Hello Mudduh Hello Fadduh: ILX Rolling Parenting Thread

Breastfeeding is getting difficult again: she only wants to eat for about five minutes at each breast and then STOPS and CRIES. :-(((( I'm of course terribly worried that she'll be underfed. Boo. Maybe I should just relax. Maybe she's eating enough or maybe she's teething?!? I was very early with my first tooth and it seems to be hereditary.

I bought a high chair yesterday because soon we might introduce solids. Scary. :-)

Last night - she turned exactly four months old yesterdat - she slept in her own room for the very first time. It went surprisingly will (for me and for her). :-)

It struck me that a hell of a lot of families (maybe a majority in London) live like this - without the luxury of a separate room for baby. How do they cope? Cos we're struggling, really - doesn't help that Ava's got her first bad cold in a couple of months, but she wakes up every couple of hours and so do we.

Still, she loves the swing, the dog, her bathtime buddy Luke and the grounds (it could hardly just be called a garden).

We had the 13-wk on numero duo last week and all is well. Nuchal fold translucency results were good (Pam's 39 but the trisomy risk was down at 1:730) and all the bits appear to be there. We might discover the sex (never did with Ava) at the 20-wk scan in July. Foetus #2 is 69mm long!

It struck me that a hell of a lot of families (maybe a majority in London) live like this - without the luxury of a separate room for baby. How do they cope? Cos we're struggling, really - doesn't help that Ava's got her first bad cold in a couple of months, but she wakes up every couple of hours and so do we.

The midwives told us that it's best to put the baby in a seperate room from three months old. At the time I was pregnant and I could never imagine doing it as such an early age. Now she's four months and I decided on my own to put her in her own room. In the evening I felt extremely guilty, but during the night, when O woke me up for a feeding, I felt as though it was mean to be. It's far easier actually as there's a bathroom in the next room. (Yes, we're spoiled rotten: Ophelia has her own private bathroom.)

ANYWAY, the midwives said that, if you don't have a babyroom, one should put the baby in the bathroom (or any other room that can be darkened and is quiet.)

It's great hearing about new babies - yay for the good test results. It's a flashback but, I still don't know, a flashforward: I'm still undecided whether to have a second child or not. How did you guys decide? I think it's just weird deciding over a new life in a way...

The negative aspect to Pam's experience was that three kids generally meant a lot of 2 on 1 meanness. So we're stopping at two (but it's more an age thing with us). The gap will be 21 months for us, which seems pretty good.

Pam's had to do a lot of looking after Luke and Ava this week and it's been a shock to the system; two toddlers is bloody hard work. We can only comfort ourselves in the knowledge that #2 won't be mobile until next summer, by which time Ava might be a little more controllable.

Oh...Pam just called - she reckons Ava's got conjunctivitis. :(

We have an adorable book by a Belgian author:

http://www.innovative-educators.com/images/hb256.jpeg

I had the reverse of this last weekend - was going through boxes and came upon one full of the baby clothes I haven't been able to part with and showed some of them to S. He looked at me and very scornfully said, "I never fit into THOSE."

I've bought her a Casio SK-1 synthesizer which I'm going to give to her at her birthday party on Saturday. This morning she came into the bedroom at 7am and yelled "ANDREW! YOU FORGOT TO GIVE ME A BIRTHDAY PRESENT!" I feel like keeping it for myself now!

I need to get this tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, so I can remind myself of this fact during my commute (which seems to be the only time I sleep right now). Well, it's an automatic. Boom-tish!

Poor Ava's eyes are a right state - she's pretty chipper, apart from the constant waking-up and crying - but she looks like she's gone ten rounds with Alan Minter.

Me? Well, I'm undecided. :-(

I dunno. Work? Well, that's not easy/difficult: I can take it slower but still want/need to be here. I returned after two weeks or so. Even less, I think. Didn't bother me that much. Actually I was happier at work (in the shop) than at home alone.

Oh, I completely forgot the language thing! It doesn't help that you communicate in flawless English here.

Oh pff. As if! :-) I have been tempted to speak English to Ophelia but I figured it would be too much energy and it would also mean that she'd be slower in her language development... I dunno, just seemed too difficult. She can do what I did: watch gazillion hours of telly and learn from the subtitles when she's about 9 or so. ;-)

The big school musical this year was "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," and Sarah got a part as one of the gaggle of brothers' wives. The production went so well that somebody with connections sent a DVD to a bigwig at the Orpheum Theatre in Memphis. Long story short, the kids did a performance of Joseph at the Orpheum on the last day of classes before exams -- the first time any high school group has performed there, and it went as well as the performances at the high school.

It's been a hell of a busy year, but a great one. As you might expect, we're pretty proud of the kiddo.

