The March-ers 2019 - Baby Talk #3

[Angelmiracle]

Thread 3 mamas

@Brobot hahah no sorcery just that he's got my personality in that he really hates being touched whilst he's asleep 😂 (I am not a spooner!) so after I've fed him I might need to rock him for a few minutes but 9 times out of 10 he screeches and literally tries to kick himself out of my arms and only settles when I put him down and leave him the hell alone ha.

If I'm being honest I've been incredibly luckily with his sleep since he was born. He's naturally a fairly decent sleeper, I've not had to do too much for it to happen. The only real issue I have is that he's not much of an eater so I think I'll be feeding in the night until he's eating properly. But when I hear about people with multiple wake ups, I really can't complain about that!

@Brobot How did your experiment go? Did it do the trick?

@Sheeni nope 🤣🤣. He woke at the usual 45 minute mark and I had to take him into bed. However, instead of waking in a panic he woke and started chatting to himself before getting annoyed which is an improvement lol. It's the small victories eh lol. I'm thinking if I at least do the same thing each night eventually he will go longer each time before waking (if we can EVER get past the bloody 45 minutes!!).

Oh my, I've now got loads of half written posts on my phone for this thread but they get out of date quicker than the latest news from Parliament which is quite some feat at the moment! Baby is currently out with my mum so I can actually do some replies.

@BadBadBeans your description of the village fete reminds me of the competitions at ours we used to enter when I lived at home... best dressed vegetable!! congratulations on your win!

@sheeni as a SW Londoner I'm very familiar with Waterloo so feel your pain... don't use the baby changing facilities there as some (clearly childless) idiot put them UPSTAIRS with no way to get there beyond lugging your pushchair up with you. The Royal Festival Hall opposite is much more baby friendly. i hope your holiday is going well!

@melissa112 I can't believe you're still watching George when he naps, that's dedication!! We found that our baby was so much more comfortable in the bigger bed and it wasn't the ordeal that we expected it to be - we literally moved him on a whim one night for a few hours, he ended up staying there all night and then that's his new room! What baby monitor do you have? Our main issue is that he's now upstairs from us so he feels really far away... and it's sad that the Chicco has been demoted to a very expensive clothes maiden once again.

@brobot sorry to hear your master plan didn't give the results you wanted! Question: is he completely inconsolable at the 45 min mark? I ask as our baby often really screams for less than a minute at the 45 min mark, but then 9 times out of 10 resettles and whenever we've been in we don't think he's even awake. Now we know this we just wait it out and only go in if he's still crying after a minute or two.

@WhatALearningCurve your description of placing the baby monitor being like an episode of the Crystal Maze made me laugh. Speaking of, how good are the new episodes? I really like Richard although not a fan of the megacrystal or the new zone.

We've started solids in the last week so it really feels like he's grown into a little boy rather than a baby.... how did I have a 6 month old?! The best thing he's "eaten" so far is baguette which I wasn't actually going to give him as I thought it'd be too hard but he stole it from me. It's been quite anticlimatic in some ways as we spent ages getting prepared and the first time he "ate" a crumb and spat out everything else after swelling it around in his mouth. However we've now been doing it for almost a week and yesterday he did swallow things, so he seems to be learning. @Wineandchoccy how is your baby eating actual meals so fast?? what are you doing that I'm not? I find it really hard to get him to eat just one food and I did him a few bits of pasta but he just played with them so I can't envisage ever giving him a bit of our curry (for example) right now!

@WhatALearningCurve haha your crystal maze monitor challenge made me laugh! How did it go in his own room? Sounds like hes a great sleeper!

@Brobot not that it helps solve anything but I did read that their sleep cycles are only 45minutes long so after that they go back into the lightest sleep which probably explains why he is waking up. Would he take a dummy at tha point if he's just babbling rather than upset or does he not like them at all?

@cardboard33 haha dedicated is one word for it. My friend thinks I'm silly for still sitting here. He turns 6 months on Tuesday so not sure what big event I think will happen then that will mean I feel ok to leave him! We have the summer infant monitor. I've attached a pic of the room as it is currently. We need to lower the cot but still not sure I could see him with the monitor on those chest of drawers. The room is so small! I have to sit on the ottoman while he naps.. so uncomfortable! What you can see of the room is basically all it is. Behind me is the door and the cupboard which has the water tank in.

