Misery loves company: riding the mo fo out into Part II

[ElphabaTheGreen]

In our last exciting instalments:

Needles was at breaking point with a screaming 10 mo DD

Hear had experienced the magic of ONE unbroken night!

Dreaming was continuing to confound all with her ability to manage three children on four or five minutes a night, thanks to DT the Terrible.

Stitch was still having her sleep eaten by...erm...Stitch.

Poppy was pondering how the actual fark she was going to manage a newborn on top of BabyAmex's night time shenanigans.

And the desperate Elphaba had turned night duties entirely over to DH with mastitic results.

Join us with your stories of misery and woe in this, the most sleep-deprived corner of MN!

Oh dear! It went a bit wrong there

Blazing row is no good. Unfortunately frequently happen here too. Hope its all swept under the carpet now and you're friends again. I became a tired psycho bitch from hell with my DH at the weekend... Not proud.

Yikes, what's going on hear ? We'll all get angry on your behalf...!

Make sure you send out four copies of your CV to each vacancy to get your point across Hear!

What's wrong hear ? Are you seriously thinking about changing the job?

How are you all anyway?Any changes on the sleeping front?

DS sometimes sleeps sometimes not,some nights are crap and some are all rightish

We started talking with DH but still hasn't talked about the disagreement . I lashed out of jealousy seeing him faffing around with computer and then disappearing into his shed when I struggle with jobs to do around the house having DS hanging onto my leg.

He comes back from work and is tired but guess what ,I'm a superhuman and I never tire...

So I demanded a few hours a week of child free time when I will be able to do stuff I want but have no time to e.g. Book reading not stuck with household chores all the time.

Anyway, hope all of you are soundly asleep for the past and next few hours.

Strange tickling in my lower belly wonder if we managed to
Create dc2 already but too early to check ...

Oh, it was just stupid senior managers who don't know what they are doing making decisions that make it pretty much impossible to do my job. What really pissed me off was that it was made on the say so of some empire building creep who has nothing to do with our team but thinks he knows it all. Grrr...very annoyed. But my manager is on the war path now so I am feeling a bit better about it.

bald my dd is also very inconsistent. Sometimes she is only waking once or twice and settling quickly, other times she is up half the night.

I am now seriously considering stopping bf completely. I think the novelty has worn off and I am just getting fed up of it. I have told her that there is no more milk during the day, which is going fine as she can be easily distracted but I haven't tried a night time yet or a full day with me doing naptime. I told her that one day I wouldn't have anymore milk at all, even at bedtime and she went 'oh no!' in a very dramatic fashion.

I think I will try doing it gradually, just stopping the daytime for now, then when I am feeling brave cut out feeds during the night, and then when I am really brave stop the bed time feed. Could take a while though. What do you guys think? Wise words from those who have done it always appreciated :o

I've just gone cold turkey hear. Mine were milk monsters though, badgered and badgered for milk, wouldn't stop gradually. Dt the much more Angelic has been fine, even Dt the terrible hasn't been as awful as I thought. They're even drinking alpro soya 1+ and oatly milk respectively!

Cold turkey for night feeds here too. I don't honestly think there's a gentle way of doing it since night feeds at this stage are mostly or entirely comfort related. It took him a couple of weeks for him to stop wailing/whimpering for want of his final night feed when we put him in his cot, but he's fine now and DH can put him to bed, thank the lord. He's still waking several a few times in the night but can be got back to sleep with a pat and a cuddle but no feed (that, too, took a while for the carnage to end but it's OK now). He has one boob once a day now when he wakes up for the day, which is usually 4:30am. 4:50 if I'm lucky. If I'm really, really lucky he might let me lounge about until 5:10am. Sigh.

I'm rusty on my child development Dreaming. Do I have to be worried that, at almost 17 months, DS's only words are 'no' and 'hiya' over and over and over again? We've never had anything resembling 'mummy' or 'daddy' (no mama or dada). We certainly get those sounds, and every other variation of sound under the sun, but not in specific reference to anyone or anything. He does very conversational babbling with turn-taking and is obviously telling us some very important, though completely unintelligible, information quite often, given his intonation and emphatic hand gestures and pointing. I know you're the physio kind of therapist but I know one absorbs info like this from MDT colleagues. And you've got three to my one so are going to be a lot less jumpy

So of course, having put that down in writing, DS screamed for boob for about 30 mins at 3am this morning.

