Newborn advice

iwanttosave_2

oh donna thomas is gorgous, but yes small amouts of water should be given, obviously not loads just an oz or 2 a day is good enough, a bit more if on a stodgyer milk like sma white

donna-j_2

Thank you. :j I'm going through a particularly infatuated stage this week. Poor boy is practically smothered with kisses.

He hasn't 'been' for 3 days :eek: so will give him a wee bit of water today then. He is BF but gets two bottles of Aptimil extra at night.

Thanks for your help.

iwanttosave_2

breast fed babys don't need water, they get what they need from the fore milk before the hind milk kicks in but if you are mixing the feeding then me may well benifit from a drop of water

donna-j_2

Thank you. We tried it this morning and he went mental! He was not at all impressed.

ladypeanut

Bottles ... My baby is now 4 months old and I was told not to make formula up all at once.
Boil the kettle fill bottles with the water and place in fridge
when baby needs feeding add formula and heat bottle.

I had problems breast feeding and now just express the milk . . that way me and baby are happy.

CharleneUK

You've been given great advice, just wanted to congratulate you!

I had my daughter on the 23rd November

jellyhead

congrats to all you new parents :-) my splodge is 18 weeks old now, it's gone really quickly!

he was born in hot weather but even so he would only drink about half an ounce of water when newborn. a lot of babies i know don't have any water but mine was very sweaty and cried lots of tears so i worried about him getting dehydrated. the amount of water he has doesn't make any difference to the amount of milk he has but he won't have water if he's hungry. if you need to give calpol after the injections you can add it to a bit of water, i put a 2.5 ml dose into an ounce or two of water and shake it. my baby vomits when asked to swallow calpol.

he was a very sicky baby and was diagnosed with reflux. it's getting a lot better now. we used a special milk for a while called omneo comfort. it's made by cow and gate and you can buy it in boots or supermarkets. it's a thick milk so you need to use a faster or variable flow teat. we used medium teats to begin with and then fast flow. he's changed back to aptamil milk now (just for convenience when travelling, and he no longer seems to need the omneo) and has gone back down to medium flow. omeno can't be mixed at room temperature, the water needs to be warm. you can't buy ready made cartons of it.

i think it was counting-pennies who first mentioned adding powder to ready cooled water, i hadn't thought of it before i read it on here. if yours is a milk you can mix at room temperature then you can just put some water into a bottle, leave it to cool and then add your powder when baby wants the bottle. no need for the fridge. if you want the milk a bit warmer you can cool down a few ounces of water, then when you're ready to make the bottle you just boil the kettle and add an extra ounce or two to the cooled water to make the correct amount of water at just the right temp for adding formula.

i did used to leave the kettle to cool but i'm a dozy mare and i kept boiling it to make a cup of tea, forgetting that i wanted cool water for the bottles lol!

jellyhead

forgot to add - for a baby who has reflux or is sicky, put something under the crib mattress so the head is slightly raised. i can't sleep flat on my back without a pillow so i know how uncomfortable it must be for a baby with a tummy full of milk. i'm also using a book under the top leg of the crib.

i've been speaking to the health visitor this week about 'tummy time' - he just vomits when he's on his tummy. she recommends buying a nest, one of those ring things that have already been mentioned. she says to put baby kind of leaning over it with his toys where he can reach them, so baby is in the nest but the toys are outside of it. that way he can practise using his upper body etc. but he's not flat and won't be sick. also recommended because my baby is now too heavy (just shy of 20lbs!) for the bouncy chair and the swing but i need to put him down sometimes, can't carry him while i'm cooking etc.

i haven't done anything really to teach him to sleep at night, he worked it out for himself and started to have a 5 or 6 hour sleep at night when he was around 5 weeks old. it's now around 7 hours, with more sleep either side. so he has a sleep, bottle at 11pm, 7 hour sleep and bottle at 6 then more sleep. he stays downstairs if he sleeps during the day and at night he sleeps upstairs. he guzzles bottles during the day, every 2 hours sometimes. he has 6 or 7 bottles throughout the day. as a newborn he fed every 4 hours but after 4 or so weeks he preferred to have lots of bottles in the mornings and fewer at night so he worked out his own pattern. his pattern hasn't changed since he was 4 weeks old, people comment but the health visitor says it's fine. he can't take more than a 5oz bottle without vomiting.

Karnam

ladypeanut wrote:

I had problems breast feeding and now just express the milk . . that way me and baby are happy.

expressing is wonderful! relieving engorgment without the pain of latching on!!!

weirdly enough i find my breast pump is effective on one breast but on the other its easier and more effective to hand express.

across

Dear Savy Sue, i didnt mean all babies who suck fingers and cry need a feed i think youve misunderstood me a little and i did put exclamation marks to get my point across but it hasnt come across right obviously, when i had babies i found they could sometimes get back to sleep without a feed but if they heard me move they knew i was there and may cry so obviously there was no chance of further sleep!!!other times i could tell they were not going to go back to sleep when they started sucking fingers in dark!!!they didnt go around sucking there fingers all day they did this sometimes at night when they awoke and couldnt get back to sleep because they were hungry!!!hope you get what i mean now! i was saying that if they were doing something like that then obviously you can not ignore them but sometimes if you give it a try they do get themselves back off without help!!! and as for wrapping them up again i was only commenting on my babies of course they are all different this goes without saying!!!! one of mine liked to have her arms out so we used to wrap under her arms and leave them free but if i was to explain all that id be writing forever! i know they are not all the same and im sure Marco realises this but we are all just helping by sharing our experiences with him and i hope other people who read my comments would find them helpful! you are obviously very experienced but rather than disecting what ive said perhaps you could write some tips to share also. ps, i never used to check my nappy by putting my finger down it we all do things our own way but theres nothing to worry about!