Babies Born ~ September 2007 #70

hi girls. i have been totally MIA sorry!!!!

mp- congartulations!! well done, what a fantastic achievement. i still don't know how you do it with 2 kids, i am hard pressed most days just making it to kinder drop off and getting all the washing done.

arte- i would love a spa bath. I'm still trying to talk dh into a pool but he's not coming around. mainly i think cos he knows he'll end up doing all the maintenance.

so I've had a few wines today, so I'm sorry if my typing is a little blurry lol. we've had a bbq to celebrate my baby turning 3. can you believe it? I'm happy and sad all in one. its bittersweet... anyway, he's had a great day. we had the dirt bike out (his favourite) and all the kids were having dirt bike rides and he had a fireman sam cake.

J turned 3?! You have to be kidding me!

J cannot be 3???! As in, THREE???!! woah dude. that was how old Miss L was when Miss M was born...and i thought she was all grown up :rofl:

As for the medical system here...in the end we wasted all our time and effort as the ear candles that i bought at the health food store down the road did all the work lol. she is all better and we havent even filled the script lol. i will do one more candling session tonight JIC there are any remnants, but yeah, all better lol.

i am not kidding. he's 3! i can't believe it

wow that is great cass! stock up on those candles for next time

Ginger, I can't believe the rockstar is getting to be such a big boy!! Hope you had a lovely day celebrating and the wines didn't make you too maudlin over your baby growing up. xxx

Cass - go the candles! I'm desperately in need of it in one ear, but since my darling sister isn't here to do it for me and I don't fancy balancing it myself with a mirror (as my friend does when she's DIYing) I'm kinda stuck. I'm not paying $50 for some trumped up massage therapist to have a go.

Wow Arte, that is quick work! But trust me in years to come you'll be pleased by your immaculate baby-spacing regimen LOL. Having one kid in kindy and one in highschool isn't the best plan, trust me. And Yay for your spa bath. Sounds lovely. Our bath is soooo sad and it sits directly on top of a concrete slab so the water always goes cold too fast. I dream of a big deep bath. One day...

Well DH is off and even though he'll only be gone a few nights it seems like a bigger trip because he's out of the country. So it's me and the girls having girly hour here tonight. Icecream and fingernail polishing LOL.

awww ice cream and finger nail polishing sounds lovely.
yes the rockstar is getting huge! i am pretty sad about it, but its kinda cool too iykwim? love watching him on his dirt bike and getting excited about all the great things to come over the next few years.

Ginger, have I ever told you that you have my ideal family - I always wanted two boys close together. Although I am very happy with what I have, that was my original plan. But then W became captain tantrum the very week that your J was born and suddenly I was rather glad that it hadn't worked out that way lol. I reckon it will be awesome watching them as they grow and become capable of doing more and more exciting things :)

MD, can you train H to do the ear candling? If you play it right you can incorporate it into your girly night :) At this house we only have a shub, I am really looking forward to having a bath again.

My DH is back again thankfully. Kidwrangling all three + baggage has landed me a sore back :(

awww thanks arte :) yeah i am super happy with what I've got. they get along so well too! its actually unbelievable how close they are, they love each other!
glad your dh is back :)

How is everyone going?

All my kids are sitting in the lounge playing together :)

I am so tired I keep having little mind slips, like my time and the rest of the world are slightly out of sync. E is apparently getting a tooth although I see nothing imminent. But she has the tongue hanging out, drooling and the sleep has fully gone to hell - sleeps 2-4 hours at the start of the night then tosses and turns in my bed and needs cuddles/feeds every 20ish minutes. I really should give her some more panadol during the night but she is terrible to give it to and I will most likely wake her up fully and then have to sit up for 2 hours. Looks like rain this weekend, I will have to book in a nap while DH is home.

Cass, that was a lovely wedding photo that you put on FB. Congratulations :) Must be nearly 4 years since you found this group then?

Arte, I LOL'd at your "shub" reference, never heard them called that, but I too have lived with shubs in the past. It made me think of those Japanese baths that are really deep but not very long (you sit upright in them, makes soooo much more sense than the stupido lying-down ones that give you a crook in your neck and never are long enough for your legs anyway unless you're under 5 foot. Depth, we want DEPTH, bath-people!!) We had one of those at the B&B we went to after DH came home when I was really heavily pregnant, I could barely fit into it but AAAAAAH the hot water was fabulous. You will LOVE having the spa. :)

And awwwww at your kidlets all playing beautifully together. I hope you get some catch up sleep soon, xxx.

