May 07: The one where SOH gets her tweed clothes and LG&T doesn't get any...

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L has a black eye and scratches all over her face. Nursery will be calling Social Services. She's like Calamity bloody Jane. She's gorgeous though.

Oh SOH, read the rest!!!!!!! The bit where I want to be like you, and am so disappointed that I can't be!!!!!!!!

SOH??? Please come back, I didn't mean to upset you.

Pj I cant add any more than what I have in the past. But stick with something and eventually you will get somewhere you just need to decide what you want and really stick with it. BTW I think using Mr Tumble although he is my best friend at the mo is a humongous mistake.

Vomiting stopped thank god tis now just the squits - yuck.

LG&T hurrah on mini G&T behaving herself.

Oh and by the way Archie is the King of the tantrums unfortunatly he has that gorgeous head of curls which means most people let him get away with murder then mean mummy comes along and puts him in his place. He is very good at storming around and crashing into things to put his point of view across.

Get back here Lentil lady. We have been singing your praises and your lovely daughter.

Are you coming for New Year? I hope so i am going to try and push her out while you are here.

Morning all--I can't stay as I have a busy day ahead.

Dh and I came up with a name that we both agree on and I wanted to run it by you. We decided to name her after his mother and give her my sister's middle name so here it is.

Eleodora Shannon.

I don't love it, but I like it. We would call her "Ellie".

Everyone has a different way of parenting and it doesnt mean that their way is the right way, its just the way that works form them.

The way we did things with ds is completely different to the way we have done things with dd.

With your first born you have the luxury of being able to try different things out and see what works best because it doesnt matter how much/how loudly they scream as there isnt a sibling to wake up. It is also BLOODY HARD as you have nothing to measure it against. What you are doing may work well if you only have 1 child but might not work so well when number 2 comes along.

Jack was a nightmare child, waking 3/4 times a night and only being able to get back to sleep with milk and a parent sleeping with him. By the time Ella came along we were knackered and determined not to let her do the same. We did CC twice and she didnt need it after that. I dont know if it was luck of the draw (i do think that has a lot to do with it) or whether it was just down to us being more relaxed.

Pink you are a fantastic mother and no one could love Lexie more than you do. You had a tough start with her and that probably hasnt helped things. Also i know what 'support' you get (or dont get) from dh and that also is tough going on you. As you know my dh does more than his fair share and thats his choice because WE chose to have children and therefore we are both responsible for the upbringing. You both work hard so he doesnt have the excuse that he is the only worker and needs to get sleep.

I know you cant bear to hear her cry, but do you think that you could stay at your mums for a night or two and see how he copes with the night time routine? Or perhaps look into getting a night nanny? I looked into getting one to deal with Jack but luckily after we moved he settled down and after 3 years of him not sleeping he now goes through.

You know where i am if you need to off load. Big hugs to you xx

Thanks AM.

The night nanny was £700. M says I just 'need to sort it'. Oh great, thanks.

Wow that is a lot of pennies! And another helpful comment from dh! Tell him the only way you can sort it out is with his help. Have you spoken to your Dr? J was given Vallergan to help him get some sleep, it was supposed to be used for a week or fortnight and it was to get them used to having sleep so that when they came off it it would help them realise that they needed it.

You know the saying you learn something new everyday? Well, Courtesy of TYG today that saying is true.
I always wondered why they called CC controlled, my CC was never very controlled. I have just realised today that the "real" CC is not my bag. The jaffas version turns out to be called extinction.

hides embarassed head in hands

AM, nice legs shorts. H is trying hard not to pick the scabs on his nose, hope J's is looking better today.

MKG, I like it, but you could just call her Ellie? How about Elodie?

PJ a little class please!! It's Primarni for us snobs ya know, Primark

btw, I'm back, not that anyone noticed I'd gone, but I'm Soooooooo over my flounce.

I noticed that you had gone my lovely!!

I keep catching J trying to pick his scab, he might not care but i dont want him to have another scar on his face!

