December 2008 - Its not wind they are smiling.

[JamInMyWellies]

Here we go ladies Rosmerta suggestion.

Hello ladies. Just a quick one from me - am very envious of those of you managing to have grown up evenings. DD spends all evening cluster feeding and will only sleep on either me or DH! Still, she's a cutie so can't really complain....

lal - I'm definitely up for the cinema on Wednesday. Have to take munchkin for her hearing test (she failed the one in the hospital!) first thing but should be able to make it to Greenwich for 11.30am.

Hope all is well with everyone....

i am here - on mumsnet.
dd2 is on my lap in the middle of a mad cluster feed.
i am not at fun party, catching-up with old friends and meeting ladyt.
boo.

Trace & ZJ don't be questioning yourselves about having the painrelief you chose, it's your body and your labour and you chose what was right for you. There will always be someone who did it supposedly tougher than you did. On teliing people I had both my boys with gas&air I had some women look at me as though I was weak as they told me they hadn't resorted to any pain relief. And if it's not the non pain reliefers that you have to 'compete' with it's the timers. For some my 12 hour labour were either not long so I hadn't suffered like them with their 500 hour jobs. Or too long and I clearly didn't have as efficient a birth canal as theirs which spat the baby out in 5.3seconds. Personally I think we are all lucky to have had healthy strong babies and I'm proud of us all for being capable of nurturing them for 9 months and safely bringing into the world one way or another.

Sorry for the rant, but I feel quite strongly about this. And besides Trace regardless of what you took to get through it you have the best baby photo EVER!!!

Sorry your not at your party Arti. You can have a party with me. I am opposite to u I am trying to get ds to feed as my boob is sore and I think one of m ducts is getting a little blocked as I can feel a big limp of full gland in it that hasn't emptied with the rest of the boob. For once I don't want him to go off to sleep. Might have to express it off.

ZJ I think it helps that we have gone home for a couple of long visits. He had I usually spend about 2 months at a time in Australia and when there he swims pretty much everyday. Then here DH takes him swimming every week and he just kind of naturally done stuff in the water. It has saved us a fortune in swim classes.

Morning,

Arti sorry you didn't get to go to the party.

I have been up since 4. DS2 woke up and as it is the weekend DH got up and did a bottle and fed him. Then DS1 decided to come into our bed, I spent 45 minutes taking him back to his room, then I gave up. But he still wouldn't go to sleep even in our bed so we have got up. DH and DS2 are in bed still. I am shattered.

veggie = thanks for your rant - it makes sense! You're very wise and encouraging! I bet you're fab at your job Are you planning going back to work?

Arti - am very gutted on your behalf . I really was looking forward to the coded messages between you and Lady T! And you didn't get the chance to use the "can anyone smell artichokes?" line!!!! Really hope you get a nice night out soon to make up for it

zj - I'm not really following a routine but I don't let Phoebe sleep for more than 2 hours at a time in the day because it generally leads to less sleep at night for her - but all babes are different!

well both my girls are alive and kicking already! dd1 woke at 6 with her horrid cough and cold, but a bit of calpol and Karvol and now she just wants to play, and dd2 fed at 6 and clearly has no intention of going back to sleep any time soon . Our evening was disrupted because we went to the inlaws, so we had a feed frenzy from 8-10 instead of 5-7, and a few more feeds in the night after than, so she's full of milk and raring to go! But I'm not complaining because she keeps smiling at me this morning which makes me melt every time!

dd1 got upset yesterday because dd2 stuck her tongue out at her! We had to try to explain that P doesn't know that it's rude and she's just practising using her mouth!

oh kayz - hope you can get a rest at some point today. How's the FF going?

Its going quite well. Its all a bit annoying having to wash and sterlise bottles. It is also a bit upsetting that when he cries I can't just feed him instead of going and doing a bottle.

We think he might need the milk for hungrier babies as he is always hungry.

Good morning (especially to kayz and trace - is there something in the yorkshire air waking our babes up today?)

kayz - your big DS2 probably has a big tum to match, so I'd guess that takes some filling

trace - how do manage to wake P up? DD is very stubborn (don't know where she gets that from ) and be awake/feed etc if she doesn't want to. Poor L, getting upset by P's toungue. DD isn't smiling yet, but is getting very good at copying us when we stick our toungues out - its our favourite game at the moment!

arti - sorry you didn't get to the party, I hope you have a lovely day today to make up for it.

veggie - thanks for your rant, I completely agree and the strange thing is absolutely no one has judged my decision to have the epi, I just feel the need to justify just in case. So its bad me really.

