MSE Parent Club - Part 2

Sami_Bee

MaximumImpact wrote: »

Sami-Bee

TBH, he's so tiny that i don't think his tummy can fit anymore in....he doesnt drain the bottles completely but nods of to sleep with a few mls left in it...but give it half an hour and he's awake and yelling for more!!!

I've been sat having a serious think tonight and I really don't want to go back to the clinic because I'm fed up with being made to look stupid in front of the other mothers...I missed a couple of weeks due to Xmas/New year etc and she was on the phone asking questions....she took me to one side when I first started going to warn me about letting my DS co-sleep saying that i was 'putting him in serious danger'...I told her I had been given a leaflet from the hospital about it and her reply was 'I don't think so, we do not encourage that sort of behaviour.....' She basically called me a liar.

I guess I am just at my wits end with it all now...I am worried sick that she will report me to Social Services if I stop going or not do as she says...

OMG you have the HV from hell! you do not have to go to clinic its completely up to you when/if/how often you go, I would put a complaint into your pct and also request that you be assigned to a different HV - all of which you are well within your rights to do.
on the co-sleeping provided your not in the high risk things ie smoker, overweight etc then studies have shown it is the safest way, prem babies also thrive much better when they have lots of close contact with their mothers :cool: sounds to me like you are doing a great job and just have a very hungry LO
the only thing I can suggest is that you have extra bottles or your boob at the ready for him

MaximumImpact

Thanks for your help and support! DS is currently asleep so I think I am going to try and sneak in some zzzz's!!! DH is due home soon and he'll take over if DS wakes!!!
I will def take your advice re HV...:T

Curious_George_2

MaximumImpact wrote: »

I guess I am just at my wits end with it all now...I am worried sick that she will report me to Social Services if I stop going or not do as she says...

ugh... the dreaded HV!
honestly hun your HV has no hold over you, hes your baby, you do what you think is best
i cant stand mine and only went because DS is my OHs first (my 2nd) otherwise i wouldnt have bothered, shes an unhelpful busybody!
she has no right to call you and badger you about your descisions and she certainly wont call social services about you, think about it... what could she possibly say to them?
tell your docs to remove your number from the system if you want too, if you dont want to explain why then tell them your getting a new number and dont know it yet and the old one doesnt work anymore (the docs have NEVER phoned me, they write if they want anything)

i dont know anything about preemie babes im afraid so wouldnt really want to advise you, but if SCBU and Bliss say a little early weaning is fine then you go right ahead, its not like your going to be stuffing sandwiches in his face... but that little taste of baby rice might make all the difference

please dont be scared of your HV, shes just an old nurse with ideas way above her station! there are nice ones about... but the ones in my experience seem to thrive on scaring the pants off first time parents.

Savvy_Sue

notenoughcash, common problem! As my mum used to say to me, "You know you're OK when you're out and where you are and who you're with, but I don't know that, so you have to tell me. You always know where I am, don't you?" (I wouldn't use that line on my 16 yo, who wouldn't care, but 10's a bit different.)

Try to talk this through with him though: tell him you want him to be independent, you don't want to be meeting him when he's 22, but to get to that stage you have to be able to trust him to do as you've asked. And if you can't trust him to do as he's asked, whether he thinks it's reasonable or not, then that means there's less he can do.

I don't know if the 'fairness' argument will work with him - it never did with my eldest, TBH - but try the "I know you feel hard done by when I can't just drop everything and take you to X, Y, Z, but it's not fair on tiddler if I do that, because I also have to do a, b and c with him. BUT if we can plan ahead, we can probably find a way of doing things."

For example, if mine ever wanted lifts, they knew it was no use waiting until I got home from work to ask me, because a) their dad might have had the car that night and b) I might have had other plans! And especially when more than one of them wanted a lift - it could become like a military operation! So they slowly learned to ask in advance, and double check the night before that we'd got things sorted out.

Sometimes the only way I could sort things out was to lift-share with their friends' parents - is it possible that your son could walk home with anyone else?

Got to go, but hope that might help a bit. Oh, and don't worry, whatever you do will be wrong, you are entering the phase where you are deliberately setting out to ruin his life. Join the club! :rotfl:

tsstss7

MaximumImpact wrote: »

hey guys..I'm after a bit of advice if possible...I have a 4 month old boy who was born 2 months premature..He is still very tiny (11lbs) but his appetite isnt. At the moment he is taking 6 to 7 bottles a day of 6 ozs plus a breastfeed in the morning and during the night. I also give him a bowl of baby rice at lunchtime......

He still seems hungry and is chewing his tongue and his hands an awful lot. I tried to broach the subject of weaning with my HV who put me in my place with her normal style and told me that it would be at least another 3 months before he needed any rice or cereal.....

