July 2023 (Thread 2)!

[RandomCatGenerator]

Creating a new thread as we’re about to finish the first - just as we finish our first trimesters!

Hi lovely ladies.
Please help a first time mummy out.
I am stressing about what clothes to buy/ what to dress our DS in when he's born. Obviously July is summer and is likely to be hot (especially if last summer is anything to go on)
What should I dress him in? I've bought a couple of lovely romper/ dungarees suits, but they have a long vest and are full length trousers rather than shorts.
Also have some long vests and a few short sleeve vests and I'm stressing about night times too. Can he wear a short sleeve vest and a long sleeved sleepsuit? Should it just be a vest or just be a sleepsuit? I feel like autumn / winter newborns would be much easier to plan for. DH says I am stressing unnecessarily, but he is so laid back and if we don't buy clothes now, the poor baby won't have anything to wear apart from vests 🤣 also, to buy newborn or 0-3?! Please tell me all first time mums feel like this?!

@AnxiousAnnie94 I'm getting a bit of a mix of everything. I do want some cooler weather/long sleeved stuff etc, because with the weather here it could be boiling hot one day and freezing the next! 😂 Mostly buying vests and short sleeved/short legged stuff though.

They can wear a vest and a sleepsuit if it's cool enough. If it's fairly warm then I'd say just a vest, and if it's one of those really hot days then I'd personally just be sleeping baby in a nappy and nothing else.

In terms of sizes, I'm going for newborn for now. My daughter was 7lb 3oz when she was born, and a good length (midwives all commented how long she looked) and she didn't fit into newborn, they were hanging off her. I had to get my mum to go and buy some 'tiny baby' clothes instead.

I'm not buying tiny baby this time just in case, I don't want them to go to waste. So getting newborn and then if they're hanging off again this time, I'll send the partner out to get a few 'tiny baby' bits again 😂

Thank you @rach971 !
We have been 'gifted' some tiny baby vests from my sister in law who didn't use them for when he little girl was born, so have 3 or 4 white vests.
I have just ordered some newborn short sleeved, short legged rompers and also have some longer sleeved and trouser bits. I've been buying quite a few 0-3 bits rather than newborn though, I didn't realise there was that much difference between newborn and the '0'. So I am going to have a look through what we have and have been given and see what else newborn I think we need to get. I know I still have another 18 weeks yet, but I hate not feeling organised and hopefully we should be moving house within the next 2 months too so everything is happening at once!

My DS was big at 8lb 14 and I was surprised that the 0-3 was way to big on him and we needed newborn or ‘first size’ certainly for the first 6 weeks or so , so it’s worth having some of this in - but not loads as they do grown out if it fairly quick.

@habiller yes exactly - but penetrating several inches back from the nipple too. Honestly it feels like the pain I had when I tried (unsuccessfully) to breastfeed. Interesting if it is a circulation thing - I have pretty poor circulation so maybe that’s it. Found anything that worked / improves it…?

I asked my midwife about the circulation in my hands and feet as they get freezing. She said she isn’t aware of anything that works and hers have in fact remained freezing cold many years after she last was pregnant. Great…

@AnxiousAnnie94 honestly, vests are absolutely fine for a baby to live in! DS basically lived in short sleeved bodysuits + long sleeved sleepsuits until he was about 8 months. It just made life so easy especially when dealing with poonamis. We’d sometimes supplement with slippers and/or light leggings / light trousers but when he was in the house he was usually just in a bodysuit and socks.

In terms of sizing - I was living overseas and there was quite a delay in getting anything from the U.K. (6-12 weeks at its worst) and local sizing was even more unreliable. So we just went for 0-3 months and it was fine. For sure 0-3 months seemed pretty baggy for a while but I don’t think he minded! He was 7lb when born so basically average. I agree with others that if you’re worried, get some newborn stuff too so you have the option. But we were happy with 0-3.

Layers are key with little babies. So get a selection of short sleeved and long sleeved bodysuits, tops / jumpers to go over the bodysuits, leggings and trousers and socks to go over the bodysuits. Sleepsuits can be supplemented with bodysuits underneath if you’re worried about the cold.

Consider what you’re going to take DC home from hospital in, clothing wise. We swaddled DS (yes, swaddled in the car seat, probably not best practice) and it was 25+ degrees. If it’s not so warm here, we’ll go for bodysuit, trousers, socks, jumper, maybe an additional top. I don’t think it’s worth buying coats and pram suits until you know the size of the baby as they’re relatively expensive items.

If you’re not fussed about everything being brand new, Facebook marketplace and vinted often do bundles of baby clothes at particular ages. Very economical. I wanted DS to have some new things (very PFB) and I really liked how soft and hard wearing John Lewis’ ANYDAY collection is - I think it’s very good value. And then we did also get a load of stuff from his cousin.

