oct/nov babies

[jomae]

Hello Ahart
Just this week I noticed Jacob had Craddle Cap all I'm diong is putting a little of his Baby bath wash directly onto his hair and giving his head a good rub with a wash cloth and then when he's been dryed i brush his hair with a soft brush which seems a bit weird seeing he hasn't really got that much hair to speak of but this seems to get it loose hope this helps.

take care Jomaexxx

Hi Everyone hope your all enjoying your little ones and getting some rest

[Cla4]

Ahart - we used a product by Dentinox (Cradle cap shampoo) and it was gone within a week. The soft brush also helps and I've heard you should be gentle but firm when washing hair. Hope this helps!

Cla
xx

[bella-s]

Hi everyone...

Thanks for all your messages on the other board. It is nice to finally be here, but I must say these early days are very overwhelming...did anyone else find that? Lucy slept a lot better last night, but I am so worried about DH going back to work on Friday...things are so much easier with two of you.

It is a bit hard as all your babies are older than Lucy, but would love all the advice about coping with the early days/weeks!

Hope you are all well.

Bella

[bella-s]

P.S. - I put some photos in the photo bucket of little LuLu

[gregmbarry]

Bella...yes the first days are hard - and nerve-wracking because it's the first time you are alone with your baby when dh goes back to work. All I can say is that it does get better. I remember feeling so much better when I sucessfully took McKenna to her 1 week doctor appointment by myself. After that I felt I could take on the world - if I could take a newborn baby out by myself - I can do it all! hehe...sounds silly but it sure felt exhilirating when I did it. Just hang in there and it will get easier - I guess one more piece of advice is to sleep when she sleeps - I can't do that because for some reason I can't sleep during the day. But sleep deprivation seems to have been the toughest thing for me - so if you can manage to sleep enough I think you'll be fine!! Take care

[EYCI]

Hi All

Hi Bella -Lulu is beautiful. What a cutie! So glad she has arrived My "best" advice, which you have probably heard a million times, is when the baby sleeps - you sleep. Trust me - Lulu won't care if the dishes are done, the laundry is done, if you've showered, or the house is clean... But, she will care that you are well rested and in a good mood to take care of her. Good luck when DH goes back to work. You'll do great. Some days will be harder than others for sure, but you'll make it through all of them

Anyone else using a baby sling or carrier? I just started using the baby bjorn and love it. Even when Hendricks is really unhappy and crying, I'll put him in it, bounce for a few minutes and he'll fall asleep. Then I can go about doing things around the house and he stays asleep and close to me.

How are everyone's nights going? We've had a few nights that he has slept from 9pm to 4am. Strangely, those have been the nights when we've been up til past midnight with friends/family etc so still no more than a few hour stretch for us. It is pretty good though... he's usually to bed at 9pm, up at 2, then up again at 6am for the day. At 2 months, he's only napping for about 3 hours a day now which I think is helping him to sleep better at night.

KristiA - Is the feeding getting any better? Hope so!! I had a strange question... did you have to sterilize your bras too?

Hendricks's baptism was yesterday. He wore a frilly white dress worn by his grandma, me, my sister, and all nieces and nephews. At first DH was not thrilled about him wearing a dress, but once H was in it, he did look pretty cute. I joke with H that now that he is a child of God, that doesn't mean it is ok to start sinning.

Hope all is well!

--Julie

[kristiA]

Julie, and others, I'm so jealous you are getting the babies to sleep so much in the night. Mine are still only sleeping 2.5 hours at the most and then they wake to eat. And they are 10+ weeks. I'm trying all the tricks you guys talk about...less naps, more to eat during the day/evening, bath at night, massage, etc.

Julie, no I didn't have to steralize my bras for thrush, but I do have to wear disposable bra pads, put medicine on, and change the pads after every feeding. I have to steralize all bottles & pacificers after every use (like I have time for that!!). The babies are eating alittle better, but not all better yet.

