civilservant

no, ludoscotts, it's not you that's the problem at all! I was confused myself until I found this web page http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/15359.aspx so Forest Hill is served by the Overground, but East Dulwich is not. And according to the map on the above link, Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill are also on the Overground. However, I think that Overground refers to to the train operator and not the station, so that some trains through Forest Hill, Peckham Rye etc. may be Overground (and hence free to kids), but not others... Sorry, my head's beginning to hurt now! You can see why I just trust to my Oystercard to work it out for me

Note that Overground is NOT the same as the train network - it's 'the suburban network of rail services in London managed by TfL' according to the TfL website and mainly serves North London. It's not hard to get an Oyster card for children - you get a form at the Post Office. More details on http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/default.aspx I got my 6 year old an Oyster card so that we didn't have to wait in ticket queues to buy her a ticket. She uses it Pay as you go and it costs just over a pound per train journey. Other bonuses are that it makes her feel quite grown-up to have her own ticket, it squawks when she wands it over the reader, and it also works on the Tube so that she can get through ticket turnstiles on the Tube by herself - she isn't charged to get through. And of course it takes all the guesswork out of knowing when and where to pay because it doesn't get debited on buses and Tubes. I didn't mean this to sound like a free puff for kids' Oyster cards, but they really do help if you travel a lot on public transport with children.

not to mention a ruined bank balance for ever and ever after! but we love them really - don't we:))

The old wives' saying that a woman loses a tooth per child seems to be borne out by this US study of more than 2000 women http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/98/7/1263?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=russell&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT The conclusion is that "Parity is related to tooth loss among American women, but the mechanisms of the association remain undefined" or "the more often you've been pregnant, the fewer teeth you're likely to have, but we aren't sure exactly why"!

I don't drive either, and depend on the courtesy of other public transport users, including those who are pushing prams. If you've got twins, fine, you need an appropriate pram, but that doesn't mean it's got to be huge. An over-large pram on public transport is definitely a discourtesy to everyone else. The only valid reason for sticking those extra big wheels and ever more leaf-springs on a pram is to cushion a baby that is being walked along the street, not a baby that is being driven along on a bus. This thread started with a complaint about a rude bus-driver. We'd be so much more justified in denouncing him if we could all swear hand on heart that we are all considerate users of public transport. A final thought - with a wry smile, I remember the pro-Routemaster campaign aimed at keeping the vile bendy buses off our streets. The debate on this thread would have been purely academic in the days of the Routemaster!

young woman on Tube, breakfasting on can of fizz and choccie bar, finishes, sticks can and wrapper on seat, and gets up to leave me (politely) - aren't you taking that with you? YW (full of scorn) - I'm not a cleaner! (flounces off) me (picking up rubbish to dispose of properly at my stop) - [sigh] They're everywhere!

ClaireC, I didn't mean to sound judgemental:'( - I should have added that it's hard enough to manage a baby, a bag, a pram and whatever as well as oneself without having to put up with a bus driver being beastly and unprofessional on top of it all. I do hope he was a one-off, and that you never have to put up with it again.

have you tried the TfL journey planner? check out http://www.tfl.gov.uk/ This gives you all possible routes depending on the time you need to travel. from my experience, the quickest route is train to Mitcham Junction and then tram to Waddon Marsh tram stop (see OutofFocus's suggestion). This'll take anything from 40 mins to around 60 mins depending on your connections. But taking the bus will of course be cheaper. Good luck!

Yes, I agree, it does look as if you were unlucky with your bus driver. And yes, it is possible - I've done it many times. I doubt that you can with any old pushchair, though, Maclarens are designed to fold up easily. The story is that the inventor designed a pushchair that his daughter - who'd just had a baby - could fold with one hand. The trick is to use a push-pull action with just one hand and foot.

