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

[SandrinaMum]

Wow there's allot to read on this site! But I'm so happy to have foun it! It's nice reading about babies the same age as your own. My little one was born on the 13th of january.
She is such a little cuty and she can make me so happy. But we do have our fights! Especially at naptime. She will fuss around, rub her eyes, cry etc and I'll obviously think she needs to sleep. So I put her to bed, and she'll lay there content for ten minutes and then she'll start cooing. When I get to her she gives me a big smile and when I want to put the paci back in her mouth she'll crab my hand and hold on so tight... so cute but leaves me helpless...  :roll:
I stopped swaddling her cause she seemes uncomfortable. worked allot better than I thought it would. Think it's cause she got controle over her hands now. The bad thing is she finds it very amusing to take her paci out with her hand when I put her down for a nap. Then she'll lay swaying it around, laughing at it. the sad thing is she still don't know how to get it back in so she'll end up sucking the wrong end... untill I come to rescue
We don't have any structure to our day! But think that's bad. Maybe that's why she is so fussy at nap time?! She's so sweet at bed time but maybe that's cause of a specific time and specific routine?!
Sorry for blabbing on or so long but had so much to get out. still loads in there and you can get thet another time  :lol:
see you all

[Leah's Mom]

Welcome SandrinaMum! I hope we can be of some assistance to you and your Little One!

I had posted resposes last night, but with the new server, I think last nights posts were lost somewhere in the land of the web!

Branwen- I have had the nightlight off now for three nights. Everynight she has slept thru until at least 4:45, somedays straight thru until 5:30. Everytime she has woken, she had a  feed and went back to bed until 6:00! Yah!!! I didn't think she would go back to bed becuase the dumb birds were chirping away and it was getting light out at 4:45, pleasures of summer! I think without the night light she really thinks it is night. She hasn't woken up screaming becuase she is scared,  this was my fear. She has acttually woken up more cal, maybe she needs the complete dark becuase she is spirited! FYI - DD etc means Dear Daughter or Dearest Daughter. LO means little one. I had no idea when I joined either!

Yesterday was my first day off for summer vacation from teaching. I am hoping to make some excellent strides this summer with scheduling etc. Really hoping to move to a four hour routine soon. Keep us posted Branwen. I would love to see what your day looks like!

[Deb_in_oz]

wow - my post is gone too and so is shae's - she was away for christening... i don't even remember what i posted exactly.

we are struggling this week - as usual she is still up and down: 1 day sleeps well in day and bad at night, next day reverses, then the other day she was eating an insane amount of food ( growth spurt at 15 weeks??) and today she is feeding little (100-15ml per feed) and often (every 2 hours or so)...  :roll:  i am so frustrated.  how are we ever going to get on a regular routine or attempt 4 hourly if she is so inconsisitent?  any oideas?  i have tried to extend awake time but her max is stillaround the 1 hr mark give or take 15 minutes depending on nap and food issues of the day.  Please help - anyone here or from the rest of the site i need guidance.

amazingly last night i only had to do 1 feed at 3:30    i assumed she would wake up nice and hungry for a change but at 7:30 it was a struggle to get 100ml in her (3 1/2 oz).

Welcome SandrinaMum! I am hoping we can get finished with swaddling in the next mont b/c she gets out of oit so much anyway - we are now calling her Houdini.

Christine - sounds like you are doing well - i hope you enjoy your summer off.  my sister is a teacher in NY and is coming out for 6 weeks - she has been saving for this trip for 2 years  - did not know she was going to be helping me with 2 lo but she is excited....  i have also turned of the nightlight and we recently put up blackout curtains which seem to be helping the daytime sleeps (sometimes!!)

Branwen - we are all watching you and your transition to 4hr so keep us updated on progress and pitfalls!!

[Schae]

Welcome Sandrina's Mum (hope i spelt that right).. I was wondering where my post had gone!

Hope everyone is doing well. We did okay last night, i've come to the realisation that Luka's bad sleeping habits are MY fault. Whenever he wakes at night, I automatically feed him (it's a hangover from his newborn days) and to be honest, it's just easier.  :oops:
But it means I don't sleep, so I've decided to stop the bad habit. He isn't hungry, but he'll eat for a little bit.

We're going to a sleep workshop this weekend, it is similar to the BW methods, and I hope it works. I need someone to SHOW me what to do! LOL!!

Christine: enjoy the vacation. and if Leah continues sleeping well, you might just get some lie in time too!

