June 2020 Babies - newborn snuggles, recovery, milk and night feeds!

[LillianFullStop]

First post natal thread for June 2020 babies! Looking forward to seeing our birth club thread members here soon!

Anyone else little one found there thumb? Ivy is obsessed with hers will suck it all day if I let her I swear, she really intensely sucks it most of the time to settle her self which is fine but she seems to be doing it more and more. I'm worried I'm not entertaining her enough so she's bored.
The last few days have been a struggle with intense crying at feeding times pretty sure it's a random phase but it's so heart breaking having her scream at you. She's not suffered from colic particularly but is suffering I think from not pooping often. I have spoken to the doctor and nurse who both said it's normal for breastfed babies not to have a dirty nappy every day but I think it's upsetting her tummy only doing one or two a week. Today we had such a explosion it was everywhere it can't be normal 🙈

@Busylizzie85. Yes DS has recently found his thumb, well his fist really. I'm constantly trying to clean his hands and keep his nails short as I'm afraid of him cutting his gums. His nails grow like weeds!
DS doesnt always poo every day either but I have found after a bath he loosens up. I've also tried some baby massage which I think helps. Sometimes he will go three times in the day and then nothing for days. So hard to know what is right for them

@babbafett I wish my nails would grow as quickly as hers does it's a nightmare trying to keep them short! I started today rubbing her belly and cycling her legs get things moving so I might try a short session every day with her see if it helps xx

@Busylizzie85 I know. The long nails are wasted on them. And as for his eyelashes,oh my god I'd pay good money for them. Pregnancy had the same effect on me but not so much now. Hair falling out and nails breaking all the time!
I hope the massage works and your LO gets some relief.

@Busylizzie85 my little one is breastfed and is a twice a week kind of chap. All medical people I’ve asked have said it’s normal (although he has always been this way!)

If I can tell he needs to go I will do let cycling and gentle tummy massage.

Thanks @Magpiefeather I'm going to do more of the massage and cycling for sure help her along. She's so much happier this evening since she went!

@SRS1311 we’re on a similar timeline, my baby will be 7 weeks on Sunday but she was a week and a day late so she’s already in leap two as well. She’s not been grumpier so far, just really clingy. She’s also been napping more which is great, but all the naps are on me, which isn’t! She’s been smiling more and more and looking at my face in a lot more detail which is wonderful though.

@Busylizzie85 Jia discovered her fist, not thumb, a few days ago and is always stuffing it in her mouth and sucking on it. Makes it so hard to tell when she’s actually hungry or not.

@Magpiefeather wow twice a week, where does he store it all?! Haha. I have also heard that’s completely normal but my breastfed girl is a 6+ times a day baby and they’re usually not small either.

@UKtoSK the smiles are the best thing arent they? Certainly helps with the exhaustion! I have a bit of a grumpy baby normally so nothing too drastically different so far!

Finally we have her appointment to be registered on 3rd September.
Health check on tuesday & her first injections on 4th September.
I'll be so happy when she's officially registered. Dreading the first lot of jabs!

@Zoey92 me too

Aww that’s so exciting @Zoey92 I can’t wait until we can get Grace registered.

Grace had her first lot of jabs today. As expected she’s very snoozy.
Did anyone wake their babies to feed during the day post-jabs? She’s had a good amount of formula today so far, but just wondering if I should just leave her or try and dream feed/wake her.

@Gigitree I didn't wake DS but just kept an eye on his temperature. He slept through when he should have gotten his next dose of calpol and I dithered about wondering if I should wake him but in the end I waited until he woke up and he was fine. I'd say if she had plenty of formula during the day already she should be ok.

@SRS1311 I'd say he was very clingy and more grouchy the second week of the leap and became lazy with his feeding latch but has come out the other side a happier baby and slept for 7.5hrs straight last night

Ladies. Turns out that if I give my LO a bath at 7 and give him the boob, he actually can go to sleep around 9pm. My husband and I have been doing this for the last 4 days and managing to spend some alone time together. We live in a flat, so the room is next to the lounge. We keep an eye on him using the baby monitor camera. I still can't quite fully relax and keep staring at the camera, but this might be the beginning of getting our evenings back!

@Missgemini That's great news! What a treat. We have tried a earlier bedtime but our little miss insists on an 11pm bed time. We will persevere though! To be fair we haven't tried a bath time as early as 7pm, so we will try it.

@Missgemini @Magpie21 we are trying to work to getting to that routine so we can have a bit of an evening. I've been slowly bringing his bed time earlier so he doesnt notice and we have more of a chance that he will go down to sleep. At the minute his bath is at 20.15 and feeding at 20.30 and down at 21.00. Over next couple of weeks I'm hoping to get that to bath at 7.30! That will coincide with him being 8 weeks old which is hopefully when they start to settle more too.