Beagle, I too spent months leafing through baby catalogues and wondering what to buy, with the result that when the baby arrived I had two packs of tiny babygros, a pack of nappies, a towel, some cellular baby blankets I inherited from my sister and not much else. That was actually a blessing in disguise as I could then shop for the baby's actual needs. Where possible get travel stuff - it works just as well at home - as you'll be wanting to get out and about quite soon. You might want to get two of some essentials like changing mats, as it's a time-saver to keep a bag ready packed with going-out stuff so that you aren't worrying about whether you've got everything you/baby need when you are getting ready to go out. Lots of great advice above and I wouldn't disagree with any of it - except about the top and tail bowl that sounds rather unhygienic to me. I just stuck the baby's bottom under a slow bathroom tap (water temperature checked first of course) when it got too gross for just moist cotton wool - buy it by the roll, not the expensive dinky little balls, you'll need loads! The one thing that I would absolutely recommend is a sling for carrying your baby in, especially when they're very tiny. And they grow so fast, especially in the first few weeks - anything you get is bound to be grown out of almost as soon as you unwrap it. My other recommendation is breastfeeding exclusively, which means that you can chuck out the expense and tedious routines associated with bottles, sterilisation, formula and other blah, and it works out very well if you're ever travelling abroad. Nappy Lady's spot on, you'll be amazed at how soon you'll be up here dishing out advice in your turn!

I'm with Ann on this one. I'm sorry that you had a rough time, and the driver might just be an ornery git/gitess. But you don't say what make your pram/pushchair is, and that counts for a lot. I commuted up to Central London and back five days a week with a toddler and a MacLaren from when she was 7 months until she started school (no local nursery places!) by train, Tube and bus. Sometimes I could leave the pushchair unfolded and sometimes I had to fold it up - that was part of the deal and you just accepted that. But I fully expected that if I was carrying the baby, I was entitled to a seat and felt no qualms about asking for one if necessary. We've stood in vain at bus-stops while empty buses whizzed past, and we've been refused entry onto buses unless I folded the pushchair up, so I think I might just be entitled to comment. But even I feel very peeved indeed when people wheel their massive Bugaboos/Quinnys/Mamas'n'Papas/Graco tractors on and then expect everyone else to stand aside or squash up!

Maclaren Techno for sure - because it folds up! IMHO, Bugaboos, however nippy and lovely, are a. expensive b. heavy and c. a nuisance on public transport, not just to other passengers but to the parents pushing them as well Has she thought about a sling for when the baby is very tiny? You can use a sling until they're 15-18 months old - it gives you quite a good back and upper-body workout as well!

Like you, I wasn't keen on sharing space with an au pair, even if we had the space to share! My daughter went to after-school club at Heber from reception onwards - she did 3 days a week, though she'd been used to being in full-time daycare from when she was quite small. Many tears at drop-off, but seemed quite satisfied and happy when spied upon and at pick-up; and it does seem to be true that the littler they are, the more care and attention they get from the carers and bigger children. The thing that she's complained most about are the dreaded 'hall games', whatever they are... My advice would be to try it, but you might be surprised to find how hard it is to get in - demand for good after-school club places is quite high.

I haven't read the book - and probably won't - but must admit to actually liking the Oliver James column in the Guardian. Yes, it's preachy and so on, but has some basis in proper research and his general attitude is baby-centred after all. (I speak as one of those careless mums who blithely dumped her baby in daycare at 6 months old and went off to work full-time. Well, hey for the capitalist system!) But the baby 'guru' who made me see red, after first depressing the hell out of me because a) I clearly was a rubbish mum because I wasn't up to following her minutely calibrated routines, and b) I clearly had a rubbish baby, who just wouldn't do as she prescribed, was Gina Ford. That book went in the bin, as I didn't want to risk any other new mum picking it up in a charity shop. Still depresses me to see that there are those who will slavishly praise and force copies of her onto their innocent pregnant sisters. At least O James, although a mister, has kids of his own.

The key issues are exactly the ones you mention - the commute and the job stress. I carried on working until I had a week to go - and then the baby was a week late, so I had two weeks of being massively(!) bored - but I was lucky because I had an easy bus journey to an air-conditioned office where I mostly sat in front of a computer. If you're on your feet a lot at work and have a massive commute, then you do need to think about how to make it easier on yourself when you get into your third trimester. If you've got any women colleagues who've recently been pregnant, I'd recommend talking to them about tactics for negotiating the last few weeks if you do decide to take it up to the wire. TfL have wised up somewhat and done a little bit to make public transport more pregnancy-friendly with better signage and the Baby on Board badges - see http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/3665.aspx. But if that doesn't work, after a while you'll discover that you've overcome the inhibitions that might have prevented you from asking non-pregnant people for a seat! Whatever you decide, the best of good luck:))

