Sept 08 - newborns, milk, nappies and all the rest ....

[Sassafrass]

Hope noone minds me starting our post natal thread now that the babies are arriving so quickly.

Arrivals!
28-May - Johnworf ? Katherine, 1lb 8oz
30-June ? KashaSarrasin ? Felix, 1.39kg
26-July - Jenbot - DD, 3lb 6oz
11-Aug - Crabby - Lilah 2.34kg
13-Aug - Sassafrass - Katie Rose, 7lb 2oz
20-Aug - Sunshinemummy - Effy Marilyn, 6lb 3oz
22-Aug - Talia1 - Anna, 6lb 2oz
26-Aug - Jenpet - Samuel, 3.166 kilos (about 6lb10oz?)
28-Aug - Potxola - Lorea, 7lb 6oz
31-Aug - Digitalgirl - Alfredo, 7lbs
1-Sept - Debithescot - Andrew, 8lb 10oz

Notcitrus I feel for you - I had about 3 days (up until yesterday really, and it may strike again!) of crying literally all the time, and we didn't even do anything brave like go to the supermarket.

Well, just as I was on the brink of trying everything, formula, you name it, Teddy actualy slept for 4 hours last night, fed and then slept for another 2. i know it was probably a fluke, and due to his traumatic morning of non-sleep, but it recharged me and DP just enough to carry on.

We have decided to pick our battles for now - if Teddy will take a dummy, we'll risk it (he's currently not interested!), but in terms of the sleep we're going to stick with putting him in the carrier/bouncy chair/feeding to sleep until he's on a reasonably predictable routine, and knows to expect sleep at a certain time.

Thanks so much for all your support everyone, I know I must seem incredibly pathetic compared to all of you who are going through the same thing a million times more efficiently, but it really makes a difference having everyone being so nice to me!

I'm glad things are better for you today Hopefully

Mac is on a feedathon today. Only problem is he feeds so often that he doesn't sleep for very long, so he's overtired - as am I!

Sleep deprivation is vile isn't it?!

i'm having a rough time with sleep and my little one although feeds every 3-4 hours only feeds for 10 minutes at a time and i'm freaking out. he should be feeding for at least half an hour right? i keep waking up past the time to have him weighed each week (2 weeks in a row) and now i feel like i'm lost because i don't know if he's gained any or lost any.

i think i'm in need of speaking with a breast feeding expert as well.

argh.

i hope things are becoming more and more fabulous for everyone!

Hi Eandz Maebh only feeds for 10 mins and my other DD did too - it really depends on the baby. If he's going 3-4 hours and plenty of wees and poos you're probably fine. Does he look like he's lost weight? If you're really desperate you could weigh him at the PO (with a nappy of course) if they're amenable.

Digigirl re cosleeping - I was like this last time with DD1 - but then I was told how to lie. Your arm goes over the top and then UP not down, put the hand under a pillow and it's SO much more comfortable than being all crunched up. I'm trying to alternate times in the moses basket and times in the bed (although it's been all bed the last couple of nights)

notcitrus I was EXACTLY like that first time, sleep deprived and weepy. I think it is kind of normal but look after yourself.

Got a visitor, I'll post more later

eandz you don't need to time feeds. look at what comes out the back end. how often is he pooing per day? is he generally content (asleep or awake irrelevant) between feeds? feeds every 3-4 hrs at night is perfectly normal.

weighing weekly is stress inducing - for mummy.

thanks for the support people. last night mrnc and guest were both mopey with colds and asked how i felt. i mentioned i had blocked ears too and d'oh, we realised A must feel the same, hence constant sucking and meepiness.

so let him suck an hour on each side, and we decided to tuck him in his pram for 3 hours no matter what as no cuddling etc was helping. i felt terrible at the time but got some sleep before my alarm went to check him. and he was ok, mildly hungry, and then we lay down and he was happy tucked in with me for the next 4 hours. Then the plumber woke us at 7, i fed him a bit more, and more cuddly sleep for him. not so much for me as can't get used to sleeping touvhing someone, but feeling so much better than i was!
it occurred to me that most of us were fed and tended to on strict schedules from birth and it didn't harm us - i suspect these regimes were a lot more forthe parents sanity than anything else!

