December 2007 - Oh what fun, they are almost ONE!

[Caz10]

OK here we are ladies!

Hello

Not been on for ages. I've been feeling down for a few weeks now and finally approached my hv who thinks I have pnd. It has been a relief to admit it to someone. I thought that these awful feelings were just what mums had to go through and that I'm just not a very good mum as I'm not dealing with them . I've spoken to someone on a local helpline and I'm being referred for counselling. It's encouraging that some of you on here have found counselling to be beneficial. For me it's the birth that I just can't put behind me. I've been having nightmares and flashbacks since dd turned one and the nervous, panicky feeling that I had for the first few weeks after she was born has returned. I'm going to the doctor next week as recommended by my hv but not keen on getting antidepressants.

Sorry to blether on but it's quite easy to 'talk' on mumsnet and I know that some of you ladies have been in the same situation. By the way, hope you are ok, clara

Congrats to Dr Skid by the way!!

Louise - good for you for talking to HV. I have found that just admitting I'm struggling a little has helped me feel slightly better. I am off to see my gp this afternoon. Very nervous as I'm not good at talking about these things and not sure exactly what I am going to say or what she will be able to do. I am interested to hear that we can still be diagnosed as having pnd this long after a birth, although from what you describe it does sound like that is what you have. But I wonder when it stops being PNd and just becomes D?

Thanks for the other messages, like Louise I am very encouraged by how many people have found counselling useful. And in fact how many people have actually had counselling - it's a much higher number than anyone in real life would admit to.

I hope everyone's ok. I was wondering where Suey is these days?

I have just started "class supporting" an NCT group who are all about to have their babies. It's very wierd as that stage of my life seems so long ago already....

Hi clara. My hv said that it is actually quite common for women whose babies are over 1 to just be diagnosed with pnd. She also said that it can linger on for years if not treated. Not surprising when you think how hard it is to admit that you're not coping.

Clara good luck, I also find it hard to express how I am feeling in RL and can also play things down (that's why MN has been a lifesaver for me, I find it easier to vent and moan on here than in RL, particularly in a face to face situation. I also know what you mean about things being easier if you admit to them, I posted a thread last week about how ds was driving me mad and have been coping a lot better since I did that

Louise I hope things look up soon and glad you spoke to HV.

Was also wondering abvout Suey...

Hey y'all. Phewey - don't have ringworm. DO have shingles. The joy. Luckily enough a superchum who's also had shingles in the past and knows what a tiresome poorliness it is took both DCs off for the afternoon (thus giving her the chance to try out the 4 children she may yet have...) A superstar. But I itch grrrrr

So sorry so many of you are feeling low. Keep sharing.

Arcadie - oh no!! Hope you feel better soon.

Claraq/Louise - know how you feel... am off to the docs tomorrow, don't feel the lofepramine has helped and I'm going to ask for a referral for counselling as well. It is shocking how many of us have been or are being treated for PND - it is more common than you realise I think, and I guess in a lot of cases it does go undiagnosed. I agree that posting on here has been sooo helpful. Carry on is what I say!

gosh arcadie, poor you. Shingles can be quite nasty, can't it? Make sure you get lots of rest and hopefully your friend can carry on looking after your DCs while you recuperate

clara, louise and BT - well done all of you for seeking help and hopefully this will the beginning of the road to recovery.

BT - def a good idea to ask to change your ADs - AFAIK it is very much a matter of finding trying a few to find out what works for you much like the contraceptive pill

clara - hope it went OK and you managed to find somthing to say. Hope your GP was sympathetic and helpful

louise - I wonder if what you have might be PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as the flashbacks etc sound like it. I think it is quite common after a traumatic birth and counselling should definitely help. I also had PTSD (nothing to do with birth or babies) and had a few months of counselling and have been great ever since. Hopefully the same will happen for me.

Hmm get me doling our psychological advice to everyone. I'm obviously taking me title of Dr. Skid a bit too seriously

Oh and thanks for all the congrats ...

hi y'all, had a pooey day i miss dd ALOT havent seen her since sat cuz of my shift pattern, unless she has been asleep im finding when i am working or trying to concentrate all i can think of is her, im not sure if i am normal lol. is any1 else a single mummy? im new to this and i think your all wonderful and i def hav a new appriciation for my mum. shingles is nasty rest a lot and drink plenty of fluids, u can take piriton for the itching and use calamine lotion but make sure u wash your hands throurhly after cuz it can spread.

my friend had it and it spread to her rudy nudy places !!!

am going to cyprus in about 2 months and was unsure of sleeping arrangements for dd, i hav requested a travel cot but they are not definate any ideas anyone.

Meme - it is perfectly normal for you to miss dd! It is hard, especially if you are not used to such a long separation.

Have you got a Travel cot? When dh and I flew to spain via Easyjet, we were able to take the travel cot with us as well as the pushcair, and it didn't cost us anything. Might be best to do that if the holiday company aren't being very helpful about promising one.

at friend's "rudy wudy bits" - hope she is better!!! Hope that doesn't happen to you Arcadie!!