I'm gutted enough that I just couldnt keep up with the BF and I was gettin so tired that I was getting angry with him, so decided to start on formula (weak, I know).....would have liked some support from the HV but that isn't ever going to happen (superior mug cow that she is) so I thought i'd turn to some other mothers and ask what you all think????

DS gets hysterical now when he is hungry and never seems satisfied..should I go against the HV and with my own instincts that he needs more than just milk or what should I do?????

Are you sure it's hunger and not wind when he wants to eat and eat? My Lo mistakes his windy feelings for hunger and would suck and suck forever if I let him (very painful!) and the more he drinks the worse the wind gets.

It's not weak starting on formula if it's causing you real problems but ff and bf don't coexist very well and you might find your lo fills up on the formula rather than the bfeeding times and your milk starts to lessen with time unless you make a real effort to keep it going. However working in your favour here is the fact that bmilk is supposedly more nutritous in the night and most women have more bmilk in the morning.

I weaned my LO at 17 wks but he was two weeks overdue and a big baby. I have to say though weaning my LO didn't solve the always hungry problem and he still didn't sleep through at all until 7.5mths ( and then only intermittantly) so it didn't help on that score either.

Becles

Sami_Bee wrote: »

what does that even mean?

I think it's supposed to be "all right mother, it is me"

He calls me Ma now instead of Mam and I think it makes me sound ancient

He also thinks it cool to speak in a broad geordie accent - think Oz from Auf Wiedersehen Pet

Maximum - I would go with your instincts and stop seeing the HV. Charlotte was a month prem, and I've only seen the HV a handful of times, and I've barely had her weighed at all. I can see she's putting weight on and she's healthy and I've got no worries about her, so I'd rather just get on with things. I'm another believer that mothers instincts are more valuable than "current guidelines" etc.

janey_uk

My daughter is 5 months now and I weaned her at 17 weeks as she was sinking loads more milk than the packet said. She had 7oz up to seven times a day from two months! She crept up on the weight chart from the 75th percentile at birth to the 91st by two months but stayed there since so my HV said not to worry at all as long as she was growing. She was also showing other signs of being ready like watching us eat and chewing her hands all the time (before the teething began!)

My mum and MIL both said they weaned their babes at 2 months - and we're all fine! I think instinct count for the most.

janey_uk

Oh btw, if ever I needed confirmation, on her first ever encounter with baby rice, litle miss took one spoonful, screwed up her nose, then grabbed the spoon to ram the next one in her face!! My problem now is that I can't feed her fast enough - she doesn't half tell me off if I'm too slow!

SusanC_2

Maximum Impact - I personally weaned my (full term) baby at 7 months but she had still shown no signs of "needing" solids and I would quite happily have doneit earlier if I had thought it necessarily. If you are convinced your baby needs solids and the specialist premature baby people say it's okay then I can't see why your health visitor would know any better. My HV (who I've seen three times) said that any time from four months that they show signs is fine and she also told me not to worry about sterilising spoons etc. (just sterilise bottles if you use them) as she said they are picking up dirt fromt he floor by that age anyway. The health visitor is an optional service which you can choose to make use of so she shouldn't be making such a big deal of you not going to the clinic unless there are serious health issues (but if there were serious issues you would have been referred to a specialist anyway). My friend started weaning at 16 weeks because her baby was very underweight, was breastfed and wouldn't take a bottle and spent most of his time screaming his head off. Until he was six months the HV was on at her every time she saw her that she should be giving him formula off a spoon instead (at six months she totally changed overnight and was completely supportive of giving solids) but the consultant at the hospital said that if she hadn't started weaning him he would have ended up in hospital on a drip.

nadnad wrote: »

oh lord you're all so industrious! i cantimagine ever getting round to making flashcards etc.! he's 8 monthsnow, but if i started to think about it now he might have them by thetime he's 3!

It's all swings and roundabouts - you probably do other things which we don't do. I'm a SAHM with only one child and a husband who is rarely out at work longer than 8.30 to 5.30 (and this time of year he's working at home a lot) so I have the time to do things like flash cards (and I also enjoy making them).

Sami_Bee

janey_uk wrote: »

Oh btw, if ever I needed confirmation, on her first ever encounter with baby rice, litle miss took one spoonful, screwed up her nose, then grabbed the spoon to ram the next one in her face!! My problem now is that I can't feed her fast enough - she doesn't half tell me off if I'm too slow!

:rotfl:She sounds like my cousin, when he was little it took 2 people to feed him, one with a spoon and one with a bottle, as soon as spoon came out bottle had to go in while the spoon was refilled! If there wasn't something in his mouth he would screeeeeaaaam!:eek: