Sept 08 - Is it day or night?

[lollyheart]

Hope no one minds me starting a new thread?

ninja do you have links to the sterilising threads you mention - or can point me to where to find them? I am so confused. The instuctions that came with my breast pump are religious in their approach to sterilising everything just before you use it. But I was reading up last night about preparation of bottles etc when making up formula (planning ahead for the inevitable day) and the book clearly said there is no need to sterilise bottles and teats - a good wash will do!! Is this true? I am so confused. Also at the doctor the other day I was asking about using a dummy while DD has thrush, and said, I assume I just have to sterilise this more often. And the GP looked really confused / amused, and said oh, yes, you can sterilise the dummy if you like.

What is everyone else doing? I thought not sterilising stuff would put one firmly in the 'bad mother' category. Am I wrong?

Also, some help needed please from those wise second timers who have been through the nipple thrush thing before...

After getting all the right advice and medication for my painful thrush problem, I thought we were well on the way to recovery. But in the last 24 hours the pain in my nipples has started getting worse again. I am terrified that it will come back and we will never get rid of it. I am now 10 days into the course of fluconazole and also using the cream plus nystatin drops for DD's mouth 4x per day. In others' experience, does thrush come back despite the treatment, and if so what do I need to be doing about it?

deffo sterilse everything re thrush. wash clothing on v hot wash. it is a v. difficult fungus to kill. doc's bemused look indicated lack of bf info for me.

ponymum - I'm in the same boat as you, going back to the gp this evening. i'm going to try grapefruit extract and low sugar diet, and get more fluconazole. and hope for the best.
apparently it could be being transferred to A and back to me via teats etc, as steam sterilisers don't kill thrush.
however our cooker has died so boiling for 10 min isn't an option atm.

bah.

sterilising thread

the only time i've sterilised since the birth is when T had thrush - I think you should def sterilise as often as humanly possible until the thrush is gone, and then if you choose not to sterilise, at least you won't keep reinfecting yourself.

T woke for his feed at 4:30 this morning. I gave him one side (he'd clearly been losing interest in his 7-8am feed). He was perfectly happy with just the one side, not rooting for more or crying, but sat merrily in his bouncy chair and stared at me till 5:45am! every time I turned the lights off in the hope of cutting out visual stimulation he wailed. he dropped off perfectly happily just before 6am, and slept until I woke him at 7:15. Mad baby.

Wow, really interesting thread about sterilising! Thanks foxy. So while we have the thrush problem I will be meticulous. After that I'll go for dishwasher and clean hands.

notcitrus I was wondering how you were getting on. Sorry to hear yours is lingering too. It would break my heart if I couldn't shake this, as I know I will not survive bf with this level of pain ongoing.

Ahoy! D has taken a dummy for the first time!! It is one of those Nuk funny ones with a flat bit. (hopefully have you tried these?) He's stopped screaming and taken up chomping. I am very chuffed, and hope this will be the soothing holy grail (you can't but hope, no?)

Talking about sterilising, this dummy has been sitting in his moses basket for weeks, so I hope there's no danger there... I wasn't expecting him to take it.

I don't think there's any need to steralise anything now that you can use a dishwasher. I have a bottle of Milton at the moment that I am slowly getting through but only because I bought it after steralising the dummy every day in hospital at the request of the MW and I was far to emotionally shot away to break from the routine once we got home. Now I steralise the dummies about once a week, but I still steralise the breast pump, although that will totally stop once the fluid has run out.

Right, forget the previous post. He's dropped the dummy and resumed grunting. He says he doesn't want it any more. S*.

OK, I know, I'm on a roll, but I have to do the MN bad mother confessional:

The only place where D will be awake and content for any length of time is in his little hammock chair. As he is only one month old, he is not supposed to sit up, so my dilemma is, am I being a bad mother to sit him in it so that he's quiet for a bit? Is this really damaging for his back?

thanks foxy - it never made sense to me first time round all the sterilising and this time i've been brave and not sterilised anything and no problems. Saying that it doesn't do any harm to be on the safe side.

re Thrush - Flucanazole didn't work for me (I didn't get the right dose first time) and basically had to resort to a diet like this which started working within the week. It might be worth trying to cut down on the main offenders

ninja - I've figured it's going to come back to the low-sugar diet; I've been there before. Thing is, given I can't eat fat either, getting enough calories into me is hard enough as it is, especially when mainly relying on ready-to-eat foods because I don't have the time/energy to cook. And the hob has died.

Managed to talk to bf counsellor midwife this morning who said get same drugs again from GP, and soak all bottle/pump bits in boiling water given I can't boil them on the hob. I'll buy a few more bottles too.

Envious of those of you with any regular feeding pattern - A is at least back to every 2-3 hours, with the odd 4-hour gap, but that's still three feeds in the night. And usually at least one of them he won't settle after at all. Some friends have have been fantastic at coming to stay and looking after him for half the night, but my breasts wake me up every 3 hours anyway by burning or making the bed soggy.

