. At the moment Jessica has either a thick sleepsuit and grobag, or vest, thin sleepsuit and grobag. Her room is reasonably warm too (usually about 22c). However she seems to sleep better when she's warmer. I'm less stressed about it than I used to be. x

team if it makes you feel any better we had the same happen over Easter - it was barely sunny, cold and he was under the sling shade but after a 4 hour walk he was a bit pink . I felt literally sick to my stomach but he was completely fine. Lesson learnt, now we go everywhere with sunhat and sun cream.

It's still chilly here (Scotland) so in a long sleeve vest, pj top and 2.5 tog, plus he's cuddled into me. He'd have pj bottoms on too but they make his nappy leak more. I still have to change his nappy once a night or it totally leaks.

Wow all these layers you all talk of! We are in the SE and all winter he had a baby grow with 2.5 tog sleeping bag. Now it's baby grow and 1 tog sleeping bag. His room is currently hovering around 22 degrees.

The bath mat- mine has sucker pads underneath to stop it moving. And then after bath time I rinse it off and hang it up. No mould.

Books- what about the local library? There might be quite a few in there and then you don't have to buy them but still get to try a few out.

Just to add with the temperature thing, I wasn't sure if DS would be a hot or cold baby because I always get cold but dh is always hot. I use the gro egg as well to help me because I always feel cold at night but it's really not that cold in our house. I think DS takes after his daddy, his skin is always warm and I've never noticed him whinging because of the cold. But then I guess it is quite hard to tell the real reason sometimes!

E is in a 1.5 tog with a baby grow and vest, the temp thing says 22-24 much warmer then our old flat, I think it is confused though as it feels cooler than that in his room!

E has been a nightmare all morning, he keeps crawling under the sofa and then getting stuck, I rescue him then he is back underneath within minutes sometimes seconds!

Gosh loads to read! You are right Nazly, I am (was) a teacher so maybe some of the things that are instinctive to me are less so to others. I've also been parenting, talking to HV, nurseries, schools, other parents etc for a decade and so I forget what it's like being a first time Mum. My apologies for being flippant, I didn't mean anything by it.

My other children have used the sit-in bath seat until about 12-18 months old. I have history of big babies too. DC3 actually got wedged in and stuck one time as he was growing out of it! I am amazed if your DS doesn't fit already. I would fear for safety without a seat for a long time yet. Unless of course you are planning on sharing a bath with baby, which many parents do.

Regarding books though, when I had my first I was desperate for some kind of instruction manual to tell me what I should be doing. In the first four months of her life I read every single parenting book in my local library. When I'd done them all I started re-reading them.

DH came home from work one day to find me in tears over some really minor thing "the books" said I should do that I hadn't been doing, and so as such I must be rubbish. After a big talk with DH we agreed that I was doing a great job and didn't need the books I just needed to trust myself to know what was best. This marked the beginning of me first starting to enjoy being a parent rather than constantly feeling anxious I was doing something wrong.

Just popping in again to say I have managed to get Jessica to have a nap in her cot!!! First time ever!!! x

Gah, might have celebrated prematurely as nap only lasted 20 minutes...

20 minutes is better than zero minutes! Small steps

Well done KitKat, 20 minutes is better than nothing. A still will only nap on me or in his pram through the day, and sometimes then its only for 20 minutes. I need to work on this soon, but we are just about getting there with sleep routine for night time so don't want to do too much.

He has a 1.5 tog grow bag, vest and sleep suit at night. Then we sometimes put a thin blanket over him when we go to bed if his room is cold. He seems happy enough, although I do sometimes worry he is too hot in the night. He has been quite sweaty when I have gone in for him the last few mornings.

Thank you ladies. Cumbrian Jessica is exactly the same (I.E, only naps on me or in buggy) but I'm really struggling at the moment to get anything done so would love her to nap in her cot so I can get a break occasionally. Am going to try and work on this I think. She's really whingey at the moment with tiredness and teething and yesterday after her moaning for two hours I was exhausted and at the end of my tether and crying myself, and actually snapped at her and told her to shut up. So I'm definitely getting that worst mum award.

I always get mega envy issues as BIL and SIL's son (I.E, our nephew) slept through the night from 4 weeks old and has a 3-4 hour nap in his cot each day, and they moan as he regularly sleeps in until 9-10am each morning (so they feel that they can never get out the house until late morning). Sometimes I have to bite my tongue from saying 'I'll swap you Jessica for 1 night who tends to wake 2-5 times a night and gets up at 5.30 / 6am every day and then you might realise that you are actually amazingly lucky'. Ahem. Rant over.

Sometimes I am to scared to put E down cause I know he will just wake up! For naps I mean! So 20 minutes is a great start!

