creche of may 2007!

[BefnalNorkSnorkel]

welcome to our second post natal thread!

Hello, hello. I'm alive. Have been keeping up to date, but just haven't managed to actually post!

Juliewoolie - I use a company called Topcleaners. They're on the net and seem to have cleaners for anywhere in London. I've used them four times now and all the women they've sent are great. I think they started at £12ph, but they charge me £11ph now because I've used them a few times. If you get someone regularly then it's cheaper I think.

Jaysis, I'm terrible, I can't think of any of the stuff I was going to respond to. I'm not ignoring anyone - I'm just being thick, sorry.

I've offered to take over the running/ hosting the NCT coffee mornings in my area because the woman who was doing it has stepped down. Am I mad? The teacher from my post-natal course was saying they were looking for someone so I thought, "why not?" I'll definitely meet people in my area now!

Read a really interesting baby book today called Baby Sense. Their theory is that babies have a total sensory overload when they're born and it takes them a few months to learn to block out stimuli and that if you monitor their cues (kind of like Baby Whisperer style) that you can stop them getting over-stimulated and keep them calm. They even reckon that "colic" is mainly over-stimulation at the end of the day and it's blamed on gastric pain because a bit of wind, which hasn't bothered the baby all day, is the "last straw". That's it in a nutshell really. Interesting theory and certainly some of the stuff seemed to fit with the way A goes completely insane in the late afternoon. Will see if I can get any joy out of it and let you know...

I need some sort of therapy to stop me buying baby clothes. I realised I couldn't justify her having any more 0-3 month stuff, so I started "stocking up" for Autumn. DH will kill me. I have quite a few bits that were given to me as well. It's just all so cute. Wait now, we'll have a fabulous Indian summer and she'll never have a single chunky knit cardigan on her back. (I appear to have accumulated 4 of those...)

Right. I MUST do the dreamfeed and get my arse to bed. I stayed up late the last two nights (WHY? WHY? WHY? What POSSESSED me?) and with A deciding that 6.20 is her "getting up time", even though she wakes at about 5 for a feed, I'm feeling well, knackered.

By late, I mean, 2am, btw. Gobsh'te.

LOL, you ladies are funny.

Cam, Maddies b'day is on the 8th Aug, she will be 2, Although she thinks she's 12 already. Our next door neighbours have the yellow and red little tykes car and Maddie just loves it, NO one else is allowed near it if she's there and she makes a bee line for it as soon as we arrive.

lg&t, enjoy your mad day tom. rather you than me. Just think, 2 more sleeps and N will be home.

yes, where is SOH or TYG they'd know what flamboyantly meant.

Just had a bad hour with Jorja, she's cried and cried, must have been hungry as it was 5 hrs since her last feed but was obviously in pain, hence she wouldn't feed, just screamed, it bought tears to my eyes. I don't remember H or M being bad after their first lot of jabs but J seems to be suffering. dh finally got her to take some of her bottle after some calpol, but promptly projectiled it all back at him. She is calm but wincing on my shoulder as I type, bless........

Off to try to settle her in bed, night. xxx

Oh there you are TYG, glad you are OK ish. Sorry xposted.

MrsJB sorry to hear Jorja is suffering after her jabs. Alana doesnt seem too bad now, had problems feeding her about 2hrs after she had them, same as Jorja, wouldnt take the milk just kept crying. She seems fine now though although she has been extra clingy. Lets hope we all get a good nights sleep

Im still feeling poo. My sore throat has developed into a full blown cold complete with blocked but runny nose (how that can happen I have yet to figure out but its annoying), headache, sore throat etc. I was going to have an early night but ended up watching Wire In The Blood and figured that as A is due a feed about now it wasnt worth going to sleep for just an hour. Instead ive been watching the worst program ever, yes you've guessed it its the one about the beckhams (shh dont tell anyone). Surely Victoria cant be as thick as she is acting in it and its all 'me me me'Thank god she's moved to the USA now, although now poor MKG is stuck with her lol

I still havent heard from my friend. I text her about 7pm but didnt get a reply, she hasnt been on Mnet either so Im in limbo at the moment. Hope everything is ok with her and the baby

I find the whole Beckam thing very funny, and she is very entertaining, especially when they showed her cheating on her drivers test. I feel bad for her kids, because they are just caught up in this media blitz.

Good morning

Well its all fun in the AM house as Jack has got chicken pox!!! Lovely NOT. That means a whole week off of nursery They need to have scabbed over by next Thursday as i need him to be in nursery on Friday as i am at the wedding! Also we go on holiday a week monday so he needs to be nicely scabbed. Although just my luck Ella will come out with it whilst we are away! I guess at least i dont have to take time off of work to look after him, so thats a good thing.

Off to baby swimming with Ella this morning and then jabs later on this afternoon.

Will try and have a catch up later x

morning!

pebble - i had that cold thing - lots of sneezing, sore throat so bad couldn't sleep that night, then following day feeling shit and full on cold. had some chicken soup that night and it reduced to just a snotty nose by the following day so its hard core but blows over quickly!

just bought L a tiny love gym from a nice lady on mumsnet - she loves it! had been jealous of TYG's one since she said it kept A occupied for more than 10 mins at a time. L's been staring at my zebra chaise but its not exactly battable!

How on earth do you guys get the LOs to bed before 10? L goes to sleep at 10 no matter what we do before to get her sleepy; baths; massages; mega feeds..., and wakes at 10 in the morning - have tried to keep her up after her 7am feed and she just gets really narky and then goes back to sleep until 10. Want to start being able to eat my restaurant food hot or with two hands! any tips for shifting her clock backwards...? am going to start a thread

x

Hello all
Glad to see you all seem to be doing so well!

I was, but it's all gone backwards. Leila is 6 weeks now, and I thought it was supposed to get easier .

She is generally a laid back baby and an absolute cutie, but she drinks so quickly she ends up with terrible wind. Doctor thinks she may also have a bit of reflux. Before, I would put her down at 10pm, she would wake at 2-3 and then 6am. Now, she is waking on the hour after 4am. Could it be the light in the room? Or the reflux? She now eats little and often as a result (I think) of the reflux. Last night was particularly bad. She was up once every hour, taking a little feed then falling asleep.I try to keep her awake, but she won't have it! Don't they have another grwoth spurt at 6 weeks too?

Anyone have any ideas? I am soooo exhausted. Managed 5 hours in two nights

xx

Morning,

Miracle - put Archie down this morning at 7.45 after his 6am feed and wait for he went to sleep for 2hours - woo hoo was able to shower straighten hair and put make up on.

befsnork am sure you have done this already but why dont you start your bedtime routine earlier. It will probably take a good few days for you to see an effect and you may have to put up with Lauren having a shriek, while she gets used to it.

AM poor you get the calamine lotion and the piriton out.

Pebblemum otrivine nasal drops work really well for the nose thing.

Blimey am a talking chenist this morning - can you tell the moment I feel anything coming on I whizz to boots.

MKG VB is quite funny. I have a friend who used to work for them and apparantly she has a very dry sense of humour and the image portrayed in the press is completely different to when she is at home.

Off for our 6 week check and Archie's BCG really dont want to take him. Hope he is ok as I know it is really important for him to get it.

Also hope it knocks him out for a couple of hours as I have to go buy an outfit for dinnner tom, my DP has said no to jeans and I have to dress like a girl, really rubbish at dressing in anything other than jeans or shorts.

have a lovely day everyone.

Oh quick question - am off on hol in a few weeks and taking my medela pump is there teats that fit the medela bottles or will I have to take other bottles and teats with me?

