Babies born~September 1st-15th 2010 #1

[Cassius2]

Hi girls!

Renson: what a good weight gain!! (and yeah i'll change his birth weight lol!). i have NO idea how much i weigh now. i now that i had put on 17kgs when i was pg...got weighed at the naturopath. but we dont have scales in the house...

MamaS: we are having EXTREMELY unsettled times ATM. i am hoping that it is just the cold and her taking in too much air during feeds. but i have sneaking suspicions that she is a bit refluxy...i hear many little gags at night and that is what sets her off. yesterday she cried (as in SCREAMED) from 8am to 1.30 , i was beside myself as i had no idea what to do. and then she was crazy all night with screaming. like massive screaming. oh boy!

Cherished: how awesome is your DH it makes the job of looking after bubs much easier and i reckon a WHOLE lot more enjoyable.

AFM: well, as i mentioned to MamaS, we are experiencing some pretty crazy crying patches. she was sooo calm and cool for weeks and now has morphed lol. am hoping that it is just a temporary thing, but is definitely our first trial of survival lol. will be buying infacol this weekend though just to keep that base covered in case it is reflux rather than the cold...eepp! i hope not

[AnnaBelle]

WooHooooooo we have a thread now - yes I am sad too that we are no longer belly buddies - but hey we will be mummy buddies a lot longer

I am OK just having time management issues no time at all really juggling the two boys - add me to the list of unsettled bubbas at night - I am going to watch what i eat at dinner a bit more cause Rupert is so windy and unsettled at night it is dribing me crazy - poor bubba

Thanks yum cass that recipe sounds lovely ......anyone heard of motillium ? how many do you take a day for inc milk?? I think we are going ok bub has put on 450 grams in one week so sounds like he is getting heaps - however he does chuck up heaps so i feel like we are feeding constantly.

Gotta go and hang up more washing - hugs to you all.

xxAnna

[Little Chicken]

Looks like everyone's little ones are starting to develop thier personalities. I love this time...sometimes. Not liking the 0430am wake-ups AT ALL! Last 2 nights Katie has decided that this is the time she would like to play and wiggle and fart for 2 hours. The phrase not happy Jan really springs to mind. But boy can she fart, she puts a grown man to shame. Pity it's not an olympic sport otherwise I would have her in training now. Had my first MCHN home visit during the week, and we are above birht weight after having lost exactly 10%, and having a b**** of a domicillary midwife telling me it was my fault she had lost the weight and was ever so slightly jaundiced because for the first time I let her sleep for 6 hours straight the previous night. Bugger that, I was tired and she didn't wake up so obviously she was not hungry and she feeds like a dream anyway. I so wanted to call her and tell her to get stuffed after this appointment but I couldn't remember her name!

Annabelle: Yep I've heard of motilium, but you need to take a lot more then the recommended dosage for nausea for it to have an effect on your milk. Saying that though, 450g in a week is very very good. That's about 40g a day when they are generally happy with about 20g. So you probably don't have a supply issue. You can take fenugreek and blessed thistle tablets to increase supply though. Is it chucking up with wind or some time after a feed? I've had a couple of absolutely spectacular vomits here that were caused by trapped wind, and then she went back on for another feed afterwards. If it's some time later you could always try keeping him upright for about 15min post feed and see if that makes a difference. If I remember correctly I think it gives the milk time to curdle and thicken and therefore harder to regurgitate. Mind you a little bit of fluid spread out flat can look like a lot, it's amazing how much space 5ml can take up on a surface! How is Edward coping with the new arrival, I think he is only a couple of months older then Lilly. I think to Lilly Katie is now part of the furniture. She will wave hello at her and give her kisses (and then scrubs her lips, I keep telling her she has girl germs herself so therefore can't catch them from her sister!) But otherwise she generally ignores her.

I hope nobody is to sleep deprived and everyone is recovering well and enjoying themselves with their new families!

[Cassius2]

Annabelle! great to hear from you! 450gms does sound like a fab weight gain! and talking of power vomits...Marta managed to do one that flew up in the air and OUT of the cot last night insane lol!

have no idea about motillium sorry!

Muminalice: that is too cute about your DD1 scrubbing her lips lol!
oh we are soo sleep deprived lol! only the last 2 nights though so i guess we cant complain too much can we lol?!

AFM: well Marta has had a better day. she is alot more settled. so far though every sleep has been in the pram as the weather is too lovely to be indoors...finally!

[~mamaspice~]

Hi everyone. Cass just keep an eye on Marta and if you suspect acid reflux get a referral to a paed. Especially if she is crying (seemingly in pain) quite a bit it could either be a bad bout of colic or acid reflux. With Charli I knew from her cries she was in pain but GP's just fobbed me off and it wasn't until a CHN heard her cry and told me to get a referral back tot he paed. Sure enough she had acid relux and was put on meds but in the end good old mylanta worked a treat. The paed told us to give her 1-2 ml before feeds and it was a godsend.

