hellosailor

think it's usually tuesdays 9:30 -12:30

It might be quite a nice thing if people know there is someone older, or frailer, on their street who might feel intimidated by door knocking / potential for tricks, to invite them round that evening so they're not home alone, whether that's for a Halloween-less evening or to have a slice of pumpkin pie if you're making something fun of it! I know my mum isn't alone in feeling quite anxious that night, my gran used to be scared s*itless when people rang her bell on Halloween, even if it is all harmless fun outside, I think sometimes it's hard for people who feel vulnerable to differentiate between the sounds of high jinks and something that sounds more threatening. And actually, something like egging the windows, or coming up through the bushes in the front garden with masks on and pressing faces against her windows, has really scared my mum before.. don't want to sound like a killjoy! Certainly not saying that people shouldn't have fun on Halloween! Just that trick or treating strangers houses unless they have a pumpkin out, maybe isn't such a great thing..

My mum is frail and lives near us in East D and I have taken to inviting her round to ours on Halloween in recent times as there were way too many groups of teenagers wearing scream masks (prob 13 - 15 ish) trick or treating her and asking for money, not sweets. Trouble is, you only know if it's groups like that, rather than little kids with parents asking for chocs when it's too late and you've gone to the door. And my mum was finding that if she turned back without answering because she was intimidated the teenage groups could see her in the hall cos there are glass panels in her front door, and played 'tricks' because she hadn't come and given them stuff. Tricks being eggs thrown against windows etc. I do worry about vulnerable people living on their own being quite intimidated on Halloween. Definitely seems best to only go to houses that have pumpkins or friends houses, that's what we did when we were little, just went to a couple of friends houses, and we were totally chuffed with that, still got to dress up, eat chocolates etc.

lots of thanks for your advice jollybaby, Fuschia, Cuppa tea and KatsuQueen, will be using these tips and trying to relax about it...while repeating the mantra 'everything's a phase!....'

yes yes jollybaby!!! She has simultaneously just started to resist being put into her buggy!! I think you're onto something! Relieved miss jb was doing similar stuff at 8 months...maybe it'll all come out in the wash, as it were....

Lochie I don't think that's a stupid question at all! I've always wondered the same thing! I didn't take ear plugs because for some reason they have never 'worked' on me and I have always been able to hear everything while wearing them (funny shaped ear canals perhaps?!) but I have heard stories from friends who said that a nurse had to wake them up because their baby was crying! Having said that, I can't imagine with everything going on on William Gilliat ward that there would be a situation where you would be sleeping so soundly that you wouldn't hear your baby! Unless others have had a good sleep there with ear plugs?

Thanks jollybaby and Fuschia - I actually bought the baby bjorn spoons yesterday as I remembered Fuschia having mentioned them on another thread! I was hoping that the short length of the handle would help but having had several attempts with them yesterday, they were actually less effective for getting food into her than a normal weaning spoon cos the surface of the bjorn spoon is shinier than a rubber spoon and the food slips off waaaay before it reaches her face!! Jollybaby, there is nothing else to suggest that she is coming down with a virus so far, but I will watch for other signs in case this explains the overnight turnaround..similarly, she has no teeth and I can't see one coming but perhaps one will pop through all of a sudden! it does lift my spirits to hear that miss jb went through phases like this and then took food from a spoon again - were the phases always linked to a virus or teething or did they ever happen for no apparent reason? (she said, hopefully...) Fuschia, you're right, I will of course up her milk intake to replace foods if necessary, don't want her to feel hungry, but just wish she'd go back to scarfing down the (zillions) of pots of food I have made for her in the freezer...

Sorry - another thread about weaning..would appreciate any advice! My baby is 8 months old and has been eating 3 pretty hearty meals a day for some weeks. Since this has been established she has been for some time on just half a bottle of milk before breakfast, (with the second half mixed in with porridge or cereal) a bottle mid afternoon, and a bottle before bed, in other words the daily 20oz required at this age but not more. She has always cheerfully eaten pretty much whatever I've cooked for her and fed her with a spoon, chicken casseroles, fish pies, macaroni cheese, lentil bakes etc, as well as finger foods. Overnight 4 days ago she won't open her mouth for food, at least not after the first couple of mouthfuls. Sometimes any attempt to feed her makes her angry and upset (obviously I don't keep trying if this happens!) Other times, and I know this isn't ideal, if you make her chortle, play aeroplanes, pretend to be snaffling it yourself etc, you can get her to eat quite a lot of the bowl by, well, let's face it, trickery. I don't really want to resort to this if she is now going to be resisting spoon feeding permanently. There are exceptions - you can still spoon feed her macaroni cheese and she opens her mouth with gusto - so there are obviously some foods that she likes so much she is still prepared to be fed! But she can't have macaroni cheese for every meal.. She will however still feed herself, which is great, but this is the bit I can't quite get to grips with..... she is obviously not at all as dexterous at feeding herself as I am at feeding her and therefore is suddenly consuming a LOT less than she is used to! I very much want to be able to relax about this and adopt a 'food before one is just for fun' attitude, but I guess I don't understand how - unless your 8 month old baby is still on a lot of milk feeds a day, or feeds during the night to make up the calories, or is breast fed on demand, food can be 'just' for fun, when only a matter of days ago it was the bulk of what was sustaining her? She doesn't want to settle for her lunchtime nap as she doesn't have milk before lunch, is just used to having a carby meal, but now she's smearing that meal over her neck, dropping it on the floor, pinging it off the spoon like a catapult instead of letting me feed it to her, so she is too hungry to settle. Do I just start re introducing milk feeds? This feels odd and...the well worn phrase....like we'd be going backwards.. Similarly, she woke at 5:30 am today and could not be settled back to sleep, she was clearly hungry, which is what I presumed would happen when we got to the end of yesterday with her having consumed a fraction of what she is used to consuming for the last 2 months when I feed her? I know that people say reassuringly that babies who feed themselves will take enough and if they want it they'll eat it, and if they don't want it, they won't, but that doesn't seem to factor in that quite a lot of the time they may be trying to get it into their mouths and missing/dropping it/crushing it to nothing in their fist before it reaches their mouth? Just watched her try to feed herself a bowl of porridge except she always gripped the porridge end of the spoon and put the handle in her mouth...at the end of the 'meal' she hadn't eaten any porridge... She clearly isn't taking what she needs because she is hungry and not sleeping well as a result? If I had started with BLW from day one then I guess this wouldn't stress me, but I'm finding it really hard adjusting overnight to the fact that my daughter is only eating a small percentage of what she was, and not because she is less hungry, but because she doesn't yet have the physical capability to feed herself what she would like to consume. Half an hour or 45 mins of trying to spoon her usual bowl of porridge into her own mouth, or use her hands, maybe results in her having managed to swallow a few spoonfuls - I was brought up in a very 'waste not want not' family and my heart sinks every time I have to throw away a bowl of weetabix with hardly a dent in it, or clean whole contents of a bowl of weetabix off the floor instead of seeing it disappearing into her tummy. How can I relax and go along with her for the ride, while getting her to eat enough to satisfy her hunger and settle at sleep times? edited to say that she has just cried and cried and refused to go down for her morning nap because she is hungry, having not managed to get most of her breakfast in her mouth, but having not let me feed her...:'(

zeban Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No problem. I've made my point! Yep, yep, you sure schooled us there Zeban - thank god there are people with the twin credentials of being childless and childish to tell us the score about motherhood. My theory, for what it's worth, is that fed up with having to hold your tongue at perceived slights by the '4X4 driving' mummies in the Clapham hairdressers in which you're currently training, lest you get the sack, you have to scurry home and vent your spleen against the faceless mothers here in the family room. But then I don't have an 'academic background' in psychology like you do so I'm probably wrong.

------------------------------------------------------- > Zeban, you're a hoot. You're betraying your > ignorance of the realities of life with a baby > with every word you're posting on this thread > which makes me quite concerned of your implication > that you're in some line of work or research in > this area & consider yourself to have credentials. > Scary stuff. > Don't worry Sillywoman, out of interest in her implied credentials just had a look back at Zeban's previous posts and her academic background is that she 'went to uni and did a post grad' changed her mind about teacher training, and she's now a trainee hairdresser....don't think she'll be advising the government on anything child related anytime soon ;-)

you can get those for adult women too Sillywoman! look!

zeban Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So it is a fashion accessory then?! You've just > admitted as much although you got immediately > upset when someone else suggested it, because they > were judging you! I guess they were judging you > right, maybe it's that that bothers you all so > much > > I think I've come to the conclusion now from > reading this thread though that many Mum's with > bugaboos are just frustrated, unhappy, and bored > middle class stay at home Mum's who wish they > could buy a pair of really expensive shoes and go > back to their old lives but buy a really expensive > buggy instead because they can no longer jusify > buying the shoes to their husbands and to the > other Mum's ;-) Zeban, I don't think I'd previously grasped that you actually don't have any children. The fact that you always seem to talk such piffle about parenthood always used to baffle me, as I presumed you did have children, but were simply bringing them up on a different planet to the rest of us. I suspect that someone who harbours such bile towards mothers may have some personal sadness that we aren't privy too (if not, your frequent vitriol towards mothers on this discussion board and yes amyw - this would be what we call trolling - is pretty pitiful) I would like to extend a invitation to you to come to my flat, I shall ask some friends with a variety of different buggies to come too, and then you can try to get up my narrow flight of stairs with each buggy, including my bee, and then you can say which one you'd buy if you lived in my flat and if you ever, heaven forfend, have children. Are you game? Into the bargain you could disprove my suspicion that you are in fact a 5 foot 2" computer programmer called Colin who still lives with his mum and spends all his time playing with conkers in a room papered with superman wallpaper? ;-)

Strawbs, they definitely did stock these in the pharmacy that moved from LL to Melbourne Grove at the end very near ED station (day lewis?) so worth trying there if you haven't already checked and I thought I'd seen them in the co-op pharmacy but perhaps I was imagining it if you didn't find them in there? As others have said in the thread, I also thought I wouldn't use the disposable paper knickers as they would make me feel weird and like an invalid but they were brilliant in the first week or two and then I switched to my supply of cheapo big primark knickers so is good to have both And yes the kings maternity pads are much better than any you can buy so if they bring you some don't refuse them on the grounds you have packed your own, take them gladly! but the boots ones come a close second!

