March 2011 babies

Don't worry about weaning off wrapping, I wrapped DS1 until 8 months!!!!! He just needed it, then I decided to not do so and he was fine, I think i'll wrap Lachie for less, but you never know.

 

 

Not going to bother with weaning of swaddling yet... just keep going with what works for you ...and then change if you have to.

Having terrible trouble with day sleeps :( poor little girl, needs her sleep but keeps whinging all the way through it.

Ah yes, swaddling. Seth is weaned off it now since mum looked after for him for a day and a night and she couldn't wrap him up securely enough so he would always wriggle out and he ended up sleeping with his arms out with her so I tried it and he settled fine. Well as well as he does anyway.

I haven't been on much lately because I'm staying at my mums at the moment to try to sort out Seths bad sleeping and it's been rather interesting. One night he slept all the way through the night! 9pm til 7am and not a peep from him in between. Last night was the worst night so far with 3 hourly wakings ALL NIGHT! I'm trying a new technique for settling him as well. It's the Pick up/Put down one. It's working quite well at the moment, when it actually works.

I'm hoping to get to the plunket family center soon (couldn't last week as it was closed due to the earthquakes ... again) for help on settling Emma. She will only fall asleep while being held which can be very tiring. I'm not interested in letting her cry it out, or even controlled crying, so hopefully there are some useful suggestions.

We are off for our first big road trip this weekend - up to Nelson. The longest car trip she has done so far is 45 mins, so the 4 hours to Nelson will be interesting. If anyone has any tips, these would be greatly appreciated. AFM, I'm still getting daily dressings on my former breast abscess - the nurse says she's never seen anything like it, which is not that reassuring, but at least it is finally healing. Hopefully then I will be able to get Emma fully weaned onto formula - she is helping the process by refusing the breast sometimes (which can actually be quite uncomfortable, as I can't express my sore boob, because the dressing is in the way).

Hope everyone else is doing well ... It seems like sleep is still the big issue for most of us.

Lillease – that sucks that Seth is being so inconsistent. I’ve thought about trying the pick up/put down technique – definitely let me know more about how you are getting on with it.

Kat – We used to hold A to get her to sleep but that quickly became really time consuming especially as she would often wake and start crying when we put her into her cot, so now I have my own CIO method. I put A into bed singing her a lullaby with white noise going, then I tuck her in, kiss her and say ‘love you, sleep well, I’ll see you when you wake up’ – she almost always will grizzle or cry when I put her down. If it is more of a grizzle I’ll wait ten minutes before going to her, if it’s more of a cry then I’ll wait five minutes and if it’s full on crying then I’ll wait up to three minutes – when I go in I pick up her and give her a cuddle and sing her a lullaby three times then I put her back into bed, and repeat the process. Sometimes she’ll go down right away with a couple of grizzles and then right off to sleep, sometimes it takes ten minutes, sometimes half an hour – very rarely does she cry on and off without going to sleep for more than an hour (at which point I would get her up for feed/play/sleep anyway).

Karen – my understanding is that Plunket advocate CIO/controlled crying. I don’t like listening to A cry which is why I have the three tiers – sometimes the three minutes while she is full on crying is more to give me a break because it can be so hard trying to settle an unsettled baby. It’s amazing the number of times I’ve waited five minutes of grizzling/crying and been about to walk into the room and she’s fallen asleep!

My one travel tip would be don’t stop if you baby isn’t crying even if it’s been two or three hours since they’ve been fed/changed. I know that babies shouldn’t be in their carseats for too long which is why we stopped after two hours but then A was really really unsettled (full on crying for almost an hour, and then on and off for another hour after that!) once we put her back in after a feed/change. I think she would have lasted a lot longer without crying if we hadn’t stopped.

I couldn’t believe A was teething already either! I feel so sorry for the poor poppet – I can definitely see a bit of tooth sticking out at the bottom right hand side, not sure whether the whole thing will pop up. It’s just quite frustrating as lots of things they suggest to help soothe teething babies don’t apply to those only three months old! I’m going to try some Weleda teething powder and might have a look at some smallish teething toys (small as in, will fit in a three months old mouth) – but otherwise I guess we have to ride it out!

Anyway, A is finally awake so better go!

Hope you are all going well and keeping warm!

AA, the PU/PD technique made Seths sleeping worse so I'm not currently using it. We've moved onto CIO I don't have any other option at the moment. We've been put onto something called The 3 day Sleep olution and it sounds like it could work so I'm going to give it a go.

Kat, The pick up put down technique is you put your baby to bed and when they stary crying you pat them and stroke their head. If they don't settle then you pick them up and pat their back until they stop crying then put them straight back to bed then repeat until the baby is asleep. In the end Seth would start crying as we were lowering him into the cot and would not stop until we would pick him up. We tried for several days but it was just not working. In the end mum rang plunketline and they didn't sound convinced that it was a viable method of teaching him to go to sleep.

Hey girls,
Havent been on here for a while, been on the facebook group more.
Lil Lease just wondering if you heard about the Sleeping and settling tips for baby free workshop at te puawai ora? its held once a month i think the next one is on 11th july 10am till 12pm, i went to one when bentley was bout 6ish weeks old, (tips werent useful for him at that age but did help later on) i did find it useful as there were other mums there too which you can share experiences and tips, you dont need to book either just turned up. theres also a breastfeeding workshop too

Wow - quiet in here! Guess everyone is using the Facebook page more (must admit I'm there more often than on here - in some ways it's just easier!)

RubyBaby - Glad you are seeing an improvement in Jacob after visiting Mothercare.

Oh bugger, reflux symptoms reared their ugly head again yesterday and having just put Abby down the poor thing is crying again in that horrible "I'm so uncomfortable and don't know what's happening" way - better go check on her.

Hope everyone, and their bubs, are well!

Ruby - thanks for sharing that info about Mothercare, sounds like it is really working for you, which is great.

Our coffee group had a visit from Ali Voysey-Jensen yesterday (a Tommee Tippee Tea-Time Talk) and it was great. If you get the chance to have her visit, I highly recommend it. She's kind of a baby whisperer type person, as well as having been a lactation consultant and paediatric nurse, and has some really useful tips for all the stuff we keep talking about here (like settling etc). She gave some really good tips about helping Emma self-settle, and they seem to be working ... she's fallen asleep by herself twice in the past 24 hours which is unheard of!

AFM, I have nearly got Emma fully weaned onto bottles now. Only one real BF, first thing in the morning, so I'm really happy with that. Hopefully I'll be able to drop that feed too in the next few days.

Big problems with sleep here today too. Well we did do the move into the cot - and there's so much more to see there.... Had to get her up and do a few swift rocks to calm her down at one stage and put her back down. But the move had to happen. Gosh knows what we'll do if we go on holiday... She's not very transportable. Will have to get a portacot and train her before we go.


One really good thing I learn about settling... is to give them a really good swift rock if they are worked up, and then a slow one, a fast one etc etc (push if in pram) and then just before they fall asleep you should be down to almost no movement...