June 08 - a Coalition for all (even those with May or July 08 babies).

[DomesticGoddessInTraining]

Abdn liked the title so I just went ahead!

DG, no, I saw that discussion while trying to browse on my iphone! It did make me . Won't get into a big debate about religion/politics/luck etc but will say one thing - why is it God gets all the credit for the good things in life and none of the blame for the shit?

As for M's sleep - well, I suppose this is all relative isn't it! He's nine months old tomorrow and still waking at least twice a night most nights for a feed. Some nights it's three times, very very rarely it's once. Is that bad? Both dh and I are utterly exhausted and spend our weekends playing sleep tag which seriously reduces the amount of time we spend with each other . We have thought long and hard about CC but how does it work when your baby is actually hungry and feeding? Wouldn't it be barbaric to leave him to cry if he actually needs food (esp given how small he is?).

When we did CC with A it was purely an attention thing and sorted him in three nights - I don't think the same would work with M. I did think about starting a thread - but I know the sleep martyrs on MN would slate me for even considering trying to get M to sleep . Ho hum . . .

poppy, I can totally understand you wanting to go for the surgical option. I did with both mine. I needed the physical closure to be able to get on with getting my life back on track. Your experience sounds horrendous - the medical profession has a lot to learn about managing m/c .

spider, that's a pain about the pre-school. Did you have another option re pre-school?

Deb, phew about the car! Yes, toy free lounge - tis bliss! So excited about the job - will probably bang on about it constantly and bore you all stupid .

Dewin, you poor thing .

DG, no, I saw that discussion while trying to browse on my iphone! It did make me . Won't get into a big debate about religion/politics/luck etc but will say one thing - why is it God gets all the credit for the good things in life and none of the blame for the shit?

As for M's sleep - well, I suppose this is all relative isn't it! He's nine months old tomorrow and still waking at least twice a night most nights for a feed. Some nights it's three times, very very rarely it's once. Is that bad? Both dh and I are utterly exhausted and spend our weekends playing sleep tag which seriously reduces the amount of time we spend with each other . We have thought long and hard about CC but how does it work when your baby is actually hungry and feeding? Wouldn't it be barbaric to leave him to cry if he actually needs food (esp given how small he is?).

When we did CC with A it was purely an attention thing and sorted him in three nights - I don't think the same would work with M. I did think about starting a thread - but I know the sleep martyrs on MN would slate me for even considering trying to get M to sleep . Ho hum . . .

poppy, I can totally understand you wanting to go for the surgical option. I did with both mine. I needed the physical closure to be able to get on with getting my life back on track. Your experience sounds horrendous - the medical profession has a lot to learn about managing m/c .

spider, that's a pain about the pre-school. Did you have another option re pre-school?

Deb, phew about the car! Yes, toy free lounge - tis bliss! So excited about the job - will probably bang on about it constantly and bore you all stupid .

Dewin, you poor thing .

Quick post - I think you're doing the right thing getting booked in Poppy, I hope your experience this time isn't anymore unpleasant than it needs to be (IYSWIM).

Thomas the tank engine on the blu ray player looked pretty good! And that's all that matters... . Having a nightmare trying to download software for it though because it's windows recommended so need to go and crank up the creaky old PC. Groan....

Dewin - sorry about your ear and 2am incident. Glad you're feeling ok today (apart from your ear obv)

S is a bit under the weather at the mo, so after a few weeks of pretty good sleep he's spent more time than I'd like in our bed this week . Can't complain though as we don't have the constant sleep deprivation faced by others.

at Eddie, while waiting for Neenz to come along...

I feel your pain dgit - it annoys me when can't upgrade stuff on your apple. And thanks for all nice words re hospital - can't be worse than last time and will take chocolate and jilly cooper to distract. Also sleep deprivation when you are out of practice is hard.

Eddie we had a lighter version of this with e- is there anything you can pump him
Full of? There was a certain kind of hipp baby rice that I would shove down her at tea after her tea (she was well over 1 I would guess before got most of her calories from non milk) or the heavy duty milk with cereal in. That seemed to help a little. Also where had one feed wr offered water if woke at same time ( this was tip that dh used with dsd who
Also did waif fo food) that definitely weeded out feedif fromhavir but without goin down the cc route which as you day wouldn't work o
This situation.

Am with you on god comments eddie- am struggling with what message he is sending now as I think the suffering through pregnancy lost is something that I dont really fancy doing a warped version of the trials of job. But I understand others beliefs and experience is different.

Dewin ear infections are vile and hope
You are on the mend now .

Eddie dh just added that water at night seemed to switch dsd (and e) to better eating in day after fee days an broke the wake for milk thing as 1. Didn't always get milk 2. Had less need as ate more in day .

Sorry for dire spelling - may have to go back to proper computer . Bloody upgrade on phone seems to have sent it loopy

hugs poppy.

hope dewin feels better tomorrow - there's a d&v bug around here but it's only striking those people who are run down already - next door has had it (they've a new baby) but we've just all had a dodgy tummy for a few hours.