Sounds like your LO has done great with moving into his room. I think I'll feel the same with him being far away when we're downstairs in an evening. Sounds like weaning is going well too. What did you start him off with? I read that it's more about playing with textures and mouthing things at the mo rather than eating before 1 year but sounds like he is already starting to swallow stuff which is great. I did laugh at the baguette! Prepare to never be able to eat in peace again! We start on Tuesday and he's already a pain for trying to grab my food.

@Cardboard33 hmmm to be honest I never let him get to the point of full blown crying because I'm scared it will be impossible to settle him at that point. Perhaps I'm causing this issue by being too quick in lifting him. I just seem to be incapable of letting him get upset as my heart breaks when I hear him get genuinely upset after his babbling. My heart twinges when I hear the little panic in his voice that I'm not there. I have let it go a bit longer before but he just gets more upset (not inconsolable) but I always intervene at that point. I just cant imagine him settling himself at that point. 😩😩

@melissa112 yes I read that before about their sleep cycles but if that's the case then why does every baby not do it?? Lol. And why is it just that first cycle? After that he seems to sleep for longer.

@melissa112 I don't stay in the room while he naps. With my eldest I used to follow a recommendation to stay on the same floor of the house while he naps, but these days I just wander up and downstairs as needed, and check on him every ten to fifteen minutes. I haven't even used the monitor because I can hear him if he cries, and I prefer to physically check on him in the day. You do get more relaxed as time goes on. It will get easier, I promise!

@cardboard33 there was a knitted vegetable category! I can knit but declined to enter - felt like such a waste of time!

@cardboard33 I love Richard ha, but it's still not the same as the original.

I'm so impressed that your baby is demolishing the solid. Mine has no interest whatsoever! I have a lot of issues with eating that started when I was weaned so i'm praying it's just the start of weaning, not a sign he's taking after me. ATM i'm just letting him play with the food to get used to it. Tried finger foods and spoon feeding yesterday - his mouth was clamped up. Went to wipe his hands and he whipped the wipe out of my hands and into his mouth. I'm fairly certain my child is broken ha.

@melissa112 to be honest it depends what day of the week it is, Tuesday for example he didn't actually sleep that well after about 1am and woke up for the day at 5am. Last night he was a nightmare and woke up every 2 hours until midnight and then slept from half 12 till 6am. Which because i'm in work today was actually quite useful. I think most of this is getting used to the room though so i'm hoping a few more nights and we'll be back to one wake up. I'm lucky in that I can happily sleep for 10 hours given the chance but i'm actually more than happy on 4 or 5 hours sleep. I'm just waiting for the day I can stop the dreamfeed because I love getting into bed early in winter and just watching tv ha. Feels redundant to do it when I know that at 10 I have to sort everything out

Had to post that fast as J cried out in his sleep! He was still asleep though, win.

@melissa112 also your nursery looks beautiful. Beaauuuuutiful. I dream of having such a calm clean space in my house. Unfortunately nobody else is interested in being tidy! So I end up tidying up for four, which is frankly Sisyphean because by the time I've got one place clean, someone else has messed up somewhere else!

@cardboard33 I do think some babies just go for solids more than others. Just keep presenting him with food - he'll get it eventually. J is one week away from 6 months so I tried him in his highchair today. He kept slithering down on the slippy cushioned insert and getting frustrated, bless him. He's sitting unaided on the floor beautifully now, but I guess the highchair doesn't allow for the 'gnome' seated position (he looks so like a little gnome when he's sitting!)

