August 2021 Babies - From Santa to Solids, Hohoho!

[PurplePansy05]

Here we go again!

I'd do another delightful intro, alas I've lost count which thread this is now and we all know our LO's names anyway 😁

So instead I will just say, Merry First Christmas together to you and your LOs! 🎄❤🎁

May the sleep regression pass as soon as they see Santa later this week...

...May they love weaning and may our kitchens survive...

...May 2022 be full of blessings for them and for us ❤❤❤

Oldcomers and newcomers welcome, as always! 🥰

This is extremely trivial and wouldn’t even be a thing if my MIL wasn’t annoying and cheeky 24/7 but… when Freddie was born she kept saying ‘so what am I?’ like that was the biggest deal ever, when I’m just trying to survive the visit and recover from the section. We said ‘gran’ since we’ve both only ever had grans so that would be the obvious one. I don’t know whether gran is more of a Scottish thing, feel like grandma is maybe used more down south.. don’t know 🙈 but anyway.. we made it clear it was gran. At her birthday, sent a text and a card both calling her Gran from Freddie. She insists on saying grandma about herself when she sees him (which is hardly ever) and the last time I saw her I said ‘gran’ quite bluntly because I thought she hasn’t forgot what she’s called, she’s doing this on purpose now. She then said ‘oh yeah, gran’. She texted the other day saying love to Freddie from grandma. Again, I let it wash over me but I’m like she knows that’s not what she’s called and she’s made that up herself because my partner never had a grandma as a child. Sure enough on the card and Christmas presents…. ‘From grandma’ 🙄 If it was anyone else it wouldn’t bother me at all but it’s the fact she’s been told what she’s called and is persisting with this name! I feel like out of spite I’m now absolutely determined it will be gran and never grandma 😂

Ah thanks for not making me feel like I'm being unreasonable. Sometimes I feel like I'm being over fussy for no good reason but I'm just trying to make sure we're all as comfortable as we can be.

We can bring our own travel cot, it's just a squeeze in the car and will cause arguments with OH when I insist we take it. But I will insist. I'll just have to be unpopular with his mum who will not understand why I'm bringing our own cot.

Apart from that there isn't much to be done about the situation. I've also still got my cough! The drive home will be interesting with no sleep between us.

@purplepansy I wish I could fake a positive lateral flow test lol. OH wouldn't be too impressed though.

I meant actually lying about having it, with your OH in on it @Ready2020 . I've become unscrupulous when it comes to protecting the peace of my own family!

you have to decide if it's worth the battle of making yourself unpopular, as sometimes it definitely is. - preach, @biscuitcat, preach. 100% agree, I think this sums up a mother's modus operandi very well👌 xx

Oh that's funny, don't grandparents normally choose their names? They have in our family except where there were already grandchildren so they already had one. Or I've heard of them having names picked by toddler mispronunciation. Two of DS1's grandmothers (he has four due to step parents!) are Nana/Nanny which I never used and was strange to me but that's what he calls them.

It's always Nan or Nana here, I wonder what DS comes up with 😄 xx

One is Grandma and one is Nanny here. They both picked for themselves too, but we weren't particular about any tbf.

@Ready2020 @PurplePansy05 totally agree on the snoring thing. Normally we have the option of one of us moving to the spare room but we don't have that atm. My mum and her partner sleep separately because her DH snores so loudly, so Christmas Eve night I had to sneak in next to my mum 😂😂 as there was nowhere else to go! Christmas Day night we were on the sofas at my IL's and he wasn't close enough for me to kick and nowhere else to move to either! Thankfully after the initial disruption I was pretty dead to the world for the rest of the night!

@Ready2020 oh they sounds really tough. I would hate is as DS2 is still up every 2 hours for a feed (like clockwork here, bang on 2 hours EVERY SINGLE TIME) is there no way you could just visit for the day and not sleep over? Surely your mil understands that it’s because you don’t want to keep the whole house awake with a baby in the night? It’s a difficult situation isn’t it!

It’s nanny here too for my DS1, but we weren’t bothered about that he wanted to call his grandparents, or what they wanted to be called, after all they are the ones being called it. 😂

@PurplePansy05 think we are going to try formula tonight before bed in the hope that maybe he will sleep longer. Feeling guilty about it though and not sure why. We will see.