Quite a variation in sleepwear then! There is quite often a drop in temp overnight so her room was only 19c by the morning when it was 21c at bedtime. I'm also still in long sleeved PJs quite often, but DP is just in pants! Going to order a lighter tog sleeping bag as my house does hold the heat once it gets to summer! However, obviously last summer (the only summer we've been in this house) I was pregnant and was sleeping with a fan on all night while DP had the whole duvet wrapped around him, so probably not an objective perspective!!

Kitkat - I've told DD to shut up too before and also felt awful, i'll share the worst mum award with you! 20 minutes is a start with the cot naps. I do think consistency is the key so they can develop good sleep associations. It is a struggle though!

KitKat I've found myself telling dd to shut up too. It sounds awful but some days when she's done nothing but nag, it's just the straw that breaks the camel's back. I'm sure it's fairly common to feel that frustrated at times. Well done on the cot nap, even if it was short! If it helps, we started with short cot naps during the day, persevered with it consistently and now dd's happiest napping there. It seems to have helped her have longer daytime naps and to self settle at night too, so we get longer uninterrupted periods of sleep.

Nazly I'd like to read a good parenting book too, or maybe a child psychology book, so please let me know if you find a good one.

Ella bloody well done to you and your dp on the weight loss, that's amazing!

Well done on the cot nap KitKat, 20 minutes is better than nothing!

I thought of a book Nazly (and if you have a boy Apples), Was having a nap this afternoon and it popped into my head:

Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph

I've not read it but this is a book that is often referenced in the media and in education (UK has a national educational problem with the underachievement of boys in school) as 'The Manual' for parenting a boy. The author has recently written a Raising Girls book, but it is much less well received.

I read Dr Sears book but only cos it makes me feel better about still cosleeping! I haven't read much of it, must do soon.

Thanks Fate, I'll have a look soon .

Is there any other teachers here apart from Fate, or anybody with experience in working in primary schools? Actually you can all help cause you went to school here, most of you did anyhow...

We recently discovered (well, little by little we learnt this) that ds could get bullied in school because of his name (well known Irish name, but not so well known in England I am afraid despite what we imagined)

This issue has upset me so much, and in turn has upset dh so much that we are actually considering changing his name in his passport and birth certificate. However, the alternative would be to have a nickname ( still not English, but a European one with same roots as his own name)

I just don't know if this alternative will ever work? I.e. Should teachers/students know the official name of a student and write it and read it and use it or can a child call himself something else?

P.s. Believe me we have spent ages and ages and ages on selecting a name from our own language/culture which would read and sound OK here and the fact that it was Irish too made us confident it will work , plus it was normally well received by people we talked to... We are upset now about this whole issue...

Nazly we had kids at school who were known by names other than their legal first name (we only knew their real first names if they told us), and my friend recently had the option of giving her son's school a 'known as' name when he enrolled because nobody ever calls him by his legal first name. I guess it would be harder to get round in later life, e.g. at work, as payroll/HR departments deal in legal first names as opposed to 'known as' names, though I've worked with plenty of people who are known as something other than their legal first name. Really though, I can't imagine what your son could be called that would guarantee bullying, so maybe best to cross that bridge if/when you come to it? I can understand why you worry though, and if you're dead against using his first name on a day-to-day basis I believe you can change a baby's name until they're one. I'm sure that's what they told us at the town hall anyway, though we did register dd in deepest, darkest Yorkshire.

FATE I have a girl but thanks for the recommendation anyway, I'll pass it on to my sister as she's currently struggling with her little boy after having the easiest girl ever as a first child. Her little boy is a totally different kettle of fish!

I couldn't remember if you had a DS or DD Apples, my apologies.

Nazly, if you love the name you shouldn't feel you should change it just because of the possibility of bullying. It may well not happen anyway - there are some very 'out there' names around that may well be worse.

Ella - My DC3 used to hold the back of his head as a comfort thing. As he got older this developed into hair twiddling as his comfort thing when he was tired. Just thought I'd mention because you said the head holding isn't making her cry.

Realised today that I have been in a relationship with DH for half of my life! We started going out (ie boyfriend and girlfriend) 19 years ago, when I was 19. On the one hand it feels like it was only yesterday, on the other hand it feels like a world away.

Popping back in to say hi to you all! I've read back, so feel caught up a bit with you and your little ones. I've been back at work for a couple months now and the days just fly by. No time for MN, apart from I do search for answers to my questions like you, Ella.

Congrats on the cot nap, Kitkat! We still really struggle with sleep. Still co-sleeping and waking several times a night, but even that is an improvement and I'm not a total zombie all the time anymore.

DS is crawling like crazy, pulling up on everything and sometimes standing not holding on to anything for a 10-15 seconds. He also pitches over spectacularly but usually takes it ok. He is an object in motion and DH, who is on paternity leave, is worn out at the end of the day!

We're doing BLW, but DS doesn't get masses of food into him. He also won't take anything off of a spoon, so that's not a way to increase his food intake. Something to worry about?

Xpost with Fate. Congratulations! That is lovely.

Thread continues here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/postnatal_clubs/2379175-September-2014-Rocking-and-Rolling