New baby and post birth advice #32 Seven gallons of boob

[Borntorun]

Is sleep training something you would do at home normally?
Holiday is such a change for a baby, and any sort of sleep training is as well so it could be a lot for her to take on at once.
I’m sorry you’re so knackered

Difficult to say. I think we had to at some point with the eldest, I was going back to work, I work a lot of night shifts and husband isn’t safe to cosleep so she had to learn to sleep in a cot and not breastfeed every hour. But I’m not going back to work til March, so plenty of time for that. I just can’t quite work out how to get her to sleep here she’s finally dropped off now though

 

[Definitelyme]

Difficult to say. I think we had to at some point with the eldest, I was going back to work, I work a lot of night shifts

Well only you can make the decision, but if KW isn’t being supportive then it could make things even harder for you x

 

[sodit]

So coming off the back of a stressful few days last week solo parenting I was looking forward to a relaxing weekend.. well, we ended up in hospital with my 6 week hold having every test under the sun. 2 X-rays, an ultrasound, lumbar puncture, blood tests, urine tests. They really didn’t hold back. Luckily all the important tests came back with good results and turns out poor thing had two viruses that he had now come out the other side of. 3 nights on the ward and we are home now.

I am exhausted to say the least but also if I am honest a little bit apprehensive about being at home. Not just the worry that littlest Megatron will get sick again, but also toddler behaviour when I really don’t have the energy. My husband said he would take over but it almost seemed easier to be in hospital where I only had one child to worry about (and a whole host of amazing doctors and nurses to really take care of him)

At least I’m looking forward to my own bed!

Hells bells Megatron, what a miserable experience I hope your little one is 100% soon and that this week isn’t too hard.

 

[Lulu Goss]

Is it the absolute worst idea ever to try and sleep train the baby while on holiday?!? At home, either she feeds to sleep, or she’ll sleep in the pram / car, or I rock her in the rocking chair. This is now the second night she won’t feed to sleep and it’s now 9pm here. Husband is being useless and won’t help (well he is insistent that he can take her to the bar and rock her to sleep there but he won’t try and rock her to sleep in our room). Is it daft to try some kind of sleep training method with the cot?! Lord knows, I just want to sleep!

You’ve probably already tried it but on holiday I found the best way to get baby G to sleep was to stick her in the pram and walk around the hotel grounds until she fell asleep. Most times we were able to then bring her back to the room and transfer her into our bed (she flat out refused the travel cot ) and if she woke we gave her a bottle. Don’t get me wrong we also had some days where she wouldn’t fall asleep in the pram or woke up when we got in, but most of the time the pram was the best option x

 

[sodit]

Difficult to say. I think we had to at some point with the eldest, I was going back to work, I work a lot of night shifts and husband isn’t safe to cosleep so she had to learn to sleep in a cot and not breastfeed every hour. But I’m not going back to work til March, so plenty of time for that. I just can’t quite work out how to get her to sleep here she’s finally dropped off now though

Fingers crossed it’s the start of a decent night of kip Crackers her dad thought he’d have better luck in the bar

I’m still having to hold mine for every nap and sleep with him at night, getting a bit stressed about it as he’s 1 in 6 weeks (! ) and I’ve got returning to work to think about.
If I transition him to his cot, he’s up 10 mins later doing proper pitiful sad crying. Mostly it’s because he wants me right there, but sometimes it’s because he’s tried to change position and has felt the bars - need a cot that’s double the width I think. Sometimes I can roll away from him on our bed, but then I can’t leave the room so there’s no benefit to it really. And no scope to just have a mattress on the floor that can be rolled away from as our bedrooms are tiny so we need the storage under our bed and the cot and there’s no spare floor space to try it I don’t think might need to do some playing around.

Oh I had a question actually - how are RF car seats with a top tether, are they annoying?
Trying to get ready for moving on from the travel system one, and they’re so expensive and we’re gonna need to buy one for each car for the logistics to work out. And probably one for my dad’s car as he’ll be doing some childcare pick ups - hoping to get him the cheapest of the ones that suit our reqs, but the most affordable ones have top tethers rather than a leg, and if it’s frustrating to him he’ll probs offer to see to sorting little lad less.

 

[Definitelyme]

Fingers crossed it’s the start of a decent night of kip Crackers her dad thought he’d have better luck in the bar

I’m still having to hold mine for every nap and sleep with him at night, getting a bit stressed about it as he’s 1 in 6 weeks (! ) and I’ve got returning to work to think about.
If I transition him to his cot, he’s up 10 mins later doing proper pitiful sad crying. Mostly it’s because he wants me right there, but sometimes it’s because he’s tried to change position and has felt the bars - need a cot that’s double the width I think. Sometimes I can roll away from him on our bed, but then I can’t leave the room so there’s no benefit to it really. And no scope to just have a mattress on the floor that can be rolled away from as our bedrooms are tiny so we need the storage under our bed and the cot and there’s no spare floor space to try it I don’t think might need to do some playing around.

