looking for Jan/Feb 05 moms to chat...

[thitz]

Hi Debinoz

I've been thinking about you feeding problem a lot.  And just an idea but could it be an ear infection?  I read in one book that it hurts them to suck if they have an ear infection.  It said that a lot of ear infections go away on their own but some don't.  Has he had his ears checked lately?

I hope something works out for you soon:)

Tarri

[Heather_Samantha's Mummy]

Jaime - My breasts do feel quite empty after 15 mins but I may switch sides too quickly like you said. Samantha still seems to take a full feed at about 1 or 2 AM even though she has been fed at 10 or 10:30 so she must not be getting enough food. She did go down at 8 PM last night and woke at 8:45 PM but I then put her right back to bed instead of keeping her up. She then woke at 12:30 AM because she had become unswaddled but I couldn't get her down again so I ended up feeding her at 1:15 AM in which she seemed quite hungry. She then fed again at about 4:15 AM. What I find when she goes down earlier is she always wakes up in the 12:00 range but when she was going down at 10 ish she wouldn't wake up until 1:30 or 2. I just find this annoying for myself because I go to bed around 10 or 11 and I then get more broken up sleep because of it. It was actually nice for a while there because I was getting a nice 3 to 4 hour stretch myself before she would wake. My theory is that she gets her deep sleep earlier in the evening when she goes down at 8 PM so then she is restless after that.
Heather #2

[sedona314]

Deb, did you lose your breastmilk because she wouldnt feed?  Mine is dwindling right now and Im pumping like crazy trying to bring it back up.

I can tell you that Matty only rarely refuses the bottle or breast due to reflux, and I can tell when thats the reason.  I  cant figure out the other reasons but I've read other people have this problem too.  It just drives me crazy and makes everything so much more difficult 


Try reading the BF forum where they have a whole post about ways mothers are trying to get their babies to take the bottle, I found it helpful, at least I didnt feel so alone.

Christine:  Matthew legs are tucked into the bottome of the  swaddle bent, and IM sure it wont be too long before he wont fit.  I also use a swaddle blanket that I foudn at the baby store, thats just a big square cotton cloth, but its a pain to use. but honestly, all the swaddle are a pain to use.  I tried letting Matty sleep without the swaddle recently and his arms were everywhere!  The only way he sleeps is with the swaddle.  My friend told me she was able to stop swaddling at about 5 or 6 months, so Im hanging in there.

J

[sedona314]

A question for everyone:

How many of you are raising your spirited, grumpy or touchy baby without help?  And if you are, how are you managing???
I have a sitter here half the week and some nights, and I dont know how I would make it without the help. Sometimes I really feel like an inadequate mom - I feel like I should be able to handle him by myself even though I know he is a very high maintenance baby.  Any input from anyone???


Julie

[949nikkirn]

Yep, we're doing it all on our own except on Mondays when I work we have a nanny come in for 9 hours. DH works 6 days a week from 3:30 am to 3:30pm. It's a bummer.
If it wasn't for reading the Baby Whisperer once while pregnant and 3 times after, I know we would never have been able to do it. DS just turned 4 months and is on the 4 hour EASY and sleeps through the night since 9 1/2 weeks. I KNOW I would have gone totally crazy if I never learned Tracy's ways. DS really shows his spirited/touchiness when we stray from his expected routine. He has come to know and rely on the structure and is a wonderul baby when he gets his 3 naps with the eat, play, sleep routine. I did have some hard times with 45 minute naps, but now he wakes up and is able to talk himself back to sleep.
Julie, I haven't been to the board in awhile and I missed if you told us why you are sleeping in the same room. Is it the reflux and you're keeping an extra eye on him? Just curious. I was just thinking that maybe he knows you are there and then he thinks it's time to play. I know with my ds that if he is a little bit awake and he senses me in the room then he gets super excited and thinks it's time to get up and play. If it's not time to get up then I just leave the room and he settles himself, but like I said before, we started Tracy's ways almost right away so he knows the routine.

Nikki
Trace 2-23-05

[Deb_in_oz]

OMG - Christine this is too strange.  ok before i tell you about our night (it happened again) we also had a great day yesterday.  firstly, the other day Dh kept her up for 1 1/2 hrs and i noticed she went to sleep fine so i said let's try it and she has been fine with exactly 1 1/2 hrs awake time for 2 days now.  the first day she only did 45 min naps but yesterday went like this:

let  her sleep late because of bad night so instead of 7:30 i ended up waking her at 9:00!!!! to make sure she would eat and still only ate at 9:30.
slept 10:30-12
up 12 but did not eat until 12:30
down 13:30 (asleep by 13:45) and up around 15:45+
went to a friend's house so had awake time in car before bottle
down in car on way home and slept 1735 - 1810
up and then had bath and bottle
took ;last feed and down at 1930 for the night and for the first time in days we did not hear a peep and were abloe to reax (i had 2 glasses of wine and watched DVD with DH  )
took DF (100ml)

THEN - exactly 0420 again she woke up.  i kept hoping she would go to sleep but was still up and cooing at 0530. then the fussing started.  got Dh up (i actually just got my 1st postnatal period and was now up dyinmg from cramp  :oops:   :evil: ) and exchanged this time for letting him sleep in.

he came back to bed around 0615 and said she had done a huge poo.  then took 85ml.

she is about to get up at 830.  i don't know how to crack this new 4am thing - do we do wake to sleep???

