hellosailor

just had a shower and did massage and already it's reducing, thanks Craigy and Moos! x

Moos I know exactly what you mean about the conflicting feelings, just stopped a week ago, baby will be 7 months in a few days and breast feeding has been, well, a struggle - she has reflux, tongue tie and wouldn't feed in public (got too distressed if I tried) so I've been pretty housebound for the last 7 months as could only ever go out for about 2 hours max - basically only in ED! Plus she always refused a bottle until a month ago so there wasn't the option of someone else giving a bottle when I was in tears of frustration after she refused/cried her way through the third feed of the day because of her various feeding probs, add into that worries about supply due to her falling several centiles and the questions from the hvs about why, and I thought that I would feel just pure relief when we stopped, but instead, spent several days last week bursting into tears at the drop of a hat because we had stopped. I guess the hormones must also go haywire when you stop which must have contributed, but I also felt / feel an overwhelming sense of sadness that it's over, and I think a sense of grief that it didn't 'go better'. I would see friends or strangers feeding their baby in a cafe, or even just on their own sofa, with the little one latched on no probs and just comfortably suckling away and feel such pangs that breast feeding felt such a difficult and stressful thing for us from the beginning,and would say to my partner regularly in the first couple of months that the daily struggle to feed her was inhibiting our bonding, rather than strengthening it, which of course was not what I dreamt of when I was pregnant and looking forward to breast feeding. But She doesn't seem to mind half as much as I do that we've stopped - she barely seems to have registered it! She's probably relieved about the ease with which she can drain a bottle having struggled to feed with her tongue tie for all these months too! But I still feel very wobbly about it...like you we're doing extra cuddles and singing at bedtime though which is lovely :)

thanks so much Craigy, that's good to know, will do the same and hopefully get it moving..

I stopped breast feeding about 10 days ago and it seemed to go okay, I was careful to reduce length of feeds gradually / pump so that I didn't get engorged / mastitis, especially as I'd had mastitis a couple of weeks earlier and didn't want to get it back through the process of stopping. I thought everything had settled down, but one boob has felt increasingly sore since the day I stopped and seems to be getting worse, and now I can feel there is a lump about the size of a ten pence piece which is half under the nipple, half not, if you see what I mean. Of course I will get this checked by a gp as soon as possible but I assume it's a blocked duct - does that seem likely? And what could I do about this to try and relieve the pain a bit tonight given that I can't feed as have given up feeding and I can't see that anything would come out now if I pumped - ten days after stopping - and in fact, by co-incidence, my pump broke at the same time I was giving up feeding so don't have a pump in the house anyway! Can having a hot bath and massaging with flannels do anything if that's not a pre-cursor to actually letting milk out of your boob? i.e is it only possible to use that as a method if you still have an active supply or might it help anyway? thanks for any advice about what I could do

> > And returning now to semantics... I aksed my > husband what his definition of a 'yummy mummy' is, > and would he be insulted if someone said I > was/wasn't one? He said a 'yummy mummy' is a > 'MILF', and then he waggled his eyebrows in a > suggestive manner and went back to watching > football. So here we are ladies, hefting our > metaphorical rocks up and down the hill, while it > seems the blokes may have a completely different > take on it altogether. It's true - the term yummy mummy means different things to different people, when it was first coined by the media about a decade ago, if I remember rightly, it was very tongue in cheek and almost an admiring/appreciative term, and now seems to be used solely in a derogatory way Wikipedia definition yummy mummy Urban Dictionary definition of yummy mummy

> > > Well thank goodness for that... more time for > drinking wine and visiting galleries now ;-) snarf! :)

Pickle Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Well said Moos. > > It's very well talking now about what you'll be > like before you've had your baby - you may be > surprised at how your views change once you have a > baby to look after, as even if it's only for a few > months you too may find you suddenly talk about > poo :) Couldn't agree more - was with a friend the other day who held her baby aloft to do the classic sniff of the bum to see if her nappy needed changing and she burst out laughing and said ' I swore I'd never do that when I was pregnant...!' - I think it's just possible you may surprise yourself by finding that you talk about poo as much as the next woman when your baby arrives Josie ;-)

Just as the thread title says really! I would like to buy a second hand tripp trapp (no luck so far please let me know if you have one to sell!) and am wondering if I end up having to get all the different parts separately on ebay or something, if all the bits are useable on both the old style and new style chair - I see the design changed slightly at some point. So can you interchange the old leather strap babyset and the new plastic one on both old and new style highchair? And can you interchange the old style cushion sets with the new style cushion sets on both old and new style highchair? I don't want to buy all the bits and realise they won't work together cos they're a mix of old and new if you see what I mean! Advice from tripp trapp veterans greatly appreciated Edited to say, not being lazy, I would ring customer services but for Great Britain customer services is based in Germany so asking the forum before resorting to phoning abroad! x

I started with the medela swing and then switched to the ameda lactaline because I wasn't convinced by the medela. For me, the ameda was considerably more effective in yielding milk, but I'm sure others would have found it the other way round! Even though it is a double pump, I've never go the hang of pumping both at once, think I'm too malcoordinated. I think you can get special bras designed to hold the pumps in place though, leaving hands free for book or laptop or whatever, maybe I should have invested in one of those! Also like the fact that as Yak says, you can buy spare parts very cheaply online if you need to replace a bit..

