new mother

http://maraschinophotography.com/ how about these guys? Haven't used them but they were advertised on Brockley Central. Brockley is reasonably handy for us and their prices looked better than ED ones.

" is def the kind of thing that could happen to anyone - I always feel as though we miss accidents by a hair's breadth a million times a day." Agreed Belle! Re BB, very sorry to hear about all this. :-((. Poor little one. The only thing I can add is that I was once told never put a burn on a bbay under cold water - my initial reaction with burns - as they can get hypothermia!Also, be sure to check their nappy as otherwise they can get extra burnt where the water flows down and congregates. Broke a big glass thing last night and spent hours clearing it and inspecting the area. Horrible thoughts. :-(((

Tbh, I think you've done amazingly well already.

Pickle, Obviously depends on the child then but, yes, our heating is on overnight now. The thought of 15 degrees makes me shiver. Maybe we will turn it off again after this cold snap so I can convince myself it isn't winter YET! I've also noticed that our ch sleep much better and longer if their ambient temperature is providing a lot of the warmth, as opposed to thicker layers of clothes - contrary to all modern advice etc., I know, but totally bearing out what my mother told me.

probably a stoopid question but I assume you have the heating on all night already? it always depresses me that winter is coming when we get to the stage of doing this - this year it's quite early....

Yes no doubt that's why. But the net result is that men get fewer sessions than women and that IS discriminatory, ironically as it is trying to help the "put upon" women in the first place. Men could sue, unless there is a specific carve out in the discrim legislation for this sort of thing.

Morocco or Tunisia will be freezing. (THere is a nasty wind that sweeps right down and keeps N Africa very cold till later than you would expect.) Egypt is an option and the flight times are reasonable and frequent these days. More interesting than eg the Gambia or Senegal but take steriliser. Other places are too hit and miss.

Definitely get a 4 door. Once the baby is heavy, you will curse every time you strain your back heaving him/her in, even if you eave the seat in. You also increase the risk of banging the baby's head, which I've done myself twice and hated myself for it.

I was sceptical about the overly Bohemian nature of the teething powder but you know what?....they worked! So, we're a temporary long haired hippie family.

'your bump is small, you don't have gd as if you do the baby is big and you tend to have abnormally large bump'. By the way, in case anyone goes by this, it is totally ill-informed. Bump size has very little to do with size of baby. Mine were both tiny to the extent of being asked why I was there when I went to the labour ward tour. ("Errr to see you again next week probably" was my reply.) I was very worried about insufficient fluid, tiny baby etc and was repeatedly reassured that size of bump had nothing to do with eventual baby. Correct as it turned out. Both were whoppers, especially given that they were early. re GD, it has a great deal to do with when the test was done and what you had eaten recently. It is very inaccurate and only narrows it down to those who definitely don't have it. those who might have it but probably don't and those who do have are left in a large bucket of confusion. If you are only just over, the chances are it is absolutely fine.

What does "textbook spirited" mean please?

Makes perfect sense - we would have gone one at a time. Equally, though, it would have been to avoid using the local bbsitter. We would never leave the ch with someone we did not know inside out personally. Things do happen, one in a million, perhaps, but that's enough for me.

My sister was in same position. My 2 year old niece would only refer to the baby as "she" and would shake her head if anyone suggested the baby could equally well be a boy. My sister told my niece in great details how the baby would be born - elective section, all the stages - to the extent that my niece was a good source of info when my first ch was born. When the inevitable boy was born, my niece accepted it all with a reasonably good grace, pointing out that "she is a boy but it is just luck what you get".

I was only allowed to do it once as a child as my parents thought the whole thing illmannered. (and that was long before eggs!) I had to do what we called a "recitation" - a poem from school that week - and I remember my costume was itchy. My older daughter is still too young for us to get any such requests, thankfully.

Me thinks, tolerance, empathy, and realising the earth does not revolve around yourself is what is required on BOTH sides of the argument. Completlely agree with the above. We take our children everywhere but the minute they behave so as to impact adversely other people's enjoyment of whereever it is, we leave. Just as I don't want to be next to a braying drunk man/woman, I think it quite reasonable people don't want to be subjected to the ear splitting yells of my children.

"I have the green man ingrained in my soul so much that I find myself reprimanding colleagues for not adhering to his beamy instruction when stepping out with them at lunchtime ...." hilarious. A friend of a friend told a male colleague in a lunchtime meeeting to "eat nicely" ... Before I had ch, I improved my behaviour at lights for exactly the reason you set out, Moos. Now, tbh, I have a list of things I find worse - using the parent and child parking with impunity, children with no manners being deemed to be "characters" by their parents, parents failing to remove ot making no apology for noisy ch in restaurants....the list goes on.

I think I should have phrased what I wrote a bit better. I don't mean that I play with my children all the time save naps and feeding. I would run out of things to do quite fast, I can assure you! Currently ~2 is playing in a soft play area that my husband made for her, and Im not playing with her - clearly (!). However, she is in my line of sight and that is what I expect a ch/m or nanny to do. I constantly see groups of ch/m or nannies out and about chatting to each other and paying next to no attention to the children. The children fall at some stage and a great wail goes up at which point the adult goes over to see what's happened. THat's not adequate supervision from someone paid to look after them. I repeat - all of our children are the most precious "thing" we have and, while it's obviosuly great for children to play with others etc, i make no apology for demanding service and performacne from people ina critical area of my life. People on the whole want to do a good job and prefer not to get away with things in any event. We should not pay (quite a lot in my view) to subsdise someone else's social outings.

Ahha! so that's the secret! fertility units eat your heart out...

(I was asking about Ruth's "new bike experience" - but the paragrpah got deleted somehow...) have I broken some rule? Sorry - I genuinely didn't/don't know!

am I missing something obvious?

Sorry but maybe I'm too exacting - I wldn't consider employing a childminder/nanny whose attention was not focussed on my child 100%. You are not paying them to chat!

Snowboarder, My sections have involved 48 hours in hospital, and I was fit enough to leave after 24 but they prevailed upon me to stay and continue to enjoy their errr...hospitality. (ha unintentional pun!)

Sonners, the loophole - or yawning chasm - is that stamp duty is eg 5% on these mega houses but 0.5% on transfers of shares in companies. So, you don't sell a house, you transfer shares in your company. And, lo adn behold, that company owns a house.

I would like to see people who buy mega houses costing eg 5,10, 20mm, paying stamp duty instead of buying via off shore companies and avoiding it completely. That really makes me mad as the stamp duty requried to move in London often eats up the savings people have put aside to use towards the move!

A maternity nurse is really not a bad idea - as an alternative way of spending the 2 grand. (of course we are all looking for ways of spending money these days, not!) For us it was a bad idea as my husband was off work both times anyway so that was fine, but a lot of peopel swear by them around when you come home and thereafter for getting the new baby into a routine. That would pay dividends too in the long run surely?