September 08 - Just ladies with babies

[pacita]

I thought I'd start a new thread before we run out of space...

London meet would be great! now i can walk again could meet almost anywhere.

touch wood, A is getting the hang of a 5-hour sleep at night.now just have to train self to take painkillers and go to bed just after he passes out...

the end is in sight for MrNC working all hours on the house. he's painting the outside over the next few days, but then just has to do a few things inside before the plasterers do their stuff. Assuming the windows then arrive week after next as we were assured yesterday, we will have 2 useable rooms for Christmas!

I wish I lived in London to meet you. I a too far I am afraid.
I am sure they are up for it. they have done it before.

Hi everyone, tonight I'm going out for the first time since Katie was born! We're having a birthday celebration at my friend's house. It's been a nice day with chocolate birthday cake and dd1 opening my presents for me =)

Happy birthday Sassy Have a great night out.

We are watching the rugby (NZ v Ireland). DH and DD are wearing matching All Black jerseys - adorable! Well, DD's is a sleepsuit purchased by Grandma in NZ and posted over (there's a photo on my profile). Never too early to brainwash encourage your child to support the right team!

happy birthday Sass, even if it's almost over now.

Foxy - we have been co sleeping except when in hospital for the week. In fact during the 4 weeks at friends' houses it's been me and both dds in 1 bed. But on her back oreven side she often wakes after such a short time. On my chest she sleeps round the clock - we're out and about lots in the day and she is so content in the wrap sling.

Today she won her first prize! She was one of the younget babies to join the library at 1 week old, and got a bag of goodies from the deputy mayor!

NC - glad your house is on the way to being more habitable. I'm finding ours pretty depressing at the moment, and the job of ever sorting it out seems a bit overwhelming

Is 3 months really the magic point when babies routines change for the better? Or is that just for those with colic?

DS is such a good little baby, but my god he's a hungry boy. Today he hasn't been a complete boob monster, but I think that's because DH has been around to distract him and help him fall asleep for daytime naps.

My weekdays usually go like this:

Between 6am-7:15am DS wakes for first feed
7:30-8:00am finishes feed and wants to play
9am - DS takes his 'guaranteed' morning nap
10-11am - DS wakes and wants feeding
12:30 DS breaks for ten minutes for either a milk-induced nap or a play (DG grabs lunch/biscuits)
12:40 DS begins feed/doze/feed/burp/feed/play/feed/doze cluster session where the dozing or playing lasts anything from 5-20 minutes.
18:00-18:30 DH gets home and distracts DS from feedathon
19:00 Bedtime feed starts
Anytime between 20:00-22:30 DS may be put down in his cot
Anytime between 22:30 and 11:30 DS will wake for a nightfeed
1-2am DS wakes for nightfeed
3-4am DS wakes for last nightfeed

If I go out then I may temporarily distract DS with a ride in his pushchair, but whenever we get to where we're going he'll want feeding for an hour regardless of how much I've fed him before leaving the house.

Anyone else got such a hungry baby?

DG if it consoles you at all, all of my feeds still last an hour (T is singularly unimpressed if I attempt to hurry him along). We do manage to do fewer, big feeds during the day, but that's only because I had my mother here for 2 weeks helping me do what your DH does - distract him to drag out the distance between feeds. Luckily for me, once we'd managed to do that for a couple of weeks, he stuck to it. I do think it's virtually impossible to do alone though, as every time I tried to distract T during that time, he took one look at me and started rooting frantically!

I do think that although 3 months is a slightly mythical magic point (as in babies don't suddenly decide to find their own routine after weeks of feeding on demand), it is a time where many people manage to pause long enough to take stock and decide how they want to continue parenting for the long term, and babies can begin to 'learn' what to expect (whether that's constant comfort in a lovely snuggly sling, or the reassurance of knowing what's coming next in a routine), so it can spell the beginning of things calming down for lots of people.

