Sanne Panne

Not cheap but I love the Pacapod (been great for nearly 2 years now)

Smiler Wrote: > had a little weeping scab for ages and now (aged > 2) has a little round red scar, which presume will > fade to white at some stage. Exact same thing here.

Heard about the bars on pressure fit gates - guess for maximum comfort and minimal redecorating the ideal solution might be a pressure fit one downstairs (where the adult is less likely to trip and if they do, they won't fall down the stairs) and a wall mounted one upstairs... then again, if you're putting wood filler in one banister you might as well do two ;)

We'll be moving from a flat to a house soon and will need stairgates. Can you recommend a top quality stairgate, ideally one that an adult can open with one hand but that a toddler won't be able to tackle? I don't mind if they're a bit pricey, just want to have some peace of mind when our new baby arrives and I won't always be able to follow our 23 month old everywhere... Thanks!

Actual discomforts on/around the day were 1. the 10-20 seconds after the needle was pulled out (supposedly it stings a bit due to the fact it's hypodermal rather than intramuscular); 2. the plaster coming off (I'm an evil mum who removes plasters after the first bath rather than let them come off naturally); 3. one of the times I squeezed a bit of pus out a few weeks after the jab (sorry for the yucky detail) which I guess I shouldn't have done). No arm stiffness that I could tell. M was 8 months so already fairly mobile - I think I would have noticed stiffness (it was done in her left arm Molly, as you implied it makes sense to do that with most people being right handed... How odd... could your HV have got it wrong? Or did mine not follow protocol?).

I read somewhere (nice way to start a post I know) that if you haven't had one as a baby you need to get two BCG jabs close to secondary school age no matter where in the UK you are. If (!) this is true it may be worth getting it now - you supposedly (again, note the disclaimers) get less scarring/stiffness the younger you do it. M never had an adverse reaction to any vaccination (we even had her vaccinated for chicken pox privately because jabs are nothing to her whereas catching the disease would be a massive pain, especially if it happens when the new baby is small) so I can't tell whether she had a different reaction to BCG - she had no reaction as with her other jabs. The risk of actually getting TB is very low, even if you live in a higher risk area like Southwark - from the bit of research I did it seems that you are only really likely to get it through repeated/extended exposure to someone with the disease (e.g. a relative or a nursery worker). That lady coughing on the bus isn't going to pass TB on to your child. And if your daughter decides to become a doctor in a high risk country one day she can always get the jab then so you can probably control your risk to an extent. Sorry for the unscientific answer, please double check everything I've said but they may be useful points to look at when deciding whether and when to get the jab. M does still have a dark red spot on her skin 15 months after the event (she was vaccinated at 8 months, age was purely based on the length of the waiting list) so I guess she'll have the scar one day (I was never vaccinated, they abolished BCG in Holland back in the late '60s due to the extremely low risk of catching TB there). I was also a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing with the risk being so low but then "just did it". Good luck with your decision :)

Good point littleEDfamily, I don't want to pressure her at all, I'm so glad she's such a confident talker, happily mixing up the two languages she's exposed to. We're not fussed about the languages either, we know it'll fall into place... I just don't like the idea of a lisp much but will definitely wait with any kind of proactive guidance until later (if it's still necessary).

This looks encouraging but I'm not sure if the fact that the -s- needn't be fully developed until age 8 means that a toddler lisp is nothing to "worry" about (I'm not really worried, we're not talking about basic health here, just hoping we won't need a speech therapist).

My 21 month old has a lisp when she says the "S". She used to be a night- and naptime dummy user but we weaned her off it last month. She started talking quite early and has a reasonable vocabulary, meaning she's had good practice with various sounds already. With the s she still folds her tongue a bit, resulting in a lisp. Her upper 4 incisors are through but only about 80% "down". Her lower central incisors are fully through, her lower lateral incisors have just come through and she doesn't have her canines yet. Is this lisp likely to stay and require "help" later on or do many kids have a lisp at this stage that will still disappear on its own?

prm Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Whilst we are on the subject of Kings Labour > Ward...does anybody know what the deal is with > private rooms? > Do you have the option of getting one after the > birth and how much does it cost? > Thanks! I don't think they have private post-labour rooms (maybe they did in the past, maybe they reinstated it recently, but they didn't have them back in 2008). The only way to get a private room is to have twins I believe ;)

missse22 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks for the warning :-) > > Ah well, what will be will be I guess...little man > has to come out some way or another, so I'm just > gonna embrace the challenge!! BRING IT ON! Lol,x Exactly! Just don't think the picture they paint at the tour is the experience you'll have when you give birth, that's all. Good luck with both :)

