etta166

Sounds pretty similar to my life, except that I'm the main breadwinner too. But... I could write something about my set-up that conveys the same information and does not sound so negative. I find it more helpful to think of the things that my OH does do, rather than the things he doesn't. Try to make a list of things that you do, things that he does and then both sit down and see if there's any way you can both agree to even things up. Your OH may not even realise half the things that you do or why they need doing. Also, if he does come up with plans and activities at the weekend, why are thay flawed? Because it's not exactly what you would have done? Or it doesn't fit with your idea of the daily routine? So what, let him do some "flawed" acitvities with your son and see if they really have the consequences/problems that you predict. That is the only way for both of you to learn what can and can't work. You are never going to look after your children in exactly the same way, especially if you are super organised (sounds like you are) and your OH is more implusive and not a planner. Let him take over more stuff for a while and see what happens. And I've also noticed that my oH and I get along better if we go out with each other regularly and leave the kids at home.

http://www.which.co.uk/baby-and-child/baby-transport/reviews-ns/child-car-seat-fitting-problems-explored/child-seats-in-medium-cars/ This is where I got most of my information from, then from car seat manufacturers' and car manufacturers' websites Hope you get waht you are looking for.

Sharls - what car seats do you use? I would love to have a smaller car... Could you let me know if Vauxhall receommend that you can use 3 seats in the back of the new Corsa? Thanks! editing this to note that sadly none of my car seats (Maxi-Cosi Priori XP (x2) and Britax Evolva 123) have been safety tested in the middle back seat of a corsa. :(

I was looking into this about 2 years ago, and the answer then was that no smaller (5 seat) cars fit 3 seats if the children are all under 4. We ended up buying a VW Touran as that was one of the smallest 7 seaters. It fits 3 forward facing group 1 seats in the middle row, or one group 0 (backwards facing) and 2 Group 1 (forwards facing) seats. At the moment, we have 2 Maxi-Cosi PrioriFix and 1 Britax Evolva 123. My sister-in-law uses a Citroen Xara Picasso, but she has one child that is only on a Group 2-3 booster and two children in Group 1 forwards facing seats. My neighbour has a Toyota FRV which has a 3rd seat with Isofix between the front passenger and driver seats, but they are pretty hard to find now. Most manufactures of cars and car seats will tell you what conbinations of the car/car seats have been crash-tested and found to be safe. Another option is to shop around for narrow car seats. There's a huge variation in size on the market. Failing that, there is a seat called the multimac that seat 3/4 children and can fit into most cars. It's very expensive, tho. Feel free to pm for more info if you like. I'm abit out of date, but must have spent days researching this!

This always sounded great to me, in theory, but I think that you actually have to register as a childminder to do this if you want it to be all above board. At least, that is the case if you look after the other child in your house. I think that if you go to the other house then you are OK not to register with Ofsted, but I'm not 100% on that. Good luck finding someone else to share with, it sounds like a perfect childcare option if you can make it work.

Don't know if you are still following this thread, but the distance was down to 636m this year.

I use the PAYE Basic software from HMRC. Takes me about 5 mins a month and cost nothing. HMRC helpline are also great if you have problems and only cost as much as the phone call.

I had two home births on dry land, but I would still say that a pool is a worthwhile investment for the fist time. First time around we planned to use the pool, but a combination of a very fast labour and a very old boiler meant that we didn't get it full in time. I did get in after the birth to clean up, and remember finding the sensation amazingly relaxing. I think a water birth could be amazing. Second time we didn't evn try to get a pool inflated and filled because it all happened too fast. But even without a pool I found that my home births made labour easy to cope with. I'm not saying that it was a barrel of laughs or anything, just that being at home made me relax and go with the flow, so I always felt like I was in control and calm. The 45m labour probably helped, though :)

13 months in, and baby #2 hardly ever sleeps through the night. Total contrast to baby #1, who was 11 weeks (yes, weeks - not months!!!) when he started sleeping through all night. I breastfed/feed both on demand, so I couldn't tell you why they are so different. The most important thing is for you to enjoy the time you have with your children. Don't try to conform to societal norms if it doesn't fit in with how you want to rear your children. Anyway, there are more gentle sleep training methods than cry-it-out. Try the no-cry sleep solution or the baby whisperer.