Oh I had a question actually - how are RF car seats with a top tether, are they annoying?
Trying to get ready for moving on from the travel system one, and they’re so expensive and we’re gonna need to buy one for each car for the logistics to work out. And probably one for my dad’s car as he’ll be doing some childcare pick ups - hoping to get him the cheapest of the ones that suit our reqs, but the most affordable ones have top tethers rather than a leg, and if it’s frustrating to him he’ll probs offer to see to sorting little lad less.

Not sure about tethers, but we have used a joie stages for years with our kids. It’s a belted RF seat, which then switched to FF, and we recently bought one for my parents' car as well. I would really recommend it, and not as pricey as many other seats. We also have a joie 360 which is also great, and easier to use than the stages as it is belted, but more expensive. Neither of them have a top tether, we’ve never used a seat with a tether before tbh.

 

[I’mThankyou_]

Oh I had a question actually - how are RF car seats with a top tether, are they annoying?
Trying to get ready for moving on from the travel system one, and they’re so expensive and we’re gonna need to buy one for each car for the logistics to work out. And probably one for my dad’s car as he’ll be doing some childcare pick ups - hoping to get him the cheapest of the ones that suit our reqs, but the most affordable ones have top tethers rather than a leg, and if it’s frustrating to him he’ll probs offer to see to sorting little lad less.

Once you get the hang of the teathers it's honestly really easy, just like fitting an isofix, I can do it really quickly now.
What ones are you looking at?
I've got all mine off this lady, she drove to Manchester to show me how to install all 3 of my car seats, but she has colleagues dotted around the North who will come with a rang if different ones to try and see which best suit your needs.

 

[Dipdab]

Some absolute miserable old sod in John Lewis said to me today “oh twins, unlucky they must be hard work. I’ve got no kids and no wife and no stress”.
Ok but why are you telling me this random stranger, clearly trying convince yourself you’re happy wondering around the crockery section on a Tuesday afternoon
Don’t you feel like people think it’s their right to make strange comments when you’re out with your children.

 

[I’mThankyou_]

I'd say if you were buying one for your dad's car, get a cheap one like the Joie Tilt from Smyths, they can be picked up under £100 same for Mr SI's car if he won't be in them that much. Mr TY has the tilts in his car I have the expensive ones in mine as I do most the driving with the kids.

 

[calmyourritas]

Some absolute miserable old sod in John Lewis said to me today “oh twins, unlucky they must be hard work. I’ve got no kids and no wife and no stress”.
Ok but why are you telling me this random stranger, clearly trying convince yourself you’re happy wondering around the crockery section on a Tuesday afternoon
Don’t you feel like people think it’s their right to make strange comments when you’re out with your children.

What a prick

 

[Megatron1298]

@Megatron1298 holy crap lady that must have been just awful for you. Hope you are getting some rest now? And baby is ok?

Dear Diary. When will I be allowed to sleep again? Yours, a very tired Me.

Two nights of no sleep. Last night was a combined effort. TMe was squawking half the night, 3Me was coughing all night, 9Me gotup to see what all the racket was about, and I had a nervous breakdown at 3.30am and just started sobbing. Obviously nobody came to my rescue so I just had to suck it up and enjoy the next 3.5hours of broken sleep before I got up for work. I am knackered.

Yup baby is ok! We have a low threshold return to ED if he spikes a fever again, so reassuring to know they pull out all the stops for our littlest babes though.

My heart goes out to anyone that’s had to have a stay in hospital with their little ones, although I feel a bit institutionalised like I kind of miss our little routine and we were only there 4 days. Was nice not having to bother cooking or cleaning even though I barely ate while i was there because hospital food is so so gross.

 

[sodit]

I'd say if you were buying one for your dad's car, get a cheap one like the Joie Tilt from Smyths, they can be picked up under £100 same for Mr SI's car if he won't be in them that much. Mr TY has the tilts in his car I have the expensive ones in mine as I do most the driving with the kids.

Brill, the Tilt is one on my list.
Cheers for the tips, going down a rabbit hole on that Facebook group.
Once I’m back at work I think it will be a lot more even who is driving him about, with a real mix of who does the nursery run due to varying shifts. Before he was born we properly shared cars as we have one of those drives where you park one behind the other - whoever left first just took the car at the back. So having both cars geared up equally should help a bit logistically as I’m hoping we can just go back to that. I hate going to bed and then remembering we need to swap the cars about. Deffo first world problems but I’m all for an easy life (although tbf Mr SI often has to go to mess about to move them both him himself as I’m trapped under baby so makes no difference to me except having to put up with his harrumphing).