Better than what Dot Cotton grapples with on a daily basis!

> (HelloSailor - I'm feeling depressed that people > judge mothers by their buggies too. It is really > mean-spirited, do you judge my child on the > clothes he/she wears too? How awful) Grim isn't it! I've found motherhood has enough challenges and stuff to make your confidence falter inbuilt, without having to worry that someone's decided you're a superficial tool simply because of what you're pushing before even speaking to you!

Oh I love this, it's so true! I've definitely had to persuade Mr.Hellosailor into a few 'essentials' that were oh so not essential! though there has been very little we've bought that we haven't found useful, even if it did seem overkill at the time. Still cannot believe that these exist though - a step too far methinks!

It's not the same but this is similar laundry bag and these are sweet and this and this too! and this love this one

The bee is a good buy if you don't have much space, as Jennyh says, and as amydown says it's great if you use the bus a lot especially if that's the only option as you don't drive. If you live somewhere where you will have to carry your buggy up and down a flight of stairs it's an extremely practical buy - I don't think there is another buggy that I could manage to haul up our narrow staircase several times a day. And without wishing to sound like a doom-mongerer, a post baby body may not have the lifting capability of a pre baby body, my gynae physio at kings is constantly urging me not to lift the bee let alone a heavier buggy! The whole 'fashion statement' or 'status symbol' aspect of this thread makes me feel a little downcast I must say - presuming to judge someone just by the choice of buggy they have, like a piece of baby equipment in some way defines who you are as a mum, seems just another slightly mean spirited way to bash other women for their choice of pushchair, of all things!

eye mask is good, they don't turn all the lights off on the ward. And what Saffron says is true - we didn't really pack anything for Mr Hellosailor to eat and I'm not sure raw jelly cubes were really cutting it for him 16 hours in! A water spray for your face the best maternity pads I found were the boots ones, and you definitely need actual maternity pads, super sanitary towels won't cut the mustard. spare batteries if you're taking a TENS machine, don't want those puppies cutting out half way through. either disposable paper knickers from boots etc or buy a few pairs of cheapo primark big pants. thin dressing gown cos it's like the Sahara in there but you'll want to cover up when you potter around lip balm and moisturiser little baby hat for when you take the baby home exciting!

hospital bag thread

Couldn't agree more. My mum was a single parent - my dad walked out on their marriage for another woman when me and my brother were babies (premature twins, and pretty high maintenance!) and I'm ashamed to say that before having my own baby this year I always found the fact that she struggled to cope (she had a breakdown) rather hard to reconcile in my head - I didn't quite get it, because I remember vividly her unravelling before our eyes, even though I was a baby I can remember it clearly, and I'm embarrassed to admit that when she used to talk about it in subsequent years I used to think 'Couldn't she have held it together better if she'd tried a bit harder?' I feel very humble when I think of this now, and can't believe I thought my mum had been weak to go under somewhat with all that going on, when I struggled to cope for the first couple of months of parenthood with the full support of my partner, and only one, perfectly healthy baby. Sorry, didn't mean to come over all grave! But do feel an idiot for not getting it until I had my own baby.

thanks Molly, that's great. And thanks for the tip about the merino wool grobags Shaunag - they sound lovely!

Yes, there are lots of pregnant women who are with dmc who don't get a place with the lanes so think it is very unlikely you would get one, even if technically possible, without being a patient there, so prob you should change to dmc to be in with the best chance...

thank you everyone - the oil filled radiator is a genius idea!! Like Susan, would be interested in which one people got from Argos And snowboarder, thanks, yes I do check the back of the neck and chest rather than hands as they are little ice blocks all year round aren't they?!

Hi Pickle, thanks for replying, We've had her in all sorts of different layers (or lack of!) over the months - our gro egg regularly read 32 degs in our room in the summer! But she wriggles around so much in her sleep that a blanket does not stay on, so that's not really an option which is a bugger. I might put her in a warmer grobag tonight (technically she was in 2.5 tog last night but it is very old and not puffy anymore so prob not anything like what a new 2.5 feels like) and see if that makes her less hot at bedtime than vest/sleepsuit/grobag combo that was too hot! There's always some conundrum isn't there?!