@Magik01 I understand that, I felt really guilty at the beginning too because we started off EBF and introducing any formula at all wasn't my first choice so I found that difficult. You don't have to commit to this forever and it might not improve Isaac's sleep or he might not like it. Who knows. Or, it might just be a huge help to you and him in terms of getting good quality sleep. I think it's worth a go, look how long you've perservered with EBF, a non-sleeping baby and managing two children! That's so challenging. You don't need to be a martyr to still be a great mum Let us know how it goes. If it's of any help, over Christmas, I've EBFed again after a while just because I wanted to and he slept a couple of hours less past two nights, but he was perfectly content and I had no supply issues. Also I don't know what your plan is but I think we'll do formula past 6 months + weaning and maybe one BF per day, we'll see. For us this will work best in preparation to him going to nursery when he's 9-10 mo. Depending on what you're thinking introducing formula now might be quite helpful from this point of view as well?

Anyone else disappointed with the Next sale this year? I thought it was due to start yesterday, wrong, it started online on Christmas Day 😑 By the time I looked, all the nice bits were sold out. However, I just spent £39 in Matalan on jumpers, Christmassy outfits and a few other bits, saved £27 so not bad. I find they tend to have some good ranges especially for boys. xx

My mum gets a mispronouncing of granny by ds so I'm guessing dd will call her that as it seems to have stuck. I'm not even sure how ds came up with it as he can say granda perfectly fine and always has yet granny got mispronounced.
Dh parents get the Danish, the words literally translate as dads dad and dads mum - farfar and farmor.
Dds sleep is not great and last night she was up every hour from 2-7am

My DD rolled over today! First time. She did it 3 times. That's it really lol.

Merry Christmas everyone and thanks for the new thread. I’ve been absent for a long time as honestly life has just been so manic I’ve not had the spare time. I’ve just had a big catch up on the thread.

I’m lurking just not able to respond as much these days! Mainly because I’ve all but stopped bfing (in fact I got my period for the first time yesterday which was a bit of a bugger!!)

Quick question for those who use dummy’s. We started using one for sleep and now he is totally reliant on it. But now he wakes up whenever it falls out. He also pulls it out a lot. He’s not able to put it back in yet so I’m waking so much in the night to plug it back in. He’s not feeding in the night and goes 11-6/7 without a feed so he’s not hungry but some nights will just be wide awake for an hour or more. He can’t fall asleep without the dummy so I have to be awake until he eventually keeps it in long enough to fall asleep.

Do they get the hang of finding it and putting it back in soon?! Or should we just ditch the dummy altogether? So annoying that he’s awake but I’m not even feeding in the night!

I take it out of his mouth as soon as he's completely asleep and always have. He'd occasionally wake up and want a dummy but very rarely in the night, more so during the day if he's napping. His naps aren't exactly long enough for me to always take the dummy out

How did you give up bf, @wimbler? I'm guessing one doesn't just go cold turkey to avoid mastitis etc, did you do it gradually? xx

Yes I think most choose it for themselves and all the other ones have (3 sets of grans/papas and a great gran), we have all sorts of variations but grandma here is quite formal I’d say, none of my friends have a grandma either so we said gran from the start but they could choose whether they wanted their second name after it or what since he has so many. The rest have pretty much just picked themselves but out of principal with her I’m not calling her it 😂 she’s so cheeky it’s unreal so I’m just digging my heels in about this

Also a bit miffed at the usual bag of tat I got from her, I get the exact same thing every year. Not meaning to sound ungrateful but I’d just rather she got me nothing and got something else for Freddie than clutter for the cupboards that fills an entire bag but has cost her about a fiver. She requests a very specific large gift every year though and my partner runs away out and buys her it. The first year when I hadnt long met her I did his family’s shopping/wrapping and wrapped a nice gift all beautifully with ribbons etc. It was lovely and we had not long bought the same thing because it was so nice. She opened it, said nothing then while we were at my mums for dinner that night she phoned him. I could hear him running away into the other room and when he came back he said she wanted to have the cash instead. So he trailed away up to her house the next morning, took the gift back and gave her the money 😳 I was horrified at the time, no one in my family would ever ask for a gift receipt let alone the money instead 🙈 Since then he’s dealt with her gift but I really grudged it this year as he carried in a huge piece of furniture for her and I got a cheap body spray set as usual 🙄