Well, must try and get some brekkie, I'm starving! DD is not a morning person and whinges, so not sure if she'll let me put her down long enough to butter and eat toast (she's a delight the rest of the day though, anytime after elenvses!)

hello hello hello ladies.

we have spent the weekend at my dad's which has been so relaxing. lots of ppl to tell us dd is the most beautiful baby in teh world. lots of ppl to take her off us when she gets grizzly (and she only gets grizzly with us - as soon as someone else picks her up, she is good as gold). and hallelujah, we have had a sleep epiphany (all these religious terms for a sunday...) yesterday there was a big party here, so we had to put her to sleep upstairs ON HER OWN IN HER BASKET (listening via the monitor). not only that, but she wouldn't go to sleep after her bath and feed in my arms, so i took the plunge of putting her down BEFORE SHE WAS ASLEEP... and guess what??? SHE SETTLED HERSELF ON HER OWN AND WENT TO SLEEP FOR AGES AND AGES. apols to those with difficult nights, but i just have to tell you, she had a bath at 7.15, had a mammoth feed from 7.30-8.20 (mammoth for her), i tried to shush her to sleep until 9pm, it didn't work, so put her down on her own - she then slept until 1.30am - fed and settled adn slept from 2.30-6am, fed, settled, adn is now STILL ASLEEP. as you guys know, this is utterly unheard of.

i think she may have changed character/grown up/settled/love being at grandpa's. who knows?

we go back home today and then dh starts work in earnest tomorrow. he is the one who always deals with her grizzles and tantrums, so i am a little nervous about doing it on my own for the whole day - am arranging to see lots of people this week, though, to keep me going.

zj re: routine- i have also been writing down times furiously with the idea i will create a colour coded spreadsheet so we can observe her patterns. yeah, right, like i've got round to doing that yet.

basically we only have a routine for evenings - bath around 7, feed in dark, quiet room, swaddled in miracle blanket (hopefully it will become a sign to her to go to sleep), shushing from me (with wonderful white noise cd in background of rainfall - works wonderfully for us, don't know about her) and then fingers crossed. as i said last night was a revelation - the night before she had no intention of sleeping and grizzled and cried and so we brought her down and she went straight to sleep after an 11pm feed. so not bad in teh slightest.

as for mornings, we try to get her downstairs with the lights and tv on by 7-7.30ish, although this morning she is still upstairs having a sunday lie in.

arti - so sorry you didn't get to your party - bummer.

re: different pain relief at labour - my cousin has just had her 3rd child in 3 years without pain relief and her mum was sort of proudly telling me how long and awful her labours were in some sort of weird competition. you know, i didn't want a sodding epidural let alone a c-section, i too wanted to be an earth mother who used positions, breathing, mantras, voicing, etc. but equally i realised if my cervix wasn't going to open more than 4cm, and that i was getting nowhere without intervention and that i wanted to be able to have a fond (ish) memory of the birth and not resent my daughter for nearly killing both me and her, i was happy to go for the drugs (and in retrospect i would have married/signed over all my worldly goods to my anaesthetist for relieving me of the pain). bugger the idea it is a competition. some people's bodies do it easier than others. and 100 years ago, both i and dd would most probably have died. so there. rant over.

i'm sure i had lots more to say - will post again when i can remember. am aiming to come to meetup avec labels and marker pen!

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hello everyone,
been reading but not posting from my iphone for a few days as have not had time to type with 2 hands - I don't know where all the time goes!

Had a shocker of a day a few days ago, had 2 friends from London with their 2 10 month year olds up to visit, my other friend came round as well with her DD (6 weeks), and then DH went round to visit my other friends whose baby is 2 days old. Then in the evening DH threw up spectacularly everywhere (fortunately he missed the new carpet but got the old(er) one) and was sick all over the bathroom, including over my friend who was staying and who is very fond of makeup's 6 make up bags. Well apparently he managed to miss one of them :-)
So spent a while in the evening clearing up the vomit and didn't get much sleep, plus we were terrified that he would have given it to the babies, especially the 2 day old one. But fortunately it only lasted overnight and touch wood, I, DS and no-one else who came round got it. DS was spectacularly good though and stayed asleep through the whole palaver and slept a lot of the next day which meant I have almost managed to catch up on sleep.
So that is the excitement from here!

Oh katie to go back to ages ago, I am 32 birthday in Dec so we could have been in the same year if you were born before sept. so maybe we did play each other at hockey and tennis, etc! Small world. By the way you should give your DH a kick for not letting you have a decent fag break!! Leave him for a few hours then he will find out what it is really like!
Right DS is crying, I have lots more to write so back in a bit!