Hi meme - yes another single mum here. Other than going to work I haven't been apart from DD since she was born and TBH feeling a bit like a break. In fact only tonight I asked my Mum if she would consider staying overnight here sometime so that I could go away one Saturday with some girls to have a spa and night out etc. She said yes :O but we have yet to set a date. I'm actually thinking it will also be quite healthy for me to do that as I know it will be a real wrench for me to leave her knowing that if she wakes crying I won't be there. So I really admire your ability to go days at a time without seeing her awake. I hope you get to spend some good times with her this weekend.

I wasn't really off to check them.

Come back people.

PMSL!!!

LOL at Dr Skid doling out advice. We have our own resident Dr Phil

Arcadie sorry about the shingles, my mum has had it a few times and really suffers Hope you recover soon.

Meme that sounds incredibly hard, it's a long time not to see your dd, poor you.

Buzzy a spa and night out sounds great hope you set a date soon.

No news here, no sleep either, and ds still attached to boobs 24/7

Do I do CC or Dr Jay Gordon?? Dr Jay Gordon is more me I think...but we've been doing a variation of that for months and I think maybe ds is just too stubborn for it to work...

Votes please

Ow he is biting my toes to get my attention now!

Claire - sorry to say this but Dr Jay just isn't me at all - I had a quick read and when I got to the bit which suggested it was still ok for a 30 month old to wake every 2-4 hours for a quick "cuddle or feed or whatever" I realised I wouldn't be able to give you an unbiased answer!!

Just the thought makes me come over all tired.

But of course if you can cope with that then stick with it an don't feel you have to change things for the sake of it.

I am not a big fan of CC unless absolutely desperate. The only time I have done it properly with dd2, she was horrendously ill a day or so later and I realised she wasn't crying to get my attention (etc) but because she wasn't feeling good. I felt very guilty and we've not really left her to cry since.

BUT she is a good sleeper, frequently sleeps through the night and if she does wake is usually easy to get back to sleep. If she wasn't so good I would definitely be thinking about sleep training by now, but would rather go for something gentler than full on cc.

As you're still breastfeeding though you will have to get the help from your dh as he probably won't settle with you around. But you know all of this, I'm sure!

Good luck!

PS It's St Lucia we're going to. Finally got the formal offer today. Hopefully going in August. Caribbean here we come!

Oh btw, saw the gp. She was pretty cool about everything, said how I was feeling was very normal especially at my "stage" in life (not sure if she meant my age or being a mum with two small children!). She gave me a few options but has left it up to me what I want to do. I think I will try and give counselling a go - if nothing else, I would like some coping strategies as I'm sure things will be difficult when we move again.

Louise/BT hope things are ok with you. Perhaps we should start our own counselling support thread. Dr Skid could oversee

I thought this might be of interest to some, BBC radio 4 programme, Am I normal? on Postnatal depression I listened to it last night and seems we all need to be more honest as mums about how we feel so we can feel pretty good that thats exactly what we are doing on this thread!

Clara - glad gp visit went well and at your next move the location sounds heavenly

Claire - have to say Dr Jay isn't for me either, we use the baby whisperer, there is a baby and toddler book, probably onto the toddler book now but thats more of a kind of sleep training but you are with them the whole time, we have used CC at times tho as being with the boys sometimes seems to prolong the process - they both struggle to wind down

Arcadie - pmsl at you dashing off to check your rudy nudy bits - hope they are still ok

clara - that's good ytour GP was helpful - will you get free counselling on the NHS? Might be a wait of a wait if you go for that option?

St. Lucia!!! Wow and

clairey - well as you may have observed I am a right old hippy lentil weaving guardian reading kinda parent and I have always fed Milo whenever he wanted during the night (and day). However he has always been a relatively good sleeper so if he was up several times in the night now I don't know what I would do. I hate the idea of CC but I also hate the idea of still being sleep-deprived... I suppose you have to think long and hard about what you think would work best and how you would cope with each method and then really go for it. FWIW I have very much had the 'this too shall pass' attitude second time round and that has kept me going. But as I say Milo sleeps pretty well so i can afford to... good luck with whayever you decide

buzzy - second that a spa break is a great idea for everyone. Enjoy!

Milo has had an upset tummy for a week now. I keep thinking it's better and then get another explosive nappy and my God is it minging!!! So he's off nursery, can't take him to baby groups - aaaaghh it's driving me mad. What do you all do when you have an ill baby? And should I take him to the doc? He is very happy and seems fine apart from the nappies.

Hi everyone.

Prob forgotton me, but was pushed in here by claraquack

Haven't had a chance to read everyone's postings, but will try and give a quick update on my 2 lovely DD2

DD1- Finally potty trained and now that she is 3, such a good girl.

DD2 - still doesn't sleep through the night - actually has never slept through the night since she was born. Has been prone to lots of colds, coughs, etc and each time has been left with bad ear infections. Last night spent 1.5 hrs at the GP surgery waiting to see the Doc (not easy when you have 2 LOs to amuse with just boring old books) and when I saw the GP - he was more concerned that it was closing time and quickly told me that she had an ear infection AGAIN (which would explain why she was up every 1 hrs for the past few days). She is still a very poor eater and now wil only eat rice krispies (prior to that it was waffles, sweetcorn, peas...). Howwever she is walking, climbing up the stairs and everywhere, talking, putting everything in her mouth etc as expected.