Deb: I wish I had some advice for you! Things will get better.

[branwen]

Deb- Eirwen went through a growth spurt at 16 weeks.  It also might be time for you to start PUPD if you haven't already.  It is hard in the beginning but it worked so well for Eirwen even though at the time she was a little under 4 months. I just had a gut feeling she would respond to it.  The patting never worked for her.  PUPD saved me from 2 hr feeds by extending her NAP time not awake time.  The problem with 2 hr feeds is that they get used to it- Tracy calls this snacking I believe.  I SOOOO had a snacker!!!  If she feeds every 2 hrs her naps are not long enough.  So you use PUPD to extend the naps.  After 1 week of PUPD hell it worked...really in 3 days it worked.  Now I hardly ever have to pick her up after putting her in her crib.  If I do it is 2 times or less. You HAVE to be committed though.  So Eirwen takes longer naps than Tracy says to at the 4/5 month mark but she is still on a 3 1/2 hr schedule.  She cannot survive on 2 naps a day though...so she takes a cat nap mid day around 11:30. 

Pitfalls- feeding early- we almost headed back to a 3 hr EASY a couple of days ago- MY fault!  I would say during the transition 15 min on either side is OK not more!  She just kept going backwards a while there and we had to work back up again!  :roll:

I would recommend not progressing to 4 hours until you can get the 3 hr routine consistent- after Eirwen was on a 3 hr EASY for two weeks she seemed to naturally extend to 4 hr between feeds.  However, she started sleeping longer not being more awake.  I think this just might be a difference in babies- mine is a sleepy baby.  Yours might be one too if she can only do 45 min to an hr.

Does any of this make sense?  :?

Schae- how are Luka's naps?  If his naps are bad too I would also recommend PUPD for you too  :wink: This also has saved me in the middle of the night.  Eirwen would eat for like two mintues and fall asleep.  She didn't want food she just needed help going back to bed.  I used PUPD to send her back to sleep.  The first night I did it I was afraid I was starving her because I too just fed at night to put back to sleep.  I totally stared up at my ceiling for 45 min to see if she would wake up.  She never did  :shock: and slept right through past her normal waking time.  This proved to me that I could completely end night feeds!  It was such a relief!

Hi Sandrina's Mum- welcome to the forum

[Deb_in_oz]

we're still up and down - yesterday she only had 2 naps  :evil:  and did not eat too much, woke only at 4am and then slept til 7:30.  today she had 3 naps (35min, 2hrs, 45 min) and fed 4hrly!!! and then has not settled well for the night.  i wish she would make up her mind and stick with it   :roll:   i am off to the GP tomorrow as she called me to discuss PPD (early childhood nurse called her to discuss her concerns...) - we are going to talk about my options.  i am not sure what i want to do, but definitely need to improve my ability to cope with 2 kids - i love being with them one on one (both are happy, chatty kids) but at the same time it is too hard when i am being pulled in 2 directions opr have a toddler clinging to me when i try to do anything else...

Schae - we still feed whenever she wakes in the night.  it always seems like hunger if she cries.  i can tell when she isn't needing food b/c then she stirs, coos and resettles herself.  if she escalates to crying it is to say "feed me now!".  anyone doing bottle feeds - how much does she need to take in order to classify as a night feed rather than a snack??  she seems to always takle 100ml at a night feed. seems like a full feed for 4am to me, but i am used to gauging by my breasts...  any help?

[Leah's Mom]

Well, we had a couple og good nights and now we are back to waking at 3 am and then every half hour to an hour until 5 or 6 am!!! I am not sure if it is a paci addiction problem or something else. I don't feed her becuase she won't eat anything. She was terribly fussy yesterday with tons of painful gas. She has never been a good eater. She fusses at the bottle and arches her back during the feeding. I am thinking about calling her pediatrician. We're not sure if it is a formula intolorance or what. She is also breaking out in a rash on the sides of her face. She's been on the same formula for 3 months though so we're not sure why it is happening now.

Deb- I consider 3 1/2 ounces (100 ml right?) a full night feed. I would think anything less then 3 would be snacking, but a full feed for my DD is maybe 5 ounces max.

Great. DD just woke from her first nap of the day. She slept a whopping 20 mintues! Hardly enought time to log on a check in!!!!!
Later...

