Sept 08: We'll soon be weaning, and of a full nights sleep we're dreaming ......

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

Hello ladies.

Pull up a chair, grab a biscuit and lets start talking about puree vs blw and sleep deprivation

here snowlight

so...opinions please. I have decided to start giving 1 bottle of formula a day as last feed, really so i can go to netball in april [selfish mummy emoticon] Last couple of nights hes had a mix of breast and bottle, prob having 4 oz formula. Last night he had 7oz and only a little bit of breast, oh and it was hungry baby milk. He woke 12.30, 1.30, 4. And at 4 wasnt really hungry so i ended up putting him back in his cot and listening to him cry til he fell asleep. Why is the formula making him sleep worse, or is it a coincidence?

Plusone - maybe it's too heavy in his tummy and is harder for him to digest so it's making him uncomfortable?

Stick with it Hopefully

You're right Imoscarsmum enjoy that shoulder time while you can. You won't beable to do that when she's 18!

yeah you could be right ILTMIMI now i feel bad!

Plusone ILTMIMI's probably right - have you thought about starting with plain formula, rather than hungry baby? AFAIK hungry baby milk has something like cereal in it in order for it to 'sit' on the baby's tummy longer.

yeah it was probably silly to go straight for no.2 milk, i just thought that as i would just be doing 1 bottle a wk i might as well go for that one. bugger, bought a whole tub of powder. oh well, will get no. 1 instead!! how important is it to chuck it after its been open 4 wks?

Don't feel bad plusone , we live and learn.

It's very important to throw it out after 4 weeks. I guess it's to do with the amount of bacteria growth. If you are only using one bottle a week why don't you either try expressing. Or if you really don't want to do that buy a small carton of ready made.

I can't remember which way round it is but one formula is curds based and the other is whey based. And one of them is harder to digest so keeps you feeling fuller for longer.

Just taken T to be weighed and he has gained nicely! Such a relief after all the drama of the past week. He's happily following a line somewhere above the 9th.

Am going to write a letter of complain about our HV's weaning advice though - girl in front of me was really distressed as her baby won't take anything off a spoon, but will happily take food from her plate at eat it. She asked HV if it was ok to do that with veggies and things, and HV said, "no, that's really dangerous. he'll choke and could die." She also asked HV's advice on avoiding dairy as almost everyone in her family has excema and/or cow's milk intolerance. Her child also had red raw excema until she gave up dairy (she still BFs) HV's advice? "Well, it's probably not that. Why don't you just give him some dairy and see what happens?" I kid you not. The girl had also mentioned that she started weaning at 23 weeks, baby is now 26 weeks, and HV said he should really be on 3 full meals a day by 26 weeks. I managed to quickly suggest googling BLW as she passed me on the way out.
Might post on the weaning board for some good research/documents to send in, so they can actually educate HV's. I don't normally get het up about things like this, but this poor girl was obviously quite distressed, and was made to feel even worse for offering her (obviously thriving, sitting up on the changing mat) baby a bit of brocolli!

Oh god, have just realised how nosy that makes me sound - I wasn't eavesdropping, they were having the conversation right in front of me!

They are all out to get me this morning...
Illustration of where I parked in tesco this morning

TTTGPSSPSSP

T being trolley park, G a small gap, P the purple paint either side of a P&C parking space, S is the space itself
Make sense?

I was parked here

TTTGPSSPSSP

Well blow me down when I came back and a car was parked here

TTTGPSSPSSP

So I couldn?t get alfie in!

I went to get a member of staff and they put a call out, after a bit a woman came out with 2 kids aged about 9 and 11, mumbling something about not realising (yeah right) and then promptly drove out of the space and into here

TTTGPSSPSSP

Honestly!!

plusone DO NOT get me started on P&C parking spaces, the amount of times I see people coming in and out of them with no kids just enrages me. I even wrote an e mail to a super market, and the reply was that they basically couldn't do anything about it their quick enough to slap you with a parking ticket if you forget to display your disabled badge (happened to my dad) or fine you x amount for going 3 minutes past your time (happened to me) oooooo

LOL pluseone Love the illustration text! Are you good at forms and spreadsheets?

Don't worry about the formula thing. Your lo may have loved it for all you knew. Just try again if you still want to give it a go but remember that there are not gurantees of sleep. Very often changes in diet make sleep worse to begin with.

Hopefully You don't sound nosey. Do write that letter. Mothers are fairly vulnerable in th early stage of parenthood and they can make some powertripping HVs feel like some sort of oracle whose 'opinion' is God's word. Some are simply poorly trained. However they need to make sure they are given proper advice.

DH didn't get the job he had an interview a couple of weeks ago. I'm really gutted. I really want to move back to Scotland. I was feeling a bit down and fed up anyway so this really hasn't helped. I keep crying and ds1 comes and gives me cuddles, need to be happy though as I don't want to upset him.