I think I’ve narrowed it down to either the Joie Spin 360 or Graco Turn2Me, and will just be getting one for now while we give it a try.
I’ve had a million tabs open for doing comparisons of various seats, and then again trying to do the maths of the best price once cashback and Blue Light (10% at Halfords) and Advantage points and first time customer discounts etc are applied.
Looks like the best I can get the Graco is £135.11 and the Joie £158.98.

Love to overthink everything

 

[WhatABore]

Brill, the Tilt is one on my list.
Cheers for the tips, going down a rabbit hole on that Facebook group.
Once I’m back at work I think it will be a lot more even who is driving him about, with a real mix of who does the nursery run due to varying shifts. Before he was born we properly shared cars as we have one of those drives where you park one behind the other - whoever left first just took the car at the back. So having both cars geared up equally should help a bit logistically as I’m hoping we can just go back to that. I hate going to bed and then remembering we need to swap the cars about. Deffo first world problems but I’m all for an easy life (although tbf Mr SI often has to go to mess about to move them both him himself as I’m trapped under baby so makes no difference to me except having to put up with his harrumphing).

I think I’ve narrowed it down to either the Joie Spin 360 or Graco Turn2Me, and will just be getting one for now while we give it a try.
I’ve had a million tabs open for doing comparisons of various seats, and then again trying to do the maths of the best price once cashback and Blue Light (10% at Halfords) and Advantage points and first time customer discounts etc are applied.
Looks like the best I can get the Graco is £135.11 and the Joie £158.98.

Love to overthink everything

Definitley reccomeny the Joie 360.
We bought one with my second and now using this time around too. It lasts until they're around 4.
I'd recommended them to anyone!
Worth the money, 100%.
We were lucky and bought ours in the January sales and got it for £100!

Halford specifically have 15% off car seats both online and instore with Bluelight, rather than the 10% over all

 

[Jellybean093]

Brill, the Tilt is one on my list.
Cheers for the tips, going down a rabbit hole on that Facebook group.
Once I’m back at work I think it will be a lot more even who is driving him about, with a real mix of who does the nursery run due to varying shifts. Before he was born we properly shared cars as we have one of those drives where you park one behind the other - whoever left first just took the car at the back. So having both cars geared up equally should help a bit logistically as I’m hoping we can just go back to that. I hate going to bed and then remembering we need to swap the cars about. Deffo first world problems but I’m all for an easy life (although tbf Mr SI often has to go to mess about to move them both him himself as I’m trapped under baby so makes no difference to me except having to put up with his harrumphing).

I think I’ve narrowed it down to either the Joie Spin 360 or Graco Turn2Me, and will just be getting one for now while we give it a try.
I’ve had a million tabs open for doing comparisons of various seats, and then again trying to do the maths of the best price once cashback and Blue Light (10% at Halfords) and Advantage points and first time customer discounts etc are applied.
Looks like the best I can get the Graco is £135.11 and the Joie £158.98.

Love to overthink everything

Another here for the joie 360. @Definitelyme and @WhatABore recommended it, and it did quite honestly, the best, sturdiest car seat I’ve ever had. And I can turn it all with 1 hand while holding the baby. It has 5 different lay down positions also, which i love!

 

[WhatABore]

Another here for the joie 360. @Definitelyme and @WhatABore recommended it, and it did quite honestly, the best, sturdiest car seat I’ve ever had. And I can turn it all with 1 hand while holding the baby. It has 5 different lay down positions also, which i love!

I'm sure mine only has 2 different positions upright or slightly reclined

 

[Jellybean093]

I'm sure mine only has 2 different positions upright or slightly reclined

He only ever stays in 1 position, but it has 1-5 on there, so assumed it was different positions

 

[WhatABore]

He only ever stays in 1 position, but it has 1-5 on there, so assumed it was different positions

I've never looked tbh
We just keep it at the most reclined and don't move it haha

 

[cupcake_face]

When do weaning poos get less brutal?! Or is this just life now?

 

[I’mThankyou_]

When do weaning poos get less brutal?! Or is this just life now?

I personally find they get progressively worse. Tends to ease off once they learn how to wipe their own arse. Though even then your left with a surprise when you go to the loo because they "forget" to flush the toilet.
Or maybe I just have a rotten child

 

[Definitelyme]

When do weaning poos get less brutal?! Or is this just life now?

When they turn properly solid

Some absolute miserable old sod in John Lewis said to me today “oh twins, unlucky they must be hard work. I’ve got no kids and no wife and no stress”.
Ok but why are you telling me this random stranger, clearly trying convince yourself you’re happy wondering around the crockery section on a Tuesday afternoon
Don’t you feel like people think it’s their right to make strange comments when you’re out with your children.

Ueah sounds like he has a brilliant life. Not at all lonely by himself wandering around talking to random strangers. Also a reaaaallllll mystery why he has no wife 🫢