Sept 08: the thread for when they may start crawling, and there will definitely be some separation anxiety bawling ....

[ILikeToMoveItMoveIt]

Welcome ladies

Well, there's no crawling going on in our house, but there's defo some separation anxiety bawling going on .... tears, screaming, the works - oh joy!

Debi so sorry to hear about your Gran. It's been nearly a year since my Gran passed away and I miss her loads. She had a good funeral and we all reminisced (sp?) about our memories of her and after a while there was more laughter then crying. IMO how a funeral should be.

glad you had a nive holiday starlight sorry to hear about your son, and hope you are getting the desired support.
it not that I mind having a child with cp, its knowing els has to work so much harder to get to where other kids his age are and its finding the right motivation to make him do his exercises, as not all toys do it for him, chocolate buttons usually works its a good job hes only tiny and needs fattening up!! Its the not knowng which frustrates and upsets me, not knowing what mobility, arm/leg function etc he will have. in a way its brought back all the memories of 8 months ago, when we were unsure whether he would even survive.
I keep dreaming about him being bullied at school, I know its a long way off but thats how far ahead i'm thinking.
he is the most gorgeous boy in the world and we love him to pieces however he turns out.
Sorry I've gone on again

in that case i will keep feeding i really like doing in now i've got the hang of it!

I am sitting in bed dosed up with painkillers as I have just got home from hospital last night. Would you believe that I have just had my appendix out!!

I am kind of still in shock over it all. It has been an insane week and I have not been conscious for a fair part of it. Tummy looks like a patchwork quilt, what with c-section scar and three new holes from the appendectomy. It was hell coping with the DD / breast-feeding question but we managed. I was in tears a lot with the pain and the unexpected separation from DD. I just hope the recovery goes OK and I don't get any infections.

I'll give you a more cheery account soon, as I suppose it is quite a funny story. But please, could I just have a little less drama in my life for a while now? This is quite enough to cope with.

Hi starlight. Welcome back and thanks for the thoughts. Best to you too with all you are going through.

I had abdominal pains on Monday, and wondered if my period was coming back in a horrible way (having kind of forgotten what that feels like). By Tuesday night I was in agony and nearly blacking out. Went to GP Wed morning and she said it might be appendicitis but wasn't showing classic symptoms. She took blood and sent it ahead to the hospital just in case, and told me to prepare to get myself to Casualty if the pain continued.

I packed a bag for me and DD, and DH drove us in. Same reaction there - obviously terrible pain and some but not all of the expected symptoms of appendicitis, blood showing completely normal. Doctors very confused. The surgeon decided he was sufficiently concerned to operate anyway, and just as well. Apparently I was "the case of the day". My appendix was agonisingly STUCK to some other part of my tummy wall - not infected itself but being twisted or pulled. Thank god they operated.

On the bright side, DD will now take a bottle. It's just horrible to think of the circumstances that forced this! I couldn't have her with me at night or any time after the op as I was in too much pain, so DH took her home with bottles of expressed milk and she pretty much had to drink out of desperation. DH said he held her head still in the crook of his arm, put the bottle in when she was screaming, and eventually when she closed her mouth to take a breath she found herself drinking and in the end she gave in. She is now downing full bottles with gusto!!

The ward staff weren't very well versed on the breast pump thing but managed to get me the equipment from maternity and left me to it. I had to keep begging for more bottles and clean pump equipment as nobody there seemed to know about cleaning the single user kits, and I refused to re-use the dirty ones. Probably made quite a pain of myself, but what else was I to do?

It will be interesting to see what I feel like when I recover, as these "pains" have been coming in episodes since early in my pregnancy, but obviously never as bad as this. During pregnancy they kept telling me, it's probably wind, or you do get lots of funny pains when you're pregnant, don't worry yourself too much, etc. Now I wonder how much of my pregnancy pain was actually related to this problem?? But of course I was just a silly old pregnant woman complaining about every little twinge, wasn't I?

ponymum bloody hell!!!

starlight welcome back!

Ponymum - lots of speedy recovery vibes winging your way. What a scary story, glad the dr decided to operate. No surprises about the lack of knowledge on breast pumps - when dd2 was in hospital at 5 weeks old none of the staff knew anything about them, and even worse, when dd1 was in scbu when born, the postnatal ward staff couldn't tell me how to use them!

Oh my goodness ponymum! Saturday you're swanning round the shopping centres of York browsing high chairs and mocking your friends for their choice of sanitary wear and next thing you're in hospital! If I'd known, I'd have visited!
So sorry for you that you've been in all that pain for so long and that you had the trouble with expressing but well done dd and dh for getting the bottle thang sussed. Silver linings on every cloud eh?!
Hope you feel better soon

my word ponymum hope your well on the way to recovery. and well done to your dh x

Poor you Ponymum, what a drama! Hope you're recovering well. Just think of all the battle scars you've got to show off for the past 12 months!

T had his first 'night' feed since last tuesday last night, but it was at 5:30am, so I'm not too disappointed. He's not exactly been sleeping through (most nights needs resettling at least once or twice), but we've had 2 nights where he's not needed any attention between when we've gone to bed at about 11pm and when he's got up at 7am! He's having his last feed (BF) at about 7pm, and apart from last night, not feeding till at least 7pm the next morning. This is astonishing after the past 8 months, believe me.
Thanks for the support everyone has given to me and my amazing non-sleeping baby, no doubt we'll need it again soon!