Hi everyone, we're having a tough week here too. If you remember R was really unsettled until about 6 weeks and then she cracked it. She started sleeping in the day, settling herself and stopped the incessant crying. Well....she has regressed badly this week and I can;t work out the reason why. She is sleeping brilliantly at night - 7.30 until about 5-5.30. However, on Monday she had no sleep in the day and the same on Tuesday. Yesterday she slept for an hour in the afternoon but that was it. Today it's back to nothing so far. I was coping oik with it before because I kept telling myself it would get better. Now I am not coping at all with it. I feel so frustrated because she was doing really well. I'm sitting here crying (very unlike me) because I can't stand listening to her cry any more. I have been up and down the stairs hundreds of times to put her bloody dummy back in but she will then drop off and it drops out of her mouth before she's in a deep enough sleep for it not to bother her. I think I have the feeling of dread for the summer holidays as well. How will I manage with her screaming all day, no cm for ds and I'm supposed to be starting potty training on Monday. Help!!!!

for you abblylou, maybe just a blip or a growth spurt sounds like she is getting over tired too. It will get easier. xxx

Hello, hello, hello

Am feeling so good at the mo, have been on holiday. Well, not so much a holiday but a short break away round the Scottish isles. Was L's first holiday! Felt so good to chill out and relax for a few days. The hotel had a swimming pool, sauna and jaccuzzi (sp) - heaven!

Charlotte's now 8 weeks, sob. She is getting so big. Now have her on 6oz of formula every feed, she's getting dead chunky. Her wee legs now have rolls lol, have to stop myself from nearly eating her every time I see them! She is too edible. And I'm feeling really broody. Read down the page that others were too which is comforting to know. I don't get it, I have a baby - but I want another one, now. Very strange.

Missed her fist set of jabs today because we were still away, the receptionist was none to happy when I rang to reschedule. 'You do realise how important these injections are, don't you?' was the reply I got from her. Patronising cow. I couldn't have done it to Charlotte today anyway, she was far too happy and smiley to start sticking needles in her. Will just have to do it next week, gulp.

Hope all are keeping well Oh and I'm now completely hooked on another tv series called House, highly recommend it.

Evening ladies

Just a quick one, will catch up later.

I finally heard from my friend this morning. She has got an infection at the top of the cervix, a water infection and low iron levels. She had been kept in overnight, given steroid injections for the baby's lungs, painkillers that caused her to have palpatations and as she was having contractions she was kept on a monitor all night. The leaking and contractions have now stopped and she is on bed rest, with an appointment to go back next week for them to measure the fluid but they still think the baby is likely to arrive in the very near future

I feel so helpless as i know she is very worried but there is nothing i can do to help. I cant even offer to take her children out for the day to give her and her dh some peace because she lives in Wales!!

Got to feed Alana now so will be back on here later

Oh by the way her hip scan went well, no sign of any problems

Hello

A doesn't sleep well after her night/ early morning feed either. Let's say (on a good night), I have her asleep by 9pm. Dream feed at 11ish, then she wakes at 4ish for a feed and then only naps for an hour until 5. I'm too tired/ zoned out to try to resettle her properly so I top her up with food and put her down and hope for the best. She invariably wakes between 6.20 and 6.40 each day, bright as a button, like a little alarm clock. Think the "key" might be in me trying to rouse myself a bit more at her 4am feed so I can make sure it's a good feed and not a snack and to stand over her and make sure she's in a deep sleep before I go back to bed. Actually doing that is the hard part. That said, she's not great at "linking sleep cycles" during the day - often has to be shushed/ patted back to sleep about 45 mins to an hour into her nap. It's a bugger, but I suppose she'll grow out of it.

at Bef's "toy envy". I had toy envy of this "Whoozit" spiral thing that some babies at NCT had and I HAD to buy one when I saw them in Mothercare. Bef you might want to look at L's day sleep to get her to bed earlier. Don't let her nap too long late afternoon, perhaps. A (on a good day obv!) would get up, feed, be awake for about an hour then back to sleep for about two hours. I wake her up if she sleeps much longer than that to feed her again, then total awake time for about an hour, back to sleep for two. Then in the afternoon I start feeding her about every two hours, rather than three and she has two naps of about an hour. By limiting the afternoon sleeps and bulking up on food, the idea is that they're tired, but not cranky, and stuffed full of food so they go down well at night.

With L, I would treat her sleep between 7 and 10 as a "nap" and therefore don't let her sleep for longer than two hours. If she insists on going straight back to sleep after her feed, that might mean waking her at 9. Then she can have one other "long" nap and two shorter ones in the day. You'll probably have a few grumpy days, but I think the key is often to alter the waking time in order to change the bed time. HTH!