If you think you could have mastitis, I'd urge you to see a GP as soon as you possibly can. You could need antibiotics and untreated mastitis can cause real problems (not just for breastfeeding but for your general health as well). For other feeding issues, Southwark has loads of breastfeeding "cafes" which as drop in advice sessions for breasfeeding. From memory, there is one at the church on Barry Road near Lordship Lane, but I don't know what day and time.

Mixing milk is fine. I expressed for the milk bank at Kings, and they had specific rules about it (like freezing the first milk, then cooling the second before adding it so the first milk didn't defrost). For my own healthy full-term babies I just expressed into a new bottle, then mixed it into the exisiting milk. I did it that way because I was paranoid that my helpful toddler would somehow knock over and spill the milk I'd expressed, and so keeping at least some of it our of reach in the fridge was more reassuring for me... I have the most hilarious video of my son "expressing" milk when he mangaged to get hold of my breast pump off the draining board after I'd washed it but not put it away. It's amazing how interested they are in the whole thing.

I wouldn't panic too much about the day away at work. She sounds very similar to my little girl, who as never really accepted a bottle from me (because there was something better on offer) but would be OK with it if I was out of the house. By OK, I mean that she would take enough not to be starving hungry, but she'd always be pretty ravenous when I got home. I found that temperature was a major factor with her, and if the milk wasn't sopt on body temperature it was much harder to persuade her to drink it. Good luck, and enjoy your day back at work :)

Chill and let your baby's appetite guide you. Children won't starve themsleves. Don't make life hard on yourself by putting loads of effort into purees that he won't eat, so try to stick to things that are low effort to prepare so that the rejection isn't so annoying. You could give BLW a try, which is less stressful as you just give them the same food as the rest of the family, at the same time as the family (but obvuously no salt or choking hazards like nuts). It might also encourage your son to try eating a bit more because a 6 month old loves copying. The other thing to remind yourself of is that this is "only a phase" :) and that many babies are only on milk still at your son's age so his nutritional needs will be being met even without other foods. Good luck!

The MMR is now known to be one of the safest vaccines (i.e. lowest rates of side effects), as the Andrew Wakefield controversy has caused a lot of follow-up studies. It's also very effective. That said, if there is a *medical* reason for using single jabs, your GP can order them in to you local pharmacy by prescribing them to your child. You only have to go private if your are choosing single jabs for personal rather than medical reasons. Also, anyone wanting impartial advice should try the practice nurse at Elm Lodge Surgery in Herne Hill. She is fantastically knowledgeable about child vaccination.

I contacted Bugaboo via the website contact form, and corresponded by email. I don't have the email address any more though.

I'd try contacting bugaboo - they are meant to have wonderful customer service and replaced my second-hand cameleon frame for me. I only got the Phil&Teds when I had a second baby and hated it compared to the Bugaboo!!

I had a really bad experience with buggypitstop and my Phil&Teds. It was away for 6 weeks and in the end never fixed. Also, buggypitstop lost the buggy for a while. When I mentioned this at Peppermint the manager there said that he was considering leaving buggypitstop because of the number of problems that he had seen! So I'd say, use with caution...

I tried All Fired Up for my Grandmother's 92nd birthday present and it ended in disaster as the plate with the footprints on wasn't fired in time (though it should have been) and now that I have it, it isn't great as there are massive ridges of glaze on it from the firing that they did. I wouldn't risk it for such a "big" birthday, but that's enough of that as I've already had one rant on the EDF :) For my Mum and Dad's 60th (which are in the same week), we got all the family togther for the day, then the adults went out together in the evening. My parents really valued the time with their family above anything else.

