Fuschia

If he usually has that 10am feed after a nap, I'd substitute it with a meal with milk in a cup... then later do the same with the 2pm feed perhaps...

Siduhe Wrote: > They are now publicly committed to building new > pools on the Dartmouth Road site, starting > straightaway. They are also publicly committed to > retaining the frontage block of the old pools > building as part of the new building." That sounds good... would be great if there was a learner pool there, now it's virtually impossible to get in to the one at p Pulse

What's Forest Hill like?

I was just thinking... while trying to resettle the two snotty ones... If he has milk early in the morning, i wouldn't meddle with that... but do the main solids meal after his first nap... so brunch is a good starting point... and you can still do milk before afternoon nap... trying to do a 9am breakfast is hard in my experience as it's too close to their first milk of the day... and then later in the morning they're tired.. hence solids best offered after a nap...

NHS advice http://www.breastfeeding.nhs.uk/en/materialforclients/downloads/leaflet_3.pdf "From about nine months, offer your baby: three to four servings of starchy food each day..three to four servings of fruit and vegetables..two servings of meat, fish, eggs, dhal or other pulses. By now your baby should be learning to fit in with the family by eating three minced or chopped meals a day as well as milk. Your baby may also like healthy snacks such as fruit or toast in between meals."

The straining is just the gut getting used to passing solids, i think. When you see how much comes out the other end basically undigested (sweetcorn or raisins!) you can see what hard work they have passing it through. I have seen whole grapes in twin II's poo... I wouldn't have thought her little bottom would let something that big get out! (TMI) I think the HVs are rather wedded to the old way of doing things and BLW is a bit of a foreign concept. Good luck, if you're not really a lunchy person, try a brunch together. xxx

PS, it does get easier. The first 6w of weaning are hardest as you're still doing all the milk thing, plus solids on top... it IS a bit of a nightmare.

2-3 meals? Nonsense. The HVs haven't really got to grips with the 6m weaning thing, have they? I know somewhere it says you now have a narrow window of opportunity between starting weaning aT 6M and children needing to replenish iron stores and sample a wide variety of foods by 7m, but really, common sense must prevail! I never managed to combine the milk along with solids thing, and esp not with the twins (would have taken forever) and always just carried on breastfeeding on demand in between meals. Started with a sort of brunch and then added in a pile of stuff for them to play with while we had our dinner, to keep them quiet... and then at some point brunch became lunch and they began to have breakfast as soon as they got up... all much easier when you can just pop food on their trays and get on with your own meal. If he's getting constipated, probably he's having a bit too much solids... is he breastfed or ff? Breastmilk has a very laxative effect, in my experience. If not bf, give plenty of water and fruit to keep things moving (not bananas) They do strain a bit at first to manage the more grown up poos. I'd offer the solids at the time that suits you best... the lazy parent way is to give them what you're having (allergies allowing) and eat together, which encourages them to try the new stuff. Ideas: sliced nectarine, raspberries, grated cheese (if not worried about dairy) breadsticks and hummous (if not worried about gluten) Penne pasta with tomato sauce or pesto (ditto re gluten/dairy/tomatoes)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6732389.ece "The idea that women are not aiming high enough is outdated. As one terrible tragedy showed this week, balance is all"

Peckham Pulse is nice.

Son no 1 was an awful napper and frequent night waker... but now, at 6 yo, he has bullet proof sleep. Even if the alarm goes off, he doesn't stir, never gets up before 7 and can be carried from room to room in his sleep. He slept with me and bf on demand till he was 2+ then MrF took him at night for a while and broke the association between bf and sleep... he did cry and fuss while DP soothed him, but he was cross rather than distressed... once that was sorted, he never looked back. He does sometimes get in and out of bed 100 times wanting a drink, a wee, etc, but all children do that. So we had 2 years of constant waking... then ever since he has been great. I can live with that. It's not endless. As they grow up, children develop adult sleep patterns anyway, and drop the short sleep cycles and frequent waking.