Ginger you're right to focus on all the good/fun stuff that's coming over the next couple of years. Such a gorgeous age as their personalities and interests really start to become more obvious. I can never get over how different my two are, and it's not just an age gap thing either.

Cally, is it the wedding this weekend? Hope it all goes off beautifully!

Cass how is life going stateside? Is it growing on you yet? If you're unhappy, you could always go and visit this place. It's just up the road from you, daytrip style (and when you go, make sure you send me a postcard, ok?) ;).

MD: I am so there lol. sounds great! I am excited as we are planning to get up to san fran in early May....yay! I love a place that you can WALK around in!

Arte: Marta was also really really hard to get panadol into....have you got an amber teething necklace? i swear by ours for Miss M.


and just a quick question....implantation bleeding...how does it go??? thought AF was coming, but after two days of spotting....nada.... :o

Cass, no idea but good luck!!

I thought I knew what tired was when the other kids were waking hourly for months on end, but I was wrong! Erin has come from behind to take the title of worst sleeper ever! I have managed maybe an hour of sleep over the last 3 nights, taken 10 minutes at a time. My skin tingles and aches, I am having bleeding noses and the odd mild hallucination. I am hanging out for DH to get home so I can have a nap.

I went over to the school to talk about W. Once I fill out the enrollment forms we will start some school visits which is what I was hoping for to ease his mind about it. They will get some programs in place to support him when he starts.

oh Arte :hug: :hug: :hug: faarrr out! does she seem cross or anything? or is it a party at Miss Erin's place??

Ah yeah so...

:bfp:

Cass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are you thinking/feeling?????????????


OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

Omg I finally get 5 mins to check in and omg Cass!!!!!
Congrats hun. How are you feeling?

Arte didnt mean to ignore your post there i am just SPUN OUT by Cass!

I cant believe Erin has taken the crown. That is the WORST!
I hope you get some sleep over the weekend

congratulations Cass!!! that is wonderful news :)

Mega congrats darlink! Hehe saw your post earlier re implant bleeding and was sooo excited. Now am million times more excited!!!

haha, aww thanks guys :loveshower:

I'm a little bit excited. A whole dumbstruck, and a little bit pooping in my pants lol. We were soooo not trying lol. But yeah, guess we shoulda taken more attention with the birds and bees talk :lol:

DH is pretty excited. he is also freaking out a bit about logistics (ie our travel plans, the appts and scans etc), it's just very very surreal. we have never fallen pg easily, so this is just weird lol.

Cass, I am super happy for you! I am picking boy! How very exciting! I am sure that everything will work out nicely and you were already planning to be home a bit earlier, it was meant to be :)

Awwww Cass does this mean you will have a little bambino born in Italy? Your DH would love that wouldn't he?

Arte huge hugs. I hope you can get some sleep soon.

MP congrats on your new job opportunities.

I'm thinking boy too! How cute would that be, I just know your girls will love doting on him!

Arte - sorry your post got a bit lost in the EXCITEMENT. Remember a while back you told us she'd stopped gaining weight? That is the exact same thing that happened with E especially when she was going through the most hellish stage of not sleeping. Sounds exactly the same - not even long enough to get a solid 20 mins before she would start up again, I was hallucinating and having heart palpitations and other weird physical things pretty much day in day out. I was totally shocked when we finally got into the sleep school and they showed me her weight gain had stopped - I didn't talk about much at the time because I felt so guilty and embarrassed like i'd been starving her for months or something (of course I hadn't, there was a sleep issue mixed in there as well. PITY the MACH nurses at the clinic couldn't point out the bleepin obvious when I went there desperate for help 6 weeks earlier :rolleyes:). BUT part of the learning to go back to sleep process was about adding in extra calories as well.

So, what we did:
*Add full cream dairy and more egg into her diet (ie giving her custards, semolina pudding, etc). I would also give her things like french toast (cooked in butter) in fingers
*Grate a bit of cheese into her food, or add a bit of butter or oil. So she doesnt' have to consume more volume to get more calories
*Give the "third boob" ie - b/feed as usual, then put her down to play or whatever, then 20-30 minutes later pick her up and offer her a boob again (the 1st if she's drained both, or the 2nd if she's only had a little on that side)
*Getting her up for an extra feed sometime before midnight - take your time and let her comfort suck for a while
*They also had me stop feeding in between that midnight feed and about 5am. This was to encourage her to take more calories during the day, when she's awake

Anyway it didn't take long to get her gaining again and she was much more content after a couple of weeks. I would really give this a go if I were you, everything you've described sounds so similar to the pattern we had with E. And if you don't get any improvement on either the sleep or the weight gain, it might be worth following up with a paed.