Who is M's fave princess? Also is J into Disney at all? Does H like Power Rangers?

Glad you're back. Now, can someone get SOH back? I soooo didn't mean to offend her.

AM - that makes me really uncomfortable for some reason. Although desperate times call for desperate measures.

I have just been speaking to a lady in the office about this. She says she thinks a lot of it is due to my lack of confidence with L, and the fact that I am so insecure. She thinks that I somehow feel like my parenting is being 'assessed', and I refuse to accept that I am learning, and will make mistakes. She said to me, 'Jenny, when she's five, she'll sleep, she'll be potty trained, she'll eat and talk, and you'll wonder where these lovely years went'. She also thinks I am way too much in the shadow of my own (seemingly perfect) mother.

I also think the tiredness affects my anxiety levels. The Health Visitor tried not to scorn when I rang her crying yesterday to ask whether it was normal for me to be able to feel L's heart beating through her chest. She said, 'Ring me back if you can't feel it'.

I have no sense of perspective!!! And I am so embarrassed as I got so cross with L in the middle of the night. I am mortified with myself.

MKG - or Eloise?

Big hugs Mrs JB missed you I did.

Miss you Sky as well.

We only went down the route of vallergan as a last resort after 3yrs of no sleep. it didnt work on him so gave up after 2 days.

I think you need to come and live near me and then i can make tea and cakes and hold your hand through the tough times (mrsjb, you should live the otherside )

Oh that sounds perfect.

off to see minnie now. have a good day xx

AM - M loves Cinderella, J is not really "into" anything yet, she will not be into winnie the pooh! lol, she doesn't seem to be quite as girly as M was. H does like power rangers but tbh he is really into Spiderman and Ben10 at the moment. PLEASE don't be filling up valuable suit case space with things for my dc's. It's far more important to buy things for the wee ones soon YOU!

I'm back too

Will post more later but Pink oh Pink, poor you. I'm afraid as you know I am on the side of the mean mummies united and am with TYG on this one. I also let the littlies cry, mine have and do all sleep beautifully, obviously I have no idea if this is just genetic or due to my beating disciplining them at an early age. Why not give it a go for say a week, and then reasses?

Oh and for sure being tired like you must be most certainly would make you more anxious.

Scoot, lots of love for you too, you are in no way a failure. Is there any chance of changing job to one that is closer and perhaps slightly less taxing?

Tis shorts weather here just now

Hello everyone, just popping in for a short visit!

DD2 has to have her tonsils out! Went to ENT consultant today thinking she may have to have a camera down her throat to look at her adenoids. He looked in her mouth and said she has very unhealthy tonsils and as she has been getting ill so often they will take them out . Hopefully won't be before xmas - she is in school choir and has lots of events.

Thanks for the sleep tips TYG - L is still waking twice in the night for feeds but the other times I just keep putting his dummy back in and they seem to be getting less. I haven't given him any gaviscon since bed time last night and he seems fine, more settled if anything. That sitter sounds like a nightmare by the way!

DD1 took C up to bed for the first time about 15 mins ago and she is still singing to him! DP going to have to go up and take over. He is much better as settling if you just leave him.

PJ - is Mr Tubmle on at 3am? You must be shattered.

Pink - there has been a lot of sense spoken here. I think you need to remember that, as AM said, there are two of you parenting and your DH needs to be involved too.

Having said that I think mums do tend to beat themselves up more over things than dads - when we went away last weekend and forgot DS1's inhaler I was really beating myself up about the fact that I was a bad mother and how much harm I could do him not bringing his inhaler etc (am feeling a bit paranoid about his asthma atm) and DH pointed out that it was equally his (as in DH's) fault and that he had not remembered the inhaler either. then we found it at the bottom of the bag

Mothers do have an ability to make us all feel inadequate. DS1 had an asthma attack when we were staying with my parents recently - first time he had had one in the night and I was really scared. I know that one reason is because of dust and he was sleeping on the floor on a mattress. When we got home I bought him a new duvet and pillow (hypo-allergenic) and my mum just thinks I am being a bit silly and ridiculous and over reacting (at least that is the impression I get). I probably am but I really really worry about DS1 -probably because of the probs we have had with asthma. Funnily enough I don't worry nearly as much about S (although obviously I love him just as much) because we have not had the same probs- so it does not follow that because you worry about your first you will worry as much about your second.
Sorry, hope this makes sense.