I use a fishing tackle box. Lots of little compartments that concertina out when you open the box and also a big space at the bottom for the more generic and boring lego bits :)

DON'T go to All Fired Up!! I've been there a couple of times and it has not worked out well... See my other post on the forum. If you're willing to go to Herne Hill, the Florence is great and has a play room for children. Also, on a practical note, at All Fired Up there are no comfy chairs or anything for the 37+ week pregnant ladies to relax in. And as for the non-Britishness of baby showers, who cares? If you and your friend want to do it, then I'd say that's a good enough reason. I was going to have one for baby #1, but he inconveniantly showed up early and 2 days before the planned shower. Given that it was a home birth, I guess that we could have deflated the birth pool and gone ahead anyway, but we didn't in the end.

Hi all, I'm posting here to share my appalling experience at All Fired Up. I am seriously disappointed and will never be going there again. First time I went there, I painted a tea pot but was only told afterwards, and after I had paid, that the kiln was broken. It took 3 weeks to get the tea pot fired. Despite that, I thought that I would give them the benefit of the doubt and try a second time. My saga started about 6 weeks ago, when my Grandmother was coming visit. I thought it would be nice to take all her great-grandchildren to make her a present. The staff initially were confident that they could fire anything that we painted so that it would be ready a week later for her visit - so off we went to do our painting. While we were there, the staff were really helpful in getting the footprints and hand prints onto the plate, cup and bowl for my Grandmother. In total, we painted a large plate, a cup, a bowl and a T-Rex. Although the painting part was fun, everything else has been a nightmare. Only the T-rex was ready on the day they said it would be, but as I had called in advance of going to collect, I was promised that the remaining items would be fired the next day. They were not. So, the plate, cup and bowl for my Grandmother were not ready for her visit. The problems did not stop there. The cup got lost. The bowl was splattered with someone else's paint. The staff offered to remove the spatters from the bowl, but the tool they needed to do that was not available. When it finally arrived, they removed about half the splatters of paint, but there are still lots left on the white background of the bowl. The cup was found, but it also has flaws in the glaze and splatters of other paint on it. I have never received any kind of apology. The manager refused to give me a refund, but offered a gift voucher of the whole value of my items. I spoke to the head office, who then over-ruled the manager and only offered a 50% gift voucher. This is my second trip to All Fired Up, and both times there have been serious delays and problems. I will never go there again. So, PM me if you want a 29 pound gift voucher and want to take the risk of going there to paint some pottery.

I run/cycle to and from work (about 6 miles each way). Cuts down on the commute time too... Good luck!

This is really tricky. I wouldn't get rid of the cats, though. I'm allergic to dust and so are my Dad and siblings. We always had streaming noses and on and off asthma and it's not like you can get rid of dust... In the long run though, you can minimise the problem. If you get a vacuum with a pet-hair filter and vacuum daily, and also encourage you little one not to go near the cats and don't let them in his room, you could reduce the problem that way and still keep your cats.

When we've been on a long night flight, we rigged up blankets between the baby's seat and the seat in front to make a dark tent over him. He was then in a dark room, with nothing exciting to look at and in a familiar car seat, grow bag, with teddy etc. and slept for about 8 hours. Obviously, this is only going to work if the little one has a seat. Also, we took washable pens and lots of paper wich provided endless entertainment (until drawing on the seats got more fun than drawing on the paper)...

The main thing with baby led weening is that you don't start at a specific age, you start once your baby can sit fairly well in a high chair, has good co-ordination for salf feeding and has a real interest in food. I didn't start with my son until closer to 7 and a half months because he showed no interest in anything except milk until then. I did use a high chair and a mat that stuck to the table with suction cups (to contain the mess a bit) and also a big peice of clear plastic sheet under the high chair. The other thing to bear in mind is that some times your baby will eat tons (I'm not kidding!) and other times just won't eat anything at all. Go with the flow... Now at 18 months my son is a very tidy eater - at last - and feeds himself with a spoon and fork eating the same food as us at most meal times. It seems to have worked really well for him. Good luck and enjoy!!