Annabelle, Rupert is rivalling Brock with his weight gains. Brock put on 380gms last week. The average is100-200g per week so our boys are powering along. SOmetimes when they spew it looks more than it is also. Someone told me that even an A4 size spew is really only a few mils. It def sounds like he's getting enough milk from you.
As for motillium, I have been taking it because of my supply problems. They recomend 1-3 tablets 3 times a day. I was taking 2 tablets 3 times a day.

BBL to continue, baby crying . . .

[Cassius2]

yeah the reflux thing is crossing my mind simply because i can hear her gulping when she is asleep...quickly followed by her crying (and BIG crying...nothing gentle lol). i'll give her a few more days to recover fully from the cold and then see how she settles down. and if no improvement I'll raise it with the CHN. thanks for the tips as well...i have heard a couple of mums say that they found it very hard to get GPs to take them seriously...such a PITA, and totally unhelpful.

(oh, that is amazing that you are also doing EBM! i didnt realise! my friend is doing EBM and she reckons it's a pretty full on routine...all credit to you babe!! )

AFM: MUCH better night again last night. although she did cry for 3 hours i have resigned myself to remember the 'arsenic' hour/s and am just that that is all it is. after she fell asleep at 9.30 she only woke at 1.30am and then at 5.30am then slept until 9.30am. so mebbe the cold is getting better

[~mamaspice~]

I'm back . . . .

Lol at the little farty bum you have on your hands Muminalice Also awesome that your little one is back up to her birth weight. Pfft to that ancillary midwife. Geez they say some stupid things sometimes . . .

Glad to hear you had a much better night cass. Yeah just keep an eye on things and if she is still doing the gulping then crying after her cold is gone it might be worth getting her checked out.

Yeah I am giving him EBM too. it has been very tiring the whole expressing thing, but due to my hypoplasia I'm only managing to express a max of 250ml per day so only 2 of his feeds per day are EBM. Not sure how much longer i can keep it up for.

[milly5]

Hi ladies!
sorry for the being MIA - thanks cassius for adding me to the list!
I'm going to be a bit self-indulgent and do a "me" post - sorry no persies, but do want to say hello to you all, and that isn't it amazing that we are all here??? that seemed a very long nine months!!!
I thought I had put a post on our "belly budies" thread, but it seems to have vanished.... anyway - to try and re-post my post....

so we have had a bit of a chaotic time, not the nice quite time you want to have as a new mum with a new born. Our little girl has had hip dysplasia, and we have had quite a few days out with dr, physio and scan appts, which hasn't exactly been conducive to (a) establishing a routine or (b) adequate sleep or rest for either baby or mum.
She is in a harness, and will be for about 12-16 weeks. She seems to be OK with it all - it's just harder for us to change her nappies and dress her and handle her etc. It also means that we can't use our nice cloth nappies that we had bought, and she has to wear disposables (yuk!). Oh, and no baths except once per week at physio when we change and adjust her harness, so poor little girl. Even though she is small (was 2.8kg as birth) we can't wear her 0000 clothes as they don't go over her harness, so she is in 000 or even 00 and they just swim on her upper body. And even the type of clothing that will fit over her harness is difficult.
The worst thing though, is because we live so far out of town, each appointment means a full day out, and then afterwards she (and I) are so tired, it makes for two really unsettled nights following.
it sounds like though we could all use some extra sleep LOL!
Having said all of that, I don't want to sound like I am whinging, because I just love our little girl, and love being a mum! I just wasn't quite prepared for this extra hurdle that's all.

Anyway, bye for now, I will try and pop back in soon, (and do some persies!)

love,
Milly,xxx

[Cassius2]

oh Milly! that is a tough start to your journey together whole days out must be exhausting for you all...
there is a girl here on BB that had a bub in June and also had to wear the harness. I'll get her to PM you and she might have some helpful hints (she is a cloth mummy too ). i know how hard it is when you have a bub that needs a bit of help. DD1 was born with breathing probs that persisted for the first 4 weeks and yeah, it's totally not conducive to restful newborn bliss so massive hugs xx

[~mamaspice~]

Oh Milly, sorry to hear your little one has hip dysplasia I can relate with the only being able to bath bub once a week. When DD was a bub she developed quite a big umbilical hernia that we had to pack with gauze and tape down for a couple of months. It meant we could only bath her once a week too, on the day we changed her gauze and dressing. Every other day of the week was a bird bath with a little bowl of warm water and a flannel.

I've had a tough day today. I'm starting to find it tough juggling a 3yo and a NB. Especially when he is so unsettled and she is so hyperactive
The babymoon is well and truely over me thinks

[Cassius2]

I've had a tough day today. I'm starting to find it tough juggling a 3yo and a NB. Especially when he is so unsettled and she is so hyperactive
The babymoon is well and truely over me thinks

big hugs and solidarity
i have days where i am riding high and loving it and it goes smoothly and then WHAM, a tough moment and the enormity of being a parent to two young human beings hits hard lol! (not helped with DD1 doing poo in her knickers ). and totally hard when they are both cracking it. i feel so stretched at times, trying to keep them both happy...especially when they are both obviously not!