Sassafrass Happy birthday.
Hope you had a fun night out
Hopefully No routines yet and she is almost 3 months! I am sure she will get there.

morning!

ok so why is m getting more unsettled at night, she's a real struggle now to settle after her feeds and to cap it all i have tonsillitus and am feeling real rough. i'm trying to hold off from getting antibiotics and luckily it's just one side affecteed, but my tonsils reached the middle of my mouth and my whole throat and neck is swollen.

enough moaning. hope you had a fun night sassy dg can you find things to go out to every day? if you jiggle the pram at home can he be fooled into thinking he's out?

it will settle

I had a great night out playing guitar hero world tour and singstar. Me and my friend were belting out the tunes and dancing while the boys played pool.

Katie, as expected didn't stay in her cot during the evening. I came home at eleven to find her fast asleep in her granddads's arms. He was quite reluctant to let her go I thin they enjoyed having her to themselves. The amazing thing was, she hadn't been hungry and then went on to sleep in her cot until 5 in the morning, so she went without food for ten hours! I think it might soon be time to let dh deal with her at night for a couple of nights and see if we can get her out of the habit of eating at 1 and 4.

hope you had a fun night sassy! ninja - hope you get well soon, achy bones, sore throat, cold sweats here...

M slept from 12am til 7am the other night, but last night she suddenly refused to finish her bottle of ebm, pushing it away and looking for breast so had to give in, never done that in 7 wks she's been having ebm at 11pm... so then slept from 12.30am to 5.30 and fed on-off til 7. got p halfhour ago (ds woulnt let me gave lay in) and now have to go bring dp coffee as he's doing a boot sale... hopefully he'll sell s.thing... hope you all have a nice sunday

Just a very quick hello from me. Dougie is asleep having had his first feed (at 8:15 this morning after DH gave him his last feed at 1:30am - I got a good night's sleep!). DD is still asleep too! I think she's a bit off colour as she was very tearful yesterday and didn't eat much (MOST unlike her). We had friends round and she was shy (again, most unlike her).

Starlight I am about the cruise, although I agree this isn't the best time to do it as you won't really be able to do the trips. Still I am most intrigued to hear more. Which cruise line is it? Do children go free or are they extra? I remember looking at Princess Cruises once and they charged £1000 per child regardless of the age!!! It's something I would love to do but DH and I have resigned ourselves to the idea that it will probably not be for many years, so I'd love to know what you think of it as a suitable holiday for kids after you get back.

Things seem to be calming down here - or maybe I'm just getting used to it. I do still find he won't settle in the day unless I hold him though, which is difficult. DD's bedtime is hard because I have to put him down then to attend to her so he's crying while she goes to bed. . I'm not getting on too well with the (Close) sling either. It worked the other day for about half an hour while I did the ironing but then the next time I tried he wouldn't settle at all so I gave up. I guess we just have to ride this phase out.

On the positive side, he's doing well at night. The night before last he did about 8 hours but I think that was a one-off! It was nice though!!! DD was always a good sleeper from early on so I'm hoping he'll be the same.

No poo for several days though. I'm thinking I might have to retrieve the bouncy chair from the spare room when DH wakes up seeing as it seems to work for the rest of you.....

Ninja after 2 nights of settling quickly after his 4am feed, T has reverted back to type, and for the past 2 nights has taken a good 2.5 hours to feed and settle again. It is so depressing. It doesn't really matter how much sleep I've had previously (DP has been doing bottles of EBM at 10:30 so I've often had 5 or 6 hours), being up for 2 hours from 4am is an absolute killer. The 2 days when he went straight back down were so easy I didn't even mind doing the 4am feed.
I just don't know what to do to solve it. I'm contemplating cutting back on his day time sleep a bit (the amount has crept up a bit over the past few days), and DP is going to try to make the EBM feed last a bit longer - at the minute he is awake, fed, burped and back down inside 30 mins, whereas it was a good 1hr breastfeed. Anyone got any other suggestions?

