********** December 2006 PART 2 **************

[castlesintheair]

Will this do?

Nope sorry nothing you can do because he is napping!

morning all...

Oli - i know how u feel , ds went thru similar nights and it drove me mad ! and dd wanted to come in2 bed wiv us for cuddles !..anyway since i have started weaning ds ...nights r much better ! , for the last couple nights he has slep 5 half hrs then feed then sleep thrn feed & wake for day . So have u started weaning yr ds yet ?
Tried again to give bottle feed - he screamed and pushed me away ..so i expressed to see if it was the milk he didnt like - nope same hysterics and pushing away from bottle !! grrr what is going on with him ? HV coming this avro so will moan at her and see if she has any better ideas !

Oh, Oli, you poor thing. Am sending massive sleep vibes your way. PLEASE don't send any of those nasty vibes my way!

So glad to hear the scan went well, Coco. It's terrible going for 'tests', even when you are quite confident everything's OK.

Quick question - what are you all using to bathe your LOs? DD2 is now 17 weeks old, and all I have ever used is water, so terrified am I of eczema. But I'm conscious that maybe, just maybe, I should be bathing her more than 2 or 3 times a week, and I should maybe be using something?

hi all havent disappeared, at an internet cafe....getting internet early May coz of the move.......hectic with two kiddies.....shooooo!

Thanks BP, will keep the 'non-sleeping' vibes outh of the border .

Re. baths, ds2 only has a bath in plain water once a week but has dry, red, scaly patches on his arms and legs which I'm assuming are excema. Ds1 had the same and all we could get was the dreaded Oilatum as all the other stuff we tried, no matter how perfume free, etc, made it worse. Ds1 still has dry patches but it's not developed into fully fledged excema yet. So if there's anything out there I'd like to know too!

Coco, I haven't started weaning him yet, he's only 16 weeks so need to wait a little bit still. I was going to go with BLW at 6 months as it seems so much easier but the lack of sleep is making me wonder. I think I'lll wait until he's over this cold and see what happens with his sleeping then.

Calm, hope the move went well and you're settling in!

Indith, how's ds's sleeping

Oli, glad to hear I'm not the only one who doesn't bathe their baby every day. I was starting to wonder if I was neglectful

DD1 has eczema, and none of the over the counter stuff worked for her, either (and I am waging a 1-woman war on Oilatum - vile stuff) The only thing that seems to work for her is salt baths and sunshine. When we're on holiday her skin is beautiful! Otherwise, it's a handful of Maldon in the bath once a week, and loads of calendula cream when I have it. DD1 does have a bath every night, but she's 4 and gets filthy in the garden!

phew, no wakey wakey vibes for me then

Although wonder if you misdirected them, Oli, as dd is not only waking a zillion times per night (fart, feed, fart, choke, feed, choke, fart) but also apparently no longer needs to nap for more than half an hour: life is FAR too exciting (aka dd1).

dh is being less manfluey, so better night for me as shared having to get out of bed. And I think dd2 is less snotty and chokey, I'm definitely less worried.

Baths: nightly, as they relax and settle both dds (and me, somehow). Just water, and a teeny bit of cradle cap shampoo. But dd1 had just water and got eczema anyway (mildly) - dd2 has a couple of dry patches, so I'm already into the after bath doublebase routine, seems to do the trick.

Hi Calm hope its going ok! Sounds stressful - suppose no other way for a house move to be though, eh...

dd2 is five months old today

Much as I miss my newborn babe, I'm so glad she's got this fat and healthy and OLD...can't help feeling bit edgy till they get to six months, probably due to dodgy start.

Very dense of me, but...what is BLW??

Oli, could it be a growth spurt? Sound's bl**dy awful, you have my sympathy! Can't offer any advice except maybe try and tank him up more during the day (I seem to feed DD2 every 2/3 hours) though I'm sure you are already doing that. Just repeat this mantra to yourself: things can only get better Can you try a dummy? Leaving him to cry for a bit? Haven't done it myself as I am a big wimp, but if you're desperate ...

I bathe my LOs every night Always use something organic. Currently using "Little Me Baby Organics" as bubble bath which smells lovely. They all have olive skins though and so far have had no skin probs.

BLW = baby led weaning Eli. i.e. NOT using a spoon and allowing LO to help itself to food. If that had been DS, he would probably have starved!!

eli, how terrible I had forgotten ds is 5 months today too!