[branwen]

Christine-  could it be dairy or soy intolerance on the formula?  Even though I bf when I ate lots of dairy Eirwen would break out with eczema on the face, now that I limit myself to 2 servings a day she doesn't have it anymore...could it be something similiar with formula?  Dairy also made my baby have really painful gas and bm's...burping her was also hard.  She would grunt and cry, it was so sad 

[branwen]

My baby is saying consonants! Oh my gosh!   :shock: It's so exciting! She says "ma" really sharp like and also "wa" and "ka"  it's crazy!  Sometimes she runs them together.  This is so neat!  she's becoming such a little person!   

[Leah's Mom]

How exciting Branwen! One day they are going to amaze us and speak words clearly! I'm not sure if it is a reaction to the dairy in her formula, I hope not. I'm a little leary of the soy formulas... I don't know much about them. If it continues to get worse we will call the doc.

[Schae]

Well done Eirwen!! Wow! 

Last night wasn't too bad. He woke twice, at 1.10am and at 5.30am (becoz my mother chose that time to phone us, but she was just being helpful so i won't hold it against her  :wink: )
He went down at 11pm (we had visitors  :roll: ). When he woke at 1am, I fed him but when I put him down he cried..soooo I did pu/pd and it worked!! Only had to do it 3 times.
Thanks Branwen for suggesting it, I was wary of trying it (don't know why).

Deb, it's when he wakes every hour and I feed him that there's a problem - me being lazy. 

Christine, I hope today goes well for you.

What time is it where you guys are? It's 19h20 here.

[Deb_in_oz]

ok - we have been having more ups than downs the past few days and
1) Olivia laughed with me - not smiled or giggled, but actually belly laughed several times back and forth in our "conversation"
2) she slept through the night last night from 11pm DF through to 7:30am with only a stir at 5:15 and resettled herself!! i actually got some sleep.

also - posted on PPD board but have started meds today - 3 days on half dose to ease into it.  Branwen i saw you take Lexapro as well - any advice/feedback?

thinhgs still up and down with liv but last night gave me hope (she ate enough during day and slept reasonably well and then took 150ml at DF) it is just so rare that we get it all aligned like that!!

[Schae]

Well done to Olivia!! That must've been bliss!!!

Things are going alright here. Got one long stretch of sleep last night.. 5 hours! lol

The sleep workshop was a complete waste of time, they just suggested crying it out.  :evil:

We have no routine, which is causing problems (since we came back from our trip) and it's my graduation on Tuesday night, so we're going to be out of whack then too. So, we'll start good and proper on Wednesday. Gees, I've been saying that for ages!! LOL!!

Hope everyone else is doing great! 

[Deb_in_oz]

Schae - sorry the workshop was not what you expected...  i can't imagine a whole workshop on CIO.  Is he still waking so often?? i know how important it is to get some sleep as i have been so sleep deprived these past months - Olivia slept through last night as well and i am trying to prepare myself that it might not last, but have to laugh:  we are having a long weekend thanks to the Queen and i asked Dh to handle night feeds this weekend so i coudl get some sleep finally.  as if on cue she has slept through and he has not had to get up once!!  :roll:  if she sleeps tonight and then starts back to waking on Mon night i will flip out... :lol:

all the rest and regular feeds (getting more clockwork with 3hrly and today did a 4 hr stretch to last feed) is doing us all a world of good. she is so happy, laughing, chatting and smiling all the time.  i really think deep down she is actually spirited/angel as she is never grumpy or crying, and seems to be getting better all the time (i shoudl bite my tongue talking abuot it here usually jinxes people.)

i hope everyone else is doing ok - where is everyone this weekend?

[Maddysmum]

Hi everyone
Its nice to read about other mums of babies the same age as mine! I am mum to Madeleine, born on 1st Feb 2005. She inhaled meconium at birth and was not breathing, needed to have heart massage and a tube to help her breathe. Anyway because of this she was in intensive care for 5 days and special care for another 11, so we didn't get to take her home till she was 2 weeks old.

Anyway since then I have to say its been fairly easy! She only used to wake once in the night for a feed, and after about 8 weeks started waking later and later every night for about a week till she was sleeping till 7am! I have to say I read the Baby Whisperer book throughout my pregnancy and DH and I have made sure we followed all the suggestions, and it seems to have worked a treat. DD can settle herself to sleep, sometimes I need to reswaddle her as shes quite active in bed!

Now I am trying to get her onto a four-hour routine, only the second day today and shes been really grumpy, think she may be missing that lost nap but the feeding is working out, she can quite easily go four hours, sometimes longer. Is anyone else trying this yet and if so hows it going?

Sorry this was so long!