Ruth_Baldock

Pebbles; best thing to do would be to sign up, and start by finding local people/businesses, follow them, see who else follows them, add them. Search people's names, see if they are on there, follow them. You have 140 characters to tweet things what are going on/ ask questions. If someone who you follow writes something and you think HEY I LIKE THIS! You can re-tweet it so your followers see it. They will see that you have chosen to retweet it, but it will come from it's origional source on your/their feed.

Saffron: I believe it takes at least three days, more like a week to really take effect. We have been doing it for two days and it means he has stopped wandering into our room at 10/11pm, and has been waking at around 3:30am and coming into our bed. This is a vast improvement on his previous nocturnal habits. We have started transferring him after he comes back into our bed at 3:30am, and we hear him stirring at about 5am, but we have left a sippy cup of water next to his bed which he has downed and then gone back to sleep until his sister starts squaking at arounf 7:30. It means overall he's getting more sleep, and isn't tired in the day which is EXCELLENT. I have also been encouraging a very early nap (10am, we go upstairs to put Lex down for a snooze at 9:30, and she sleeps till about 10:45). It means I feel like I'm doing some kind of nap relay race but I feel is helping. For now! famous last words!

DG2; If you follow someone, it basically means you are subscribing to their feed/tweets, and whatever they tweet/retweet will show up in your timeline. If you have an open or public account, they can just click 'follow' and they will see whatever you write. However, if you have private or protected tweets, then a request will be sent to you to authorise them to follow you. You can block users who follow you who you want to naff off (I get a lot of thai prositutes following me, and also, stock exchange bots...) I have an open account, which means if you didn't have a twitter account you could still search for my name and find me and see what I've been banging on about. I know of at least two people who do this, it makes me laff.

Following celebrities who my husband's company have worked with has proved excellent in terms of networking, we've found. Some of the celebrities/famous people I follow are interesting, funny, retweet thought proviking things (Caitlin Moran, Sue Perkins...) some of them post photos of themselves in bikinis (Jodie Marsh) and some are exactly the same as most mums I know, really (Lily Allen...)

"Ultimately I have taken the view that holidays are pretty rubbish with children but they love them and I chose to have the children after all." I don't know whether to nod my head in agreement, or be really depressed by this. It's what you make of it, your expectations and such! We went to New York with two; 3mo and 21mo, and we had an excellent time! Did I expect to spend time quaffing cocktails in downtown bars? Leisurly days spent in Macy's/Bloomingdales? No! Did I expect to stay in the most touristy bit of the city, and end up in Central Park a LOT? Yes. I also spent a ridicolous amount of time in Starbucks' all over Manhatten breastfeeding. It was great! Having said that, I have been saving since then to go back minus the children when they are about 4 and 5 so I can 1) Have a tiny handbag, 2) Not wander around looking touritsy with a Maclaren in tow (with a BA tag on it, natch...) and 3)DO WHAT I DAMN WELL PLEASE. I don't know what the point of this comment was. Sorry.

Normal people, eh? Well, I'm on both, but I love twitter. LOVE IT. I've made lots of friends and contacts on there, it's also good for local news, activities etc. It's also incredibly useful for small buisness' which don't have a huge advertising and marketing budget. I mainly follow people with similair interests to mine (parents, basically), local buisnesses/places of interest (Brockwell Lido, Peckham Rye Park, Brunswick Park...) and a few celebrities like...er...Tom Daley and Jodie Marsh. Don't judge me! Anyway, I definitely wouldn't have got through the first year of being a Mum to two babies under 2, PND, and general WOE and WAH without it. Anyone reading this, feel free to follow me: @yasaikatsucurry. I am going off Facebook a bit, mainly because of my family's incessent digs, sniping, bitching and p-a remarks.

Thought I'd give everyone a bi of an update (I will reply to PMs, promise!) Since my OP, Seb's sleep has got significantlly worse- getting out of bed at 10pm, getting into my bed whilst I'm downstairs, getting up in the night etc. I have been keeping a diary and he wakes 3hrs 35mins after going to sleep on the dot. I have been talking to Millpond, and have paid a small fortune, and we're going to try some wake-t0-sleep techniques. It's also a form of seperation anxiety, we think, as my husband is working long hours and not getting home till 1/2/3am at the moment (ugh), and our son is very much a Daddy's boy. My husband is much better at settling him at night than I am, so he wakes expecting my husband to do a bit of shh-ing and reassuring, and when he's not there, my son gets worried and agitated. Not much we can do re: working hours unfortunately (again, ugh, we're all absolutely knackered). We have also found an early nap, aroyund 10:30-11:30 helps IMMENSLY. Getting him to take this is tricky, so I need to put my thinking cap on re: logistics of this. How has everyone else's sleepless week been?

Lego, Duplo, plastic shape sorters, plastic vehicle toys = Yes, good, fine. Anything plastic and noisy with flashing lights (apart from the baby's toy keyboard/piano)= HELL. NO. V-tech, this means you. The day I can chuck out our V-tech walker will be the happiest day of my life. Yes, over my wedding day/birth of my children. I hate that smug toy.