however, so much for the builders going great guns - it was all going to be watertight by tomorrow, except the scaffolders have turned up, and having not been paid for months, are taking all the scaff down because mrnc refused rightly to pay them £3300. cue big ding-dong in the street, mrnc taking photos, and scaff bloke deciding to take the walkways first just to make our workers' lives harder and technically illegal. our guys are remarkably relaxed and still climbing over the scaff guys, and saying not to worry, they'll just cut the stairs hole early and do it from inside if they have to. which means a house totally covered in dust for ages but should at least still get us a roof layer by the weekend...

still, i've had loads more sleep so i'm reassuring mrnc that we're doing ok and loft conversions only happen once. and squirmy is clearly feeling better today, catching up on sleep. and a friend who is a mum of a toddler and about to give birth again is about to turn up with cake.

blimey, i thought i used to have mood swings, and then i got pregnant, but looks like i aint seen nothing yet...

hopefully starlight is completely right when it's your 2nd or 3rd you know what to expect and are just more laid back about everything cos you know that it's normal if you know what i mean
i promise that things will seem so much better in a couple of weeks oncethey get to 11-12 weeks they are less windy and sleep better and longer on a night

well i spoke too soon ds is now as windy as hell and has the trumps from about 4pm until mignight every night this week and dh is starting nights next week so may be insane soon

also i have managed in my sleep deprived state to decide i would quite like hair like katie holmes and dyed my hair unfortunately whilst dithering over hair dyes and picking them up and putting them back down i have managed to pick up the wrong dye and not realise until after the event and i now do not have lovely choc brown hair i now look like morticia addams!!!

anyone know if you can dye over the top of semi perm dye with another semi perm dye to lighten it a couple of shades?

imoscarsmum if you would like to talk to me off board about the feeding difficulties and where you are now with feeding charlotte, email me at y f forster at gmail dot com.

i don't know if you are open to the idea of re-establishing bfing but it can be done. also want to echo that you don't have anything to feel guilty about. what you need is a big cushy safety net to land on and hopefully i can give you ideas for one however you feed charlotte. you sound like a great mummy.

update - structural engineer says we're watertight except at the back, which should be ok by end today as they can reach ladders up legally (so nyer to scaff bloke threatening to report us for workers breaching h+s working without walkways).
and made mrnc call the insurers, who said no worries, if it rains and there's damage any claim will be covered and dealt with as an emergency.

so relief there. and squirmy is clearly a content sleepy thing.

hopefully - your struggles and others have made me feel a lot better, or rather less guilty. someone told me ages ago, and someone i told said she found it helpful, that if you get to a year on and you and the baby are still alive, you've done just fine.
now just to remember that at 4am...

hopefully

oh, the only reason i haven't been posting about my inability to cope is because i've been sleeping...believe me when i say i know not what i'm doing. and when you post, your questions are usually similar to whats going on with me. so i just mentally piggyback on your posts waiting for the answers.

eandZ - Elizabeth only feeds for about 10 mins at a time, she put on 4oz so I am not worried, maybe we have fast milk?!

hopefully and eandz You really shouldn't be so hard on yourselves. I suspect everyone has a hard time adjusting when it is their first baby. It's a massive learning curve looking after a small person, and at the same time your body is recovering form birth and you and your DH's are shattered. It would be weird if you didn't find it tough. I think it took me about 7 weeks to get settled after I had DS. Those first weeks were awful.

eandz can you get a health visitor / nursery nurse to come to you to weigh your DS and chat about any worries? Mine have come to me for the last 2 weeks so I can still take it easy after my cs.

hopefully, eandz and others struggling - yes I echo what eandz has said that there are plenty of us struggling to cope even more, who can't even find time to post our woes, but feel comfort when we get a few minutes to read posts and see that others are going through similar things. For everyone having a hard time - you are not alone.

Some of my problems:

1. no pattern to anything, especially at night
2. desperately tired, no idea what day it is (literally - HV turned up and I had forgotten)
3. didn't even manage to have a shower yesterday ... but at least managed to wash dd and even get a load of washing on - huge achievement
4. dd has decided to grip with her jaw in a grinding motion which makes me actually cry from pain, especially when she takes a serious clamp shut and then pulls herself off the breast! Seriously considered giving up in desperation 2 days ago but had a good talk to HV and things seem to have improved, or maybe I am just coping better with it.