[Deb_in_oz]

Julie - 1st we will never really know about true cause of my milk supply issues.  i think about it often and lately started thinking about the fact that she always fed better at night, etc so the question becomes was it because my supply was greater at night (as i thought, and due to stress causing decrease in daytime supply) or was it because she gets too distracted in daytime and preferred the night therefore this action on her part caused the decrease in daytime milk...

it just seemed that the further in the day we got the lower my supply and the more dissatisfied she got, so we started supplementing with EBM  and formula, and finally had to decide what to do.  i am happier with the bottles 90% of the time (hate having to do it outside the house as it is just easier to BF - portable...).  she was fussy on the breast too but this is worse, but some days she is fine so we persist.

she is fine with the bottles/teats we use.  we also tried the faster flow teat this week but she is not ready for that - she got very upset, took 120ml straight away and then spit most of it up as it happened too fast.  we are going to stick with med flow for a bit longer.

about the help - DH has had to work from home a lot to back  me up since i was not coping with 2 (partly just issues with balancing needs of 2 kids, but big part was that i could not figure out olilvia's needs so was forever stressing and driving myself insane).  he will be back in the office from next week probably though     to cope better though we hired a mother's helper 2 afternoons a week for alex to have some good playtime..and we hired cleaners who come for 2 hrs every other friday.  alex also goes to occassional care mondays for 3 hrs in the morning but this isn't a break for me as it is a stress doing drop off and pick up around olivia's sleep/eat needs We have no family in the country and moved to a new area to give the girls more space so am a lot more isolated than i was when i had alex (out every day, walked every where etc)

[sedona314]

Nikki:

I was co-sleeping with Matthew in sleeper next to bed and he has always woken frequently through the night.  I am sleeping in his room with him so if he gets up five times I am not running into the nursery each time so then i would get NO sleep.  Im trying it this way (sleeping on bed in nursery) to see if he will do better, and then I will go back to my room for sleep with the monitor.  He cant see me from his crib like he can from the sleeper in my room, so he's not getting excited.  He barely even wakes up at night, he cries and cries with his eyes closed and I take care of whatever need it is and he goes back to sleep never having opened his eyes most of the time whether in my room or his room.

Julie

Matthew - Spirited  1/31/05

[HeatherC]

There have been many posts about bf lately, so I thought I would mention what has happened to us.  At about 3 months I believed that Kelsey's reflux was starting to really bother her and thus making it hard for her to bf.  It was terrible to feed her because she would pull off and on and I worried that she was never getting enough to eat, plus she was obviously miserable.  I was having to give her supplement formula after each feeding.  I gave formula because I could never get enough bm from pumping to make a good feeding.  She would always be able to take the bottle with no problems.  Therefore, I figured it was the position of having to lay on her side to bf that triggered her reflux.  At first, it was only 1 or 2 of her feedings in the late afternoon that bothered her, so I replaced those with formula all together.  She had started zantac, and it seemed to help for the most part.  However, around 4 months, her bf got worse, and I was getting miserable.  It was such a struggle to feed her.  I attributed all of it to the reflux, but now I'm not so sure.  Either way, we eventually replaced all but the morning and night feeds with formula.  My supply was dwendling anyway because she had lost her ability to nurse well enough to produce the demand on my body.  I never liked the breastfeeding, and I only did it for her benefit, but now that she's not doing it as often I feel bad.  However, she is still getting some bm, and the important thing is that she is fed no matter how.
Now that she's taking 4 feeds a day, she bf in the morning with 4-5 oz formula, takes 2 bottles of 8 oz during the day, and bf at night with 4-5 oz of formula.  She's is not bf very well at either of these feeds anymore, but I'm trying to hang in there a little longer.

[HeatherC]

Julie, you asked who was doing this on their own.  Sometimes, I feel like I am.  I have my mom around a lot to help me, but it's my husband whom I'd like to be able to rely on.  However, he works a lot.  Even still, he has no idea what I've gone through to get her to the point she is at, nor does he even know our routine, how much she eats, what her sleepy signs are, etc.  For example, this morning I put her down for a nap, and went to lay down myself.  I told him she wouldn't eat until noon, but to play with her when she woke.  I got back up at 11:30, and asked if he had gotten the bottle out.  He had already fed her!  An hour before it was time!  Putting us back at 3 hours instead of 4.  His reply was that she must have been hungry, but I explained that she likes to eat and would eat no matter how long it had been.  So frustrating!  :evil:

[Leah's Mom]

Can't post much. I have a MAJOR virus on the computer and the minute I log onto the internet I get bombarded with hundreds of popups. I'm taking it in tomorrow, I have tried everything possible to get it off myself, but it just keeps spreading. So I may be out for awhile. 