These children...

Thinking about it I am thinking it might be kinda and quicker on dd if we just gave it up completly in one go. I think if I give her one feed and no others she can't understand why she can't have it at other times. I am sort of hoping that if we just stop feeding she will get it quicker and stop asking.

What's your experience dreaming, do they still ask for it?

Spoke to dp and he is happy to go with whatever I want, bless him. Considering just doing it tonight as if not it will have to wait for a couple of weeks as dp is out next weekend. Gosh

hear that was exactly why I decided to do it all cold turkey in one go in the end. I didn't think they'd 'get' why it was on offer in the day but not all day every day and not at night. In the end I did quietly feed Dt2 in the night for a week or so. Never again for Dt1 though, as i ate dairy so it'd have made him properly poorly. Dt2 now rarely asks, Dt1 more but both distracted quickly with milk in a bottle. Bit poor I know to give bottles as they've never has them before, but they do find it comforting the way a tommee tippee beaker isn't.

elph, my dd was vair slow to talk. Like your ds at that age, if she even had one word (hers was.'more') . 27 months she only had about 30 words, and some of them were things like 'baa'. I pestered the slt's who said not too much tv/radio on all the time ( we didn't do either then anyway), read books- but where we'd done things looking at her understanding like saying 'where's the pig/umbrella/ whatever?' they said don't 'test' her understanding like that- which was perfect and she followed instructions really well anyway), they said don't read the words but talk about the pictures, like, look at the boy brushing his teeth- though that's too complex initially so just say 'brushing his teeth' etc etc. As she signed, and had good understanding, the slt lot weren't concerned at all. I know our nanny started in February when she was 29 months and she was barely saying anything. Now she never stops talking and had a language explosion all at once about April time. Nothing to sentences. Boom. She's still not that clear, as her birthday treat last month we went swimming and it is still "I yuv it!" "y" sound for "l" , she says "bee-yana" for banana etc etc but again, my colleagues reassure me if she's understandable by strange adults at 3.5 that's fine so I'm trying to not focus on it. I would say 17 months is very young to be talking much. Amazingly my boys do have loads of words, even two word phrases like " all gone" by Dt2 and they've had more tv, less reading, absolutely minute 1:1 time so no idea how/why they're talking!! I wouldn't even think about it under 2.

After that ramble about my dd's speech delay, I shall quote you the Mary D Sheridan bible 'from birth to five years' spiel elph (hearing and speech, 18 months) :
Makes speech like sounds continually to self at play, with conversational tunes and emotional inflections
Listens and responds to spoken communications addressed to self. Uses between 6 &20 recognisable words and understands many more. Echoes prominent or last word in short sentences addressed to self.
Demands a desired object by pointing accompanied by loud, urgent vocalisations or single words.
Enjoys nursery rhymes and tries to join in. Attempts to sing.
Hands familiar objects to adults when requested. Obeys simple instructions eg get your shoes or 'shut the door'. Understands 'no' . Points to own or dolls hair, shoes, nose, feet.

As i said, dd didn't talk under two, or 2.5 really. Definitely 'delayed' but now within the norms. I think your ds has almost all of that nailed anyway and am frankly astounded my boys do!!!!!

Thanks for that Dreaming It occurred to me that I've probably hot-housed the poor little chap on things like self-feeding, dressing and undressing, shape- and object-matching (no need to play 'guess mummy's job?' there) that he's probably expending his developmental energies in other ways. We actually seem to be getting 'car' quite consistently now and, while I was watching Game of Thrones yesterday, the appearance of a direwolf elicited 'goggy!' which also occasionally gets applied to our real dog(gie)s. He definitely understands no and actively ignores it.

How's it going Hear? Did Operation Boob Wean get started last night?

Oh, and he definitely dances, but he's not a patch on Baby Hear.

Operation Boob Wean did indeed get started and went really rather well. I have told her I don't have any more milk and she says 'all gone, no more' and seems to understand the basic concept. She asked for it a couple of times at bedtime but accepted it when I said there wasn't any. She did cry for a bit but wasn't actually asking for milk so I think it was more tiredness and change. She woke once and asked for milk but only once then went back to sleep with a cuddle when I said all gone.