Julie - the teats for Medela bottles are the odd-looking "haberman feeder" ones, which were designed for SN babies, but I hear BF babies take them well. They're pricey and you have to buy some sort of valve for the bottles too. I suggest buying some Medela "Pump 'n' save" bags which attach to the breast pump for pumping and storing and the bottle and teat that A is used to already. If you don't have time to get them before you go, then email me (twelveyeargap at googlemail dot com) with your address and I'll post you some of mine. They're sterile for immediate use, so that's handy.

Evening all, i survived.....just. I cancelled Beaus, hearing test as i just could not see myself being at school then to the hosp then back to school within an hour. The day was quite busy enough.

I had dd leavers assembly this morning, she was so cute. I wish i could have done it without Hugo and Beau though, Hugo kept commenting all the way through "enough now, mommy, lets go", "too noisy, shssssshhhhhhh" It climaxed with Beau yellin for food, so i attached him as discreetly as possible (we were front row and all parents was in a circle round the hall) Hugo chose that moment to freak out about a dragon display and leao on to my lap......discreet went ouot of the window as you can imagine

Anyhoo daay over, have 1 asleep behind me, 2 on the couch all clean, 1 in the bath getting clean and 2 still out and not clean at all!

Im going to get some dinner and have a bath before Katie and Peter are on at 9, it is entertaining you know I must shave my legs too dh is home tomorrow

Beau has been crashing by 8 for a week or so now, he has a bath, feeds and goes in his crib. I lift him up to bed when i go up and feed him about 11. He then sleeps until between 5-7. Im very happy with that!!!

Pebble forgot to say really hope your friend is ok, sure the bubba will stay put till they pump her full of steroids. It is magic what they do in SCBU now.

Cam i read the Mozhe thread... is all i can say. I could comment freeley having had twins in SCBU for months but i felt it would be a bad argument to get drawn in to.

Hey evening all

Pebble glad you heard from your friend, will keep my fingers crossed the lo stays in as long as possible.

Minipop - sorry you are having a tough time of it just now, it will get better soon I'm sure, 6 weeks is always a tiring time, J also would not sleep very well after 4am a month ago but now is much better. As they bulk up they sleep later and longer. At this stage in my opinion, it makes no odds if the room is too light or dark.

Bef, we love our gym, its now onto dc3 and looking well loved and worn but J spent half an hour gazing adoringly at the whale this afternoon. Even ds1 likes to climb underneath it

As for the bedtime routine, what the very sensible TYG says makes perfect sense. Can you try to move her 'bedtime' forward by 15 mins/half an hour every few days and keep on trying to wake her up at your preferred time?

We had a lovely day, perfect for picnicing (sp?) now keep your fingers crossed that the sun shines tomorrow for the re-scheduled sports day.

LG&T, hope Phim enjoyed her leavers disco

Julie - J had his BCG last week, there were no problems, he was fine and barely batted an eyelid, but did wriggle all over the place, so hope Archie's goes equally well.

Hi everyone

TYG thanks for the info. I will order some of the bags in time for going.

Archie survived the BCG with no ill effects I popped him on the boob while she did it to keep him calm.

Sorry you are having a tough time minipop and abbeylou. Hope it gets better for you.

LG&T I take my hat off you are truly supermum. If I had had to do all that I would be on the floor in a gibbering wreck by now.

Pebble hope your friend is ok.

I really feel for those having troubles getting lo's to sleep well. It must be knackering for you. On the other side though.
How long should a baby at 9 weeks be sleeping does any one know?
I'm not complaining as long as it's normal but Jorja is ALWAYS asleep. She wakes only to feed, bum change and then goes straight back to bed! She has about 10 mins in her bouncer around 6pm and the she's ready for bed again. I'm not sure I agree with waking a sleeping baby but should I be keeping her awake longer and having more play time with her?

Big stay put baby vibes heading towards rainy wales for you friend pebble.

AM, hope Jack is ok, sorry I missed you earlier.

