Beagle

I too have an 18 month hold and I could have written this. It started 1 month ago and Daddy just isn't cutting the mustard right now. It HAS to be "Mammmeeeee". It started when the two if us went to visit my parents for a week without her dad. I'm trying to make dinner/wash up with this little body between my legs like a forward in a scrum. Hopefully it is a short phase as I have no solutions only empathy and a degree of reassurance that I am not alone.

I've realised my maternal default setting is guilt, some days I miss my girl so much I have to sit and look at her picture on my phone (!) However you say you have great childcare, so focus on this. When I am home I combine playing with trying to cook and clean and do other household tasks, and all of them get less time than they deserve. At the childminder she gets to play, and have fun all day and I'm not getting frustrated and short changing her and then we have great quality days together when I am home. I think as other posters say guilt is instrinsically part of motherhood, just don't let it be the over riding emotion. You being happy in your career will make your home happy, don't feel bad about that.

my 18 month old does "yogo" with the Piplings and nods along with Upsy Daisy. Is this a bad thing? She can recognise numbers all courtesy of Ceebeebies. It's not like she's watching Eastenders. I find after about 20/30 minutes she goes off and plays with her toys. We do plenty of outside play too. I won't feel bad about it as without ceebeebies there would be no clean floors or dinner.

there was a thread on this very topic last month. Put Weaning in as a search and it should bring it up and be a good starting point. B

Thank you. Loads to try here before we become hermits. In two weeks time away I will have a petrol car and a forward seating chair so it will be interesting to see if that eliminates the problem. I remember those strips hanging from the back of cars in the 80's, when seatbelts let alone childseats were an unknown item. I mentioned this problem at work and someone said her granny made her sit on a brown paper bag. I can remember that advice as a child too but don't have any idea why it might work! I think I'll spare my child that indignity for now. Fingers crossed something suggested above will work. i shall report back.

Thank you. Womanofdulwich, we do have a diesel. I hadn't even thought there could be a connection with that. I will try seeing if we can keep her cooler too. The little thing is constantly subjected to Neil Young albums, maybe we need to rethink our in car entertainment. As we are flying next week, I'll be doing a sick bag sweep.

Hello, My 17 month old has been suffering horrendous car sickness since she turned a year old. It's not even on long, windy road journeys anymore but any journey over 30 minutes. We try not to feed her before a long journey, but it is a bit hard when travelling any distance as we can't starve her. I am beginning to think it might be related to her rear facing car seat - bought with safety in mind - but looking into it this seems to be an issue. I also understand car sickness is quite rare at this age. I can live with the extra laundry and the permanent smell of old milk in the car, but my heart aches for her as she struggles in her seat restraints to be sick. Any advice dear readers - I may well be selling a faintly sick smelling rear facing car seat before too long ! B

seeing my chid tumble down the stairs at 15 months was horrific. We installed a stairgate at the top the next day.

oimissus, I use 1 tin and seems to work well and feed 3/4. In fact I am sitting here replete from yet another helping. I'm stress rich and time poor and have no time to be soaking beans!

I'm amazed myself Belle as she eats this but won't eat much else hence why we are all living on it. That child can detect the most miniscule fragment of pea in anything.

We have been living on the below link all winter and my 17 month old LOVES it. It goes really well with brown rice. I only use 2 red onions, tinned chickpeas and about half the spinach (or usually kale, in fact whatever green vege I have). I use a tub of creme fraiche not sure how that equates to 300gr. Nigel Slater, I love you for this recipe. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/feb/24/foodanddrink.shopping21 There is also a great tuna and tagliatelle recipe in Anabel Karmel. http://www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/breastfeeding/tuna-tagliatelle

We opted for a rear facing seat that is good up to 4/5 years. We went to the following store which has trained up staff who went through the options and fitted it for us and were really nice to deal with. http://www.babycarepettswood.co.uk/carseatsbesafe.htm It did cost a bit more but we have compromised on other items and decided we wanted to really think about the car seat and went for the rear facing option. It does mean the front passenger seat can't be moved back so might not suit everyone but we have had it 5 months and all is going well, lots of leg room for her to grow into. We bought the Britax model. Although I think 5 months ago it was a bit cheaper!

I wonder if anyone has any experience of a toddler pulling their eyelids when tired or falling asleep. It does appear to be the actual lid rather than the lashes. 15 month old daughter has started doing this in the past few weeks but is doing it more and more often. She has always looked for skin to skin contact when having her before bed bottle and this usually involves touching, pinching and scratching whatever skin she can reach on me but this has now extended to her own eye lids and knowing how aggressively she scratches me I am worried she is as rough with her own self. If she wakes at night the ritual continues, I have marks across my chest and neck today and short of wearing a polo neck to bed don?t know what to do! Her other habit is chomping down on my collarbone. She also pulls her lids during the day when sleepy. The only trigger I can recall is that she was given a present of a doll with eyelids that closed and opened and against my own judgement I allowed her to play with it, this started a fascination with eyes, poking mine, trying to pull the eyelid and then she started on her own. Doll is consigned to a cupboard but I am getting quite concerned that she will start pulling out her lashes, which from the reading I have done is a more serious issue. I did mention the scratching and pinching to the health visitor recently who just murmured skin to skin and said nothing more, but think I do need to follow up about the eyelids specifically this week, in the meantime has anyone any practical suggestions. I thought maybe tying a short length of ribbon to her sleep bag that she can touch might provide the tactile sensation she is looking for. Trying to distract her with her soft toy isn?t working and I can hardly pin her hands down which will only distress us both. In magnificent hindsight I know I should have nipped the pinching months ago. Hum ho . . . If anyone can point me towards any practical advice or has any to offer I would be grateful as I am worried about her.