The nap was very nice Oli thankyou I think you may have purchased a faulty batch of wakey waky vibes

Baths- ds has one every night either with water or something nice and irritant free. All followed by a massage with something equally nice and friendly (currently waitrose coconut stuff). Anyway he went from having dry skin to nice soft baby skin.

ds is currntly all happy after being out all morning at bumps and babies etc (for which I had to wake him from his nap) but I am exhasted. Don't quite understand how I can be so tired when getting sleep!

I'm really tired Indith, so are all my friends at playgroup this morning. We decided it must be the weather. It's very humid down here.

Hope its just the weather I have work to do this pm having let dp work all morning!

Hi All,

Second night of sleep from 8pm to 6pm with no dream feed

Also DS rolled on to his tummy for the fist time today and sadly landed straight on some bells DD had been waving at him for encouragement not 2 minutes earlier. Thus we had a very displeased scream followed by total refusal to even be put back on his mat on his back.

Am hoping the reflux theory is just a theory as I want my baby to stay a baby for a while as he's my last! Although I think he might have different ideas as he now travels in his travel system without the car seat, and today had his first ride in a Tesco baby trolley sear instead of being parked on a one in his carseat!

Hmm, You mean Durham isn't near the M25? Oops, sorry, Eli [apologetic ].

Well, all there must have been some pretty hefty, accurate vibes coming this way - took dd up for her nap at 1:30, ds2 went straight down afterwards, then came back downstairs to find ds1 asleep (standing up, next the sofa [bless]) so put him to bed and climbed straight into my bed. We all had 1.5 hours sleep - bliss!

House looks like a bombsite though - any chance of some tidying up vibes now please? (it's all take, take, take with me!)

Castles, I'm hoping it's just a growth spurt, combined with a cold but if you see an exhausted looking woman wondering around MN in a few weeks time, quietly muttering 'it'll get better, it'll get better', then that's me .

Eli, what's doublebase? Is it better than aqueous cream?

Oli - no tidy up vibes I am affraid, I need them too!

DoubleBase is a serious moisturiser in my experience. My DA has it for scoriosis (sp) and gets it by the vat load!

When I say serious I dont mean it;s a frowny looking cream I mean it only seems to get oprescribed to the poeple I know whose skin is so dry it's almost dust!

Warning 3 in a rowe, and sleep was 8pm to 6am (10 hours, not 22 as accidentally implied in earlier post).

Well HV wasnt full of ideas ! Just suggested that I keep trying to give him the bottle until he gives in and get used to it ! Thats what Ive been doing for the last couple weeks ..how much longer can the hysterics go on I wonder . Will get dh to try more often to feed him with bottle in hope ds realises he cant alays have my milk - HV said that he can smell my milk and suggested I go out of the room and leave him someone else to try to get him on the bottle .
I bathe ds 2-3 times a week , i put a tiny drop of johnsons lavender bath - i love the smell ! -it relaxes me and ds loves his bath ,so calm and always smiles at me - totally the opposite of how my dd was - she screamed throughout bathtime ! , cradle cap shampoo , then hes pampered by having baby talc on his torso & back ( helps to slide on his vest !) and massage arms /legs with baby lotion . This is probably my favourite time to be with him,he smells full of goodness and so smily/giggly at this time ...ahhhh

LOL, LFM, 22 hours - that takes Competitve Mum Syndrome to a whole new level!

Oli, here was our typical sleep pattern yesterday

11:30 - 12:30 - am nap, will go longer at home but we were out and about with ds1

4:00 - 6:00 - afternoon nap

acted like he would go down at 8:30 but did not go to sleep until 10:00 !!

woke at 1:00 and nursed

woke again at 3:00, got furious because I would not nurse him. I rocked, walked, put down, picked up, gave pacifier (he's never taken to them really) and finally at 4:00 fed.

woke again at 6:00!!!! I resettled him and he went back down in about 5 to 10 min

woke again at 7:15 for regular morning feed.

Dh thought I was being extremely cruel (both to himself and babe) not to nurse ds2 at 3:00. I tried to get him to understand that we've got to break this every 2 hour habit, especially as dh will be going out of town for a week in two weeks time and I can't bear the thought of coping with this sleep schedule on my own for a week. Although as I write this I thinking of castles with 3 on her own all week...

Oh, and re: bathing. Ds2 has a touch of eczema so we only bathe 2 to 3 times max per week. I put some chamomile blended stuff in the bath then slather him down afterwards with lotion - Lubriderm, usually do they have that there? He still needs a mild steroid cream on his cheeks fairly often. Ds1 also had/has fairly dry skin so I didn't bathe ds2 at all for 6 to 8 weeks and still we wound up with a skin problem. I suppose it might have been worse if I had been doing lots of baths early on