[Edited by MNHQ: identifying]

@melissa112 his first food was banana and a slice of bread... although since the baguette incident yesterday I've decided we should give him crustier bread because he can hold it better. He seems to like eating better if it comes from our plate rather than his (typical) but so far he's had banana, bread (plus baguette), peach, cucumber, sausage, carrot and broccoli. I think you've got the same highchair as us (the Joie Mimzy LX) and we've found the tray table to be too high so we've taken it off and pulled the high chair close to the table, lowered the seat so it's level with the table and he then eats directly from there. It's much messier but he seems to be able to grab things more easily so "eats" more as a consequence. Yeah, we've been told to treat food as a complement to milk until he's one rather than a replacement although the health visitor did make me laugh yesterday as she asked how weaning had been going (we're literally like 6 months and a couple of days) and I said we'd only just started given he's only just turned 6 months (as per their recommendations) so he wasn't really swallowing that much and she was like "yes, well the more practice you give him the better he will be, so you just need to do it more!" and I was like yes, we will, but he's LITERALLY just old enough so it's not like I've been doing it for a month and am saying this to you!! At the talk we went to at the children's centre they said to only try them once a day initially but she said that if you do baby led weaning it's better to do it more often than that as then they get better at swallowing. We did it twice yesterday and have made a decision to avoid "feeding him" after about 4pm because we did it a few days ago around 6pm and he was very unsettled that night whereas last night we stopped around 4pm and he had the best night sleep ever... although maybe that's just a coincidence!

@brobot hmm, it's SO tricky isn't it? I asked the question as my baby literally screams out as if you're murdering him around the 45 min/hour mark, but it's only for less than a minute (usually much less, around 10 seconds) and initially we used to rush upstairs to check on him. Then we realised he wasn't actually awake when he makes these screams so when he cries (he usually does a couple of big screams then goes quiet) now we wait for a minute or two after this to see if he will continue making noise (meaning he's actually awake) or if he's in fact asleep. Even if he's awake I think it's fine to leave him if he's just doing a grumble talk, as my baby has very distinct cry meaning "I'm really upset/I've got myself stuck/I need help" versus his "I'm a bit annoyed but not actually unhappy so I'm just going to grumble/talk about it for a bit and then I'll go to sleep" cry .... if it's the latter, we just leave him to it and he will go to sleep on his own after 5 mins or so. With naps, I've also realised it's good if he's crying and being difficult when I'm trying to put him down as it means I've got it right and he will again usually go to sleep on his own very quickly once he realises it's sleepy time.

@cardboard33 good point about the table. I've got
The Joie multiply and I think the table is just a bit too far away from him. Only issue is I've got a high table with bar stool type seats but I might see if I can level it with the kitchen units or something.

@Brobot I do let mine cry sometimes. Not overly so but just when I know it's his "I want some attention even though it's bedtime cry". I try and give myself a specific task - like I won't go in until I've put this washing away / emptied the dishwasher / eaten my tea. Sometimes he calms down other times he doesn't and that's when I know to go on.

@brobot I think my LO is quite similar to yours sleep-wise and I honestly don't think he has any other cry in the nighttime than "I'll scream until you pick me up and put a tit in my mouth. Do. It. NOW!" So if you feel you don't really know what @cardboard33 means, you're not the only one.

My "holiday" is going as well as could be expected. We're leaving MIL and her House of Smoke tomorrow. Can't wait, although I'm not looking forward to the long drive to my home village (or my mother's cooking). My LO has been so amazing so far. He is such a social baby, enjoying all the different people. He's somehow surviving on two naps a day most of the days. And he's starting to "creep" already, so I think we might not be too far from actual crawling now.
I went to a pretty brutal massage today, the guy's told me to take it easy for a few days. So obviously it's taken an hour of on/off rocking to get the boy to sleep tonight. I'm in a lot of pain right now

@melissa112 your nursery is so beautiful! I sort of remember when DS1's room was like that, tidy and organised. Poor DS2 has piles of our crap taking up half his room. He's very much the second child haha.

@WhatALearningCurve I like your broken child haha. We're only 2 days into weaning and DS2 has swallowed a tiny amount of what we've given him (so far peas and carrots) but mostly likes chewing the empty spoon. DS1 was absolutely not interested in weaning when we started and barely ate anything for what felt like ages. Once he got going properly, he started eating anything and everything - yours will definitely get to the curry @cardboard33 some just take longer. Despite not having tried much, DS2 is definitely already much more interested than DS1.

