Yak

Strawbs, I am still very much a new mama (only 4 months in) but I've found that there's any number of gadgets and gizmos that you can buy (new or on the forum / ebay), rent or borrow to help with babylife. I suspect much depends on your attitude to gadgets in general in your life; some people like having a lot of kit, some people like getting by with the bare minimum, and the vast majority of people, I suspect, fall somewhere between the two. So don't feel pressurised into getting "stuff" if you are not a "stuff" person; equally if you want to get things to help you and your partner feel more prepared to cope with the arrival of your little one, then go for it!

This blog (written by a local-ish mum and her sister) is full of lovely ideas for grown up and toddler food. They even have an "under 5 minute" category.... http://crumbsfeedyourfamily.blogspot.com/

Agree with all the above - worth looking at "normal" clothes and staying in them as long as possible, in my experience! A lot will depend on your body shape and where your bump sits on you, but at 4/5 months pregnant an elegant, long dress (possibly in one size bigger) from a regular retailer might work well. Or Asos has an online maternity collection which isn't too expensive or frumpy. But it might not be dressy enough for a posh dinner. I second the suggstion to buy some nice accessories - by the time your are 9 months pregnant the only way to feel and look half decent is by wearing necklaces and brooches etc!

Call me the worst mother in the world, but I never warm yaklet's EMB - at the start I was a bit worried about him preferring the bottle over the boob and/or suffering nipple confusion so I tried to keep the two types of milk feeds as distinct as possible. And in the longer term it meant that my husband can feed him on the go from a bottle without worrying about what temp the milk is. Having said that, I know other babies have refused bottles unless the milk is nice and warm..... Just my experience if you want to count the pennies!

Thanks Marlene but we really need to use valet parking because amount of stuff and people we will be travelling with. Does anyone have any companies to recommend (or ones to avoid)?

Thanks, everyone. So far we are having success with disposables plus motherease nappy & wrap. Poor little yaklet is basically like a weeble but it stops the 4am laundry. I have bought the next size up in case its that, but call me tightfisted I'm keen to use the supplies we have! Also if baby f is just going up to a size 3 I'd be astounded if his playmate needed a bigger size than him :) Cannot quite believe that I started a thread about wee. The glamour of parenting, eh?

We only have the one so far, but that took years and years to get there. So already I feel like we are very blessed. Mr Yak is an only child (his brother died aged 6 wks old) and his parents have separated with have no other family to look after them. I can see how hard it is for him to be the sole and only next of kin to ageing parents, both of whom have particularly demanding needs. So he'd ideally like more, as would I. Having said how hard we found it concieve, there was a time earlier on this year when I thought I was going to have to start a thread titled "how to cope with two under one....."!

Really interesting thread and observations. It has always struck me as a bit odd that we / they / the "experts etc seem to expect all babies to need the same amount of sleep and the same amount of food. Surely that makes as much sense as expecting all adults to sleep and eat the same. I think maternity nurses can be a god send (particularly to twin mums - the 4 sets of twins I know have used doulas/mothers helps/maternity nurses for the first month or two) but ultimately I suspect much really depends on the child's own eating and sleeping habits and the parent's attitude to those habits, as alieh says.

Agh how horrible! You have my sympathies. How long did it take from applying a bit of tough love with toddler sb for his sleep to improve? Are there grandparents / friends who could have him to stay for a couple of nights so you can focus on getting baby sb's sleep better, if that's what you want to do, without fear of toddler sb getting involved in the act too?

Don't know if you tried the Sally Army today Ruth, but my sources tell me its closed for the hols still, and not sure when in Sept it will restart. The 185 also goes to the Horniman from the McDonald's stop in Camberwell so hopefully both double buggies can get on one bus! Might be worth taking slings for little ones too so they can stare at the fish etc in the aquarium.

How about 3 onwards? Will pm my address...

Susyp, you sound like a wonderful woman and mother. I can't believe how hard it must have been to write that post, let alone endure what you experienced. Well done on taking what must have been an incredibly hard step to take. I suspect the hardest thing might be to understand - however hard it may be to really take on board - is that it is absolutely not your fault, or the fault of your daughter, that your husband absued you. And it is absolutely not your fault that you had cancer. It is his fault, and his alone, that he was abusive. He certainly does need help. Could you contact someone at Womensaid in the first instance? If you find it hard to speak to someone in person, could you email this thread and/or print it off and show it to them? In the meantime, do you have a trusted friend or relative who could come and stay with you for a while? It might help to have someone around who you and your daughter can trust for when you feel wobbly. You sound incredibly brave and you are doing absolutely the right thing for you, for your daughter, and also probably for your husband in the long run, even if at times it feels like it wasn't the right choice to make. xxx

G & B sounds good. Failing that, you'd be welcome to come over to yaklet towers for rolling space....