Eddie not all of us believers think God is responsbile for the good things etc. Rolf posted the footprints poem a while back which is much more how I look at it...

spider I had DS1 in nursery three afternoons a week when Fraser was little and it was nice for all of us. Fingers crossed you find the right spot...

No news here and dead tired - been out in the rain doing activities at a local SNH site (Scottish Natural Heritage) all afternoon in the pouring rain....

Eddie I'd try reducing the feeds at least in case he's just waking because he wants it (and you know my two were small too). With DS1 when he was 9 months I used to reduce the feed by two minutes a night until it was down to 7 minutes and I learned he really was hungry - anything less than that and he was up an hour later. But he had been feeding for 40 minutes so it made a big difference to my sleep. Can you try limiting the bottle size and then supplying water? Or just switch one of the feeds to water? He should be old enough to only have one feed a night I would expect. There'll be lots of tears I'm sure though..

Thanks for the tips on M - will try and feed him something different in the evening that will fill him up, and then maybe try the milk first then water thing. We did try just water but he screamed until we gave him milk . Dh is going to be off for a couple of weeks in August so I think we'll try and tackle it then, when we can catch up on sleep during the day.

AH, can you remember how old your boys were when they gave up night feeding completely?

Eddie, I wouldn't start a sleep thread on it - you'll get loads of abuse! Don't have any experience of the night feeding problem as S gave his up pretty easily early on, but I'd try Abdn's suggestion of substituting with water - you might find he realises that it's not worth waking up for.

What time is the last feed before bedtime? Are you still doing a 'dream feed' around 11-ish. I used to try and really feed S up before bedtime with dairy heavy stuff - e.g. lots of cheese/butter in his 'evening meal' followed by a yoghurt.

Poppy, have given up trying to download my software updates and will try and relocate my wireless router so I can connect it directly to the blu ray player at the weekend I think. It's ridiculous that they have an iphone app that interacts with it, but software downloads only work on windows. Grrrrr. If I hook it up to my wireless it'll update it seamlessly though (I hope).

Eddie - P was about the same at 9 months. My hv sent the special sleep hv (ooh err) round for a home visit to sort us out. My iPhone has the same bug as Poppy's I think so will call you to explain what we did.

Thanks for all the advice about pre school. Need to have a think in the morning. DH has declared that he is happy to defer to your collective wisdom as he has too much on at work.

I agree DG - the sleep threads on here are brutal (despite not being posted in AIBU ).

spider, thanks - that would be really helpful. As you can see from the time of post, this morning he was up at 5.30am after a 10pm and 1am feed . I could do the feeds OR the early mornings, but a combination of the two is killing me . I'm just so worried about starting a new full on job when sooooo tired.

Lol at your dh leaving us to decide on P's childcare options ! Personally I found A's two days at nursery an absolute bloody lifesaver - although given how difficult M was in the early days I was often tempted to drop him off at nursery instead and see if anyone noticed .

Eddie - hope you had a better night or a later start to the day! I am trying to recollect what the boys were like at 9 months but my mind is quite blank!! I do remember offering water(to one of them) though and it did help but it was hard going for a few nights.

Spider - lol at your dh letting us choose

Dewin - any better today?

Hi to everyone else, hope the sun is shining for you today.

Eddie - when DS1 was about 11 months we switched him to a banana in the middle of the night from milk (much easier to leave outside the door) and I don't think we dropped that until he was closer to 18 months but the time of the banana eventually ended up being around 5:30 - and then he'd go back to sleep. Fraser dropped his night feed around a year I think but he still sometimes wakes up very hungry. If M was getting up once a night I'd think it was reasonable, but twice a night is probably habit - especially 10pm and 1am!!!. He will scream the house down at first - but you know he's fine and just let him!

Those with iPhone ishoos - when you downloaded ios 4 did you download the new version of iTunes first and do a full sync to update apps etc before you started the download? I know a few people who didn't who then had problems. My sis had loads if problems but she went into the apple store and they were really helpful apparently.

Deb, I so knew you would comment on my fb post about Christmas . In my defence, it was Hamleys fault! I am going to start my Christma shopping though - haven't done my usual Christmas savings pot this year, so if I start now I won't have to hammer the credit card later!

Eddie, I think J was still feeding at least 3 times a night at 9 months. Actually, it could have been more, he was a right little bugger and barely ate still. It will get better I promise, he mostly sleeps through these days.

How long will it take me to pack a 4 bedroom house Eddie? I move 2 weeks today and am wondering if I should get started...

poppy you are being so brave. Hopefully the hospital experience won't be as awful as expected and you can at least stop playing the waiting game.

Good news about the car deb, mine was doing a weird central locking thing yesterday where it would lock three of the doors or only one. Obviously I would have preferred all four to have been at least one of the options. After 15 minutes or so in sainsburys carpark frantically locking/unlocking it and getting more and more stressed it finally did it properly and has been fine since. Thank god.

Waves to everyone else

A banana? Interesting idea, but didn't that make a dreadful mess?!

sybil, are you moving yourselves or using a removals firm? If you're using a removals firm then I would highly recommend paying the extra for the packing service (I think we paid about £200 out of a £1200 bill for them to pack). It was worth every penny. They came in the day before and packed pretty much everything and loaded it on the van, and then just finished off the morning of the move.