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ok trying to now type while he feeds, don't think it will work!

re weight loss, I am in! i have 2 stone to lose, I cannot believe it. I have been trying to eat healthily for 3 weeks, and have lost NOTHING. I really don't get it, I thought BFing was meant to make the weight fall off? Maybe once I am a bit more active it will start to work. Am a bit sulky about the whole thing to be honest, as although I wasn't skinny in the first place, I have been the same weight give or take half a stone since I was 16. so I am really not used to it, and likely to throw strops like a teenager if i don't lose some soon. Currenly weigh 11 stone and was 9 before i started.

verso re exercise I will be using my turbo trainer (thingy you put your bike on so you can cycle on it stationary) when DH is not around, when he is and ds is fed and unlikely to want to be again soon, i will go out on my bike for 1-2 hrs. i don't do the gym any more.

Re pain relief in labour, cannot really comment as didn't do that much of real labour myself, but i do think it must be different for everyone. I am convinced depending on babies position and mother's physical structure it hurts in different ways and amounts for each person. The midwife was telling me that contractions hurt in different places for different women which i found strange! And i find the whole competetive thing annoying but haven't found it at all in RL, though i did find the women running my antenatal class a bit too pro totally natural, and the fact that when I asked them "what happens if you end up having a c-section" and they responded "that's very unlikely to happen" I now think, having had one, was even more crap of them!

Right Ds has fallen off, is snoring, better go, decide what to do with him!

Morning everyone (it is still morning isn't it?!)

Had a very exciting email inviting me to give a paper at a conference in September - a whole conference on the subject of my phd! I wouldn't have thought there was enough to say! Dammit I'm not going to be able to go - it's in New York - because a) well, I don't have anything new to say, b) dd isn't allowed into any serious libraries and c) we're booked for our autumn singing holiday that week anyway. But blimey, if only it had been any other year!

SL yuk poor you with all the vom, glad you seem to have escaped. 6 make-up bags??!

rosmerta hope you had a good birthday party, was there jelly and ice cream?

kayz I think ZJ has a very good point about babies and their tummies - they're still only tiny so need to feed lots to keep themselves going. We think bloody hell not again but they've got through their food so fast (and are growing lots to prove it ) that they need to feed loads.

Cat - we're trying coleif to stop dd's excessive fartiness but tbh it hasn't done a thing, just makes us feel we're doing something... the only way to get her to take it is in a little syringe while she's sucking on someone's finger so it gets swallowed by mistake. infacol and gripe water make no difference either so basically I feel it's my fault - I'm not latching her on properly, or not winding her properly, or eating something that doesn't agree with her. Of course it's probably just a phase as she has an immature digestive system but I have to beat myself up about it anyway

and following on from that, the competitive birth/mothering thing - went to an NCT under-1s meeting on Friday and over half the women there had had CS, so clearly its bollocks to tell people it won't happen to them. It was a really interesting session actually talking about why we compete with each other (who has the worst night's sleep, most painful birth etc) asnd the conclusion was that because nobody really ever praises us for what we're achieving (our babies are alive and healthy! Hallelujah!) we feel we can only focus on the bad stuff, and you feel guilty if something good happens - so I'm all the more happy when people come on here and give us good news like WG and her fantastic night's sleep - gives us all hope

dd is just about being put down on occasion now to nap - and we're finally getting better at knowing her signals. She's sort of into a routine of her own that says "feed me!" so she feeds for about 40 minutes, then she'll be either cute and playful or grizzly for about an hour, then wants to go to sleep but can't manage it on her own so into the sling and she's fighting it for about quarter of an hour, then sleeps for maybe a couple of hours and it starts again. So not that bad really. What's really interesting is that no matter what time she goes off to sleep (9pm last night!!! ) she wakes on the stroke of midnight for a feed. We're trying to give her a big feed before bed, sometimes she's just not interested, but it's always midnight for the next one. May need to try and get her out of this habit [bleary eyes] once her tum gets a bit bigger and she can go longer in between.

apologies to anyone I've cross posted with, this message took about 45 minutes to write!

Hi all I'm currently laying next to poor little ds2 he has been crying at me for about 45 mins, I could work out he wanted he wanted sleep, what I couldn't seem to read from his cries was that he wanted to sleep on his tummy. I had tried feeding him to sleep putting in his cot on his back and side bouncing him rocking him shushing him until I had no spit left, putting him in the sling. Now finally he is asleep on his tummy in our bed hooray!!! Now I need to tidy our room whilst listening to the match... Tricky. Oh he's off again!

