Ttc first baby catch up with our babies!

[Fivebyfive2]

Just putting this on in case anyone wants to catch up? We're all at different stages, so might be able to help each other out?

@Delilah7 @RanchoRelaxo @MrsR16 @thumper59 @trashkitten10 @Bostonfern @crossfitgirl sorry I know I'm missing people, I'm blaming newborn brain!

I'll leave the link on the 'pregnancy' catching up thread xxx

Hopefully tonight will be better for sleep then ladies!

Today has been good, we saw my parents and went for a social distance walk. They brought their digital scales, I think joe is about 15 pounds 2 now, so still just about on his 50th centile 😀 Home now, chilling with hey duggie! Xx

Hi all! I'm sorry to hear that you've all been having a rough time with sleep, but I'm ecstatic to know it's not just Ethan! He decided that day time naps are just not his thing... 3 naps for the past couple of days and we're lucky if he's asleep for more than 40 mins... he's been a bugger tonight - was up for 4 hours before crashing for the magic half an hour and then up for another hour before finally crashing completely!

Any words of wisdom?!? 😂

@MrsR16, solidarity here! Joe has taken to cat napping recently, even on me he has a max of an hour when he used to have 2 sometimes. And he really fights sleep the last few days; I know we shouldn't, but we've resorted to getting him in the pram a bit more just to get him off! Tonight he was on and off me for half an hour before finally latching, coming straight off with a cry and just sort of rolling back into my lap, eyes shut, arms up, totally conked! He did give me 5 hours though and has just gone back down after only 15 mins. I'm just hoping we don't have another 4am party later 🙏

A friend of mine from NCT sent me some 'sensory sleep' guides that have apparently helped her baby. My dad is bringing the print outs over this week for us to read through. In 2 weeks Joe goes in his own room and I'll be able to leave him alone for his sleeps, so we're gonna start getting into better habits /routines (in theory) I could pm the pdfs to you if you want to have a look? Xxx

So funny how most of our posts are about sleep issues 🙈

@MrsR16 Daisy went months of waking up after half an hour in the day. And then randomly doing a one off 2.5/3 hour stint. No rhyme or reason as to why sometimes she could sleep longer 🤔 I read that around that 30/40 minute time is when they transition in their sleep and if they have been rocked/patted/fed/cuddled to sleep, this is when they realise that they're no longer being rocked/patted/fed/cuddled and they wake. Basically said not to do any of those things if you want decent sleep and put them down in this elusive tired but awake stage. All easier said than done!

@Fivebyfive2 Did Joe stay settled last night? Daisy is fighting sleep as well. She's now starting to babble so she will get herself all snuggled, eyes closing, yawning away then suddenly wide awake and shouting BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH and grinning. Repeat x467 times, add a few full rotations around the cot, a couple of tantrums and getting herself stuck upside down and back to front in a corner before actually giving in and sleeping. Give me strength 🤦🏻‍♀️

@Fivebyfive2 that would be great if you could! Anything to try and help! 😂 how did Joe do last night? Xx

@TrashKitten10 babies are funny things aren't they? I wish they'd all read the same instruction manual! 😂😂 I'd read that about their sleep cycle, but my problem I have is that Ethan simply won't go to sleep by himself (probably done it once in the last 2 months!) so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place! 🙈

@trashkitten10, ha ha the babbling is very familiar 😂 He wasn't too bad, woke for about 10 mins about 3ish but then woke at 5.25, had a feed and then pooped so that was that! Daisy rotating around the cot sounds hilarious, although I'm sure it is less so when you just want her to sleep!

Seeing the in laws today ladies, so no doubt I'll be on here this evening needing to vent 😂

Joe now does his Jimmy Carr laugh quite regularly, but only for his papa.. Typical!! I'll get that boy to laugh, by hook or by crook! Probably by falling over or something!