One quick thing - Deb, I tried wake to sleep hoping that would work one night, well it backfired and she was up from 3:00 till 4:30, rather than 4 till 5:30.  :shock: Here's wishing you better nights than we've been having! I'll try to touch base again soon. If the computer is out for awhile I can go to my mother's and use her computer.
Take Care!

[Deb_in_oz]

Christine - that sucks - was planning on trying that tonight as it happened again last night/this morning - 0420 again!! and chatter adn sucking until 0530 where after a couple attempts to re-wrap and settle failed Dh fed her (100ml) and she went back down until i woke her around 0745.  URGHH!  Has Leah been doing anything new - any milestones or developmenet things??  the only new things with OIlivia are: 1) she has started this new thing with sticking out her tongue and "talking" through it almost humming - she must like the feel and sound as she has been doing it a lot (started 2 days ago) and 2) she really wants her hands and is sucking through swaddle so much that her nightgown sleeves are soaked as well!  i am afraid to try without swaddle as i fear her not sleeping but maybe we need to try 1 arm free

now i am scared to try wake to sleep. although i'd rather be up at 3-4:30 and get back to sleep - i have a harder time grabbing that last hour at 6am than i do at 4 or so (wheni am actually still so tired thati will fall back to sleep easier)

also she has had diarreah (?sp) it seems - very runny - for the last 2 days as wll - not sure if i shoudl treat it as gastro??? she is still eating just pooing so much.  last night she woke before DF to poo at 10:15pm so Dh fed her afterwards instead of 11.

HEATHER: i understand abnout Dh not knowing the routine etc.  with Alex my Dh was clued in to BW and new about getting her to  bed etc but he still never knew timings or amounts (solids)  if i disappeared he would have had no idea about what time she ate etc.  and i kept complaining that he needed to learn - his response was that I was wioth her every day so it becomkes automatic and he just could not learn SO i wrote it out specifically and attached it to our fridge! i updated it every time we went through a new stage (ie as we added solid meals or dropped naps) and he knew to ask before deviating if i was not right there.  Until recently he still did not know portion size for her - i asked him to throw some frozen peas and corn in a pan for her - enough for 2 portions and he made enough for an army - i said how much did he think she ate - he said "she can eat it over several meals" and i said "if i fed that to her every day she would have enough for the month!!"  :roll:   BUT HE TRIED

[Leah's Mom]

Deb-
It's worth a try to attempt wake to sleep. If it fails, you will just be up earlier but Oh well! DD has had one new milestone. She has found her feet. She has always played with them a little over the past month, but lately that is all she does. She tries to get them into her mouth too.  So I don't know if this has anything to do with it. Last night was better, sort of. She woke at 1:00, paci back to sleep. Woke at 2:50 - fed. Woke at 5:15 - paci. Woke at 5:50 - fed. Woke at 6:15 for the day. She's obviously hungry during the night as the paci just doesn't do it for her. Maybe it's time I look into starting some solids. She is big - 27 inches, 17 pounds.

[Deb_in_oz]

hi CHristine - am up b/c i did not do wake to sleep yet and she woke at 420 again and is still up at 0610 (fed her finally at 0550 and she took 120ml) thought she would fionally sleep but is still doing her thing.

i checked on her several tiumes this morning and she is also lifting her legs. she even had managed to move her arm so much that her hand was inside her nightgown instead of her sleeve.  also noticed her moving her head side to side at a weird angle  :?

annoyingly she actually woke at 830PM after going down fine for the night and was doing the same chatter thhing for an hour or 2.  i toold Dh not to feed her unless she cried out for it - leave her to settle etc.

what the hell do i do - i guess i leave her in there now to see if finally goes to sleep and then start the day at 7 with an exhausted baby?  then do wake to sleep tonight - and according to latest book you should do it for 3 nights to see full results  :shock:

on a positive note we had a really good day with her - extended awakle time to 1  1/2 hrs and had 3 good naps - 1 1/4 hrs - 2 hrs each!! why can't we have a good 24 hour period?? usually day or night is good!

[HeatherC]

Christine-that's so funny...Kelsey has also starting really holding onto her feet on her own now.  It started on Saturday, and now she does it all day.  She reaches for them either laying or sitting.  She's so proud of herself.  Her legs just kick everywhere.
Also, Deb and Christine, have you posted on the night wakings board for help?  That may be a stupid question, but just thought I would ask.  What is it that your lo's do?  Just wake up and chatter, or wake and cry?