You might find that just night weaning is enough to bring back your periods... and if the worse comes to the worst, and he's still bf when you conceive, your milk will probably dry up or change taste and he may self wean at about 4/5m pg. That's nature's way... though some mums continue bf all the way through or start again after birth and tandem feed. Self weaning is of course the very gentle way... one step back from that is "don't offer, don't refuse" and the more proactive approach is to cut out feeding in certain circumstances (eg before naps) by changing the whole routine, easiest done if you're on holiday or the dad is around for a week or so, you can just institute a new routine for eg dad taking him out in the buggy at naptime, to break the association. This is the best advice I've seen about night weaning. There's no way, i think, of stopping the lovely "wake and have a little bit of milk then drift off again holding on to mummy's boob" without the baby getting a bit cross, sadly. But this article is a gentle and realistic approach: http://www.drjaygordon.com/development/ap/sleep.asp I'd add in things like adding a soothing CD, blanket etc to your bedtime routine for a few weeks so that you can keep those cues as support while you make bf less central.

Not a habit.. but twin II spotted some rabbit like pellets of baby poo when I was changing twin I's nappy and swooped in and scoffed some before I could stop her :-( takes reccyling to a new level!

The Nappy Lady Wrote: I remember someone saying it is also > linked to key development stages when they are > trying to master a new skill. http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/02/qa_what_are_sle.html

citizenED Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Licking a tissue to wipe a dirty face - isn't that > what you're supposed to do? How about, lick a > tissue to wipe dirty face, then turn it over to > wipe dirty hands. as long as you don't use it on their bottom first!

snowboarder Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- As you may be noting he's > not easy..modes of transport that babies > traditionally find soporific don't fool him. My first one was the same...the good thing is, he used all the extra awake time to learn... talked early, learnt to read early, is very clever (but oh so wearing!)

What are your worst confessions? I must confess to occasionally wiping a passing snotty nose on the inside of my pj top... Also frequently retrieving food from the dining room floor, picking off the cat hair and giving it back to the original owner...

Moos Wrote: Or a > don'twipethatonmyshirtohGodtoolate.... Rofl. I'm going to start a thread on most disgusting habits we have.. I must confess to occasionally wiping a passing snotty nose on the inside of my pj top...

It's very nice if you're stuck indoors with a clutch of snotty infants having only had only a few hours of sleep...

Hope this isn't going too much off topic, SB! Not sure whether I should start a new thread, but just remembered this study into the effect of different models of babycare, on crying levels: http://bawlingbabies.blogspot.com/2006/07/comfort-babies-rather-than-let-them.html

Moos Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I do think that this must mean babies that are > repeatedly left to cry for prolonged periods of > time, though there's no data on how long/how often > given in the article. All babies regardless of > how gently we treat them cry and cry and cry - if > that damaged us permanently, the species would > have died out long ago. We've all paced the floor > with a screaming child trying everything we can to > get him or her to stop crying and this can happen > night after night - apparently with no ill > effects. Agreed... of course babies DO cry., we can't feel guilty about that... the thing is, adopting a policy where we're told it's alright (even necessary) to LEAVE them to cry, against our instincts, is actually bad for them. That's very different to the feelings of a baby which is crying because it's is tired ill but has someone there, comforting it. And of course, some babies do need to cry for a moment or two when over-tired (one of mine does) ... just giving him a few minutes to settle isn't wrong, he actually doesn't want to be picked up at those moments, he cries almost to tune out noise and distraction, i think.

Interesting piece re baby sleeping: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/7/T070200.asp

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1083020.ece (For anyone guilty their baby is in their bed!)

Mellors Wrote: > Surely thats not true? How does it permanently > affect brain chemistry? http://books.google.com/books?id=jDLzs0LqlawC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=stress+crying+baby+brain+chemistry&source=bl&ots=xgXtvImX-F&sig=6XuGv0y5k0d2NuOzk3WE4d4s71w&hl=en&ei=zVdxSv3tA9GfjAeB1YGrDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/should-we-leave-babies-to-cry-1700132.html WE're talking about prolonged crying with noone coming to help, as opposed to the normal crying and complaining babies use to communicate.

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