So much sleep talk haha! It’s the only topic of conversation on my NCT mums chat too, every morning it’s ‘how did they sleep last night?!’
I do strongly recommend the 7-7 sleeping routine book by Charmian Mead, worked wonders for us. It’s not an exact science and you just take the things from it that work for you. I was so strict on sleep from very early on as it’s impossible to ‘go with the flow’ with two very different babies! But they do both sleep through very often - Conor has slept through every night now since he was 13 weeks old (I’ll bugger myself saying that out loud now won’t I!!) and Ruairí usually goes 6:30-4:30/5 and just needs resettling and will then sleep til 6:30/7.
I really do recommend reading up on baby sleep, what they do and don’t need, etc (as @TrashKitten10 mentions if you always rock to sleep you’re making a rod for your own back!) as I found a lot of it so interesting; but things that worked for us:
EASY routine - eat, activity then sleep (Y is ‘you time’!!) - so they don’t have a feed to sleep association. Even the boys bedtime bottles we do earlier so there’s time to digest/wind, a bit of sensory play then up for bath and bed
Putting down drowsy but awake - this one is the killer and I’m always glad we started this early! But it’s the only way they learn how to fall asleep on their own. Ruairí nails this but Conor was a bit of a nightmare - you’ll have to listen to them cry a bit. But it works! We used to have a 2-min rule - if he was still crying after 2 mins we’d try and resettle.
Blackout - where they nap and sleep to be as dark as humanly possible - before we had the blind we even cello taped bin bags to the window!
Routine routine routine - bedtime bottle at the same time, bath at same time, bed at same time. If you read a bedtime story do it every night.
Well-fed babies sleep better - so tank them up!! We did this by if baby came away from the bottle I stop, sit them up, wind etc then offer again. I was amazed at how soon they started draining bottles by doing this!
Another thing which worked wonders was putting them in the nursery. We did this early as they outgrew the shared crib and we don’t have room for two cots in our bedroom. But the first night they went in they both slept through. They really seem to like the extra space. But obviously that has to be a personal choice.
Oh and noise!! White noise used to work quite well, wave sounds seem to do the trick these days but anything to drown out the other household/outside noises.

Hope any of that helps! It is hard, every single stage is hard. Trying to get Conor to learn how to fall asleep by himself/self settle nearly broke me on many occasions but you HAVE to persevere. It really will work if you keep at it - it can’t be coincidence that both boys have managed it!
Also - you will still have shit naps, awful nights, bad days. Generally the boys are good now but they’re also not robots and sometimes are just grumpy, cranky, whatever and we have a crap day. But I just try and keep with our routines and get us back on track.

And the one thing that has worked best for us - WINE. And lots of it!

The boys tried out the paddling pool yesterday. Safe to say they loved it!

Morning all!
So I managed to scare Finn by talking to DH last night when he was feeding. Cue a traumatised baba who only did 3 hours of broken naps yesterday.
Finally got him down at 9pm and he gave us a glorious 6 hours...followed by 2 1 hour stints. WHY??? My lord! Still feeling pretty good though - that’s the longest sleep I’ve had since he’s been here!
His reflux keeps disturbing his sleep though and he’s apocalyptic when you try to give him his meds...I really need to solve this to get it to work before it peaks at 4 months.

@Fivebyfive2 - so pleased you had a nice day and go Joe for the 50th centile! Sounds like you had a decent night, which is great and definitely needed for dealing with the outlaws 😂
Finn is back on catnaps which is rubbish. I’m currently pinned down to try and get him to catch back up. Similar position to you; he used to do hours on me now it just feels like a very light sleep.

@MrsR16 - very much with you, I’ve tried getting Finn to sleep when drowsy but tbh he’s rarely in that state and if I catch him like that, he’s instantly awake when I put him down.

@TrashKitten10 - totally relate with your nap story in that one day Finn just went to really long naps but he seems to have reverted again. Daisy sounds hilarious!!

@MrsEG - cross post! Any tips on the drowsy/awake thing? I honestly think I’ve only seen Finn like that when he’s waking up or poorly after his jabs!
His sleep cues of yawning are usually all I get. Sometimes a bit of flailing...

@MrsEG - forgot to say; the boys are gorgeous and what a great idea for a pool! Finn’s sun hat and screen have arrived so hopefully we’ll have some garden time today!

@ELW85 With naps the second you see those yawns you wanna be picking him up and putting him down for a nap. I get zero cues from Ruairí - sometimes he just falls asleep on the playmat!! But I also keep an eye on awake time too. Again it’s worth reading up on it but for the boys at the mo they should have 4 hours of naps a day and awake time’s no longer than 2 hours so if no one looks sleepy by then I put them down anyway! Ruairí will become drowsy with a dummy so that’s been our failsafe with him. Conor is the tricky one and I’ve tried every bloody settling technique haha, sometimes slowly rocking and singing to him works and I just wait for his eyes to droop and then put him down. Also rhythmic patting works nicely for him too. Sometimes nothing works - I put him down awake and he cries for two solid minutes then zonks out. But he stays down, so I’ve learned to live with it!!!

@MrsEG - thanks! I’ve ordered that book! Randomly Finn has stopped wanting to be boobed to sleep but will now want a dummy, so fingers crossed!
I don’t want to put him in the nursery yet though so gonna have to work on nap times in a fairly light room at the moment.