Almost everything I own is from Uniqlo/Urban Outfitters/Peacocks. Yes, I know, Peacocks are terminally un-trendy, but I have bought some fabulous stuff from there, which has worn/washed really well. Uniqlo's stuff is just top notch, their jeans are the best fitting I've ever worn!

We used to shut the door of his room but weirdly about 2 months ago, he got really anxious about us doing this and now pleads with us to leave the door open, which we do. We had stairgates across his door, and we have them on the stairs, but he has worked out how to undo them!! Time for new ones, possibly. He kicks uo SUCH a screaming fuss if he can't get out of his room that he wakes up his sister, and I have to go in there to calm her down, which is obviously fan-bloody-tastic. oimissus; he's starting in Jan, providing we can potty train him! (MORE FUN AND GAMES!) Alieh: He needs about 12-13hrs. He gets about 11, broken up in bits as we all disturb each other when he's in with us. When he's had a bad, overtired day, he is often in bed by 5:30! (With the baby still dawdling over her dinner/smooshing it into her hair downstairs...). Sometimes he will go all the way to 7am when we do that. Sometimes he wakes at 9pm raring to go. What else? Oh yes. My husband has offered to full-time co-sleep with him, whilst I room in with my snuffley baby, and this would probably work for a while provided my husband didn't have to pull all-nighters at work. I am kind of so sick of all of this, I just want kids: in bed, and me and my husband to have some time together. We've not had the best time of it recently and it's hard to reconnect with all this sleep stuff happening. Sorry, bit of a pity party there. He used to sleep on his own and perfectly for my in laws, who have him overnight quite often. He used to nap for 2.5 hours, then go to sleep at 7pm till 7:30am. In the past few months, he has had the same sleeping patterns there as he does with us, which means my FIL ends up co-sleeping with him in the futon in his( my son's) room at their house. This makes me think it's seperation anxiety/something to do with sleep cycles rather than a 'trying it on for mummy' thing... Thanks to everyone for their responses!

Smiler; We have cut out ALL naps, which means between 2:30-3:30 I have a hell of a job keeping him awake and happy (thank god for youtube videos of farms and trains, is all I can say...) My IL's look after him and his sister on Fridays so I can scream into a pillow all day/nap and she never normally puts him down for a sleep, except for last friday, she put him down for three hours for some reason. I won't go into the reprucussions of that. Hellish. We did offer rewards, which worked for a fortnight or so, but now he has decided that Mummy's bed is MUCH better than Dairy Milk/Robot Toys/Anything else. My arsenal of techniques has been exhausted :( It's always me that does the night wakeups, my daughter wakes to breastfeed so theres not much my husband can do. It's genuine hunger, she gulps her milk down, I'm not too worried about habits. When she's ready to stop, she will (this has been the line I've taken with her, and it's worked like a charm for a seamless progression thus far e.g. no swaddling, drinking from a cup etc) About 60% of the time, if he isn't sleepy, I will lie on my bed with him for hours and hours and hours. Or in his room, lying on the floor. Sometimes he runs off and runs downstairs. If I have the energy, I will literally wrestle him back upstairs, but sometimes I don't and I let him come downstairs. He did this once a week or so ago, and WOULD NOT come upstairs to sleep at 10pm. Me and his Dad were exhausted and put him in his room, he ran out, went downstairs and we believe he played with his trains until around 3am when we heard him rustling about in his room. Shocking parenting right there. This is how big the problem is. Basically, this is the pits, and I'm sorry you're going through it too. My husband is in a work all night if you have to, several nights on the trot, industry and can get by on 4hrs sleep. He has adapted. I have not.

Also! What do you do when Little Saff wakes? Apart from cry/swear inwardly?

How understanding are your employers re: Zombie-like state? My boss was so, SO supportive and lovely, but his boss and HR were total see-you-next-Tuesdays. I got a written warning :( My boss did point out to them my sleepiness/lateness caused by it could have been caused by my PND (it wasn't) which shut them up slightly, but they had to follow protocol re: consistent lateness, I guess.