Apart from that she was in our bed and a bit grumbly occasionally but not properly waking. The nice thing was that this was the first morning in months when she hasn't cried for milk as soon as she woke up. We had a nice cuddle instead. :)

I've warned dp that the 2nd night is always worse so expect all night screaming tonight. But basically I couldn't have expected better, hoping that means she is basically ready for it.

Dd did the amazing talking development about 17-18 months and suddenly has tons of words and does 2-3 word phrases (mainly 'coffee and cake', we had 'wrong way up' earlier). She is pretty early but I sort of get the impression it all evens out by around 3 so resist the urge to get all smug as in a few years she'll probably be getting overtaken by all the kids with only a few words at 18 months. :o

On my phone as we're away so just a few words.

DS has slept all night,woke up just once so I scooped him to our bed and he never woke up till nearly 8. A bit worse today as didn't want to go to sleep. DH has buggered off for a walk so plugged DS to my poor sore boobs and he fed to sleep.

Sore boobs,3 days late and tired...Bought the pg test but it's one of these shitty ones with blue cross if positive,will get some better ones when we're back as the one I did I'm not sure.

Hope everybody's getting more sleep regardless to how not angelic or terrible they are :)

Eeek, bald, I'm excited for you for both the sleeping very jealous and the possible updiffedness :) . Where are you? And just to confirm, your ds is sleeping through bar one quick wake up on holiday in the normal realm of all sleep goes tits up?!

A few words from me. Hand, foot and mouth is the work of the devil and not a 'mild viral illness'. Sadly Dt 2 is worse, and oh how we suffer with both up like night owls all night. Calpol o' clock... Thank goodness dd seems to have avoided a 3rd bout.

I live in fear and terror of hand foot and mouth. It's why I'm hoarding my annual leave because I figure it's inevitable with full time nursery.

Had a BFP yet Bald?

Hello folks :)

On the laptop tonight so typing is sooo much easier...

Developmentwise-I used to look at the "milestones" on some websites and then I stopped.DS sas a few words,he's trying to imitate some sounds so will have to watch my language but they all sound the same.Cone,car and quackquack are all "ka" or "ka ka".Not to worry,they will get there eventually.

DS is dancing-he does some very quick foot tapping aka Irish dance or swaying back and forth with legs wide apart.It looks comical.Today DH played some Motorhead to him and it turned out that my son is a headbanger

I think all children are getting advanced in communication,if only we could understand what's this wailing all about.

Dreaming that's pants with hf&m. ((hugs)) to you and family,hope they'll get better soon.

Elph I think that as soon as you say something about the child doing/not doing something they immediately regress.Remember I wrote last week about DS waking up just once when we were away?Mwah,mwah,mwaaaah,he put such a bloody show the next night tossing and turning that DH and I were knackered.The night after he refused to go to sleep at his usual bedtime(9 pm) so I took him out of the cot and let him play on the floor.2 and half an hour later he still didn't want to go to sleep.Last night was the same story-I was in my bed and he wanted to get out of his cot and play-I hissed through my teeth "just go to sleep",he took one look at me and lied down.

We went to Perthshire for 3 days (passed too quickly) but oh,gosh,First 3 days in my life that I didn't have to clean,wash or cook.

As for upduffiness-well,first 2 tests were pants (could ever work this fecking blue cross),next ones were purple so a bit better.I got a faint line on both deja vu with DS but being 8 days late and nauseous in the evening speak for themselves...

Good night :)

Hello everyone. Hand, foot and mouth is horrid! Hope everyone is feeling better now.

Dad's weaning went amazingly. No bother at all and she doesn't even ask for it anymore. I really think we were both ready to give up the bm. :)

Of course it has made absolutely no difference to her sleep at all. Though she is a bit easier to settle I think. Usually a cuddle will do the job now and it is easier for dp to settle her as well.

We are now tentatively working on potty training. Scary stuff!

Whoops. Some unfortunate auto correct their. That is obviously dd's weaning. My dad is fully weaned i I can assure you :o

Oh, how I'm dreading the clocks changing. Please, please let me not have to get up in the hour of 4 from now on.... Any ideas on how to make this less painful anyone?!

In other news, hand foot and mouth is over. Dt1 is still not sleeping. Mission Self Settle for him is showing no sign whatsoever of working and work is going badly for me, to the point I may resign.

