MSE Pregnancy Club 26

Kayalana99

We got given a bath themoter..think it was from boots though. It's a yellow plastic whale that simply has a black strip that goes blue green red... Ok elbows work fine and I would of managed without it but theirs no debating whether or not its the right temp and now LO is abit older he plays with it...and for sake of £2-3 which can basicly be used as a bath toy later on...cant go wrong :-)

Bangton

Huge congrats Lao-Cat - hope your feeling ok. First boy in a little while..do you have any names yet? : )

Thermometers..hmmmm not sure. I'm not so worried about the bath but wondering if a room thermometer would be useful although some are on the pricey side for what they are. I don't want to pay £14 for a plastic thermometer. I've really been conscious of trying not to buy things just because they are sold as if they are needed and I'm not sure if I think thermometers fit into this category or not!

Feeling relaxed today. Made the decision with OH last night that I'm going to pack work in next Friday. I'm tired of hauling myself around. When people are walking towards you and you just can't be bothered moving out of their way you know your knackered!! Feels like a weight has been lifted to be honest and gives me time to clean, nest and spend time with my mum and family. Ironically I'll also be better off as I can take 11 months maternity and 1 month holidays rather than having two months of no pay right at the end.

House nearly decorated top to toe as well so I'm all over the house magazines although I think it's time we stopped spending money. I've developed a baby blanket obsession. I try not to buy useless things but 10 blankets and a load of fitted sheets is fine in my head! Also nappies and wipes..I can't stop myself!

Have a good weekend girls xx

BadlyWrittenPoem

Lola888 wrote: »

And don't listen to the crap that bf babies will sleep better on formula it isn't always the case and the lack of sleep isn't forever. DD1 started sleeping through from about 2-3 mths old!!

I agree. My first slept through from nine weeks and the second still needs occasional rocking at 13 months but stopped feeding overnight at 12 months and I have breastfed them both just the same - I think different babies are just different.

BadlyWrittenPoem

BeNiceToMySelf wrote: »

thanks for the advice. The time commitment with breast feeding also worries me. I guess baby could always have one formula feed per day to stop me going insane and OH could look after baby. I'm hoping that I can express. I do think that society looks down on formula feeding like society frowns upon a cesarean birth. A healthy happy baby is what everyone aims for not an unhappy depressed mum!

Do you mean time commitment as in you having to be there to feed the baby or length of time spent on feeding? Based on friends' FF babies and on mine taking expressed milk I'm not sure there's much in it in terms of time spent on feeding. But if you mean being there to feed the baby, it's totally doable to routinely give a bottle each day. DH has always given a bottle of expressed milk for the late feed with ours (introduced by two weeks) and it worked fine and didn't cause any problems - I'd actually say that with DD1 it enabled me to continue with exclusive breastfeeding as I really needed that break where I knew I wouldn't have to feed in the early weeks.

BadlyWrittenPoem

amus wrote: »

I've told midwives from the start I intend to breastfeed as long as it works for me and baby, yet I still get asked about it almost every time I go to the midwife and have had about 3 letters through the post promoting breastfeeding. What a waste of nhs resources! If they're going to waste money sending unnecessary things through the post I'd much rather them post me something useful, like say, bottles of gaviscon!

Interesting how much it varies - apart from in my first pregnancy, I've never been given any information about breastfeeding but the hospital have posters everywhere telling you that you should breastfeed which really annoys me as the money would be better spent on giving individuals proper information than on plastering the ward with posters which tell you you should without giving any meaningful or useful information. IMO they should give people proper information, allow them to make an informed choice and then provide proper feeding support for whatever they have decided.

BadlyWrittenPoem

BeNiceToMySelf wrote: »

What are people's thoughts on thermometors? I have a room thermometer but I think I would like a bath thermometer and some way to take baby's temperature. there are so many out there I have trouble deciding. the ones where you have to buy replacement covers seem like a lot of fuss.

I don't think we ever took DD1's temperature until she was almost two and even then it was quite faffy so eventually we bought one of those forehead ones when we saw a good deal and we've found that really useful for taking her temperature but I don't think we've ever successfully taken the thirteen month old's temperature so I wouldn;t say it is worth having one particularly when they are very small.

ETA: We do have a bath thermometer though which is a floating regular type of thermometer which we actually use for all baths (not just the baby's) just because our hot water is temperamental and it makes it easier. I am paranoid about scalding the baby though - I don't think a bath thermometer is *really* necessary.

BadlyWrittenPoem

Oh, and I never bought a room thermometer because I already had thermometers in all the rooms anyway - we have a crazy amount of thermometers!

BeNiceToMySelf

BadlyWrittenPoem wrote: »

Do you mean time commitment as in you having to be there to feed the baby or length of time spent on feeding? Based on friends' FF babies and on mine taking expressed milk I'm not sure there's much in it in terms of time spent on feeding. But if you mean being there to feed the baby, it's totally doable to routinely give a bottle each day. DH has always given a bottle of expressed milk for the late feed with ours (introduced by two weeks) and it worked fine and didn't cause any problems - I'd actually say that with DD1 it enabled me to continue with exclusive breastfeeding as I really needed that break where I knew I wouldn't have to feed in the early weeks.

I asked my MW about expressing and she said not to express for the first 6 weeks! So that's me getting up and feeding every few hours just because I'm the only one with boobs. And if I'm up then I might as well wind and change baby's nappy. That's the time commitment and lack of freedom that I think comes from breast feeding.

BadlyWrittenPoem

BeNiceToMySelf wrote: »

I asked my MW about expressing and she said not to express for the first 6 weeks! So that's me getting up and feeding every few hours just because I'm the only one with boobs. And if I'm up then I might as well wind and change baby's nappy. That's the time commitment and lack of freedom that I think comes from breast feeding.

Yes, the official line is that any bottles or dummies in the first six weeks will cause "nipple confusion" but neither of mine had any trouble or confusion. I think if you were giving multiple bottles a day it would interfere with breastfeeding but one a day never caused us any problems and anecdotally, people who wait to introduce a bottle seem to have much more difficulty convincing the baby to take one at all.

lozza1985

We've got a video monitor and a breathing mat monitor thingy too, but then our room isn't big enough to have baby in with us so she'll be in her own room from day one. Video monitor also tells the temperature (not sure how accurate it'll be though), which is probably useful in our house as we don't have central heating but electric heaters so its hard sometimes to get the temperature just right.

I'm 30 weeks today so far no mention of breast feeding at all from midwife. Don't know if that's routine in my area, or because Dh has been to every appointment with me so perhaps she doesn't want to bring it up! Mind you, for various reasons we know we're going to FF our baby so it would be a waste of her time keep bringing it up anyway.