In other news, I got my first ever good morning smile when I went to pick T up out of his cot this morning. I of course instantly forgave him for his 2 hour party!

hopefully sorry it's going backwards again, I'm sure you're going to have a more settled toddler to make up for it.

starlight are you sure - i've just been given even MORE clothes a lot of which i'll never be able tp put on dd because of the season, dd1 was a summer baby though so i have some stuff from her as well.

sunflower hope you're feeliong better as well

Starlight I would happily consider a later bedtime but I am (a) terrified that he'll wake at 4:30am anyway and (b) I feel bad for making DP do a feed so late. I've spoken to him though, and we've agreed that if things don't improve (i.e. he starts settling quicker or sleeping a longer stretch so i can reasonable start the day), we'll start doing that from thursday night (so he's here on the weekend if it completely mucks up T's body clock).
I think unless things begin to change in the next couple of days it's safe to assume that we're going to have to help him learn that 4am is not party time rather than hoping he'll magically pick it up himself.

The other problem is that quite often he's fairly sleepy at the end of the feed, but he's quite windy, and by the time I've managed to get all the burps out of him he's totally awake and very cross! I did try putting him down without thorough burping, but he was up 3 more times, each time doing a very undignified belch.

ninja thanks for the vote of confidence. Hope you're beginning to improve on the tonsil front. I am clinging on to the fact that when he does sleep he is a very heavy sleeper (we can make quite a lot of noise and he doesn't stir) so once the sleeping probs are sorted he should be a good sleeper!

In other positive news, T went down for his lunchtime nap without a problem today, as well as on friday (this has been our bogey nap for a couple of weeks). It's brilliant that he's going down for it again, as he tends to sleep for a good 90 mins at that one, giving me a decent break.

Starlight got to be worth a shot!

Incidentally has anyone experienced this - my SIL reckons that when she gave her DS a bottle of EBM during the night he settled much quicker than after a BF. Her theory was this his stomach was extra full. DP also thinks there's some merit in this as T settles very quickly after his 10:30pm bottle of EBM. To be honest it's probably a non-starter as I don't think i can express much more (takes me 2 sessions to get one bottle of ebm for 10:30 feed), but would be interested to hear if it's true.

hopefully it worked with ds - he was going from 10.30pm to 7am from 2 weeks. not working exactly with dd, though she goes to 5/6am when she finishes the bottle. problem is she doesn't always finish the bottle and so wakes earlier for night feed

starlight I've e-mailed you.

Tonsils feeling rubbsh - I can't talk (dh says great) or swallow (there had to be silver lining - goodbye a bit more baby weight?). I think I'm going to Doctors tomorrow though as the space where food and drink should go through is getting smaller and smaller. Doesn't stop me typing though

How long does this poo chair usually take to work? Still no poo. DH put Dougie in it earlier and left him to cry for half an hour until I came in and took him out! For goodness sake!

I'm desperate for him to poo now as he's farting like a trooper and it stinks! Poor wee thing!

DD finally work up at 11am, while DH slept on til 1:30!!!! In fact as Dougie was also asleep it was just muggins here up doing the housework! Now if I'd known they were all going to sleep that long.....

Oooh starlight that is a veerrr' intresting theory about the 40 minutes upright. I am going to try that, as it is wind that often tops Frank stettling after a night feed. And it is that which nibbles away at my mental health.

Have just ordere a Kari-Me to alternate with my Tricottio. Hope its good - for all you sling fand there was an article in The Times about baby wearing yesterday.

I'd be up for a London meet up by the way.

Gah - how many spelling mistakes???

Grrrr... I have got T down about 300 times this evening, and he has woken about 3 minutes later! He is also in desperate need of a poo (man, I would love to know what percentage of posts on here are about baby poo). I have abandoned him to DP for a moment, and am watching Strictly - I have decided Cheri Lunghi (sp?) should go out.