Bell, Lucy is so precious! Congrats! Yes, the beginning what very scary for me. I wasn't alone for the first two weeks and then I was scared to death the first time I had to be alone with them. But after being alone one day, then getting out of the house with them by myself, I felt great about it.

I can't sleep during the day either, Gregmbarry! I've tried, but I lay there and think of the zillion things I need or want to do. It's amazing how little sleep I can live on.

[Mel_P]

hi guys

Just wanted to drop in and say hi, havent had a chance to catch up on all the posts and whats happening with everyone, will do in next day or so. Hope everyone is doing well and taking care of themselves.

Maia and I doing well. Just when I think I kind of know what kind of routine suits her, she does something different, like be a fickle bum all day and then sleep for 10.5 hours straight so still working things out and sort of going with the flow slash doing a bit of a routine thing.

Its so cool to see her starting to smile coo and blow bubbles!! Although mostly its still just greedy sucking, big farts and poos and big grizzly frowns for more sucking!!!

Bella good luck with the first few days with lovely lulu, (LOVE the lulu!!). You might even find that things go better than you think, youll have some nice time together go get to know each others rythmn. Its super hard to kind of take the golden rule of advice and sleep and leave the housework, hard to stay sane I find when the house is a nightmare! but its so true. Make sure your priorities are bubba and you. My MW said to me make your breakfast, as soon as thats finished, make your lunch for yourself and pop it in the fridge! Second make sure you get your sleep have one of her naps in the day with her. Have you read Kaz Cookes book? Its quite funny, she makes a comment about the whole planning a routine for you and bubba, "feeding baby, sleeping, showering, cleaning out the cutlery draw etc ... to make a note to yourself .... 8 years from now clean out the cutlery draw! "

Don't worry about everything being perfect either, as long as she is fed and dry, shes all good! And even if there is a little crying spat, remember it isn't going to be anything terrible, you love her dearly and are taking good care of her, so try not to stress when she seems a little grizzly. Look forward to hearing how you get on

Mel and Maia

[Tracii]

Hi All - sorry I have been MIA..my parents just left and I haven't had much time to check in. We are doing well...Isabella is now on a pretty good schedule of 3 hours sleep/1 awake. Some nights she has a tough time sleeping..midwife says it is due to growth spurts...so I have finally learned a valuable lessons..instead of getting upset (i.e. I don't know how to help her)..I just try to relax with Isabella and give her as much love as possible..sounds pretty basic but somehow took me awhile to figure it out.

Isabella is growing and putting on weight. My milk production never came in..slow dripples and droplets after pumping, massaging, drinking special tea, using red lights (heat)...I have decided to solely bottle feed her..tough decision but it is getting more stressful. I will really miss BF - she was so good and it was so bonding..but it wasn't fair to BF Isabella when she would suck and suck and only got 10ml

How is everyone else doing getting out of the house? I always feel so accomplished if we can get out of the house...even for a walk with the dogs

I hope everyone and babies are doing well...and getting enough sleep!

[jomae]

Hi Traci
I can totally understand your decision to soley bottle feed like you my milk didn't come in properly either Jacob understandably was very distraught at feed time as he never got enough he ended up so savage trying to get a feed that i ended up cracked blistered and finally bleeding and poor Jacob was putting on little weight if any when he vommitted my blood I thought enough is enough and decided to bottle feed proberly like you i stewed on my decision for a while and even tryed to express my milk to see if I could continue but after half an hour of pumping and only getting 10ml I thought theres no way I could feed and I tell you when i did change him over he was so much more relaxed and no longer the skinny little bub but a very chubby healthy babe and it was a hard decision and i missed the closeness but if bub is not thriving it's not worth it I just make sure i cuddle him up when bottle feeding so we still have that close time.

