MSE Parent Club

chocaholic110

izoomzoom wrote: »

Choc, what a tiny boy and traumatic time you have had too.

I made the mistake of putting my boys to sleep 'asleep', but this time round we 9x out of 10 make sure she is awake.

think tom is unhappy about something if you put him down and then he screams - could be a wind / needs swaddling ????

also if you find he has fallen asleep try waking him up by changing his nappy and then put him back down to sleep.

sure you will have lots of people along to offer advise but I have never had such a small baby so don't feel I am qualified.

I do swaddle and it worked a treat for a couple of weeks - he fights his arms out now though. I think his main problem is he wants to be with someone all of the time

heather38

hello all,
i'm so tired!!! yesterday i slept 19 hours! i am never having another baby, this is it for me! i'm nearly 8 weeks now so i hope it will pass soon.
i am another one that puts baby to sleep awake. i used to play with her feet or ears to keep her awake at the beginning then she got used to it .
we have milk at 6pm then bath or wash pjs then bed at 7pm, she got into her routine herself though, nowt to do with me!
i don't think 5 weeks is too late, i used to feed kennedy and put her in the basket, admittedly she would be nearly asleep from her feed, but i never put her upstairs on her own at night, she would be in the front room with us until we went to bed, usually around 11, she would get a dream feed then off to sleep with us all.

Snaggles

Choca, don't worry, you're doing fine, probably much more than fine!

It's never too late to start putting them to bed awake, you will have a few bad days as you make the transition (it's helpful if you do it during the holidays for example when there's 2 of you there and you can do 'shifts'), but they get used to it quite quickly.

I have also heard that small babies are hungry babies, so maybe it's just something he will grow out of as he catches up a bit. You must be exhausted though with the interrupted sleep, and the worry about the monitor going off. Can you manage to get any breaks at all? Could anyone take over for a bit while you had a couple of hours sleep during the day?

One way we used to settle DS in his moses basket (DD just slept 24 hours a day so she was no trouble...lol) was to feed him, burp him, change him and then pop him in with the covers over him lightly (he hated swaddling, or even being tucked in, so I used to have to do that once he was asleep), and then hubby would pick the whole moses basket up and rock it gently. Much easier while they are small and light!

Aesop

[quote by Aktuga


On a different note, I do agree with FAC that the parenting thread is a little, well, like a private club. Although I probably get that impression with mums in general. The baby group I attend is okay, but after a few complaints from myself hubby came to the conclusion that I am being bullied by my NCT 'friends'. That's probably why I call them the female dogs! On the whole though it was the worst £200 we ever spent. Still gonna meet up with them though, don't meet many people any more... how sad is that!![/quote]

Hi, if you dont like the people you are meeting at NCT, which I think is very expensive, have you tried looking at netmums.com? I joined the group and have started making friends with other mums, we are going to start meeting for coffee next week, this is free and I am sure you will find nicer friends.

SusanCarter

We found just recently after Alice's cold had gone she would scream when we tried to put her down for daytime naps (and when we put her down at bedtime without having given night calpol). We eventually worked out she was hungry so gave an extra ten minutes feed before naps and top up bottle of expressed milk at bedtime. Having said that, when she was small she would generally cry anytime I put her to bed but it was generally (but not always) an "I object to lying down/being put to bed" cry rather than an "I'm distressed/something is wrong" cry and she would stop within five or ten minutes max. If she was still crying after ten minutes or if it sounded like a real cry then I used to assume she was hungry and feed her.

Sounds like its been quite a traumatic time for you chocoholic :grouphug: and I think you've done really well to breastfeed considering all the trauma. Small babies are likely to need more frequent feeds as their stomachs will be smaller and also they have a lot of growth spurts early on which can make it seem like you are feeding all the time. At one point I was feeding for an average of four hours per day!

We've had Alice in our bed to sleep quite a few times as sometimes its the easiest way to get her to sleep. We did it on holiday for a couple of nights and we have been known to go to bed at 8 just to get her to sleep. I don't think the occasional thing like that is going to create bad habits and I'd rather we all got rest than stayed awake with Alice crying.

Bailey, hope your baby comes soon. I got fed up and I never even went overdue. (I'd second the recommendation of "husband-assisted induction">)

Js_Other_Half

<hugs> for Chocoholic.

I'd tried putting DS down awake at 8 weeks - it worked no problem the first night, so I thought we'd cracked it...

The next night he screamed solidly for 2 hours, despite me lying on the bed next to the crib, patting his tummy, and humming (actually maybe that's where I went wrong...:p ) After 2 hours I conceded defeat!

I kept trying it for daytime naps, which was reasonably successful, and by 10/11 weeks he'd go to sleep in his crib too. We always had the musical mobile (15mins of classical music), a muslin for him to hold, and his dummy.

Snaggles

Talking of routines, I am going back to work soon, and I will need to tell Natasha's nursery what her routine is (will feel a bit silly just saying 'feed her when she's hungry, give her a nap when she's tired ).

Our general routine at the moment feels a bit jumbled so I'm wondering if people could give me a rough idea of what they do.

This tends to be ours, but apart from bedtime, we don't stick to anything religiously:

7am - breastfeed
8am - breakfast
9.30am - nap
11am - snack (ricecakes/biscuit) and breastfeed
1pm - lunch
2.30pm - nap
3pm - breastfeed and snack
5pm - dinner
7pm - breastfeed & bed

This is what Natasha has sort of chosen of her own accord, and she's generally a happy, healthy little thing, so I don't think it's disasterously bad, but I'd be really interested to know what others do so I can [strike]steal it[/strike] pick up some tips.

[Deleted User]

Snaggles, if you had asked me this last week, i'd be able to offer a very routine similar to yours, this week however.....ALL GONE TO POT!!!

I think i'll try the pineapple thing again and hot bath, I would try husband assisted induction, but his AD's aren't conducive to that kind of thing at the moment, he's switched brands but things are not on the up yet! We did manage it at 37 weeks, goodness know how and appeared to make no difference. I'm not actually sure its physically possible now at 40+3 for either of us. I just hope my waters don't break in my sleep, strangely enough when they popped with Jack, I felt and heard the pop and for me that signalled the start of labour and I don't want to miss it again.

daphne_descends

Bailey, reading you waiting to go into labour is making me excited on your behalf. I loved the feeling when things started to get going - the relief of the wait being finally over, but also before the pain really kicked in! My waters went in the birthing pool and I wasn't really aware of that happening, but I was sleeping on a towel for a week or so beforehand as I was scared of it happening in my sleep

Just think, soon you'll be able to smell that baby smell and cuddle your tiny little person... is it wrong to be broody already tiny hands and feet, ahhhh...

Snaggles

Bailey...oh dear, how can I put this in a way that is suitable for family viewing.......um.....although the man's 'contribution' to the induction is important from a hormone-releasing point of view, I found it was the *whispers* orgasm that started things off.

But I used to get a flurry of braxton hicks contractions after 'marital relations' all through my pregnancy, along with a rather uncomfortable tightening around my bump.

I felt the pop when my waters burst too. It was a very strange moment. Hubby just gawped helplessly as I yelled 'get me a towel' :rolleyes:. I really wish I had thought to sleep on one!

Fac, no, broodiness isn't unusual. It's not just broodiness either, it's a chemical craving, because (this is my theory anyway) your body really likes the flood of endorphins you get during/after the birth, and it really wants to recreate that feeling, so it makes you desperately want another baby. I think it's mother nature's way of making sure we don't get put off by the pain, and we do have more than one baby (or used to, when we all lived in caves and had bad hair).