hellosailor

Am I missing a glaringly obvious solution or does everyone have this problem?! My almost 8 month old baby is having a few night wakings at the mo, and I'm sure some off them are down to the temperature having dropped over the course of the night and her waking up cold. I have not been comfortable with the idea of preemptively dressing her 'too warmly' when she goes to bed at 7, so that she is the right temperature in the colder early hours, as obv we are all mindful of the risks of overheating. Last night I went against this instinct and put her in a vest, sleepsuit and grobag for the first time in months as I knew it was going to get a lot colder during the night, but she woke an hour and a half later and was hot and sweaty, so I had to strip her completely to get the vest off (she needs to be wearing a grobag to inhibit crawling round her cot endlessly so has to get the vest off!) which of course woke her fully and had her wailing. At 4 in the morning she was awake again and wouldn't re-settle, and by now she felt cold, so I imagine it was that! This time I put a warmer grobag on her and she went back to sleep. Is there anything I can do to avoid adjusting clothes several times a night?? I think the reason that this has not been an issue before is that our room has always been on the hot side, so over spring and summer it's been very warm when she goes to bed and...just slightly less warm in the early hours, so it's only now that this is a problem...zzzzz

miracle blanket highly recommended - does what it says on the tin!

Chantelle there are 2 moses basket in the charity shop by the Palmerston at the moment by the way, (just had a brain blip about what it is - st.christopher's hospice I think) Snowboarder, we've just moved our 7 month old out of the bednest - agree, the best thing ever! Wish she could have stayed in it longer really, but she's finally got too big. She absolutely refused to take a single nap, let alone sleep at night, in a moses basket (quite unusual I think! sure I've never heard anyone else say this? she had every single nap on me for the first 10 weeks...high maintenance at the time but rather lovely looking back...) But I did find that keeping the moses basket in the kitchen and then just taking her wherever I went in it was the easiest thing, including having her in it in the bathroom while I had a shower or bath etc. Couldn't have done without it on that front.

These hair stories are just brilliant! It strikes me that parents had a more 'function over form' attitude to hair in those days! As I recalled in another thread recently, my mum was exasperated because she wanted me to have a short crop and I wanted to keep my pony tail, so one day she just came up behind me with a large pair of fabric scissors and snipped my ponytail off, leaving me looking like Joan of Arc.

istickler, how long did hamster live after this episode? Because if it was for sometime, your mum may just have made the most important breakthrough in 21st century medicine

mwahahahahaha! love these stories! Yak, yours made me remember that when I did ballet classes at the same age as tap classes (think I actually had ballet shoes for this rather than rubber soles, will check with my mum) we did a little performance and I was cast as 'a drunk'. Again, never questioned it until I just remembered it, but seriously, why would a ballet teacher cast an 8 year old girl in a leotard as 'a drunk.' Vividly recall being very jealous that my friend was playing Madonna. I don't think this would necessarily happen in 2011.

I longed for a nurse. I got a poacher. What must the other parents have thought about the strung up bunnies...

Can I just ask a quick question which is probably quite obviosu - let's say you have dropped the late morning milk feed and your baby has milk and then breakfast when they get up and then no milk again until the second milk feed of the day at 2:30 - with a solids lunch in between. If you are taking a relaxed approach and not worrying if they reject most of their solids lunch, would you just give them an extra milk feed here instead? i.e if they haven't had anything since breakfast, they're not going to settle for afternoon nap etc, get through to 2:30 milk feed, without something in their tummies, so rather than saying 'ok, they didn't want lunch' you substitute the food they rejected with milk at this time instead? Just wondering cos if you end up doing this a fair bit then it feels a bit like 'going backwards' in that you're saying, ok, this isn't time for lunch, it's another milk feed, when you had dropped it. but I guess there's nothing else you can do cos you're not going to let them crack on without having a nice full tummy?

HollieES Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My mum had other ideas. She wanted me to be > "original" so one year I got dressed up as Noddy. > Yes, Noddy, you know - the one with the blue > shorts and the weird hat. I remember that the > local newspaper came to our school to take a > photo...a bunch of girls dressed as Cinderella or > the like, the boys dressed as various superheroes, > and Noddy. > You have just reminded me that my mum made me go to a fancy dress party when I was about 5 dressed as... a poacher. I have no idea what the inspiration for this was. I had a beard drawn on and sack-cloth up my legs, and she took the clothes off my cuddly toy rabbit family, tied them all together by their legs with string round their ankles, tied the strung up toy rabbits to a pole and made me carry that round all afternoon. The other girls were mostly Dorothy, Princess etc. >

Was just telling a friend earlier that when I was little, probably about 8, my mum paid for me to have tap dancing classes but wouldn't pay for me to have tap shoes, so consequently I have some rather comedy memories of standing in a row of little girls dressed in pink leotards and all tap tap tapping away doing nifty shuffle ball changes, while I silently scuffed the floor next to them like a confused horse, wearing my usual clarks school shoes with a rubber sole. I have always remembered this without really questioning it, but when my friend fell about with mirth I realised...it is quite odd! If she was going to fork out for tap lessons - why not buy a pair of second hand tap shoes? Or why not pick another type of class?! Or take me to the park for free? Random! Memorably, another friend was religiously told by his dad that dried up white dog poo on the pavement were 'baby seals.' What stuff did your parents do that looking back, particularly if you've had now had your own children, seems a bit, well, strange?