@RandomCatGenerator Thank you so much!! We have sorted through all our stuff this morning. We have about 10 long sleeved vests and 6 short sleeved vests that were gifted to us from my sister in law's baby, the only neutral bits they bought for their little girl and about 6 pairs of up to one month leggings. Think we need to get a few newborn body/sleep suits but think we will be ok newborn size and then we actually have quite a few 0-3 month bits as that's what I have been buying as I thought that did from newborn 🤣 silly me for thinking '0' was newborn 🤔 but like you say, if they're a bit big and they're in the house, who cares anyway?! We need a couple more body/sleep suits for 0-3 and maybe some more short legged short sleeved rompers (just because I personally love them!) Apart from one outfit and one pack of sleepsuits that I bought when I found out we were having a little boy, all of the stuff we have has either been gifted from family that have come from their children or bundles that I have bought from Vinted. I absolutely love Vinted, you can get some absolute bargains from there- I paid £4 last week for 7 short sleeved rompers that were all Next! As long as I wash them all when they arrive, I don't see an issue with it myself- they grow too quick for me to be spending loads on brand new outfits.
I am going to buy a going home from hospital outfit though as I've seen some really cute ones that have their names embroidered on and that will be a photo to announce him to the world 💙

Rompers and dungarees are incredibly cute 🥰 just impractical when doing a high speed nappy change! Just make sure everything has poppers that fully pop open.

Does anyone have any tips on how to get old milk stains out of baby clothes. I digged out my sons baby clothes and even though they had been washed, they have no developed cream patches around the neck area, but he was a very sickie baby. Can I get the stains out or are they wasted?

Not a baby sick expert, but sometimes stomach acid can bleach the clothes! Bleurgh. Poor you.

You can try hanging them out on the line. A bright day is the best. My dd was a hot summer baby so I saved loads of her clothes by hanging them on the line and the sun does it's magic.

Yep, honestly apart from sore breasts I feel normal enough I could start worrying I’m not pregnant but they are agony! We did a bit of an experiment and for me the nipples are the centre point of the pain but it definitely radiates round - it feels like they’re being touched (and not gently!) a good two inches before they are 😂

Hope everyone is well! All been a bit strange here - I have anti-fya antibodies apparently (didn’t have them last time but did have to have a transfusion) so had an additional scan to check all was okay. All looks fine, next step is to genotype husband’s blood and if they can’t say for sure baby definitely won’t have fya antigens I’ll have scans once a fortnight! Trying not to worry about it and see it as extra chances to check in.

In terms of clothes sizes, we got told the whole way through last time that she was going to be a huge baby so didn’t buy any newborn stuff and then she was 6lb 10 and all the 0-3 month stuff was enormous on her. She’s still very petite (she’ll be 2 next month but still comfortably in 18-24 months and some 12-18) so I’m going to get a couple of smaller bits this time just in case! Once we know what we’re having we’re going to go through all the stuff in the loft from last time and see what we’ve got.

We told our 4 yr old DS about the baby tonight, his initial thoughts;

• ‘don’t give the baby my teddies’
• ‘how will it get out your tummy’?
• when I said about a c section ‘no don’t do that!!’
• ‘let’s give it my old cot to sleep in , with the sides so it doesn’t fall out’
• ‘eat some of my Shreddies mummy I want the baby to have some’
• ‘can we call it blaze’
• ‘does it like loud noises, can it HEAR THIS’ 😂

All fair questions I think and made me smile so sharing!

@dunkedbiscuit that's adorable

@dunkedbiscuit 😂 bless. It's so funny what they come out with. I'll be telling my 8 year old after the 20 week scan. It's getting hard to hide the bump anyway now.

Not sure how she'll react. We have spoken about her having a brother or a sister before and she said she'd like it as long as they don't touch her toys. She said if it did pick one of her toys up, she'd shove a lollipop in its mouth so it would have to grab onto that instead and it'd drop the toy 🤨😂

I've been awol from these threads because I've honestly been asleep or working! Will try to get more involved! 21 weeks and still bloody tired, I've also started with all over body itching which is driving me nuts but maternity unit doesn't seem too concerned.

Speaking of baby clothes - would a newborn in July need a pramsuit? Surely they'd be boiling!

@rach971 haha that’s a good strategy she has there!!

We told our boys at the weekend too following scan -they were very excited but the main question was about what would happen to their lego. They know babies can't have small toys which conflicts with their current policy of carpeting our house with lego!

Haakaa is excellent! Great for putting on the ‘spare boob’ as you’re feeding the baby or pumping with the other. I had great difficulty breast feeding and pumping so it really made me feel I wasn’t wasting anything!

Hey, just checking in, not been on in a while so tried catching up!
I'm 20 weeks tomorrow and have my scan on Friday! I also have extremely sore boobs, they were definitely not like this in my first pregnancy. My bump is huge, quite a few people have commented how much it's grown this last week or two. I've had horrible constipation, bad to get something prescribed from the docs which I think may be starting to work (thank god!!) And I now think I have PGP (Pelvic Girdle Pain) across the top of my bum or bottom of my coccyx which is extremely uncomfortable!! Midwife thinks it sounds like PGP too and unfortunately nothing can be done except try help it with certain movements (or avoiding them).
On the plus side, I've started feeling the little guy moving now 😁💙
Hope everyone is doing okay!!

I didn’t know anything about breastfeeding @habiller aside from that lots of people said ‘give it a go but don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t work’. I think the most useful thing for us was when we understood how little they really need at the beginning in terms of volume, but also how they do just seem to want to feed insane amounts and that’s not a sign they’re not getting enough or you’re not making enough, they’re basically just training your body to make more for them as they grow. I was really stressed because I couldn’t seem to pump much at all and she wanted to feed all the time so got convinced she wasn’t getting enough but she was growing fine!

Sorry about the PGP @MamaSJ15, you can take paracetamol but I’m guessing ibuprofen would probably be better and I think I remember reading we can’t have that, is that right? Would one of those support belts help at all?