This post is probably not going to make me very popular on this forum, but it does seem that the older your child is, the harder it is for him or her to settle into nursery. I once discussed this with my daughter's nursery manager - a woman with 20 years' experience - who confirmed that in her experience babies found it a lot less traumatic to start nursery at 6 months old than at 12 months or older. And the more regular the routine, the easier it is for them to understand - so paradoxically, nursery every day is probably better than split days, or odd days, or any irregular arrangement.

sb - on our GP's advice, we tried not bathing the baby - outcome: the baby's skin worsened; when she finally saw the dermatologist, she was 95% covered with eczematous rash (dermatologist's estimate). Clearly, it varies according to the individual case. We too use Oilatum, nothing else. For what it's worth, I find the whole 'pampering' industry with is smelly lotions and potions rather distasteful. buggie -

buggie, you may be right, but see also http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8055038.stm

I agree with all other posts that recommend a dermatologist. Six years ago, our daughter developed eczema all over at 2 months old and GPs were useless - prescribed a variety of emollients, none of which helped, but were very reluctant to refer her on to a dermatologist. We finally self-referred when she was 4 months old to a dermatologist at Great Ormond Street, who put us on a regime of Oilatum baths twice daily - yes, twice daily! - Diprobase and steroid cream, also twice daily, just to bring the inflammation down and restore her skin to a reasonably normal state. Some other things he said - the main reason for using steroids is because the priority is to reduce the inflammation, and food allergies are rarely the primary cause, it's more likely to be genetic. He was furious with the GPs for their neglect and pussy-footing around the need to use steroids. My daughter's skin is much better now, but we've had to accept that twice-daily Diprobase, daily Oilatum baths and occasional use of steroid creams will be part of our lives for ever... On the other hand, my niece - whose eczema her parents decided to treat with emollients only - has some scarring on the backs of her knees and crooks of elbows as a result of scratching, impetigo etc. She also has mild asthma - I've seen recent research that claims that untreated eczema can result in an increased asthma risk. I do hope that your baby gets better - it's very distressing to see them look so itchy and uncomfortable, not to mention the risk of infection and loss of sleep. Good luck!

I continue my quest for the elusive East Dulwich hedgehog. The Royal Mail have just issued some lovely stamps showing threatened mammals - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2010/apr/13/royal-mail-stamps-uk-mammals - and guess which animal features on the first stamp in the series! In keepign with the threatened mammal theme, local hedgehog news is not good. This is what I got from Hugh Warwick, a hedgehog expert at the BHPS (British Hedgehog Preservation Society to the un-initiated - he's also got a great book on hedgehogs out for those who might be interested) "By the 2000s hogs appeared to have been lost from around 45% of sites where they were present in 1960-80 - the map shows S and SE london to be badly lacking in hogs. The distance from St Pauls Cathedral was a very significant indicator of likelihood of hogs - closer you are the fewer. Habitat fragmentation is likely to be the cause of your absence of hogs - great parks are fine as long as they are connected to a supply of hedgehogs! It is not just roads that are the problem but the loss of gardens and green space connecting up the landscape. So every extension, car park on front garden, decking, patio - all affect hedgehogs' chances of coping. Your garden sounds like it would be prime hog habitat, but if there are no hogs in the area, all I can suggest is to keep an eye out for signs of hedgehog - dead ones on the road are actually quite encouraging as they tell you that there are some around ..." We're not doing so well - do keep any sightings coming!

Enjoy your squirrels while you can - we used to have a thriving population in our garden. Of course we didn't appreciate them and moaned about how they trashed our bulbs etc. Then someone nearby got a cat, who proceeded to eliminate the baby squirrels with extreme prejudice. The crying of the wounded babies was heart-rending - I expect they crawled away somewhere and died of their wounds. This was a couple of years ago. Only the bravest of squirrels ventures into our garden now because those bloody cats have made it their own. So no hedgehogs, and no squirrels, but no end of cats... is this the green and pleasant East Dulwich everyone else is blathering on about?

Has anyone seen any hedgehogs in East Dulwich? I haven't seen a single one, alive or squashed, since moving here four years ago.