Everything is a blur. I am so tired in the craziness at night I now no longer know whether I've been asleep for 5 minutes or 2 hours, and have to ask DH to tell me whether I just fed her or not - not that it makes any difference if she is screaming for it...

MN is such a comfort to me. Thank you everyone for sharing what you are going through and for being so encouraging and supportive. I don't think I could do it without you!

meglet
after your post i called health visitor and told her why i couldn't make it the last two times and if she would come for a visit to weigh my baby and go through the motions of breast feeding to see if theres something i could be doing better.

ponymum
you were able to do the wash? i'm trading sleep for showers since i feel icky with all this breast milk dripping everywhere and the gel leaking out of my disposable breast pads...and i'm not even producing much milk! but am no where close to doing the laundry. (to be fair, i've never even learned how to do the laundry till last week though).

also, i have to announce i've learned to stop complaining when hungry and just go to the kitchen and make things myself. (before i just used to come up with dessert/baking activities or gourmet pretentious recipes and do them just to do them...but normal cooking i never attempted) i feel like i'm growing up. very slightly proud of myself even if a little sleep deprived.

google 'lilypadz' for leaky breasts where normal pads are a joke. i just walk around with a muslin to mop up b/c i hate pads and don't leak too much.

I suspect things in the foxy household are getting back to normal as I am online looking for car insurance quotes at the moment.

DD2 is 5 days old and currently asleep on my chest in a sling. she was weighed today and is a smidge under her birthweight. yay! MW will come back on tues to weigh and discharge us!

I got some lovely flowers from work today and I can't believe I am already thinking of taking her in for a look round. With dd1 I felt like a battlefield survivor well for weeks on end.

lillypadz- on order. thank you for the suggestion foxy

just spoke to breast feeding person from le leche league and i feel better. much much better.

pretty much she told me trust instinct and not just 'wait around' for baby to cry. (what husband and mil were forcing me to do) am really happy that husband has come to his senses after he overheard the conversation.

Starligh I followed your advice. Yesterday night I decided to give it a go without the 1oz formula. It was not much and I only gave it to her because she had lost too much weight after coming from the hospital. Anyway she does not like it and lets me know it with her body language.AND>>>> It was fine, she had less wind and I have been feeding her lots, my breast are definately fuller. So Bye bye formula, for now anyway.

Lorea still has a cold and it breaks my heart hearing her having problems breathing. Yesterday she slept with me again, but I arranged in a way I was not worried. She was in her grobag high up the queen size bed, there was a pillow towards the end of her side, but not touching her and I slept with my pillow more or less to the level of her legs. The duvet her side of the bed was secured so it could not go over her.
Worth a try. My dh sleeps in other room.

Hi just wanted to say that my babies have always only fed for ten or fifteen mins at a time and have always gained weight (they've never been good sleepers but you can't have it all!). Some babies are just quite efficient feeders/suckers.

Good luck to everyone suffering from lack of sleep, its not easy but it passes quickly, and thats coming from someone who's kids tend to wait until they are 18 months before sleeping thru! Can't help hoping this one wil sleep thru sooner but so far she is the hungriest (heaviest) and feeds every 1-2 hours round the clock!

dd2 was weighed on Monday at 5 days old and had put on a bit of weight, even though she sleeps a lot and doesn't feed that long. But last night and today she seems to have had less interest in feeding. Last night she woke because of wind and didn't really want milk, I was so uncomfy, rock hard and bulgy, I've had so much milk the poor thing has received a jet of milk in the face a few times. She's pooing and weeing well, so it must be OK but it's hard not to worry. It's wind that keeps us up at night as it's so difficukt for her to settle back to sleep. And a few times dd1 has woken when dd2 is asleep, and I feel a bit desperate. Partner has a day every now and again of being helpful, but generally rubbish - like he's been out since 4pm, no contact.

My sisters don't live near, I don't have any other family, partner's mum seems to have done her bit by looking after dd1 for a few hours 2 days I was in hospital........

So I'm feeling down and tired, the house is still a state, electrician rubbish, kitchen due to be fitted soon....

Sorry, just wanted to get that all off my chest.

I mentioned the windiness to the mw, and she said try cooled boiled water, but that sounds a bit mad. Why would I want to faff around with bottles on top of bf, and wouldn't she just get full on water etc.

water should not be given to a bf baby - can be dangerous at this age - water intoxication