@ELW85 You can get this black out stick on sheet stuff to black out a bedroom if you wanted to or were still having trouble - some friends of ours got that as blackout blinds didn’t fit the window. This is obviously assuming you want to put him down for naps in his Moses basket/snoozepod etc in your bedroom - if he’s napping in the living room then yeah, that ones harder!! But it works a treat.
The book is fab - like I say, you can just take from it what you need. Try one technique a day kind of thing. It was a dream for us though! She is the consultant I had a phone chat with :)

Hi everyone!

Hope you're all enjoying the lovely weather and babies aren't too cranky in the heat.

Sleep and naps can become so obsessive can't they! I got myself in a right tizz about it all a few weeks ago. Bought a sleep book then worried I was doing everything wrong by feeding to sleep, letting her nap on me etc etc so I've put it away for now. My thinking is that as long as I'm happy and she's happy and healthy and it's working for us then we'll continue. Her awake windows are always much longer then what the books say so I've stopped timing them! She naps when she's tired, all babies are different.

Also if you're breastfeeding, your evening milk contains sleep inducing hormones so it's pretty natural to fall asleep whilst feeding.

@ELW85 Finn is still really tiny at the moment so please don't get too worked up about sleep routines yet he's still in fourth trimester and getting used to life on the outside. If it's any reassurance about reflux, any reflux material within 2 hours of feeding has a neutral pH so won't cause any longterm damage to him even if he finds it painful.

I've got a lovely whatsapp group chat with other doctor mums and the ones who are second time mums all agree that they didn't really pay much attention to daytime sleep first time round as they were always out and about at baby groups, cafes, visiting family etc. They say being stuck inside all day has made it much more obvious and easier to track when they're sleeping.

Esme is 11 weeks old now and really such a joy to be around. She's so alert and "chatty" and can be left to play in her gym for almost a whole episode of The Bridge which is our current lockdown viewing! She met her grandma and grandad for the first time (2metres away!) at the weekend and was so excited to see new faces it was wonderful. I honestly found the first 6-8 weeks so gruelling and didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped, but part of that was the huge pressure I put on myself to get her down for naps and do housework etc rather than just put my feet up and enjoy the cuddles!! Absolutely loving it now though and can't wait for everything to get back to normal so she can meet everyone else!

That was a bit of an essay!! Here's a couple of pictures of my (very big) wee girl!

@MrsEG - we’ve got the gro company blind for the nursery but he’s napping in his Snuzpod or on me at the moment. He does well to be fair in our room so I might just power through it with grey blinds.

@LikeTheFruit - I honestly can’t thank you enough for that post. I’d been losing my mind about the reflux and what it might do to him, so that is hugely reassuring! Thank you!
And I can totally relate to everything you said about how challenging essentially the first 12 weeks are. I’m only starting to find my groove and enjoy it now if I’m totally honest; 9 weeks in!
Yes, I’d been worried about Finn’s wake times too. I felt like he’d gone back a bit since his jabs but he’s varying from an hour to 1h20 so I’m just going with it. I guess it depends on what we base it on! If it was until he’s REALLY yawning it would be longer. I’m just desperate to make sure he’s getting enough stimulation for his development. What was reassuring though is that yesterday, he started chatting away to me more even during feeds, so I’m trying not to worry!
Today he seems pretty tired but he didn’t do that well napping yesterday so I’m not surprised.
Esme is absolutely gorgeous and I’m so pleased you’re doing so well!

@LikeTheFruit Ah she is absolutely beautiful! I agree the first two months are hell. DH was at work too from week 3-7 and I was on my own with two of them. Unsurprisingly ended up with PND - I really don’t think anyone warns you properly as to just what it’s really going to be like! Glad you’re feeling better. I remember 12 weeks being a magic age for the boys, they just became so alive! They weren’t just a total chore anymore haha!

@ELW85 so this probably makes me sound like a terrible mother but I Don’t ‘do’ much with them at all. We plonk them on the playmat, try and put rattles in their hands. They’ve been in the little tent and paddling pool outside. But a lot of awake times me and DH just have one each on our lap and we chat and sing to them. Most mornings I stick them in their swings infront of Baby Sensory on YouTube for half an hour so I can eat. And they’re hitting all their dev milestones! Well, they suck at tummy time, but whatever, I’m just letting them figure it out in their own time!
I had the BabySparks app but was obsessing about them not being able to do things so just deleted it. Remember if we weren’t in lockdown loads of their awake time would be spent just in Grandparents arms, sat in the pram in cafes, in the car, etc.