On top of that trying to juggle work (I swear some days I find it so hard to focus as I am so tired and guzzle down the coffee) and family life. Will be the first to admit it's so hard and tiring - but it pays the bill and allows us to have the nice things in life.

Lots of hellos and hugs to you ladies and a big smacker for your kids...mwwwwahhhhhh.... (yes I am still sleep deprived hence the incoherent posting)...

Thanks for the replies

Clara I know what you mean about Dr Jay...I think his approach is more me (as in it is more the approach I do naturally iyswim) but at the same time I don't do co sleeping if I can possibly avoid it and no, I do not want ds to still be waking several times a night at 30 months! I can cope with him waking once until he is about 2 because that is what dd did and now she sleeps brilliantly so I can kind of see an end to it if that is what he does. We had the same thing with dd as you with dd2-the one and only time I did CC with her she woke up the next day with a new tooth and a red raw bum

Insy I tried baby whisperer when ds was tiny and it didn't work for us at all. I liked the basics behind it but it just didn't work and ds' screaming got worse when I tried. Mind you I don't think it helped that I couldn't stand the way she wrote the book and wanted to throw things at her everytime I opened it! PUPD and shush pat just enraged him too rather than getting him to sleep...Does she do anything different for toddlers?

We did do some CC when he was 8 months because he'd stopped settling even when rocked and it worked for a while but then we went to Botswana and came back and everything changed.

Anyway, what we have been doing for a while now is me feeding ds then dh settling him for bed. Dh was going to him when he woke and he was settling fairly easily and sometimes sleeping through til 5 or 6. But then he suddenly started waking earlier and earlier and either not settling at all for dh or settling and waking again several times-hence very sleep deprived parents. So the last couple of weeks (I was feeling guilty about dh getting up to him )I have gone to him. That immediately means no crying but he wasn't settling again, just wanted to be held by me all night and was trying to feed constantly. This week I have given up trying to settle him and put him back in cot and just brought him in bed with me but refused to feed him. Night one he woke at 11ish and just tried to feed all night, night 2 he woke at 12, again kept trying to feed, night 3 he woke at 2 but accepted it when I said no boob and was ok just being cuddled then lying next to me, last night he slept til 4 and wasn't really bothered about feeding, just tried once then gave up. The next step is getting him out of my bed again! Hopefully he might carry on increasing the time he sleeps for and it won't even be an issue eg if he sleeps til 6 then I can just feed him and get up so he'll have spent all night in his own bed. Fingers crossed!

I dunno though, it just seems like everytime we make some progress with his sleep he goes backwards again so I do wonder if a harsher method would have more of a lasting effect.

Clara am very of St Lucia. Wow!

Skid not at all of the nappies (well unless the green face can also mean puke!). Could he be teething? DD used to always get horrible green runny smelly poo when she was teething, ds' nappies are SO much nicer to deal with!

Hi Amani cross posted with you there.
And no, of course we haven't forgotten you!
Sorry to hear your dd2 has been poorly She sounds like she is developing well though despite the illnesses. And she really does sound like my dd was re food, she used to go through stages of only eating one or two things and barely ate anything. She's fine now though

Glad dd1 is doing well and well done on the potty training. DD went backwards again so I've just forced her back into nappies for a bit and will try again at a later date. She is not happy about the nappies at all but I wasn't happy about changing her pants 4 or 5 times a day either. Lucky for me she is telling me when she needs a poo and doing it on the toilet so I'm not having to change pooey nappies-funny how a few months ago I didn't think twice about it but now I haven't done it for a while it seems really gross!

DS' latest achievement, climbing into the toilet. Has done it 3 times now

Hi Amani! Glad to hear from you thought sorry to hear dd2 hasn't been well - big hug from me and ds to you and your 2!

Clairey - Dh has also been going into ds and settling him, works half the time. He still wakes 2x a night for booby though. I now put ds in his cot awake after his bed time feed and he does settle himself most nights, which is good!

Claraq - St Lucia sounds dreamy - am also very

Have now register ds at new nursery, local to me. Sad to leave old one as it was excellent but can't really justify sending him there since I am no longer travelling that way to work from next week - Tuesday is my last day!

BT Hurrrray for last day.

Amani Hey there - nice to hear from you again.

DrSkid Filled with sympathy on the not being able to go out with DCs. It is one of the worst things about them being poorly is that you're strapped to the house. ( And of course, that you're own flesh and blood darling darling precious cherub is unwell.... )

Insy All rudy nudy bits present and correct. The shingles are on my back. I think they're clearing. How's DF ( Darling Foetus?)

And who is this Dr Jay? I thought I'd read EVERY parenting book ever written. GF, Baby Whisperer, Babywise, miriam Stoppard, "What every parent ought to know" ( which is frankly terrifying), Ferber... the LOT! Don't tell me I've missed out a huge chunk of my parenting knowledge!?