If packing yourself then I would start now and do a little bit each day to stave off insanity !

I must have missed your news that you have a completion date then? Great news .

Sounds very sensible Spider, putting P in nursery a couple of mornings. I would hold out for the school you like cos they could well have a place come up soon. Do they base it on age eg do older kids get priority? You could always find a cm or even another school in the short term and switch him if a place comes up, or if he is happy leave him, but then put him in the school you like when he goes to proper nursery at 3. I really like my CM and the kids love her too (and yes they are always very well behaved when they are with her!)

Poppy, you really did have a shitty time last time didn't you . Praying that you have a better time next week.

Rolf, that sucks about DH working on your hols. My DH does the same - he often has to come back to Liverpool for some case or other. It's not so bad if it is only half a day or so but any more than that I would be royally pissed off - it's not much a hol when you still have to do all the childcare.

Debs, lol at the rally style driving! Glad the car is OK.

Eddie, on the God discussion So is M having milk three times a night? How much and is it stopping him eating during the day? Have you tried giving him half instead of a full bottle (therefore you know he is not ravenous) and then leaving him to cc? I know it's a worry then that he might wake even more often but you might be surprised that he still goes 3hrs or whatever even though he has only had half the amount. Then hopefully he will eat more in the day. My boss swears by a slice of Soreen malt loaf before bed - he says his DD was a terrible sleeper, then a MW told him to give her Soreen before bed and she slept through ever since! There's always oatibix as well - it always worked my two (and sweet potato ). How much protein is he getting in his meals during the day? That can really affect how full they feel. So lots of meat if poss!

Hey, looking for some sling advice (as I know some of you really know your stuff). Someone at work is looking at slings and asked me for some recommendations. She's going to be on her own with the new baby (DP complete tosser) so trying to point her in the direction of things that are good but not very pricey.

An ergo best by miles in terms of comfort ease of use and longevity - there is a slog swap thread here . A baby bjorn ok at fest but don't get active one as faff to put on- they do start to get heavy after a while though.

Avoid baba sling and scootababy nice idea but madly impractical ...

Just realized am massively hypocritical
Given my sling spend and can't be judgy about those with a pushchair habit.

Neenz thanks for good wishes. And Rolf/ neenz sympathy on working holidays- I always think it's a shame when there is no blackberry reception....

Sling looking forward to tips- I think did get iTunes update first .

I wondered about the mess from a banana too Eddie! H started waking more when it was really hot, I thought that was fair enough as I was having trouble sleeping and I think he was probably thirsty, but he seems to have got back into the habit now. He usually only wakes up once and I always feel terrible if he wakes more than that so lots of sympathy from me.
Congratulations on the job and house!

I'm interested in sling advice too, if I use ours more than once a week I get a really bad back, ergo looks good Poppy but a bit pricey for me.

DG - TV sounds good, I was having a look at TV options as we still only get BBC. Then DH pointed out that we don't have time to watch all the stuff we record anyway. He nearly sorted the aerial out the other day so he could watch the TDF but had to sort something out on the van out instead. I think we are the only people who still have an old CRT!

Popped into Ikea this morning to get some coffee and chocolate and had a look at the sale, they have an extendable kids bed (like [http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/S69847510 this] but I'm sure it wasn't the Leksvik) reduced from about £100 to about £25. Not really sure what the point of the extending is, and it isn't online so now contemplating dragging DH there when he gets home, Ikea twice in one day , that's a first even for me (feeling weary at the prospect). If anyone's interested the sale finishes on Sunday I think.

Sybil - we moved ourselves so I started packing fairly early on and we hired storage to put a load of stuff in beforehand so there wasn't so much on the day. Wouldn't recommend doing it that way if you can afford not to!

Kt there are a few ergo second hand on eBay. And thanks for iPhone tips.

I have been watching second hand Ergos on ebay and they are going for £70+ not including newborn insert. I am still undecided about getting one, might wait to see if this baby is one that demands to be carried round - if it is happy under the play gym then that's fine with me. The Dts always were thank goodness .

Is the bed extendable so that it starts small eg not too scary and then grows with the child? What about the mattress tho? My SIL is thinking of getting an infant bed for her DS (£70 without mattress) but I think what's the point just get him a normal sized single bed - he'll need one eventually so that's just throwing £70 away imo

It is money well spent IMO as you can use it for years( I still use it) so if it is priced against a maclaren not so bad.

I would have agreed with you neenz but bed we had has an edge you can walk round so we got a lensvik with edging as seemed safer as even with bed guard on e was hanging off the bed/ walking round edge in a way that wasn't safe. Also someone said me that more cot like bed eased the night waking and unsettled bit.And I did like idea of it growing as less scary. The mattress does extend but not got it out pack yet. I can post fb photos if you like when set it up(also show off the fab removable stickers we have put in e's room).

DGT thanks for the iphone tips. I asked DH when he got home and he thinks he did the update of itunes first.