Hooray for dummies. Oh and using the dummy just reminded me if something I was going to say ages ago when Kayz was worrying about what people would think of her bottle feeding. Something I used to do with ds1 and am doing now with ds2 is when you are uncertain of what choice to make esp if it possible against what you maybe believed before you had children (ie breastfeeding, using dummies, using pullups!!) just ask yourself who it is benefiting, the people who judge you, yourself, or your baby. If to you the answer is baby then it is def the right decision, if the answer is you but also your baby because you will get some sleep/keep your sanity/not throw baby or DH out the window, then it is the right decision. If the answer is will keep other people happy or less likely to judge you then that's the wrong decision.

Also Cat a tip on giving medicines or colic relief, when you put it in their mouth gently blow on their face ad this makes babies and small children swallow. Also good for in planes when taking off if they don't want to feed, to equalize their ears.

Trace I would like to go back to work but unfortunately I do weekday work so can't do anything until boys are at school or nursery fulltime. I'm a bit sad in that I can't bare to leave them so that's why I gave up completely. Have been thinking of writing some papers and articles though, and maybe speaking at a conference. I have to say my ranting abilities came in handy at work, as I was forever telling silly SHOs off who had no idea what my patients families went through and could be quite useless at dealing with them. I would have given Kayz' midwife an earfull.

Hooray WG welldone you. And we can sympathize with each other this week as dh leaves tomorrow for Cardiff til Thursday and he also seems better at settling ds'. If he could lactate I would be of no use. Oh and speaking of lactating I read that BF is the only thing that makes fat come off your bum, tum and thighs first hooray!!!

SL I have put my beautiful dama bianca Bianchi bike on the wind trainer ready for some cycling. We have a programme which let's you ride through mountains and stuff but I'm just going to put on a DVD and ride when DS asleep?!?

Oh I've discovered why the screen of my itouch is so sticky I have obviously squirted breastmilk on it. Luckily it has a protective cover but will need a good wipe. Right time to tidy.

Argh!!!

I'm trying to sort out a holiday and I am failing miserably. We're not too sure where we want to go. The Lake District would be ideal though. It needs to be accessible by train incase DH hasn't passed by then and fairly cheap!!!

Veggie I would love to have had you as a BF counseller(sp), I think you would be wonderful at the job.

I'm not a bf counsellor yet but hope to be one day, I still have 2.5 modules at a bucket load of probation to bet through. My profession is a paediatric nurse and my last job was managing a childrens community nursing team and nursing services in a couple of special needs schools. When I went into management I kept some of my previous case load of complex care and special needs patients. I have a real soft spot for special needs kids and their families they get a rough deal from our health services a lot of the time.

Kayz did you watch the game? We don't have to talk about it but not good we can't afford any extra games. Although did you hear Eduardo is coming back soon.

No I didn't, we haven't got Setanta Sports. I do know the score though. We really should have won! I can't wait for Eduardo to be back, I watched the game where he broke his leg. It was horrible.

I know something like that would freak me out and make me nervous about playing against rough teams. I guess it's lucky I don't play for Arsenal.

I have something very wrong with me I seem to be having another nesting instinct. As soon as I am ever free of Jordy I just want to not just tidy but completely reorganize, whether it's shelves or whole rooms. I have just cleared out ds1s walk in wardrobe it's not big but I have managed to fit his chest of drawers into it freeing up room for his toys etc and general play area. We don't plan to live here long enough for ds2 to share the room but if for some reason we did I think at a squeeze we could fit him in.

I have just found out a friend of mine safely had heard 3rd child and after 2 boys she has had a girl! So she is very happy. She is 44 and I think she didn't want anymore after this one but was really wanting a girl so I'm so happy for her. Oh I think ds1 and dh are back from their bike ride. We just got a trail gator for ds1 so we can take him for longer bike rides.

WG well done on the sleeping at grandpa?s, that?s fab! And I have created that spreadsheet! We?ve got a routine (or regular pattern) for the mornings now, so I?m working on extending it to afternoons and evenings

Cat I also go out with DD in the pram most days, and it does coincide with when I want her to have a nap as she will (almost) always drop off in the pram, and I think the fresh air does us both some good. Sometimes she?s asleep before we go out the door, but I still go as it could be my only outside trip of the day.

SL your poor DH and what a relief the babies didn?t catch it ? phew! And I found that attitude at my ante natal classes too ? the response for me was ?well that?s not your preferred option so we won?t go into details?, correct I wouldn?t choose an emergency C/S but I would readily agree to it if I needed one and so I really wanted to know what to expect

Poor DD is whining again, she?s not slept since 7am, apart from about 3 10 minute cat naps and is so tired, but I just can?t get her to have a proper snooze today. Am expecting an overtired meltdown pretty soon if she?s doesn?t get any kip. Ta ra for now

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