September 2014 - Rocking and Rolling

[FATEdestiny]

Our babies are rocking and rolling, crawling and climbing into the second half of their first year.

Let the fun continue...

I'm only sterilising if I'm pumping bottles to store in the freezer. If we had a dishwasher I probably never would have sterilised at all. I've been advised by microbiologists that it is not very effective.

We've never left him overnight, but I'm ok with the idea! But we really need to get his sleep sorted first.

I meant to say, DS has had two days of diarrhoea and has been running a bit of a fever. He does have a cold, but seems also to be in discomfort. Could this be teething? The first two came through with no fuss. Poor little guy.

We still sterilise :) habit really more than anything else!

I haven't left E but will be leaving him over night with his father next month I am looking forward to it now as his sleep has been terrible and I may actually get a full night sleep!

He just won't sleep through and he is in his own room and that has made f all difference!

I still sterilise bottles but that's it.

my mum has got b a baby walker and a play pen and he loves both. we took him to the zoo yesterday and he loved rabbits and meercats and pygmy hippos.

he has his own room at home but I can safely say sleep is not great....I still have to replace dummy at least once a night. While we are here at mums he is in our room. dh goes home today so I may well try leaving him when he stirs at 3 and see what happens. at the moment he is also waking up at 6 on the dot...

my mum has babysat the last two nights which has been great and made me feel human again!!!

We are still sterilising, but only bottles and dummies. I was actually watching DD sucking on the rug the other day and wondering why we are still bothering! We do have a dishwasher, so I think I'd be ok with just running the bottles through there, but we don't run the dishwasher often enough to keep up with the bottles we use, so will probably keep going with the sterilising for now. I'm just not confident enough of the thoroughness of my hand washing of bottles!

DD moved into her own room at 4.5 months. It did improve things, but we changed so many things at the same time it's difficult to know what might have made the difference.

Second night with the calpol, second night that was pretty good! Thanks for the heads up on the use of essential oils with babies. I've done a bit of reading on it, and there are some to avoid, but mainly if using them directly on the skin. I already have a baby decongestant oil, and the calpol thing has lavender and camomile in it. They are both fine in a diffuser after three months, so I might try getting those and mixing them with the decongestant one.

The experiment continues...

Oh, I forgot about leaving overnight!

I haven't yet, but I will be leaving DD with DH for two nights next month. I've got to go away on a work thing. Originally they were going to come with me, but we worked out that in those two days I'd only get about half an hour with DD when she was awake. It just seems selfish to make them go on a long drive, stay in a city they don't know, be in a small hotel room, take DD away from her bed with sleep just starting to improve, away from nursery after just three weeks, etc...

I realised that I was just being selfish wanting them to come with me, so they are staying home and I'm going on my own.

Two nights away for the first time is going to be tough, but I know it is the best thing for her, and she'll have a great time with her daddy!

Oh Team your 2 nights away sound like bliss, I'd take them and run! While you're here, what's the exercise app/thing you're doing atm?

Oh also we're still sterilising bottles and dummies but I'm not really sure why either, we have a perfectly good dishwasher and don't bother with any of her eating equipment!

I must confess that a small part of me is looking forward to two nights in a row of uninterrupted sleep! As you all know, my wonderful DD has been a total sleep disaster zone. I will miss them both terribly though

It is the seven minute workout by perigee. It is free in the App Store, but that only gives you one workout. I purchased the cardio workout (app is free and each additional workout is £1.49) and then made my own custom routine mixing cardio and stretch/strengthening type exercises. I'm also using light weights to try to deal with my bingo wings I started with tins of beans, but moved to 1kg weights last week. My arms ache! It is great though, and the first exercise thing I have ever stuck to. I'm going to try to squeeze it in every morning when I go back to work.

Hiya ladies! God it's been forever since I posted, how are we all?xx

The 7 minute app is very popular it seems! I'd also recommend Charlotte's 3 minute body blitz (which I think someone else mentioned?) which is 12 lots of 3 minute workouts (high intensity interval training) and it is a KILLER! I have not managed more than 4 segments in a row yet, I did 4 this morning and I could not have done more! Certainly feels like lots of calories being burned. On a related note - does anyone have a fitbit? And what do you think of it?

Welcome back missbright! How are you doing?!

Place marking. Thanks for the new thread Fate

Hello there miss! How are you?

Zana, hope things are going well for you!

Coil fitting yesterday. Wasn't the most pleasant of experiences but wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Fingers crossed that should be it for the next ten years, no more having to think about contraception.

Won't be entertaining the idea of removing the dummy while it is DDs comforter. Dummy use here is only for the first 10 minutes or so when going to sleep so it's not a normal fixture in awake time. Dummy is an immediate sleep inducer since it only comes out for sleep and so works instantly. Because of how sparingly it is used, I have no issue with her having dummy to get to sleep for a couple of years yet. My others have been 3 or 4 when we got rid with the aid of sticker charts and bribery (and no distress).

My Mum once offered to have DD overnight while the bigger 3 were at other grandparents. It was arranged and cancelled because I chickened out and didn't want her away from me at night. So she's not had a night away from me yet.

DD's bedroom is still decorated for a 9 year old boy so although her brother has now moved out, the room needs redecorating before she moves in. I'm not ready to have her further than arms reach yet though, I'm quite happy with her in a cot next to our bed.

Honestly, If I spend 1 hour each time to get ds to nap/sleep with a dummy only, am I just not better off rock him to sleep! He sleeps in 5 if I rock him!!! I am slowly going crazy as can't really afford to spend this much time...

Also, he wakes up at nights 2 or 3 times anyhow! Can't get any worse than that if i now rock him can it?

We really need to start sleep training actually but I am putting it off till August/Sept when dh is going to be less busy hopefully and able to help with it. I can't imagine it can be done on my own, can it ladies?