Yes I'm inclined to agree with Ratty that some of the stuff you mention '(cleaning/declutterin/setting up the cot/shop for last essentials for hospital bag etc)' while a bit menial in one sense is actually some of the exciting stuff that you relish doing for yourself / the new baby and would not want others to do even if it was offered for free. I definitely got a thrill out of packing my hospital bag (and eating and then having to re-buy and pack the chocs in it several times!) The food service is a lovely idea, the success of which I think will depend on how much you have to charge for it to make it work, it might be one of those things that many people would lOVE to have but can't stretch to paying for, particularly when a new baby has taken a lot of cash to prepare for. Good luck with it all, exciting to be setting up a new business as two new mums! hope it goes well! x

I was only thinking the other day that if laboriously prepared home made foods were presented in an ella-style pouch then they would probably be greeted with more excitement...so did a bit of a google search and....someone else has had this idea! Look!re-usable pouch for purees!

what happens if you spread the toast / rice cake with puree?! popping the puree in by stealth for the time being!

Was told recently that a man whose wife died in the Pakistan floods and who was trapped on a roof with his baby, started lactating enough after a couple of days to breast feed his baby and save her life. Amazing.

by the way I didn't in any way mean to imply that those that chose to leave the necklaces on overnight were hippy dippy space cadets, lots of people of course leave them on at night, I meant more that rather than leaving them on because they haven't thought about it, they are likely to have made a conscious decision to do so after weighing up the safety (and as molly says, the beads are individually knotted in a way that they break under pressure. ) I know plenty of people who leave them on and plenty of people who take them off, or use an anklet at night so the baby can't get to it under their sleepsuit. I think everyone is more than capable of making their own decision on whether to use / not use an amber necklace, and if they do, whether to leave it on or not at night!

Tee hee! Thanks for your warning Taper, try not to worry, I don't think that just because some parents use these necklaces in the hopes that they just might make teething even a slightly less painful process for their babies that it necessarily follows on that they have no common sense or parental instincts and will leave the dastardly things on overnight. Being open to different kinds of 'treatment' or whatever heading amber necklaces might come under, does not necessarily mean the people who buy them are hippy dippy space cadets who need to be given unsolicited basic safety advice ;-)

Claire Kedves only works Tuesdays and Wednesdays I think, so if you leave her a message tonight she will hopefully pick it up in the morning. She is a something of a legend, wonderful woman!

I understand that Taper....the site claims that in other countries doctors advocate the use of amber necklaces, and as I mentioned, my GP here in East Dulwich suggested that I get one (I did not bring it up, they did..) just saying, it's not just the sites that sell them that believe they have analgesic qualities!

I have no idea if it works or not but there are lots of people who swear by them, one of our local GPs suggested that I buy a necklace in fact! 'Amber?s anti-inflammatory and therapeutic properties are additionally recognized by allopathic medicine. In Austria, Switzerland and Germany, one can find amber teething necklaces sold in local pharmacies. Pharmacists and medical doctors have long known concerning the therapeutic properties of amber which embrace calmative, analgesic, antispasmodic, expectorant, and febrifuge (anti-fever) functions. A pure analgesic, amber will assist calm a child without resorting to drugs. Amber is a resin, not a stone. It is therefore heat to the contact, in addition to very comfy and lightweight to wear. Scientific investigation into the therapeutic effects of amber is ongoing. Currently, there are different theories that attempt to clarify how sporting amber on the pores and skin can have a soothing and calming effect on teething infants and toddlers. One concept means that when amber is worn on the pores and skin, the pores and skin?s warmth releases miniscule quantities of therapeutic oils from the amber which are then absorbed via the pores and skin into the bloodstream.'

taper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > They have no medicinal benefit. Pure woo. Goodness, would love to know what makes you qualified to say so, and in such a condescending tone too, assume you're the forum's resident trained gemologist? what an interesting line of work! :)

when a hospital runs out of donated breast milk and has to buy it from another hospital's bank I believe it costs about ?100 a litre so it's brilliant that you're donating! Wish I could have done but nothing much ever came out when I pumped! :-S

Yes, the ladies are really lovely in pretty pregnant but perhaps not all of them are that experienced in fitting bras (not complaining at all, there's no reason why they would be) and the person who measured me for nursing bras got the size wrong by several sizes. Ended up in trusty M&S in town for measuring but then went back to pretty pregnant to buy some bras. Next time will try the fitting studio.

have you tried the fitting studio in dartmouth road in forest hill - supposed to be a very good service for measuring and helping you pick out maternity and nursing bras that are just the right fit, I haven't been but friends have and said it was great.. just googled it.. www.thefittingstudio.co.uk

another vote for dan bevan at health matters for acupuncture and Francine at the same place for reflexology - though who knows if I would have gone into labour then anyway etc etc, but anything worth a go and they're both lovely people!

thank you so much for your replies, all really useful. Have tweaked timings a bit and last couple of days seems to be more workable, sure it will all change again in another two days but there you go! I suppose the other thing for me to remember is that there will also naturally be hungrier and less hungry days so not to assume that the timings are always the prob if food / milk is refused, as it may just be one of those days.. p.s very good response to a home made lentil bake I slaved over and froze a gazillion pots of on Sunday, very rewarding when they do like something you made! phew! :))