I think I remember seeing various posts on here re: a sleep seminar which is run for parents to educate and help learn about their child's sleep habits; offered to groups of 6 or so of parents with children of similair ages. If I was writing about my 1y/o, I'm sure I'd be inundated with responses. But I'm not. Me and my husband, and entire family really, are at our wits end with regards to my toddler's sleep, and we've hit breaking point now. Bit of background/history: My son, Seb, is 2y9mo old. He has always been an atrocious sleeper, and even as a baby, would barely nap. I remember him being awake for 11 hours straight, fairly reguarly, when he was as young at 7 months old. This was not for want of trying, he reallty seemed to struggle to fall asleep. We had a bedtime routine in place, but he'd never fall asleep at 7pm, and he'd stay up with me and his dad until we went upstairs to sleep at around 10pm, where he'd have a late night feed (a bottle, by the time he was 3mo old, of forumla although it never seemed to help him sleep any longer). He'd eventually drift off and one of us would transfer him to his cot, and then he'd wake every 3 hours. I went back to work when he was 10mo old, and was exhausted. I'd fall asleep on the bus to work and kept being woken up by the driver at the end of the route. Fearing for my job, we decided to sleep train him. It was painfully hard, but it worked, and he was an excellent sleeper until around 21mo, daytime and night sleeps. His sister was born when he was 18mo old, and I am sure this has played a part in his sleep getting worse and worse and worse. He's in a bed, not a cot, and has been since he was 22mo. He was weaned from his dummy at 22mo, too. Basically, he doesn't nap. If he sleeps in the day, he's up till 10pm (a good day) or as late as 1am on a bad/standard day. He is knackered during the day but struggles to fall asleep before 3.30pm unless a car journey is involved. When he finally does fall asleep, he'll manage a few hours before coming into mine and his father's room. We did rapid-return a few months ago, with great success, but we tried on Saturday and he was basically up for about four hours from 12:30 in the night. He understands about night/day and knows when it's light and daytime, it's okay to come to our bed for cuddles. If he wakes in the night he'll say he knows he has to wait for morning, but he wants our bed now. His sister never co-sleeps, but does still stir in the night for feeds, so perhaps this brings him into a lighter sleep. They share a room, and there is no way out of this. We were referred to a sleep clinic, but the emphasis was on a good bedtime routine. We have had the same bedtime routine since he was born. His diet may have something to do with it, he's quite the picky eater. His lack of sleep/playing musical beds is having a massive impact on everything we do now, and has started to really make me resent him, which may sound ruthless, but I'm afraid after almost 3yrs of brokem sleep, save a period of 10mo (in which we had blips/regressions) is true. If this sounds familiar, and you'd be interested in getting a group together for a sleep seminar/a cry, do PM me and let me know. Yawn. Rx

Well, we take our two swimming quite reguarly, I used to dive for my county in my teens *preens*. We're also a family of avid cyclers, and the moment our eldest was old enough for a bike seat (Hamax Smiley, when he was about ten months old) we got one, and he goes on the bike a lot. Now we have an adventure AT3 trailer which we wheel both babies around in, so although they're not actually cycling yet (save for my eldest's balance bike) they're familiar and comfortable with bikes. Southwark have an excellent gymnastics club, which is held at Brunswick Park primary school, in SE5 here: http://www.southwarkgymnastics.co.uk/ JAGS have a tonne of stuff for children over the weekend; our son loved trampolining on a Saturday, my husband's work schedule means that he's been unable to take him for a few months which is unfortunate. Honestly when it comes to sport, I think we're spolit for choice locally.

Kellymom has some excellent guidance on this; I have this table printed out and stuck on my fridge! http://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/milkstorage/milkstorage/

Saffron Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Do be aware of the 'Sudocrem Episode'. This > occurs when a parent leaves an innocent pot of > Sudocrem unattended within Baby's reach. Baby > then proceeds to open the crem and gleefully smear > it on any surface within reach! It takes a 60C > wash to dissolve Sudocrem, so it's best never to > turn your back on a pot of it!! > ;-) This has happened to me four times in almost three years, and now my two egg each other on to do the schmearing everywhere.

Definitely Camber Sands!

oimissus & kitty; We don't have an iron or ironing board either; I tried to straighten a shirt with my hair straighteners but it all went horribley wrong...

iphone! I tell him I'm going to do it, count down (3,2,1...) and then say I'll say the abc song and when it's finished, I'll stop brushing his teeth, which works somewhat...

My Mum never pushed any of us to brush our teeth, and by 5, I had two fillings and an extraction. With this in mind, I'm extremely strict about teeth brushing and I tend to do it for my toddler, which he doesn't like. I tell him I'm go

One week fast track isn't always guaranteed though, like in my case. There weren't any problems with the application at all, we just randomly had extra checks applied to our referree as some passport applications are picked to have. You get the extra costs for fast tracking it refunded. Basically, don't rely on it only being a week long and leave as much time as possible to get a passport.

"It does seem some people are just more prone to UTIs, like other people are more prone to stomach upset or nasal congestion. Hope it's better soon. xx" This is so true. Both me, my Mum and all my sister (and now Seb and probably Lex...) always had recurrent UTIs (and thrush, since we're on the subject). In my case, it's due to a very short urethra, so not much could be done on that front, so it's all about preventative measures, really, which I'm sure you know about. I had to have lots of tests, scans of my kidneys and such to rule out anything more serious. I withheld urine whenever, as a child, I was constipated too. Not sure why. Could this also be a factor? xx

We got ours done with the 1 week fast track, but it was 'delayed' and we got it 22 hours before flying off to the States. Not worrying at all, totally stressfree. *bitter*

Fuschia Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > How many children would you like? Some cars won't > take 3 car seats HA HA HA, immediately post-partum, isn't the answer 'MORE kids? And do this AGAIN? No chance...' Leather seats are a must. *nods sagely*