@MrsR16, I have pm'd you 🙂

@LikeTheFruit, aaahh Esme is grand I know I've said this before but I absolutely love her name 😍

@ELW85, I was similar to @MrsEG at the 9 week stage, it's pretty much just waving things at them and chattering! We're at a tricky stage with Joe at the moment, very bitwixed and between... Getting bored of things being waved around, but just not quite able to fully sit / move how he wants to. Honestly I think that's partly why he's been fussy recently, a bit frustrated maybe?! But he loves to watch the world go by and when we read to him he really takes notice now 😀

@MrsEG, Joe absolutely loathed tummy time, it was ridiculous! I literally had to lie right next to him patting and talking to him. Now he's a bit bigger and stronger he loves it! I put Joe in front of a 'relaxing' baby sensory video, he literally sighed, smiled and did a giant poo 😯 Haven't tried it since 😂He likes Hey Duggie and Love Monster on cbeebies though xxx

@MrsEG @LikeTheFruit - thanks ladies I really needed to hear that!
You’re right, lockdown has me drained and overly focused I think.
And Finn is AWFUL at tummy time - he’s just has a meltdown there after 1 min! We didn’t have it though so I’m trying not to freak out!
And nobody us close to being a bad mother! God knows how you do it with twins - you’re amazing!!

I just wanted to pop in and say sorry I'm not posting much these days! I think of you all regularly and will aim to pop in from time to time, but I'm just not going to put the pressure to keep up too strictly on myself.

In terms of sleep, I have to agree with @MrsEG - we were having a bit of a mare with M. She would literally only go to sleep by either being fed or rocked and would wake up after 40 mins unless we held her. I think in my last post here I said I'll just go with the flow...but I quite quickly changed my tune

We read The Baby Whisperer (the one with solution in the title) and it has completely changed things for us. We now follow the EASY routine and she has had a morning nap, afternoon nap and a short cat nap on the evening dog walk. She goes down to bed for 7.30pm and usually doesn't make a peep until 10pm dreamfeed. Then she usually wakes once for a feed around 3am, then that's it until wake-up time which is 6.30/7am.

Things that worked for us:

• Stopping feeding/rocking to sleep cold turkey
• Introduced shh/patting and pick up/ put down
• If she wakes at the 40 mins mark, don't just give up and get her up - try and resettle back to sleep (9/10 it works)
• Louder white noise machine (we had a myhummy bear before but it's very quiet)
• Putting her upstairs in her nursery for day time naps (it's darker and cooler than our south facing bedroom)

She's adapted to it really well and I'm much more sane now as we've got our evenings back. Like @MrsEg says, you can just take what you want from the sleep books and make it work for you. But what made me determined to get on it now was the thought of having to rock a great big 10 month to sleep...she already weighs a stone, my back would be done in!

@purplefig - lovely to hear from you; I was thinking of you today!
Yes I totally agree - I can’t think of rocking Finn to sleep indefinitely! I do want to try the putting him down/shushing etc but I’ve tried before and I’m not sure it’ll work - I think he’s maybe a bit too young, but it’s probably more me being lazy!
Finn’s naps haven’t consolidated yet but I’d love to get there with him; hopefully he’ll have a longer waking window soon.
It’s great that you’ve got more structure - did it take long to get M used to the lack of rocking?

@ELW85 Thank you! I'm glad that's put your mind at rest a bit. In terms of stimulation, Esme will go in baby gym or bouncer when we're eating etc. I talk to her a lot during nappy changes, she really likes it if I say la la la really slowly (laaah laaaah laaaaaaah) and will try to talk back. She also really used to hate tummy time on floor so often I do it on me. I just lean back so semi reclined with her on top of me. Still really young for books but I bought a couple of these which she loves
-totally mesmerises her and make nappy changes easier cause she stops kicking her feet in her poo 😂😂😂

Baby Sees Spots and Dots https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1909763020/ref=cmswwrwaaapiii_hWaTEbD5TFM3P

@MrsEG Aww thank you! Your boys are gorgeous! They are so different as well! Totally agree, it's like this great big secret how hard it actually is! Like why did no one tell me?! 😂😂

@Fivebyfive2 aww thank you! Loving that Joe let's you know what he thinks via poos 😂😂

@purplefig hey! glad you're doing well with more of a routine in place. Our next big task will be starting a bedtime routine but think I'm going to wait another month first!

Save my sanity Charlotte has not slept all day she's fed pretty constantly since about 11 😭 is she cluster feeding?
Every time we put her down she cries

Am I right in thinking she's 2 / 3 weeks old? Absolutely normal, she's getting her order in, building supply! Xx

Is she still doing normal amount of wet and dirty nappies? Xx