We're a couple of weeks off of 6 months but he was so ready to eat (the death stares we've been receiving while eating in front of him!). Am I right that finger foods shouldn't be until 6 months though? Can anyone who knows tell me why as well? I think he'd really do well with feeding himself as currently everything in his hand is shoved into his mouth.

@BadBadBeans I'm glad you've got your appointment and that baby is taking well to bottles.

We had an awful night last night. We've now progressed to waking up 4 times from when he goes down at 6pm (still trying to move this back!) Til we get up anytime after 6am. Usually he has a feed, falls asleep feeding and goes back down with no issues. Last night I think he was up for an extra 2 feeds and after 2 of them, woke up grizzling every 5-10 minutes for an hour or so. I'm so tired, I'd just about nod off when he'd wake so would put his dummy back in, get back into bed, nod off and then he'd wake up again. I feel almost sick with tiredness today and the boisterous 3 year old isn't helping haha. I think we need to try not feeding him every time tonight so DH is going to be in charge of some of the wakings to hopefully give me a break.

@jenfur I think it's closer to "around 6 months" for finger foods. If your little one is ticking off the other signs he's ready, I think it's OK. Some people say it's because the baby's gut is "open" until then, but to be honest, I really don't think it magically closes exactly on 6 month mark. Also seen some studies that the open gut thing isn't really true - it mostly "closes" in the first few weeks and after that the changes are really really small.

Evening ladies, I hope you're all doing well. We've had. Busy couple of weeks but have finally finished the nursery; though LO won't move in for another month or so. Weaning is going well; she eats like a dog though - just shovels it all in 🤦🏼‍♀️. I'm doing mostly baby led but we've had some purées as well as I figure it's no different than soup or yoghurt. I'm no longer on maternity leave - 3 weeks of Annual leave and I'm back in work. Trying to make the most of every second. Here's a pic of Missy in her door bouncer. How is she 6 months old already?!

@Brobot hmm that is a difficult one. Does be go to bed at the same time each night? Sounds silly but have you tried putting him to bed 45 mins later? Maybe he sees the first bit as a nap and his main sleep starts later. Tough one though for sure.

@BadBadBeans that's brilliant news that you can get seen soon. I'm so glad you're not having to wait 6 months after stopping bf! Sounds like J is doing really well too on the bottles. Haha George does the same with the bottle grabbing.

Thank you for the compliment on his nursery. To me it seems rather bare and unfinished but it is quite peaceful aside from these bloody creaking floorboards. Ha I feel.the same way about the rest of the house as you do. We have DSS every other weekend and most of the school holidays and when he is here I just give up on tidying until he's gone or let DP sort it.

@WhatALearningCurve are you back in work or just a KIT day? I'm sure once he's used to the new room he will become more settled overnight. How has he been since the other day? Oh and yes, nothing better than sitting in bed all cosy while its rainy and wintry outside!

@cardboard33 hows LO getting on the past few days with his food? I did laugh at your health visitor. I mean it's all well and good to say that if youve been weaning months but a few days! Yes we have the same high chair. We start weaning tomorrow but we did pop him in there last week I think to sit with us while we washed up and I remember thinking the tray was quite high..he's quite a tall baby as well but it made him look tiny. I'll have to see if I had it on the lowest setting but if you're having the same issue then guess they just need to grow into it. What a pain!

@Sheeni glad you made it through the smoke house! LO sounds like he's having a great time with all the new people. Hope you have a lovely time on the rest of your holiday, and have recovered from the massage!

@Jenfur haha behind the cot are piles of crap that need moving too. We move the things into DSSs room when he leaves on a Sunday then have to scramble round and move them back on a Friday when he comes and inevitably they just end up in LOs nursery hidden by the cot again! I think i did read that finger foods should be 6 months, something to do with their ability to chew but I cant be sure. Theres a list of readiness signs, I think sitting up unaided, able to bring food to their mouths and losing the tongue thrust. Not sure what that last one is. Oh gosh your night sounds so tiring, hope you got a better sleep since then!

@HidCat oh she is so adorable! What a gorgeous big smile! I agree, time is going scarily fast! Haha sounds like she has really taken to weaning!