I find the bath is the biggest thing that helps to relax him and signal that its night time. Sometimes before the bath he will be in "colic" mode and be grumpy and crying with no chance of sleep. As soon as he has a bath, pjs and then bottle he is a different baby..calm relaxed and completely knocked out! So I'd definitely recommend introducing a bath!

Thank you @babbafett she did end up waking about 30mins after I wrote that and had a good feed then so that’s good.

I honesty have no idea how/when to start getting her into a routine (once she’s over the recent immunisations of course) her nap times are all over the place, she doesn’t wake up at the same time each day so therefore her ‘bedtime’ is different each day. I really am struggling to see how you guys have managed to make ‘bedtime’ 7pm 🤯

She has been asleep now since 1.50pm - so 3hrs 45 mins and showing no sign of wanting to wake up yet.
So she will likely wake up and be really hungry, if I’m lucky I will have just enough time to bath her before she wants her bottle.

She woke up at 8am and has only had 2 x 30mins naps prior to this mega nap, so I don’t think her amount of total daytime sleep
Is unusual for a baby her age (9 weeks today)
She will typically have one sleep each day that is 3.5hours or more but when that is changes each day.

I’d love to have her in a routine for bedtime but I really am struggling to see how to implement it until she becomes more regular with her naps 🤷🏼‍♀️ Am I just dumb and missing something obvious?

@Gigitree I would be waking her after that length nap around 3.5 hours max personally give her bottle as she will be v hungry bath her, massage / story if you do it offer her another oz or 2 perhaps and bed for 7 x

If it helps @Gigitree we have no routine either! Benji barely naps some days and then days like today it feels like he's been asleep the whole day. We bath him ever other day but time changes depending on when he wakes up from his last nap (if he decides to have one!) I've started using huckleberry to predict nap times and help me start to structure his day a bit more but the bedtime thing is still beyond me at the moment!! 😬😬

@BabyBird20 does the huckleberry app give you predicted times for future naps/sleeps? I have been a bit crap at populating the data in it so far so I think maybe it doesn't have enough information yet.

Has anyone started to experience hair loss yet? If so how bad is it? I started seeing more hair in my hairbrush pretty much 2 weeks after giving birth but dare I say it hasn't been as bad as I'd anticipated. Perhaps it's gets worse a few weeks down the line. (8 weeks on Monday, formula feeding - if that has an influence). My hair never looked as healthy as it did in pregnancy! I have fine hair usually.

@Magpie21 yes it is pretty accurate with nap times on the days I manage to follow it! Or when I realise he's massively overtired and check the app and it says his ideal nap time was an hour ago 😬 I think at the 2 month mark it starts predicting nap times based on how long he has been awake and how long he slept for, so as long as I track when he fell asleep and when he wakes it will give me a prediction for a nap time between an hour or two after he wakes up if that makes sense? I'm not always very good at tracking but try to do it on the days I am home and not got much on!

Thanks @BabyBird20 that does help! Everything I’ve said says babies aren’t ready for a routine until 3 months so I was just going to wait until then to start, but then I keep seeing you guys on here and other mums saying they’ve got their LO’s into a routine so early and it makes me feel like I should be doing that too!

Everything I’ve read that should say**

@Gigitree same here, I won't ever have this chance to just sit and snuggle again as next time I'll have a toddler to look after too so I'm kind of letting him do what he wants. I've found in the last week or so he's naturally started to want to be put down more and has fallen asleep on other people/in his bouncy chair about 5 times which is a big step up from only sleeping on the boob! By 3 months (only 2 weeks argh!!) I might try a bit more routine. 🥰

We started to bath him every night from 3 weeks partly because it sort of pressed his reset button when he was fussy in the evenings and also because it helped us feel like there was more structure. We started bathing at between 8 and 9 and over time we've brought that to 6.30 to 7. He loves his bath and it seems to trigger bedtime calmness for him. We haven't missed a night of bathing even when we totally mistimed his naps and he didn't wake til gone 9. He's 11 weeks now and for the last 4 or 5 weeks he's gone to sleep straight after his feed after the bath. Last night he slept 7.30-2.20 then 2.40-6. The sleep stretches are slowly getting longer.

I didn't know about the routine thing not kicking in til 3 months. We just did it anyway because I needed structure to my day and it has worked for us. I expect that's a lot to do with Freddie's personality as much as anything though. You just have to do what you're happy with. A routine will come when you are ready x