Oh WG I wish I could give you a big hug and take madam out for a walk so you could have some rest. Hope you had a good day wioth your friend. You're very right about the not a new mum any more thing, people seem to expect us to magically have developed the necessary skills to cope with everything when in fact the adrenaline of new babyness has run out and the oh my god it's going to be like this for the next 18 years fear has kicked in. And Effie's right that them being more mobile makes it all the harder - poor dd gets dumped on her her mat with a pile of rattles quite frequently when I just can't cope with her whinging any more and need a break
trace it sounds like lucy's doing a great job of dealing with other kids' questions about her birthmark. Do you think the questions will eventually stop and then she'll be back to not even thinking about it? Presumably once every kid has asked her, they'll stop? I know that sounds like a very passive way to deal with it, but if she can be reminded that it's her 'special mark' then once the questions stop she might not feel sad any more? Poor love. (hmmm, on reading back taht wasn't very eloquently put but you know what i mean?!)
daisy I wonder that about kids and energy - I mean, they're spending lots of energy on growing loads, and still can run around for hours too. Maybe they have solar panels hidden under their hair? Or do they vampirically suck energy from their long-suffering parents...?
veggie that's really sweet about the chap on your DH's course and his daughters. And a bit crap about the work situation. Don't know anything about employment law but is there any contracting or temping work he can do on those days to bring in a bit more money, without endangering his current job? A bit short-sighted really on the employers' part as well if the team will be losing work.
JB that's very cunning about the different ends of the cot for different activities. I remember one of the many, many boosk I read said to turn your baby round in ethir cot every night so they looked at different things and didn't get a flat head from always looking the same way
SL hope you got some good advice at the clinic, seems to be a bit luck of the draw there! And thanks very much for arrangeing the glazed and amused, it was great fun (SL organised for a load of us to take our babies round and do the hand/footprints on a plate thing as fathers' day pressies, very cute!)
spot boo sorry you're having early starts as well. Our bloody babies, when will they learn...! Well, sometimes I take comfort in having a baby who's so interested in the world that she wants to get up and see it loads (viz ZJ and the no napping) rather than a boring passive baby that just sits there and doesn't do anything to entertain me!
njan hope your head's feeling better now and your row is all sorted. I like the idea of doing something you enjoy and letting the baby watch - we really mustn't be spending all day every day putting them so much first that our own needs fall too far by the wayside - we are still people as well as mums after all.
effie that's another great idea about taking babies to groups so they can see other babies. We did a trip to a nursery yesterday and dd was loving looking at all the other kids. Though I found it terrifying and I don't want to let go of my little girl I'm sure it will feel very different in 6 months time but for now, she's too small to be in with all those boisterous kids who can walk!! bisou re teething, lots of us have been using the homeopathic stuff that veggie recommended, can you get it down under? Chamomilla powder.
LadyT you will have post waiting for you in Oxford Enjoy the high life in town
well here dd seems to be getting the hang of a moderately long first stretch of sleep before being hungry - from 8 to about 2.30 or 3. BUT she's much harder to settle in the first place, we've fallen into a very mild sort of (eeeek) CIO. In that she'll go down fairly quietly, lights out, music on, then start to grizzle, and the volume increases until she's about to really let rip and then there's a very spooky "waaaaah [silence]" at which point she's just conked out. I really don't like the thought of her crying to sleep and she certainly would never be left for more than a few minutes, but it usually happens about 5 minutes after we've put her down and if I keep dashing up to cuddle her after the first grizzle, she ends up with overall much more crying as there's a little bit, calm, a little bit more, calm, etc etc until I give in and feed her to sleep. From which she wakes more easily than if she settled herself. Damn. Is that awful?
And she's also gone back to waking at 5.30 and being really active, I try desperately to feed her back to sleep but by that point it doesn't work. All I can say is thank god DH is in the back room, he'd never get a decent night's kip otherwise as between us she and I end up taking up our whole double bed as she gradually L-shapes her feet into my middle and I gradually back across the bed...
I'm really curious to know if tehre are any studies that show babies actually suffer if they don't get a continuous 12 hour stretch of sleep at this point. I mean, so many of them just don't do it, and yet turn out absolutely fine in terms of mental development. Is it more that the parents wish the baby would sleep that long, and hence we end up frantically trying everything in the book, when in fact (if only we had a team of night support for our own sleep needs) the baby would be fine. And ditto for daytime naps. If they don't want to, and don't get really grumbly, should we be panicking so hard about forcing them to snooze for X number of hours during the day?
(obviously I'm only able to write this much as dd was boobed off to sleep a while ago on our bed... )