Sorry have to cut short hope your all well will catch up soon
take care Jomaexxx

[Tracii]

We have just survived a hellish morning and day yesterday...the longest 12 hours of my life....at 2am DD woke up for her normal feeding and she usually falls alseep pretty good by herself...but after 15 minutes of crying I picked her up and cuddled her thinking everything would be ok...well the crying and screaming did not stop until 11am! 9 hours of total helplessness for the both of us (DH is in Vienna moving our stuff to a bigger place). I did everything in those 9 hours and nothing worked..I was holding up pretty good until about 8am and I just had to go away and cry/vent...I made urgent calls to my midwife who suggested Isabella is not reacting well to teh formula (I stopped the partial BF a couple of days before)....suggested she can not digest the sugar in the milk. So I had several search parties looking in Munich for this special lactose free formula...not so easy in Germany to go to a big store and find what you want..I had friends and in-laws searching high and low. Finally my in-laws found some at 5:30pm...stores close here on Sat. at 6pm! I was totally frazzled..what a day. Seems like Isabella is better on the new formula..not spitting up like she did with the last (seems she would vomit up whole bottles). Today she is very tired and a bit grouchy..she slept well at night and after a feeding this AM went back to sleep after 30 minutes of being awake. My heart went out for her because looking back I could see she was cramping up and bloating with the old formula...but who knew at the time?

I never thought parenting would be so hard..but it also so rewarding.

[kristiA]

Tracii, what a horrible experience. Poor Isabella. I can just imagine how difficult of a night/day that was for you. You want so bad to help her stop crying and know what is wrong, but you can't figure out how. I hate that feeling when it happened to me with the Thrush. Hopefully the new formula will continue to work for her.

Both of my boys started smiling at us this week finally. And now they do it several times a day. It's so much fun to have them interact with us, make eye contact, and smile. They are 11 weeks now. My maternity leave from work ends next week and I just jresigned & told them I wasn't coming back. Even if I wanted to work I don't know how I would do it with two little ones. So I'm now officially a full-time stay at home mommy. What a great job!

[Tracii]

Congratulations KristiA on the job promotion! Your little guys will be so happy to have you at home.

ok -so how much 'play' time do you all get in with the little ones? Seems like little Issy basically sleeps and eats...and maybe about 5-10 minutes per session of interaction/playing.

[EYCI]

Hi All -

Tracii - for Issy's aga, 5-10 minutes is pretty good. Sometimes that's all I get with Hendricks, although sometimes he'll go 30 minutes or more. I think the key is to just pay attention to their intereset level and let them take the lead. If she isn't interested in playing, don't try to force it. As for switching to the bottle, I to had to abandom BF at 3 weeks due to no milk production. I felt bad/guilty, but he was instantly so much happier and I was so much less stressed. The added bonus was that DH could help with the feedings.

KristiA - Congrats on staying home. My DH's last day at work was last Friday. He's going to be a stay at home daddy. When we started out with twins, we decided that he would stay home. Even though we have just one babe now, we figured why change things. We have the next 2 weeks home together before I go back. I read your post about waking up confused, wondering where the babes are, if they were fed, etc. I do that too! Mostly I just wake up frantic that I fell asleep with him and I start searching through all the bedding to find him. I know I'm still half asleep and usually DH has to wake up and reassure me that he's safe asleep in his crib. Do you swaddle the boys? Hendricks always kicked out of his blanket so we started using a SwaddleMe blanket. He instantly started sleeping at least 1 hour longer at a time and was much less restless.

How are the rest of you doing? Love the pics on photobucket. I've added a new one of Hendricks. Merry Christmas and Happy Holildays to all!

--Julie

[kristiA]

Julie, thanks for the tip on the Swaddle Me thing. Yes, I do swaddle them still, but just recently they started kicking until they could get their arms out. I do have two Swaddle Me's that I haven't used yet. So I will try them tonight! I like the idea of an extra hour of sleep. That's so funny that others experience that frantic looking in the bed thing for their babies like I do too. I usually think I'm holding a baby and so I'm confused when they aren't in my arms, so I look under the covers, etc.