The directgov website has a pretty decent summary of what happens at the end of ML here. __________________________________________________________ Giving notice of your return to work Your employer will assume that you will take all 52 weeks of your Statutory Maternity Leave. If you take the full 52 weeks, you don?t need to give notice that you are coming back. However, it can be a good idea to do so. If you wish to return earlier, for example, when your Statutory Maternity Pay ends, you must give at least eight weeks? notice. If you don't, your employer can insist that you don?t return until the eight weeks have passed. You must tell your employer that you: are returning to work early want to change the date of your return If you decide not to return to work at all, you must give your employer notice in the normal way. ___________________________________________________________ You don't have to give notice of when you would like to start your ML til much closer to your due date - 15 weeks before your baby is due. The employer will probably want confirmation of your pregnancy anyway via your MATB1 form, which you should be given by your midwife at around 22 weeks. I also worked in a small team where no one had ever gone on ML before and I remember feeling quite pressured into having to commit to things at a very early stage in the pregancy. While I would suggest being empathetic to your employer's situation, at the end of the day it's their responsibility to find cover for you and to ensure that the contractual arrangements they put in place with your cover minimises their liabilities to pay "double".

Horniman, if not too far by bus? Or the sally army playgroup on lomond grove? I've not been but my Camberwell friends with babies & toddlers rate it highly.

Thanks everyone for your replies - just back from gp to rule out infections etc and he's been given a clean bill of health. I didn't know about the diabetes issue so will take him back if I still am worried. I think I'd be more concerned if he was weeing loads in the day too, but it seems ok on that front. In the meantime i'll go up a nappy size and just tie it tightly round his lanky legs. Poor blighter doesn't have a lot of chub on his thighs..... Once again the collective wisdom of the forum comes up trumps!

He's bf - takes five full feeds (from both breasts) during the day - not sure how much that is but I express first & last thing to get enough for his dreamfeed. he certainly is distractable during the day - even the "chink" of me putting down a glass of water is enough to break the spell & start the gummy grins & giggles. I now mostly feed him in the semi-darkness & that's helped him to get enough not to wake up hungry in the night. He started doing that last week after previously sleeping through the night from about 12 wks Maybe the dreamfeed is just too easy to glug down.... I suppose I'm loathe to reduce it in case we go back to night feeds again. I do realise how extremely lucky I am not to have to do them regularly as I suspect a lot of babies his age are still regularly feeding in the night! Oh, and he's teething too, in case that has any effect.

Pretty suddenly, the yaklet is waking up sodden in the night. He's 4 months and has always been a champion wee-er, but til recently he would go in one nappy from 7 til 7 no probs. However, now he has already leaked by the time of his dreamfeed at 11 and for the past couple of nights at 3/4/5 am. Apart from his dreamfeed he's not really having any milk at night (hurrah, that seems to have passed for now) - but I do tank him up in the early evening & he has up to 9 oz /260 ml at 11. Nappy wise, so far we have used: Two pampers stay dry one inside the other Little lamb with boosters & wrap - both microfibre and cotton Little lambs as above with motherease wrap But all to no avail - tonight I started thinking the roof over his cot must be leaking, he was so wet! Tomorrow I'll try the pampers with a motherease wrap and are what happens. Any other suggestions? He also has loads of nappy free time during the day, so I'm wondering if that's having an effect. But surely that degree of wee control would be pretty unusual, right? Any bright ideas?

Can anyone recommend a meet and greet car company at Stansted airport before I resort to googling and just going for the cheapest? Thanks!

Gah- it's only open in the mornings for coffee etc, not afternoons. How about House or the South London Gallery?

Can now do Wed too if that's better for everyone? And is anyone else around or is it just the SE5/SE15 crew? If so I might suggest checking out the Crooked Well.... - lots of sofas and space for the little ones. No changing table but changing mat in the disabled loo on the ground floor.

Sounds good. We're free on tues am and possibly weds am too. The wooden circle playgroup is also on this week if anyone fancies that?

Second the recommendation for epi-no. All I can say is that it's German & very, um, efficient!

A friend who was made redundant shortly after the birth of his very disabled son is currently half way through a nursing degree and loving it. If Mr B wanted to chat about what it's like being a mature male student (and pretty much the only one in his cohort!) I'm sure he would be happy to do so. I still dream about being a piano teacher or garden designer, or going down the academic / lecturing route in my current field. As much as I really love what I do at present, I don't want to be doing it for the next 30/40 years. God, how depressing that I'm that far off retirement.

Yes, the 5am agricultural noises do pass eventually. We used to do a GTU = a Grunty Top-up feed at 5am to help the yaklet poo. It took his mind off trying to get the poo out & was certainly better than listening to the otherwise endless dawn chorus. He grew out of it after a few weeks. Could you pop her on the landing outside your room, to shield you from hearing every single grunt & groan? Or would she be more likely to disturb Seb there?