To avoid adding to my already long essay above.. George is doing naps alone from today and the first part of the evening before we go to bed will he in his cot alone upstairs rather than downstairs with us. Still not ready for him to move out overnight. Is it weird that I feel so nervous about it? He's 6 months on Wednesday so 2 days can't make a difference right? The thing is, we're really disturbing him by having him downstairs. We're having to sit in the dark almost silently (since 4m sleep regression, before that he slept through anything and we could even hoover round his crib!). He wakes up loads at the slightest noise and I think it is affecting our relationship in a small way. DP is at work all day, once LO is down for the night we can barely speak for fear of waking him, then we go to bed. I do think it's time for him to go upstairs. I'm so so worried about SIDS though. Please tell me I'm being over paranoid now at this age and it's ok to move him? He'll probably not last much longer in our room overnight either as we have a snuzpod and don't think it'll be long before he starts pulling himself up. I just feel a bit teary when I think of him being there alone..

@melissa112 I'm back in 2 days a week. I thought I was going to hate it but if I'm honest - I love it. I hate being away from baby but I know that it's making me a better mum because it makes spend more quality time with him when I'm not in work. If I'm being brutally honest it also gives me 2 nights a week where the 2 hours before bedtime are totally focussed on me playing with him rather than just being exhausted and counting down to bedtime.

I know how you feel about him being up there alone. I was completely the same - I know you don't want to put him in his own room yet but I can't say enough how much better we're both feeling now I've done it. We're not both waking each other up with noise and he's learning to self settle because I'm not awake and up with every little noise. The few hours of sleep I'm getting between wake ups are proper sleeps and even baby seems to have lost his restlessness period.

Even just taking him up at night for bed before you go will allow you to feel like you've got a bit of your evening back and will remind you that you're still you - you're not just baby keeper now!

@WhatALearningCurve that's great that the new room is working so well! Sounds like you are both getting more quality sleep which can only be a good thing. I completely know what you mean about being reminded that you are still you. I went to Sainsbury's with my mum earlier and left LO with DP as he's off work and it was nice to pootle round at a leisurely pace. How exciting my life is haha.

We tried two naps alone today. The first he lasted 40 mins but I now think he only woke as he had a poo. The second I woke him accidentally. Just fed him and hes asleep on me so about to put him in for a few hours. Ahhh. Its so dark and lonely in here and I feel so apprehensive now the night is here! Do you feed before bed?

I normally hold him up on me after a bottle and he snuggles in and goes to after fairly upright so he wont throw up milk. He always falls asleep. Now I'm paranoid about him choking on milk? To be fair it's rare that he will be sick once he's asleep but now I'm wondering how I can ever put him down drowsy as his milk will still be sitting on his stomach ? Am I overthinking this?

Sounds like work is going well too. I bet it's nice to have a brew that doesnt go cold! I only want to go back 3 days a week but not sure whether they will let me!

I normally hold him up on me after a bottle and he snuggles in and goes to after fairly upright so he wont throw up milk.

^ meant to say....I normally hold him up on me after a bottle so he wont throw up milk.

@melissa112 mine used to be really sickly as well but it's definitely calmed down now and happens rarely. From what I've read into as well it happens less and less as they get older. I literally give him a bottle and then put him in the cot. He's not thrown up at night since he was a proper baby so I think they're at an age now where they can handle it better?

@WhatALearningCurve thanks, you've made me feel better. I'm literally sat next to the monitor watching it haha. His eyes just opened and I felt this huge bit of guilt that he woke up and it was dark and no one was there. He seems to be going back to sleep though and no crying or sounding upset so will have to be strong and stay down here! I hope it'll get easier.

@melissa112 please don't think you're alone in any of this. I'm literally glued to my monitor. My eyes hurt sometimes from staring trying to detect his chest moving hah.

Also - how creepy is it when they're eyes open and they stare directly at the camera in the dark ha

To all of you who have LOs in their own room.. how do you get them off to sleep? G will only sleep if you're laying next to him and shushing & patting him. Which I obviously won't be able to do once he's in his own cot. (We're planning on putting him in it this week at some point!)