I think someone was selling one on the forum in the last few weeks Strawbs, an avent one (the one we have, fits all bottles I think), do a search and see if you can find it. I find it very useful but agree you could do without it.

what was her first word?? x

There is one room with a built in pool - room 12 - ask for it as soon as you get there in the hopes it's available! They have 2 inflatable pools, though one was broken and not in use when we were looking into this a few months ago so there were only two available pools earlier this year if you include the built in one. Maybe they have fixed the 2nd inflatable now. I would say that if water is the main thing you've got your heart set on and your morale would plummet if you were to get there and not have a pool (which I have heard of happening to several friends) then take your own birth pool in a box as a back up, you can always leave it in the boot of your car if you get a pool room. That's the advice I was given! Pools often come up on the forum, and all you need is to get a new liner for 25 quid. Though actually pools that haven't even been used at the birth often come up on here (I sold mine on here after ending up in room 12 anyway and not inflating it!) x

Have you also tried promethazine (phenergan) as well as the two medications you're already on? I think this is the medication that Mrs TP is referring to in her post as well, I had hyperemesis and it was the only thing that helped (did try alternative treatments including acupuncture but to no avail). I really feel for you, it's just awful feeling so sick 24 hours a day, I was able to stop taking the medication and keep food / water down without it at week 20something, I forget exactly when, but it did really help. x

Yes I have to say in my experience they don't get stains out unfortunately..

thanks so much for responses, all very helpful, will look at Rapley and Karmel books and see what I think would suit us. Thanks so much for offer of lend Saffron, just ordered them before I saw it!

Morning, I would like to read up on weaning as we're approaching it (baby is 5 months but will wait until at least 6 months) - and work out whether to do BLW or a combo if that's possible? Is it possible to do BLW and combine with TW? Is anyone doing that? I don't know much about it yet but I have an instinct that I may not want to do just BLW as my baby has fallen 3 centiles and has reflux and tongue tie - latter two hopefully will be sorted soon, but perhaps because feeding has thus far been a difficult journey for us I can't envisage her wolfing down finger foods with gusto (though hope I'm wrong and she'll surprise me!) so hopefully it's possible to combine styles? what are the best books for me to look at on BLW and TW in your opinion? thanks for advice!

Lovely names Ruth! x

Napisan is great, you don't have to add that much to the wash (with fairy non-bio or whatever you're using as detergent) to get the poo stains out!

I think they have nice ones in both postmark the card shop on Northcross rd and Greetings card shop on LL.

I often find myself trying to burp soft toys. Or swaying like a nutter, trying to rock a cheese sandwich to sleep. Oh, and I frequently call my baby by my cat's name. Don't even have the cat anymore.

Our 5 month old baby has never been that into the bjorn bouncer, though I have found it useful for stuff like giving calpol and being able to gently lean her back! In terms of getting time to do other stuff while she sits in something, we have found a swing chair like the Fisher Price Aqua Take-along swing which we bought via the forum has bought a lot more hands free time than the bjorn, but I know other babies who love bouncing in the bjorn so as Yak says it does depend on the particular baby I guess. I would definitely get a second hand one via forum, ebay or gumtree rather than shelling out for a new one, as everyone says, they wash very well.

Following the 'should we bother getting a nappy disposal system' thread , thought it worth mentioning that If you use a nappy disposal system then a cheap way to buy the refill cassettes is through a company called Wrapooh who make much cheaper refills to fit the poplular systems like Tommee tippee sangenic and angelcare system, you buy them on amazon and it saves a lot of money! Having said that, our baby is 5 months and as we have not yet entered the territory of 'solids poos' we haven't found the disposal system we bought essential yet - a bin with a lid would work just as well for us at the mo - but we gather that sealing away the smell becomes more of an issue when they start to eat solids, so maybe the sangenic we bought will come into its own then! http://www.wrapooh.com/

Francine at Dulwich Therapy Rooms is great and does a lot of pregnancy reflexology

If you do decide to give it a go, Lizzie Lomax at Health Matters on LL is lovely

I think it also depends on how good the midwife is and, also literally,(sorry!) how long here fingers are! I had one at 40+1 and the midwife said I was 1cm and 50% effaced - no effect but some cramping and spotting. Had an attempted one at Kings at 40+4 where the consultant had, by her own admission, extremely short fingers, and she couldn't reach my cervix so wasn't able to do it. And then my regular midwife came round later on the same day, gave me a sweep and said that conditions were exactly the same, 1cm and 50% effaced so as nothing had moved on in 3 or 4 days then chances were that it could be a few more days to go....but went into labour half an hour later, so am fairly sure her sweep was responsible! Found them umcomfortable but not too bad. I know it varies a lot, but it you're finding it very uncomfortable they can stop immediately.