Exciting bald, that's lovely news!!! What will the age gap be then? And they're always horrors at night on holiday aren't they?! (Actually, my lovely dd has always been fine- not so my twins of course!)

hear, what is this crazy potty training you speak of?! Isn't she only about 18 months?! (I'm refusing to contemplate it for the boys til they're at least 2.5!) . Then again, I was heavily pregnant and so run off my feet with baby twins that I couldn't face thinking about it with dd til she was 2.8. 3 days and that was it though, and she's never had a poo accident, so I'm hoping for a repeat with the boys, but know it was so, so easy with dd it'll mean they're untrainable. Fact.

bloody hate clock changes. Stupid idea.

SHe is only tiny so we aren't pushing at all, but she has started saying when she is doing a wee or poo (just before for a poo) and has developed an obsession with sitting on the toilet shouting 'wee wee, poo!'. So I sort of feel we should let her get on with it if she wants to. We've decided to just try lots of nappy free time at home for now and see what happens rather then going for full on training as I don't want her to get stressed about it.

That sounds very sensible hear . My boys tell me either just before or mid poo they're doing one. I shall ignore this for another year :) (they never mention wees, but will wee on command in the bath. Silly game where DH says "you're not going to wee in the bath are you?" So, of course, both promptly squeeze a wee out!)

Anyway, I digress. 4:50. I will not be up at this time tomorrow, right?! Plus one million night wakings including being woken once by a headbutt to the nose. Accidental I think, but unpleasant nonetheless. I will not miss cosleeping one iota...

Amateurs, all. DS was up at 3:05, since anywhere between 4 and 4:30 was his usual wake up during BST. Can't say changing the clocks bothers me since his sleep and hours of waking are fecking stupid regardless.

Bizarrely, it's now almost 1pm and he's charging around the house like a merry lunatic despite not having the slightest wink of a nap. This child is so goddamn sleep-averse it wouldn't surprise me if this is the beginning of the end of naps altogether (ripe old age of 17 months). He was down to one nap a day by nine months so it's not outside the realms of possibility.

I'm officially doing my last BF on Thursday morning. He's down to one feed a day when he wakes up but it lasts anything up to an hour, leaving me feel like I've had my nipples sandpapered. I'm over it now. I'm off work on Friday and Monday so it will allow time for the inevitable mastitis without having to take sick leave, telling my boss why I'm calling in sick, then have her treat me like a weird hippy-freak because I'm BFing a toddler, so clearly bringing the mastitis on myself because of my strange and primitive beliefs. Besides, it may well stop the early wakings!

Hear I've read your first post and thought "hmmm,why the heck she's weaning her dad,bet he scoffs everything without needing any help" :D made me laugh and then you corrected it to DD.That made more sense.

Dreaming good that this bloody thing is over,what are the symptoms,treatment and how long the recovery takes?Asking because I always associated hf&m with livestock but no humans I'm an ignorant

Elphaba good luck with Operation No Boob.I'll have to note some tips how to do it because at the moment it's a perfect pacifier and cure for everything.This stereotype about babies sleeping lots are just bollocks.Everybody else seems to have a baby who goes to sleep at 7,mine goes at 9 and still unhappy about that,up at 6 with some wakings at night ranging from 1(good night) to several ones (shitty night).

Last week we were away for a night,DS zonked in the pushchair and was limp so we got him changed and put him to our bed.I was woken up at 00:40 by a mighty headbutt (one of these that makes you see the stars).DS went to bed 2 hrs later after running around unhappy.He knew he was bang out of order looking at both of us sitting with crossed arms and dead serious faces.No cuddles,no talk,nothing.He looked a bit lost and made me feel like a complete bitch.

Just wondering how Poppy and Stitch are doing-give us a shout ladies if you're lurking :)

To those of you potty training-how old are your wee ones?I was told by HV that the average age for potty training is over 2 years as the child must be concious that wee and poo comes from them and then it's a matter how to control it.

DS is coming on 17 months just now,DC2 according to internet calculator is due at the end of June so there will be a gap of just over 2 years.I'm shock at our fertility because I didn't think it would happen straight away after making a decision I was hoping for months of shit hot sex at least not at our age.

Will call the surgery in a couple of weeks to make an appointment,fingers crossed that everything's going to be fine( my first pregnancy ended in mc).No sickness,cravings started to kick in-scoffed half a big jar of pickled beetroots last night so wouldn't be surprised if it's another boy.I don't mind the gender and better from practical point of view because have loads of DS clothes.

Take care ladies,wishing you long and peaceful uninterrupted sleep :)