Sorry that DD has to have an op, SKY, but I suppose if she'll be healthier for it in the end, then it will be worth it. I hear that most kids are over the worst in a couple of days.

This will give you a shudder. I was in my dad's town of birth with him a number of years ago, and he told me that when he was about 9, he had his tonsils taken out in a convent hospital by two unqualified nuns under a local anaesthetic.

Is L waking twice after you go to bed? That's harsh... A was like that. She was three hourly for MONTHS. Eventually she went to just one waking in the night then at 25 weeks just stopped waking. The first night she slept through I went up to check on her at 7am because I was convinced there was something wrong with her.

FWIW, I am trying to settle O at night without the dummy. Sometimes I give in, but I ALWAYS end up having to settle him again later without it. The thing is, if he settles with it, then when he loses it, he needs resettling anyway. I didn't want to get into the night time dummy return game (although it's better than night time comfort feeds I suppose). Anyway, most nights I give him a little while to mooch around and try to settle and if he's still not getting off to sleep I put my hand on his back (tummy sleeper so it would be his chest if he slept on his back) and just cup the top of his head so he doesn't do that head thrashing from side to side thing that babies do and he usually falls asleep that way. Dummy is a last resort. I'm afraid of him becoming dependent on sucking to stay asleep, iyswim, to the point of removing the dummy once he's fast asleep. That said, if I was getting up a few times a night to feed, i may feel entirely different about the dummy!

I think we're over the growth spurt here. Only took a week... Back to feeding one side and went 7pm to 4am without a feed last night. Phew. I was getting concerned because my boobs were (or at least, felt) permanently "dry". I need to express enough milk in the next two weeks to get O through 24 hours without me and I was seriously concerned I wouldn't be able to get the supply up enough to do that. (For my night away on the 29th I mean). Thankfully today I managed to get 5oz in the freezer so I'll have to do that every day now til I go away. I tried O with a bottle of formula. He was not amused. He's fine with breastmilk in a bottle, but he just spat out the Hipp formula. I only wanted to try him in case mum went through all the breast milk and needed some back up formula whilst I was away. Obviously I'll have to just make sure I get in dairy cow mode. (Although I will try some SMA and Aptamil in the mean time to see if he can be tempted.) It's funny, when I gave A some formula on Day 1, because she was so unsettled, I felt like a failure. O has been a good feeder since birth and I couldn't give a hoot if he had the odd bit of formula. The human mind, or at least mine, is a strange thing.

Can you tell I've been at the red wine tonight? If I go to bed now, I might feel human tomorrow. It's all very well having a baby that sleeps hours and hours at night, but if you don't actually sleep at the same time it's completely pointless.

About your DH, PJ. I just wanted to say that all relationships are not created equal and I think the work in a relationship is rarely split equally.

I have never met either you or your DH, but if he's not very hands on with L, I wonder if perhaps it's better for you to just get on with getting things fixed for now, without his help. He may very well respond better to older children than babies - it's the case with lots of men and sometimes women just have to shoulder the responsibility in the beginning in order to reap the rewards later.

It may not be fair, but sometimes it's just how things are. What I'm getting at is that some things are relationship breakers, but sometimes taking something on (like the sleep thing) gets you through something and provided your DH picks up other problems and responsibilities in future, then it's ok.

Sometimes the work is divided not directly down the middle, but by one person taking on some things in their entirety and the other person taking on other parts. Is this making any sense? DH for example, is crap at settling O at night and he was crap at settling A until such time as she was a bit older and had bottles at night instead of breastfeeds. He just doesn't feel confident about putting babies to bed unless he can feed them. It's only a small thing, and obviously L's sleep thing is much bigger than that, but it's just an illustration. I just want to make sure that we give the benefit of the doubt in case it's deserved. I sometimes get afraid that we get so protective of our "friends" that we don't allow for the ways that relationships work differently from our own.