We bath the kids at 7pm every night so by the time Ella is out and dry and dressed its 7.20pm. Feed and she is down by 7.40pm. A normal night lets her sleep until 4-5am and then she goes back down til between 7 & 8. She is normally awake for 1-1.5hrs before needing a snooze. This snooze can last between 45mins -2hrs. The she is awake for a couple of hours. She will then have another nap (length depends on what the previous nap was). She normally needs a feed and a cat nap at about 5-5.30pm.

We didnt have a routine with Jack at all. HE would be bathed in the morning and and night didnt go down til 10.30pm and would be up every 3 or so hours. It really helps having Jack in a routine now as we already have the skeleton for Ella.

Jack woke up this morning looking like a human dot to dot! They are everywhere! Hair, ears, under the chin, all over his little bits They are starting to itch now, so having to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesnt do any damage.

Ella had her best nights sleep 7.30pm-7am. I doont know how much of this was down to having had her 2nd batch of jabs yesterday.

Had a look on the next sale.... not a lot there really. A lot of the kiddies stuff had gone that i really wanted mind you i guess that saves me some pennies.

Hope you are all well

Anyone heard from SOH?

ITS sounds like a nightmare day, very trying when the lo's arent settled and you are trying to shop

AM sorry about J's Chicken pox, lets hope E doesnt get them just yet - at least she wont need the jab for them if she does get them

TYG sounds like an interesting read - havent even managed the baby whisperer yet - must get hold of a copy soon

MJB sorry J is suffering with her jabs, hugs to you both

Pebble sorry you are feeling worse, hope all goes well for you friend, how many weeks is she?

Abbey it may just be a glitch, hugs to you, hope she settles again - you will be fine in the hols

LW&L Good to hear you sounding so relaxed - Arlens jabs are 4 weeks latedue to being unable to get him registered and the surgery not taking him until he is registered - the nurse and hv both said it wasnt a problem, who do these receptionists think they are - re the another baby, I seem to remember you saying never again a few months ago lol!!

oh more to say but Arlen has woken, back later

oh its me lupins btw

Arlen is now 11lb 11, spoke to hv about his appetite, he has gone from 9th to 50th centile in a month - she said she could tell he was eating well and then she said if he didnt settle down then i could consider weaning in a couple of weeks, was quite amazed actually she said 6months was the ideal but some babies need something earlier and as long as you take it easy only 1-2 bland meals to start then they will be fine, didnt actually tell her i had been doing that for last few days, but feel a bit more justified in my decision - especially as yesterday he ate a whole jar of banana porridge

Am off on a mumsnet meetup today - will let you all know how it goes

Dp went to docs, she is keeping him on the same pills for another 3 weeks, however his suicidal thoughts are increasing in both frequency and strength it does say one of the side effects is that they will increase in the 1st few weeks,

TYG dont talk to me about baby clothes, didnt think i could get into boys stuff but he more clothes than mothercare!

Was thinking we had not seen SOH for a bit

Have a good day all, back later to report on meetup

Why is it when they have no school and i could potentially have an easy morning (compared to school run mahem) they all get up at the crack of dawn?????

They were all playing X Men this morning, each one was a different mutant (no costumes needed ) Even Hugs came in dressed as a dragon with bear paws on, very sweet. It is lovely when they all play together and reminds how nice it is to have 6 under 8 No really, i do mean that

It is absolutely heaving it down with rain, so no chance of throwing them all outside to play. This may hamper my cleaning plans for today, dh is home tonight and i like to project the image i cope well with out him Course if he read this i would be discovered in an instant!

No word from SOH...... i cant even text her as she dropped the phone in lemonade. Hope her and her friends little one is ok.

Poor babies with all the jabs, Beau gets his next week. PINKJENNY had Lexie's jabs in the week, she sent me a text afterwards saying "i will need years of therapy after that" PMSL..... She is currently struggling to keep Lexie cool while she wears her hip harness, must be a nightmare.

MrsJB i wouldnt wake J up to play with her, i would enjoy the sleep Jonah used to sleep all the time too, he still would given half a chance. Some just need their sleep more than others, lucky you!

A pic of the motley crew is on my profile