Oh Debi I'm sorry to hear that. The job market is horrible at the moment and for all you know they offered the job to someone they already knew, but went through the interview process just as procedure (this seems to happening a lot amongst many of my friends)

Hang in there. These things usually have a way of working themselves out.

thanks snow [i secretly do love spreadsheets]

youre so right, I am gonna give it another night or maybe 2 and see how he likes it. The first night he pushed the bottle away but by the 2nd and 3rd night he was fussing at the breast and took bottle really easily. Obviously prefers the faster flow. Speaking of which...with ds1 i had real trouble with avent bottles leaking but have discovered NUK bottles with an orthodontic teat. They are fab and no leakage. Alfie seems to get loads in his mouth, much more like bfing. Can thoroughly reccommend if anyone is interested!

oh and debi sorry bout your news, maybe theres something even better round the corner..?

for debi and meglet

Haven't been on here for days, I've had withdrawl symptoms!! Basically dMIL is staying, and we're potty training dd, so there is no spare time, I'm shattered and craving peace and quiet and not having to make conversation!

Croydon is indeed south London. Proposed date for meet up is Wed 13th or Thursday 14th May. I'm excellent with dates but rubbish with people and can't remember who said they're coming, but everyone's welcome! Put it in your diaries and we'll talk details nearer the time. Someone needs to suggest a venue too - anyone else bringing a toddler? If its all babies then I know a lovely starbucks

Right, back to dMIL since I'm now clearly not researching potty training on MN...

Sorry to hear your DH didn't get the job debi. As plusone says, maybe something better will turn up. So sweet of your DS to be giving you cuddles .

lolly, hopefully and debi it was lovely to see you and all the DC's yesterday. DS's nose is fine now and he had a fun afternoon with his best friend playing with potatoes , I might just bin all his toys and buy a bag of spuds. DD was back to her happy self in the afternoon, I think she was over tired. We're going to do the soft play place again when its quieter during term time.

I did try to do BLW with broccoli for DD last night, but over cooked the broccoli to mush . So i pureed it through a garlic press and mixed it with her baby rice, it wa a sort of 'glow in the dark' light green coloured baby rice. oops.

forgot to tell you about my bargain buy at tescos. 97p (i think) for a thing called a 'dash board mat' which is that non slip stuff. Bought it for the new highchair to stop little bottom slipping on the wooden seat!

Ah plusone, but the real test will be, can you stick the baby to the dashboard?!
Loving the parking space illustration!

Meglet sorry to hear the broccolli didn't go quite as well as the roast chicken! I'm sure she enjoyed the glow in the dark mush.

Sorry to hear the bad news Debi. Hope something turns up soon.

sorry bout your DH debi hopefully definitely write that letter.

No-one in RL seems to know about BLW. I find myself mumbling some sort of apologetic explanation for why we've decided to go this route. Usually finishing off with a 'ha, I'll probably give up in a couple of weeks if he doesn't start eating anything'. Everyone asks me whether he's sleeping through and when I say no they inevitably diagnose that he's 'obviously hungry'.

I'm completely aware of how my decision to not feed purees must make some RL mums feel that I frown upon them going the puree route. But I don't. I think it's the same as those who co-sleep and those who don't.

Anyway, today A played with avocado, dried apple and rice crackers. He's loving it, less gagging, and lasting longer and longer in his high-chair before throwing his arms in the air to signal his majesty has tired of this food business.

We also went to the park today and he got so excited as soon as I took him out the pushchair, he wanted to explore everything! He even loved being on the baby swing!

Oh snowlight, so that's you! I'll probably bump into you soon.

Last night I woke up at 3am and thought "OMG, I haven't had my breastfeeding tablets today!" I looked all round for them in the dark for a bit, thought about it some more and realised I couldn't actually remember taking them all week. Started to panic a bit now worrying about what would have happened to my milk and if DD would be alright. Went to find DH (working lates at home at the moment) to see if he remembered where they were.

He looked at me a bit funny.

I thought about it a bit more and realised they didn't exist. Went back to bed.

LOL Jenbot I've no idea whether you've got me or not but I agree we'll probably bump into each other soon.

And PMSL at your sleep-drunk wierdness!

jenbot that sounds liek me - psml

Thanks for the sympathy, feeling a bit better about it now. I do believe that the right job will come up when the time is right and we always said that we want to move before ds1 starts school and thats still 18 months away so there's no rush.
Weirdly the warmer weather today helped as I hung washing outside for the 1st time in months, its amazing how much bigger the house feels without wet washing everywhere!

Those of you with trays for your bumbos- do you remove the tray to get the baby in and out and if you do is it easy? Can you get the top of the tray off the bottom bit? It looks like it should come off but ours is really stiff so we just manouver him in and out with the tray on. But then tonight he choked on a bit of cucumber and it wasn't easy to get him out fast to put him flat and hit his back so he ended up horizontal in mid air being held by dh with the bumbo still attached!