Of course you could be thinking, "No, he really is a useless bllx." and that's fine too!

Ramble, ramble. You're all going to laugh at me tomorrow.

I do appreciate that i am very lucky with my dh and the amount that he does and i know that not everybody has their dh's around 24/7 or have dh's that pull their weight, BUT it takes 2 people to create a baby and it should take two to bring the child up. In my opinion those who just let their partners get out of doing their fair share are fools! Whilst men cant breastfeed they can do many other things if allowed.

Pink, how did you get on tonight? I know how tough it is to let bubbas cry, whilst i am from the mean mummies club dh wasnt. He had a very traumatic childhood that included domestic violence and spent many a night crying himself to sleep and also listening to his 4 siblings do the same. When it came to him being a parent he just couldnt bear to hear J cry as it brought back bad memories. About a year down the line he wished that he could have dealt with his feelings and let me get on with the CC.

I think that as some of us have become 'friends' in RL and have met each other and partners it has changed the way in which you give advice. I have met Pink and she stayed with me for a weekend and i got to see first hand what she has to contend with in terms of getting L to sleep and also how she has to do it single handed whilst her dh just sleeps. I would normally offer up the CC advice and say that thats the way forward but i know that it just isnt something that Pink finds easy to do.

SOH still not back then? I FB her yesterday too, hope she is just busy.

Contenscious issues surrounding parenting. I think different relationships work differently you cant compartmentalise them any more than you can a child's behaviour.

When it comes to childrens sleep habits the only thing that works is consistency. If you consistently bring your child in to your own bed and feed on demand the child will expect it and rightly so. If you put your child in their own cot and feed by routine the child will expect it. There is nothing cruel or wrong about one way or the other. You should not feel bad for chosing whatever path it is you choose.

Pink we only get on at you because you need someone to tell you and reassure you that A is not the subject of some horrific child abuse and will not be scarred for life by her mummy choosing the path that she needs to follow in order to get herself back. Sleep takes everything from us, rationality and our ability to cope being major loses.

We will (i am sure) support you in whatever you chose to do but you must pick a direction a stick to it. I am with TYG on the sort it out yourself though. I am not sure battling with M (who does not reassure you) and battling with A is what you need right now.

Yes all men should take equal responsibility but that is not RL. My dh is also fantastic but (and quite coincidentally) we have a wee tiff last night. He is home an awful lot recently, it is lovely but unusual. I HATE asking for help and am quite happy to get on with things. However the last couple of weeks has seen me making appointments regarding Midwives\doctors\parents evenings (you know the usual stuff) with him in mind to help.

Og course the Parents evening debacle was a pain and stressed me as i was unsure if he was coming or not. IT takes a vast amount of preparation and planning to coordinate 6 children from 3 different school and 2 toddllers to get anywhere. Now he is unavailable today and cant make the midwife appointment this morning, Beau is a pain, he hates it so i hate it and cant wait to get out. I have never just laid there and heard the babies heart beat calmly. I want to.

I have also made 2 doctors appointments this afternoon for 4. A ridiculous time cosidering the twins are not back till 3.55 and i barely hobble back from school until 3.45 atm. I went a bit mental. It is not that i expect him to be around normally but when i make these appointments he uis there nodding his head saying "yes, yes".

I only flashed really as he said "well i should be in work 8-4 every day". I wanted to shout back "well that is FINE i could mamange if you were i'm not fecking useless you know" It is the expectation thing again...

When he is away i just get on with it, when he is home i expect him to notice the bulging washing basket\filthy bathrooms\crap blocking sink etc... he doesnt of course and i feel resentful. Ridiculous really.

I am my own worst enemy though, if i asked he would do it. I just fester and boil then do it anyway Relationships are a strange thing.

Anyway waffle over, children to change, midwives to see!