MD, thank you so very much for that! I will go out tomorrow and stock up on high calorie things for her. I was floundering in the dark with no idea of what to do, I really appreciate having a plan.
I have wondered if her no weight gain is related to my weight loss, like it is taking the nutrition out of my milk. I thought I was eating enough but maybe not enough to support breastfeeding :( I hope I haven't been starving her :( She never seems overly hungry, except this crazy overnight frenzy. I will definitely offer both boobs too, she has always been content with just one side since she was born. She is a non complaining type - like if DH has her and she wants a feed but I take a few minutes to get inside, she will just go to sleep without it.
That makes whatever happens tonight a bit more bearable having a plan for tomorrow.

I do think that the mother's diet can affect the composition of the breastmilk, but really only under fairly extreme dietary conditions. Like your blood, if you were eating loads of lipids or starving yourself then that would show up in your cholesterol levels, but in the most part the measurements of various things remain within a fairly narrow range (ETA just remembered the word I wanted to use- homeostasis). It's like that for breast milk. E never seemed extra hungry during the daytime during that period either (she seemed content enough with both her breastfeeds and solids) so it never occurred to me that it might be a problem. I only fed the one boob too which seemed to be enough (and was for the first 7 months), but when I started offering the 2nd and 3rd boob - even after a little play or whatever, she also took it, so maybe it wasn't. :hug: Dont' feel bad - trust me any self-flagellation is a result of your sleep deprivation. :hug: Everything is so much more in perspective when you've had some rest. I hope this works and you get some decent sleep soon. You are a wonderful mummy and a most excellent person too. xxxx

ETA - just realised your E is a bit younger than my E was at that stage (around 9 mths old from memory), so it's probably more appropriate for you to still be giving a feed between that late night one and 5 am (?) Also, not sure how far you've gone with introducing solids at this stage? Obviously don't be stuffing her full of something she's never had before, start with a little and build up gradually. xxx

I thought BM was supposed to be like that, I hope it is good enough for her.
She is not quite 6 months yet but we started solids just before 4 months because she was very interested, grabbing it and eating it herself. Now I wonder if it was because her body needed it? Anyway, I didn't want to start her that early so I have just stuck with simple foods - mainly fruit and veges, bread and kruskits, and bits of our tea. Now she has (yet another!) cold and hasn't been interested in any solids today so I have been offering her BF when normally I wouldn't and she has been taking a bit. I will try extra feeds over the weekend and see how we go, but am sort of thinking about a bottle of formula in the evening after her solids dinner. Not that she will likely take a bottle lol, nothing is ever easy!

Wet, wet weekend here.

Arte you might find if you're offering extra feeds for a few days you will get a boost in supply and won't need the formula. Have you comp fed her at all before now? See how you go. :hug:

the extra feeds could be good....oh arte, i hope this crap sleep will pass :hug:

yeah as soon as i saw that bfp i immediately thought of a little boy.

haha, are you guys sure lol? I wonder if DH only has girl sperm lol :rofl:

Leila told me a few weeks ago that we need a 'brudder'...maybe she sees something we don't!

now that the immediate shock is over I am starting to get excited :) i have to get a ticker!!!!!!

I havent told Miss L yet...I think I want a bit more time to get used to the idea (also, i had a very hard time around 5-12 weeks pg with Marta that i want to prepare for this time JIC...darn PTSD!).

Cass, W keeps talking about when I have another baby. Not happening lol. I waited until around the 12 week mark to tell W with both of the girls. I am glad you are excited. New babies are always a blessing.

MD, many thanks as always xx. I have never fed a baby from a bottle since I fed my brother his bottles when I was 5. I have no idea how lol so I hope I don't need to.

Arte, I would have no idea how to do a formula feed either. But boosting supply, I know how to do that lol.

Cass wow @ the brudder talk. Start planning boy names! There's plenty of time before you need to announce, we waited until after 1st tri to tell dd1, it makes it more real for them once you start getting a bit of a bump. Xxx

Omg I am so excited for Cass! And now a ticker too! Bizarrely that makes it v real.
I hope the PTSD stuff is easier this time around with the positive M experience front of memory.
Does this mean you will come home earlier? Or stay later in Italy?
Wow!!!!!