Well, to add to my pretty yuk week (sick baby, sick me) i now have mastitis sooo not impressed! luckily i had an appt already with the GP this morning to get a referral for the 'retained product' (oh what a lovely term) from the birth. so am on two lots of ABs (one for the bleeding and the other for the boob). i will need an ultrasound for the bleeding (going saturday), and probably a D&C. has anyone had one of these? how will it work since i have a newborn?? i am worried about the feeding etc...
the silver lining to the week though is that now that Marta is better we have found a pretty good night-time routine. although it may all fall to pot at a moments notice at least now i know what we can aim for lol. Marta goes down at 6.30pm, leila at 7pm. marta up at 9ish for a quick 'dream feed' then wakes around 1.30 for a quick feed and nappy change then up at 5.30ish for a feed, cuddle and then back to sleep til 9am. i find this quite civilised lol! (especially after the 5 hour scream-a-thons of the last week lol).

[Cassius2]

double the love

[~mamaspice~]

Aww thanks Cass Yeah the enormity of the situation hits me sometimes too. Brock screamed for 7 hours yesterday And as for DD, she is advanced in so any ways but toilet training aint one of them. We are having a real hard time with it. She just wont come to the party. And a little bowel problem she has at the moment means she poos 5 or 6 times a day. Just what I want to be doing right now with a NB - changing a toddlers dirty bum all day, NOT . . .

Thats good you have Marta in a routine. I really need to do that with brock. So sorry to hear you have mastitis you poor thing. Hope you recover soon Brock is awake a lot of the evening, and Miss C doesnt go to bed til around 8pm so as you can imagine our evenings are chaotic.

[Hope.Positive.Love]

Hi Everyone,

I have only just found this thread and would love to join you all... I know Cherished and Milly from the PAML thread... Hi Ladies...

Milly so sorry to hear about your bubba, we had a little boy at work ( I work in child care) who had to have a brace, he started when he was only 7weeks old, didn't bother him in the slightest.. It was removed when he was 15wks old...

Loving my little girl so much right now, she is a really good sleeper and eater ATM - she'll sleep for 4 -5 hrs during the day then have a big 6 or 7 hr sleep at night. We're getting into a little routine, she'll have her last feed around 6 - 6.30pm - then be asleep by 7.30pm usually - won't wake again til 1 or 2am, then back to sleep until 5 or 6 - I know I am very lucky, which is why I say ATM she is a good sleeper and eater, who knows what will happen when she has a growth spurt...

I do have a question for all you mummies out there, Bub has started to have weepy/gunky eye on her right side, I know that it can be common in bubs, and conjunctivitis (SP) can then happen - everyone is telling me Breastmilk Breastmilk Breatmilk to get rid of it? Yes, No, ideas thoughts???

[~mamaspice~]

HPL and congrats on the birth of Audrey. I am very jealous of her current sleep routine Hopefully she keeps that up for you

As for the weeping eye it is very common in newborns as their tear ducts get blocked easily. It is like a bacterial conjunctivitis as you say. You could try breastmilk or gently bathing them with a strile saline solution ( you can buy tubes of it from the chemist). But if it doesnt go away you may need antibiotic eyedrop like Clorsig.

[Cassius2]

hi girls!

welcome Hope.Positive.Love! . for sticky eye we use saline. you can buy the stuff at chemists or, like us just use cool boiled water with a small amount of salt dissolved in it. we wipe the eye with a cotton make-up pad. both my girls have had it...comes and goes occasionally.

MamaS: ha ha! yeah i second the whole two bum changes lol. especially as toddler bottom changes are so much more intense lol.
and honest, i wouldnt say that we have a routine as such lol! just an ardent wish for some 'normalcy' to kick back in. i need a goal lol. last night for example, there was NO routine Marta just cried and cried and cried. and then cried and cried and cried lol. fell asleep finally at 10pm, woke around 1am and cried for about half an hour after her feed and then woke 3am then at 7am...oh boy. i was SMASHED after that. have spent the day on the verge of tears!

AFM: well, we have been travelling really well. although last night really rattled me, as poor Marta just couldnt settle. she was really freaked out. i *think* it's from the ABs i am on for the mastitis (pure conjecture though lol)...milk prolly tastes a bit iffy lol. but it was exhausting as from about 6pm onwards she was over it all and just cried and cried forever (until about 10pm). by that stage i was exhausted beyond belief and went to bed only to have her wake a couple of hours later and feed and then cry a bit more. hopefully tonight will be a bit smoother

hope everyone is going well and those bubbas are growing well and getting lots of cuddles!!

[AnnaBelle]

Hi everyone

Milly darling - sorry to hear about your little baby girl and her hip displasia - it must be a stressful time ontop of the normal new born stuff - I hope each day gets better for you and be sure to come and let it all out here with us.

Welcome Hope.Positive.Love & congrats on the arribal of Audrey (pretty name)

I am still in La La babyland so not a big post - I just have no time to do anything anymore and this has caused some tears thats for sure.

thinking of you all heaps

anna xx

[Cassius2]

Annabelle: totally hear ya! whinged to DH today that i wish i had time to clean the bedroom lol! we have had tears here too the last couple of days. because of my history of PND i am super nervous so have called my psychologist JIC it escalates....blergh. sooo hope not!