Some unsolicited information here. Please be mentally prepared for an unpleasant experience - they seem to want to scare you during the labour ward tour and will be mentioning overcrowded rooms, child abduction risk, busy midwives and other things you really don't want to focus on when you think about your impending birth experience. I ended up with an unplanned homebirth so can't talk for myself but based on what most of my friends who ended up giving birth at King's said the actual experience is very unlikely to be as bad as they make you think during the tour. Not meaning to be negative, just thinking it's better to go to the tour expecting a slightly negative tour guide. Maybe they've received enough complaints to change their tone in the meantime!

> I think the advantage of having a nanny works > well for families that have two working parents > especially in the winter months, no dragging the > kids outside in the cold weather to go to the > childminders and if the children are sick the > nanny will be at home with them and you can have > peace of mind that your children are safe in the > home. Good point, hadn't thought of very bad weather and child sickness yet. If they're really sick you want to be there yourself but if they just need to sit out an antibiotics treatment or if they have a viral rash they're probably just as happy with the nanny. My daughter is with a great childminder now (an expensive one though - two kids there would cost at least the same as a nanny) but when baby 2 is here and big enough for me to go back to work I'll need to choose. My main concern is that I am a bit worried that my eldest would miss out on playing with other kids. Of course there are playgroups but I like the idea of them having some "mates" they know - and with two kids I wouldn't go for a nanny share so they'd probably only have brief encounters with other kids.

Thanks so much for all the advice and encouragement. We slept in the living room last night, leaving mini Panne in the bedroom by herself and it went extremely well. The rooms are right next to each other so we would have heard her cry but all I heard was her babbling for a while at 4:30am. She woke up for the day at 6:45am. Looks like the main issue was that she could see/hear us whenever she'd wake up at night and she'd think it was a good idea to have us help her fall back asleep again... the same happens during the day: she can play by herself for 20 minutes without a problem (I keep peeking through the door every minute without her noticing and she's "reading" or playing and chatting happily) but when in the same room she involves me in everything she does, gets fed up much more easily and seems unable to entertain herself. That's fine during the day but not at night... Don't want to draw conclusions too soon (which I always do) but so far it's looking good! We'll sleep in the living room another couple of nights and if things go well we'll move back into the bedroom after that. I may get a big screen of some kind we can put between her cot and our bed so she doesn't realise we're there (although my husband's snoring will give us away anyway). Really not keen on going back to the dummy (even at night) as we've come such a long way already and I'd hate to make her (and us) go through the whole process all over again. We'll do it if she regresses dramatically but let's hope it won't be necessary. Thanks again for all the input.

Oh no, 4 posts that make me think we should give it back and wait till she's 3 (she's nearly 21 months now)! I'm not against sleeping with the dummy at all - the thing is, she WILL ask for it outside the cot and it drives me insane, I really don't want her to have a dummy during the day (that bit I can't change). I mentioned your posts to my husband and he said "don't go back, otherwise these nights of bad sleep have been for nothing", which is true - now that we got rid of it and made great progress during daytime we should probably persevere, especially since she'll have a little sister soon and once we start giving the little sister a dummy it'll be so much harder to get our toddler to give hers up. I'm really hoping she will beat the addiction before that time. Thanks so much for the feedback so far, I think closer to 3 is probably indeed a better age to get rid of it but it doesn't work in our case with our daughter being such an addict. She doesn't actually say "dummy" anymore when she wakes up at night but something is clearly missing as she can't seem to self soothe after 2-3am. Heeeeelp!