Snuza girls, do you have a baby monitor that can 'see' Snuza's light? Can anyone recommend one if so? Mine doesn't and I'm so annoyed about this. Considering buying a completely different one with a sensor pad under the mattress instead 😑 Also do your monitors show baby's chest movement clearly? I don't know if I'm being stupid, but the vision is clear, I can see Leo, tried different angles and heights and his chest just always looks flat on the parent unit even though he's obviously breathing? xx

I don't have a snuza but I can see breathing on the monitor. It might depend on the frame rate because if it's exactly matched with their breathing it's like you get a picture overlapping perfectly with each out or in breath. We have a Lionelo one. If yours has an anti-flicker setting (switch between 50/60 FPS) try that.

I think most baby monitors use an infrared camera in the dark so maybe that is incompatible with the Snuza light?

If you have any Alexa devices I really liked the look of the Blink cameras, but we have google home rather than Alexa, Blink is owned by amazon so exclusive to that system, and by the time we replaced all our google speakers with amazon ones it would have worked out so expensive.

@PurplePansy05 I have a Snuza but not sure if you can see the light actually. You can see his chest going up and down on it though. It's one of the BT ones that doesn't have an app or anything. I think it was something like £80. I don't really rely on the light all that much, I kind of just assume if it went on ok then it's on 🙈 but I do also just check anyway

Is it the £79.99 one from Currys/JL @Daffodil21? Can you tilt the camera using parent unit on this, it says tilt manually, so I assume not? Mine was supposed to be controlled via parent unit but I can't work it out at all

@BertieBotts Do you mean just the standard indoor Blink cameras? We have Alexa downstairs and Google upstairs so no issue there. I think they're wifi only? xx

@PurplePansy05 yes you can tilt it using the buttons on the screen. It's the BT 5000. I couldn't work out how to tilt it with the control either but my DH showed me so if you have the same one, I'll ask him as I've forgotten already. We don't use it much atm, but we did try and put DS to bed earlier recently and used it then (with no luck 😂)

Yes, you can link the Blink up to your system and then use it as a monitor. It looked much higher quality than any actual baby monitor and it has a noise/movement sensor as well.

If you google use blink as baby monitor you can find tutorials which should tell you if it's easy to do.

@PurplePansy05 thank you for that, I think I really needed to hear that and you are totally right about not being a martyr doesn’t make you a bad mum! Gosh your words are exactly what I needed to hear so thank you.

We did try a bit of formula last night but he wouldn’t take the bottle. I’ve found he will only really take it if he’s in the half asleep state otherwise he just bites the teat. It may also be because he’s not particularly hungry but tbh because I’ve fed on demand I don’t think he’s ever got to the really hungry stage!

Last night was a nightmare again, think he was just too tired. Daytime naps are only half an hour at a time, two or maybe three times in the day. Going to work on trying to get naps a little longer while DH is off for Christmas.

Me and DH are also going out for something to eat tomorrow night without any children which we haven’t been able to do in forever. I have warned my mum that Isaac isn’t sleep even when we actually put him to bed so she’s prepared. 😂

Also think Isaac may have rolled today! Topical that I was with DS1 and DH was with him! He said he didn’t help him but I’m not so sure, lol.

Hope everyone is doing okay. The one thing that really does my head in about Xmas is where to put all the new toys that family get the kids! Very grateful and they didn’t actually get a lot (a few family members gave money for their bank accounts as I said they have enough toys already) but I hate clutter so so much.

@PurplePansy05 we have a bt monitor but I think because we have it quite close to him we can only see his head. I just have the volume up and rely that I’d hear the snuza alarm going through it if he stopped breathing. I’ll nip in and out to check him but now he wears more layers to bed it’s actually not always possible to see the flashing light through the sleeping bag. I am a bit more chilled about it now he’s over 4 months though

@Magik01 we have boxes upon boxes of toys in the living room still so I’m with you on that one! Very few of them are actually for just now anyway so I think the rest will go to my mums spare room and I’ll kind of rotate them to cut down on the clutter. He got a few small things that do the spinning, flashing lights, songs etc and I just tried showing him them but he’s interested for 2 seconds then gets tired because it’s all too much for him and just cries 🙈

Enjoy your dinner! We still haven’t been out ourselves! Not intentionally but now with all the covid stuff I don’t even know if we’ll bother