Arte I hope the extra feeds do the trick.... Otherwise would you consider going somewhere for a sleep school (I know you would have to travel) - just thinking if you can stop it reaching where you have with w and a - for your own sanity!!!!!! I doesn't set the others off on a waking cycle again. The school induction etcnsounds great for w and it sounds like he is happy about the house move too - great news.

Ginger - I am also really thinking how many fun times ahead w the boys... They are best friends too and rawly growing up. Not to say I am ruling out number 3 but it may be a way off now.

I wonder when trills ban ends?????
I just made a story box ofthe 3 little pigs for Noah to have at kinder... Quite proud of my craftyness!!!!!

hi girls
hope everyone is staying safe with all this crazy weather.
does trill know about cass's bfp? can i text her cass?

Trill totally knows lol!

Has there been more bad weather? I have been reading 'the age' and seeing all the floods. Is trill affected?

I wonder how the wedding went for Cally??

oh thats ok then. just didn't want her to miss out lol

hi girls how is everyone going?
texted sherie and they are going ok with all the flooding i was a little worried

Thanks for thinking of me G :hug: I've missed you all so much that I broke my ban early :lol: but I'm on top of my work so it's all good.

And yes, I did know about the new September Baby! Even though I was banned I can still read the buddy threads, so as soon as I saw Cass' post about implantation bleeding I messaged her on FB and told her that it sounded like when I had it and she messaged me back to tell me she was indeed with child again! So I am super excited about it and a new baby for the group. I thought it might have been the end of it all for us so it's nice to have a preggie buddy again.

Sooooo yeah, things were pretty hairy here for a while. We recorded 77mm of rain over Saturday which pushed us to over 7.5inches of rain for the week!!! We've never ever recorded rainfall that high since we've been here. It was an impressive sight to see all the water running everywhere though. The kids had a home day on Friday because the roads were closed, but they opened them again yesterday afternoon. We were able to drive into town so the kids still went to school, but the buses weren't allowed on the unsealed roads till after lunch. P was supposed to go to Griffith for a school excursion today, but that's been kyboshed LOL. So she's been at school since 7.30am when they were supposed to leave. They thought they could take an alternative route but that went under water overnight too. So if it doesn't rain again we'll be right. The roads are a mess though and lot of them were totally washed out so we have to go super slow over them. It will be months before council can get them all fixed again. They were still fixing roads after the last flood.

oh i know! all those pics she is posting on FB is so insane! i leave the country and the state goes for a swim! far out!

how has it been up in the mountains?

MP: yeah, i reckon this pg will be much easier mentally. i have everything in place now and such a happy memory to recollect...such a big difference. already chatted my midwife back in oz and she is sending through all the paperwork :dance:
can you post pics of the storybox?! it's been ages since i have seen one!! (in fact, it may have been when i was 5 lol).

AFM: we have had a lovely day today. thankfully Leila has been a bit better emotionally. the other day she had a 20 minute horrendous screaming fit at me in the botanic gardens. it was so so so ugly and i was just so devastated. she has obviously been dealing with some serious worries with the move and not knowing her place in the whole scheme of the upheaval. i thought we had been reassuring, but strangely what came out of her screaming fit was that she was worried that we were going to leave her here! (she was screaming that she was going to send me away and lock me up = that she feels out of control and worried that we might send her away here). we had a good chat that night during bath time and seriously, since then (ie since i told her that she is with us 100% and that we would never ever leave her here) she has been alot more balanced. sometimes i guess letting the tantrum run a full course is healthy for all involved. we then had a big pillow fight as a family to let all the tension out of her and turn it into laughter...it really helped. (hey, arte, maybe that could work with you guys?? or something similar...)

Cass, I let the tantrum run full course several times a day, no luck here! Could try a pillow fight but he will probably just sulk out of principle lol.

Trill, wagga is about to come on the news here!

MD, I fed and fed all weekend and my supply went up, then E decided two sucks was enough and she would rather suck on a stinky old sock! I am now leaning towards it being part of her cold because she is much better again now. I think she must have had a mega sore throat or something because she was trying to eat solids but spitting it out and crying instead of swallowing it. She is back to normal now but you have no idea how much it meant to me to have a plan to get me through the night! Poor chicken then spent the last two nights having a coughing fit for about an hour or so in the middle of the night. The other two have never had a chesty cough, every time she gets a cold it goes to her chest!