Gah.

pacita if you're a bad mother for it than I'm horrendous! He's always sitting up (with some blankets propping his head up) in his little vibrating chair. Sometimes it's the ONLY way he'll stop crying. come to think of it.... he's in that thing a lot

Pacita T lives in his bouncy chair. I think it's ok to use if it's flat down, but he likes it best when it's upright and his head is perched in the most appallingly uncomfortable looking position on his chest. He'll sleep like that for ages! So at least we're all going to end up with children with spinal deformities...

sorry nc I remember you saying that now.

imoscarsmum (I think it was you anyway...it was a few pages back) we've had problems with unsettled evenings too and the only thing that fixed it was keeping ds awake more in the day. She-who-must-not-be-named recommend babies of around 6 weeks only have a 30-45min nap between 2ish and bedtime. Ds has had numerous baths this weekend, all in the name of waking him up! There's a definite pattern that too much daytime sleep (esp afternoon sleep) results in an awake evening, but he's never happy and awake in the evenings. Its not colic as there's no evidence of any pain or discomfort, its just traditional baby cranky time.
We're stuck on a night waking at around 3am too. He has also been waking at 5 and only taking a nibble then going back to sleep, so at 5 this morning I ignored him and after a lot of snuffling around he went back to sleep til 6:30. Have seriously considered evicting him from our room so that he doesn't wake us when he comes into a light sleep and snuffles, but then we lose the convenience of him being right there for feeding. Maybe we'll let him stay a few more days

Got the letter today about his 6 week check and 8 week jabs, and of course I can't make either appointment and have to change them. Lets hope I get a sympathetic receptionist when I ring...

notcitrus and ponymum I really feel for you with the thrush lingering. Mine cleared up with the fluconazole (sp?) but I had given up bf by then so there was no re-infection between dd and myself. Really hope the diet/hot washing/drugs work soon

And I should have said that if we have a cranky awake evening, he spends it sitting in the bouncy chair, with a dummy and a blanket! Bad mother alert

Carrieon T is so much better since I cut that afternoon nap down to less than an hour. I'm working on slowly increasing the lunchtime nap (used to be around 90 mins) to 2.5 hours, along with cutting down the morning and afternoon naps.

Is anyone taking the decision to give their babies separate jabs rather than MMR (is that the controversial one? I can never remember), or not to give them jabs at all? One of my relatives is a high powered medical prosecution lawyer, and she had seperate jabs (am I thinking of the right ones?) for her girls, saying she thought that it was less risky. I haven't done any research, but I'm thinking I should begin to look into it properly.

hopefully - A will have MMR, plus all the others (he had BCG the other day - it was 'OI YOU'VE TAKEN THE BREAST AWAY ow GIVE ME MY BREAST BACK' as I didn't trust him on my nipple while being jabbed!)

The MMR hooha coincided with a slack bit of my PhD so I ended up reading the BMJ etc every week and read every single paper on MMR, risks, blah. Basically one tiny tentative study which no-one has ever managed to replicate with the same results, and was dodgy because the lead scientist was getting undeclared payments, suggested there might be a link with gut problems. End of.

The increase in diagnosed autism cases started well before MMR was offered in the UK (and other countries), and also in countries where they do single jabs.

I'm worried because the jab takeup is really low round me (transient population), and A won't be protected by herd immunity. Hopefully he'll avoid all the nasties until he's had his jabs. Measles can be very nasty in 1 in 100 cases - a college friend of mine was blind from it, and there's been a couple deaths in London now for the first time in years. The Daily Mail and other sensationalist papers have a lot to answer for.
{gets off soapbox}

carrieon I have been contemplating doing the separate MMR jabs for ds. I read a book all about vaccinations called "The Truth About Vaccinations" by Dr. Richard Halvorsen link here that i checked out of the library and it explained so much regarding the health and safety of childhood jabs. some of the things i read were actually incredibly shocking and i've become so skeptical to some of the scare tactics doctors use on parents. i would highly recommend reading it (when you can squeeze in reading time these days). He does a really good job at advising which jabs are good for babies and which ones to stay away from.

That post about the jabs was succintly put NC. I didn't know that the evidence was that weak on the research.

it it exactly the same scenario with the dummies and SIDS research and the hoo-haa created out of nothing over it all to sell more dummies. I am that the FSIDS who a lot of parents trust has not been less than honest (imho) about it.

phew, just taken about 20 mins to catch up.

DS1 had the mmr and ds2 will have it too. I'm with notcitrus on the there isn't any real evidence thing.

DS2 also sleeps with his head at a very uncomfy angle on his shoulders, he does this while lying flat though so its not just the bouncy chair doing it.

He has been asleep in his carrycot for 2 hours and the instant I started typing he woke up!

Do you think eggs (me eating them obviously, not him) could give ds2 bad trapped wind? He has never really suffered from trapped wind before and then on St night he was awful. Was screaming and kicking and wriggling for ages and even though he eventually squeezed out some huge burps and some sick he was still suffering until eventually 1 burp seemed to do the trick and he was fine again. He also has a bit of a cough though and was coughing through the whole episode and also choking and not breathing in properly which was very scary.
I ate eggs for lunch on Saturday and his farts smelled of egg on Sunday so maybe thats another thing I have to avoid.

oops, not halloween anymore

i should think egg should only be a problem if there is a history of egg allergy in the family. we have it on dh's side of the family and dd1 is allergic. her eczema improved and asthmatic symptoms disappeared when i took egg out my diet.