We got rid of our 20 month old's dummy over the Easter weekend. She used to have it for sleeping (in her cot but also when it was nap time in the car/buggy) but she had started asking for it too often while awake (any time we put her in the car/buggy but sometimes even when out for a walk, it drove me nuts) so we decided to go cold turkey. I keep reading these fairy tale stories where the child complains before bedtime the first and second evening and then moves on with life as if dummies had never existed. Well, not our child. She doesn't ask for it during the day any more and has become a much happier kid (so far so good) and even goes to bed fairly easily now (from happy "bye bye"when she had the dummy to major meltdowns the first few evenings without it to five minutes of complaining now) BUT she keeps waking up at some time between midnight and 3am and from then on needs our help to fall back asleep every 45 minutes to 2 hours. Last night was hell. She needs us to sssshhhh-ssssshh her at best, but more often I have to rub her back, reposition her on her pillow with all her soft toys in her arms... in some cases I've even given her a bottle of milk (she's been off bottles for ages) and I don't see any progress whatsoever. Whenever she falls asleep I lie half awake waiting for her to wake up again. Should we ignore her requests for help/attention at night? We still share a room (we're in a one bed flat, will move in 3 weeks time and she'll have her own room but we can't deal with the broken nights that long - I'm 30w pregnant and need SLEEP!) and are considering moving our mattress to the living room so we can let her learn to fall back asleep on her own again. If she really screams or if she cries for more than 10 minutes we could go in to soothe her a bit but we can't keep getting up at the first little noise she makes and start soothing her because nobody is getting any sleep this way - not us but also not our daughter who is becoming more and more dependent on us every night. Any advice? Should we move to the living room until she's slept through a couple of times? (except when ill/teething, she slept through from 9-10 months till the day we took the dummy away). How do we deal with this without letting her go into total meltdown? How do we soothe her (if we should do it at all) while still teaching her to go back to sleep on her own? Edited a few times due to sleep deprived typos.

We also have the Maclaren Techno XT, it's quite good although my daughter doesn't like sitting in any buggy at the moment so she often stands on the buggy board while I push the otherwise empty buggy. Nice thing about the Techno XT is the lie flat option that will also come in handy if you're thinking of having another baby at some point. I've never been allowed to take an umbrella fold buggy onto the plane with me but they do let you take it up to the gate at pretty much any airport, and depending on the airport you fly to you will either get it back again at the gate OR... you end up walking to the hold luggage carousel (e.g. in Amsterdam) with a prewalker on your hip and a massive handbag on your shoulder (while pregnant ;-)). Tip: put your baby on a hand baggage trolley (the ones that have a basket at handlebar height) and hold him/her very well. It saves your back.

I also think that you can teach your toddler a lot of things but they're always going to have moments when they try the "alternative option" anyway. That's part of their mission to explore the world. Even if my 20 month old listens to me 99 out of 100 times when it comes to safety, that's not enough when it comes to car safety. I need the straps to cover that other 1 time. It is of course not Britax' fault that they don't sell the clips in the UK, it's the European law's "fault". We are more frustrated with the law than with Britax (at least I am) but I also find Britax' reply a bit silly and think it's fine to have a little go at them too ;) Anyway, my car seat is a Maxi Cosi. Maybe I should write them and see what they say!

Good idea Woof, saves substantial money....

Hilarious what Britax writes, they basically say that if your child wriggles out of the straps you're a bad parent. Did a bit more research, the strap connectors are indeed called "chest clips" on most websites and are illegal in the EU as an adult needs to be able to release a child with one single move... ummm I think that in a compromised situation I'd rather risk having trouble dealing with two clips than with a kid flying through the wind screen. I found two brands that sell them outside the UK: "Hug It" and "Houdini Stop". Don't outbid me on eBay now please.

I believe some of the physios at ESPH (the gym on Lordship Lane) have experience with pregnancy and they do offer massages for non-members there. You can always give them a call. Good luck!

Good warning Narnia, I do agree with the others that the reason not too many people replied is probably that it was quite specific (the topic could have easily started a more general debate but somehow it didn't). My biggest fear of having my children looked after by a nanny rather than send them to a nursery or a no-school-runs childminder (like we do now) is that there are more opportunities for my kids to cross the road with someone else than myself or my husband supervising them. Not saying nannies care less, just that it's extremely scary to give that responsibility to someone else. When I'm in the park and see kids I know with their nannies I always observe how they interact and often let the kids' parents know if they're particularly nice or particularly focused on their mobile phones. Feel a bit bad for being a spy and basing my judgement on 15 minutes of observation but I can't help it.

My 20 month old keeps wriggling one of her shoulders out of the harness of her Maxi Cosi (Tobi). I think the height adjustment is correct and it doesn't seem to make a difference whether I strap her in more or less tightly. Am I doing something wrong? Do those pieces that connect the shoulder straps at chest height exist for toddler car seats (I've seen them on the smaller rear facing seats) and if so what are they called? Something like that might make it harder to wriggle out. Hard to look for something if you don't know the name though and I haven't seen them on the "car seat accessories" / "shoulder strap covers" pages I've looked at so far. Thanks for any help/advice!

Well if anyone was late it was me ;) Next time better! Nice to see you Pickle!

Daughter still asleep at 3:30pm so not sure if anyone will still be there when we arrive! Will try anyway as we need to get some fresh air and it's a great spot x