My Sarah has been visiting us for 2 weeks, which has been great. It's such a relief to know my parenting didn't fuck her up too much - at 24, she seems to enjoy our company, is fun to be around, thoughtful, but not at all a morning person :) I'm going to be incredibly sad, taking her back to Flagstaff on the weekend. We won't see her again until December, when she finishes her masters and possibly (still merely possibly) gets married.

as for having another, we've gone back and forth and decided we want to. well, really my wife was sure immediately. i took some convincing, not because i don't want another kid -- i do -- but the first pregnancy ended 3 months early and the same thing is likely to happen again. those 3 months were really hard, every day in the icu, and we also got really lucky. her doctor says that if she goes on bedrest after the first 20 weeks, she can probably make it closer to full term. but even there, there's no guarantee. and there's the whole logistical issue of her being on bedrest for 4 1/2 months, who's going to watch the kid while i'm at work, etc. etc. but ok, still, one day it just hit me watching the kid doing something or other, he was just flipping through one of his books or something, and the amazingness of the whole thing just really hit me, and i thought, yeah, it's worth trying. we still have to work out timing (to the extent that's possible), but i guess we'll just figure it out as we go.

A friend of a friend had one miscarriage, one cribdeath but persevered: she had three children. It must have been so hard for her. :-( One pregnancy she had to remain in bed for months...

Ophelia now sleeps in her own bed and has slept through the night FIVE times now! I'm so proud. And so tired. Funny: now that I can sleep through the night, I feel how tired I am. :-)
I did feel slightly guilty for putting her in her own room as most people I know only did this at six months or even later. So what about you all? Tell me I'm not a coldblooded mother. ;-)))

During the day however she definitely needs a LOT of attention. IShe doesn't sleep much. I don't mind, I love it (most of the time - heh).

congrats to sarah AND mr & mrs rock hardy -- she couldn't have done it w/o you! quite a milestone. and now the empty nest era?

I just came off the worst night I can remember though (nb I may not remember a few in the first weeks)--I guess it's teething, he's suddenly gone from one wakeup a night to one every hour or two, he just comes right out of sleep yelling. I gave him some liquid tylenol around 3 this morning and I'm not sure it helped. He has some bad spells during the day too. Oh well, this too will pass. And otherwise it's a really lovely age. :)

Teething? Urgh, I am not looking forward to it. Well, in a way I am if it's not like my friend's son: he had engorged (?) purplish gum! Poor thing. Anyway she's been biting on her own finger and also other objects so maybe it's starting? I was early so maybe she as well? Then again my husband started teething later.

I hope the babycenter website is right: that the first teeth is the biggest problem (and the molars).

Also good for teething: leave a carrot out on the counter for like a day-ish, until it gets all limp. It has a good flavor for them, and they can chew on it forever without biting pieces off and having choke-on-able size chunks in their mouth.

I don't really have any major objections to it (except for waiting until school lets out for the summer - and that's really only because I don't want it to be a distraction... like the time I let him wear blue nailpolish to school when he was in first grade and his teacher called me and basically said 'you'd better not do that again or the kids WILL THINK HE'S GAY OH NO OMG WTF'), but I'm getting hung up on the fact that I think 8 1/2 might be too young to be starting up with hair dye.

What do y'all think?

Maybe you could offer him one of those 24-hr washoutable hair dyes as a sort of trial run or something?

Her latest hilarious thing is to nod vigorously, as if in agreement with what she's just said. She has proper shoes now - red gingham numbers - and some pale blue sandals. She still finds my humming the opening riff to "Tears of a Clown" hilarious and her love for Kraftwerk knows no bounds.

I'm seriously up for another baby but I think we'll wait till she's a year.

Teeny, did you start on solids yet?

http://static.flickr.com/58/164424008_c3f325686e.jpg

The (American) book we have recommends rice cereal, something which they don't do at all here: they start with fruit and veggies. But they do recommend waiting until six months if you breastfeed. I don't know, I just can't wait that long. :-( Part of me worries but ah hell I was eating solids when I was 2 months old!

Apparently here, in Belgium, only 60 procent starts with breastfeeding. By six months only 15 procent continues and only 4 procent manages to do a year of breastfeeding! WTF!

American advice is very consistent about rice cereal to start because it's one of the least allergenic foods, but it's totally refined and then vitamins are put into it--nutritionally speaking it's not that fantastic because of the synthetic nature of the vitamins. But baby is getting most of her needs filled through mothers milk still, so it's not that important. One book I have recommends that breastfed babies start on banana because its sweetness is similar to breast milk.

You can totally wait until 9 mos-one year to start solids if you want, babies who have parents with food allergies should go that long (so they say) because it decreases the likelihood of those allergies developing. (although a lot of times docs will recommend vitamin supplements too.) But at the same time it's nice to get them in the habit of taking food from a non-boob source, I think that's why the six-month mark is frequently mentioned. I don't think there's any babies who didn't figure it out eventually though. ;)

Here's a page on breastfeeding rates in the US and around the world: http://www.kellymom.com/writings/bf-numbers.html

In the last couple of weeks she's started to really associate the word "puppies" exclusively with dogs whereas, previously, it just seemed to be a word she liked to say. She shrieks, "Puppies!" at dogs in the streets, in books, on advertising hoardings. Pam propaganda, I reckon.