Got some friends over for lunch, just off to make focaccia and finish my pavlova [domestic goddess emoticon]

Bloody hell ponymum. Lots of healing vibes coming your way.

Do they think your appendix was stuck to adhesions caused by your csection?

hopefully - I have noticed M is much less interested in his milk now. I think it's more of a comfort and a drink to him now. Which is what happens when they get older I suppose. It just makes me feel a bit if I think about it too much

Oh and can I please have your focaccia recipe?

IMO - thanks for the muffin recipe, I'll be making them this week.

Thanks everyone. Still feeling very sore and trying to rest and recover. DH says I am a terrible back seat driver with the parenting! (What, me? Control freak? No!)

starlight I think that is the million dollar question! I am trying not to get my hopes too high.

ILTMI no, nothing to do with the c-section.

I mean, the million dollar question is will the next one be easier, not when will it be!!

Definitely NOT preggers atm, as of course they tested that first thing I arrived at hospital. At one point a casualty doctor was skirting around the question, asking if there was any chance I could be, etc. As a nurse had only just told me they were about to do a pregnancy test I thought 'perhaps he is trying to find a tactful way of breaking it to me?' !! But no, he just hadn't read down the notes to the bit that said PT negative!

But quick poll please: has anyone on this thread taken a pregnancy test just in case? Or thought about doing one if you still haven't had a period?

I must admit that when these pains started it crossed my mind to pick up a test from the shops (unlikely as it would have been! ).

I did a pregnancy test a while ago, simply because my period hasn't come back and I'd had mild pains but no period. and I had some cheapy tests lying around. needless to say it was negative.

starlight do you still co-sleep?

ponymum blimey - hope you feel much better soon!

Was thinking I ought to double-check I'm not pregnant, and wondering when I should see the doc about not having periods. One pregnancy not noticed until 4 months is merely unusual but two would look like carelessness and people would take the piss no end...

A seems finally to be sleeping better, only one waking in the night most nights...but also waking earlier. I think more feeding in the afternoons helped - he now has bf round 1 and 3, then tea at 5 (keep offering food until 6 if he's still going) and bf at 7. God knows how I'm going to fit in a solid lunch but I guess I ought to try that soon.

Having been happily feeding as much as A will take up to now, I'm now wondering when one has to start ensuring a child isn't eating too much?

NC I wondered about feeding too much. DS's legs are chubbier than ever! Am hoping he's storing it all up for when he learns to walk. Have had no end of 'ooo, he'll make a good rugby player' comments from everyone. Polite way of saying 'man your baby is fat' I think .

ponymum hope you're taking it easy now. and no, have not done a PG test.

But deep deep in the back of my mind I'm thinking, well it wouldn't be terrible if I accidentally got pregnant. But financially it would not be great timing. Have NO money left and no idea how lucrative my freelancing will be over the next 12 months. Saving up for Maternity Leave #2 whilst working part-time and paying for nursery fees (come September) is going to be a lot harder than it was first time round. Mind you, won't have to pay for as many new baby things or buy a new car....

starlight I would still be here keeping the Sep 08 thread going by myself, pregnant or not. Perhaps name-changing and having a conversation with myself to keep things interesting.

Had a rubbish swimming lesson today. DS cried the entire time and practically ripped my swimsuit he was clinging on so tightly. Not sure if it's because it was me who was in the pool with him (last week it was DH and he LOVED it), or because he just wasn't in the mood. Might have us both in the pool next week to see what happens.

Oh and we have completely reverted back to nights from 4 months ago (except bedtime is now 7-8pm) with 3 wakings a night: 1 resettling and 2 feeds and then up at 6am. So that was approximately 6 weeks of on/off sleeping through. Am trying to 'enjoy the night-time cuddles'.

wow! ponymum That was a big drama! Hope you recover soon. I don't cope very well looking after children with a cold, never mind after recovering from surgery.

digitalgirl we've gone backwards with sleeping too. We'd had a couple of weeks of sleeping 7.30- usually about 6.30 but the last 3 nights have been not so good. Waking 2 or 3 times and struggling to settle. Guessing it's teeth again. He also had a rash on his body today which I think was probably a heat rash so he was maybe too hot too.
I hope the teething gets better, we had a really easy ride with ds1 so am finding this hard, he seems to be really suffering.

We had family portraits done yesterday. Venture style photos but by a guy with a studio in his garden so only about £200 for a big composite picture rather than the millions venture charge. He's already emailed me the link for the photos are they are really good. It was good fun too.

Well Effy is finally on the move. Not properly crawling yet but doing this kind of body popping movement that gets her frim A to B. I now have to teach her how to get down from things - we taught DS feet first and he got the hang of it really quickly.

She's sleeping so well since I turned the monitor off in her room. She must settle herself before she cries loudly enough to get me up.

Ponymum hope you get better very soon - what an unbelieveable thing to have happened! Sod's law eh? Doesn't happen a year ago when you could have taken sick leave from work and sat with feet up. Oh no, it waits till you have baby under one at home and a recession in full sail!

Starlight you wouldn;t want to live with me, I am hard work (ask DP!!). And glad that I've inspired you to do more cooking tho - don't forget to take care of you as well as BS. I'm no genuis either - after a few weeks of disorganised weaning, I figured that I have to make my lunch and tea, so as long as it's generally summat C can have, i just plonk it in front of her. My diet is now chock full of fruit & veg . I fully admit to having a fairly easy baby now though and DP used to be a chef, so he loves cooking lots of good stuff for freezer.

Happy Monday - sun is out here