Sleep training is hard work so having as much support around as possible would be a good idea. If nothing else, having DH with you through the worst of it at least means you don't have to shoulder all of the responsibility yourself.

I used to have to rock (actually it was more of a bob up and down) DC1 to sleep even though she had a dummy from 20 weeks. I feel your pain Nazly, I really do.

Everything's good here thank you Team :) (apart from the weight loss - see the thread).

Hope everyone and their LOs are well!

I haven't posted in absolutely ages but have managed to catch up on everything that'S been going on (I think?)

Nazly - I think your LOs name is lovely - unusual but not unheard of (DH and I went to see well known comedian with the same name in Feb as our first proper "date night"). I do understand your concerns though. Z has an "ethnic" name but looks much more like her dad than me, and coupled with the NI/English middle and surnames will be confusing for people around here, when she starts school. I was fretting about her being picked on at school for it, even before she was born. My solution is that we will move to an area where people are less likely to raise an eyebrow at her blended origins.

we still have not decided on a nursery, and my work are dragging their heels on getting back to me about changing me hours for when I go back in October.

Sleep - Z has been in her own room for 2 months exactly, and bedtime is 8PM. She has the odd occasion where she wakes herself up (usually with a horrid hacking fit of coughing - this house has been invaded by one cold or another for well over a month now) and finds it hard to settle. ALso, in the mornings she wakes as early as 5am - instead of trying to get her back to sleep i usually bring her into our bed and we have snuggles until a more "normal" hour.

dummy - we only use this at nap and bedtimes usually - or if shes grumpy for no reason - although DH has a habit of reaching for it more often than that.

night away - I've yet to spend a night away from DD - even when i've been out for several drinks , rather than stay over at a friends I prefer to come home, drink a LOT of water, look in on her sleeping, and go to bed. I am also always up at 8am to be on mummy duty.

Mobility - slides backwards on her belly and also spins around v quickly. Can get onto her knees but has yet to figure out how to move forwards.

Z is 8 months old today!!!!!

does anyone have a fitbit? And what do you think of it?

Yes I do. Its brilliant. I've managed to shift 10 pounds in about 6 weeks. I'm just above my pre-pregnancy weight but I've given up for a while as I'm still breast feeding. My short term goal was merely to shift the majority of the extra weight I was carrying as it was starting to get to me. I can now fit back into my pre-pregnancy jeans which is brilliant as I've been trying to avoid buying new clothes and I looked like a sack of shit. I didn't think I'd ever get back into them as I thought my hips had permanently expanded.

The main benefit has been to stop bad habits and make me think about what I was eating. I got into them whilst pregnant and piled on 4 stone in total (not so great for someone just under 8stone to begin with). I am still eating chocolate and wine but in a lot more moderation and giving thought to portion size.

Bit of advice though. I did 30mins of moderate paced swimming and it burnt just 194 calories. I was really surprised at how little it is. (Do bare in mind it works out slightly differently for everyone depending on your weight so this is just a rough idea - which is why the fitbit really comes in handy)

I see a lot of you are using the 7 minute burn workout to try and loose weight. Its good for your heart and lungs etc but I suspect a lot less effective at weight loss. Unless you do it a lot, it won't shift much. I've done a quick google and it suggests a session works out at about 25calories. (It might be worth double checking that, but it sounds about right based on what I was getting with other exercise on the fitbit) I think the other real danger of the 7 min workout is you are liable to think you've burned more calories than you have as its harder than a simple walk. I'm unconvinced its the secret to shedding the pounds.

For context a slice of medium brown toast is around 65 calories. So one slice of toast could equal 20mins of work out alone. IMHO you'd be better looking at cutting back on certain things and making healthier food choices eg vegetarian or fish options rather than meat options than relying totally on exercise to burn the calories. I personally don't have time to do enough exercise to loose weight that way and I'm not hungry nor depriving myself of food either.

Exercise is good for you in other ways so I'm not knocking anyone doing it (I should do more tbh) but I do think weight loose is more about input rather than increased output of energy.

That said I found that on days I ate more the fitbit did give me motivation to move more and stopped me over compensating with 'reward' food for having done exercise. It also made me a lot more honest about what I was eating when I used the app on my phone to record what I'd had.

I really should get back on it as I've just had a bit of a huge blowout weekend and not dared to get on the scales yet. I want to maintain my current weight now for the short term before trying to get back to my target pre-pregnancy weight.

Team I hope that you'll miss them while also settling into your lonely and quiet hotel bed with a happy little sigh.

Nice to see you, Miss and Zana. Enjoy those last few days of her not being able to figure out the forward motion, Zana!

I'm intrigued by the coil, FATE. I hope it suits you. I tried to have Mirena fitted once but it didn't work and the doctor told me I'd have to wait until I'd had a child and my cervix allowed for it!

calorielab.com/burned/

How many calories you burn with various exercises.

I got a Fitbit but I don't put in my food consumption so it's not so much of an incentive. If anything it's been the opposite actually as on an active day it'll say I've burnt 2200 calories, plus the 400-500 for bfing which is a crazy amount! So I end up not watching what I'm eating. It's still useful though, and I wear it all the time.

I have mine set up so it automatically knows I'm breastfeeding and calculates based on that (you have to set it up online rather than on the phone app).

Great photo Zanashar!

I understand that the coil isn't recommended until after you have children, IAteSomeofthePies. In fact I considered it after DC3 but the GP advised against on the basis that I wanted another child. I consider myself 'done' now in terms of children, but don't want the permanence of sterilisation or vasectomy.

RedToothBrush, nice to see you posting again. How's the mobile mayhem going with DS?

Red - ooh, i didn't know you could set it to bfing, I haven't looked at it online yet just on my phone.