Are you using Fairy Liquid or powder? If I use powder we get a flare up but liquid/Liquid tabs seems to leave less residue and reduces this. I also completely avoid fabric conditioner as seems very irritating for baby and other half who has terrible eczema. Sounds like the issue might be more complex than just washing powder but sometimes the little changes can help so worth investigating all routes.

weaning floored me more than anything else this past year. Mouth firmly shut, mmmmmm noise, head turned away. This went on and on, she lost weight, I was at the end of my tether, and then on advice tried Baby led weaning (BLW is not for everyone, I was resistant) I fully empathise as I found the whole thing distressing and felt really hopeless when she dropped weight. I had to learn not to get hung up about it although that's hard when health visitors question the weight loss. You'll get there even if it feels today as if it will ever improve. Good luck.

When I spoke to work in Spring regarding returning to work part time my boss informally mentioned there had been a 1% pay increase this year (bemoaning the small %). When I got my confirmation of return to work letter it had my old salary (pro rata) on it with no % increase. I queried this by email and a couple of weeks later was informed the rise was discretionary and not all staff had benefitted from it. However, yesterday some of my colleagues were sitting around complaining about inflation and the pathetic 1% pay rise. I said something about it being discretionery and they looked at me as if I was talking rubbish. Admittedly I am slightly sensitive being back at work and trying to get used to balancing a job and feeling like I have to prove my family life is not impinging on my work, but I do have the sense I have been discriminated against - for frankly the sake of a couple of quid. My boss is very defensive and unable to deal with confrontation. I don't know what to do but I think if there was an across the board payrise that they should have to abide by the law which according to CAB extends to all employees on maternity leave. Any advice very gratefully appreciated.

Sounds familiar, my 9 month old only started taking a bottle 3 weeks ago after 5 months of refusal. Are you trying to feed expressed milk via the bottle or formula? In our case it seemed better for breastfed baby to associate the bottle with a different drink. Quite simply after a frustrating night she was very hungry one morning and I put a bottle of formula in her mouth and she took it, and we have never looked back after months of pouring refused breast milk down the sink. I was using Dr Brown with 6 month + nipple as I had been told they were better for reluctant bottle users, but the flow was too fast and she had to come off to breathe. Swapped back to Avent with 3 month+ nipples and having great success. She takes a NUK sippy cup for water but the bottles very handy for childminder. Why she finally took a bottle two weeks before I returned to work I have no idea, but extremely grateful. Am still feeding morning and night. Good Luck, it will happen.

bit late adding to this but, if it is that she can't feed and breathe at the same time due to a blocked nose, so is pulling away to breathe what we have found works, even at 3am, is running the shower on the hot tap to buld up steam and doing the feed in the bathroom. The steam clears little noses quite quickly. Other tip is feeding in the bath as again you have a nice steamy environment. Ditto what other posters said, no one will make you feel stupid for taking a small baby to the doctor. Honestly the stuff I have been in about is so crazy at times, but they have always seen me and not made me feel stupid. Good luck.

Ladies, I've been reading the advice offered in this old thread and resurrecting it as I am really struggling. Since the advent of teeth Easter weekend my 8 month old daughter has been biting me, and drawing blood, at the end of her feed. I can't always react quickly enough to anticipate she is about to pull away biting and I am dreading feeding her. After an initial week of biting at Easter she did stop, or I got wise to her and stopped her doing it, but since her third tooth started coming through this week it has begun again and I am quite cut and sore. I will try ignoring it as suggested above as 'No' is eliciting no response other than a smile and a giggle and I am also giving her teething powders ahead of a feed to help her gums. Has anyone got any other advice? I should add she is a bottle refusnik but if this continues it will have to be formula as this can't go on despite the fact that I will be so saddened to end a wonderful breastfeeding experience on this note. :(

I realy didn't know what to make of this article, thinking about it now I actually thought it was poorly constructed. It did reinforce for me how lucky Dulwich is to have the choice of homebirth. And it did also make me wonder about those women who have incredibly quick births. If the legislation changes are they supposed to run the gauntlet of traffic to have a (legal) hospital birth?

Yip Goodrich Road plagued. Can recall a neighbour throwing up the windows in the early hours and shouting f*** off foxes at them, to no avail. Poop by the door and they have now taken to spraying my front door! It is so rank smelling. Anyways what we find most effective for temporary relief is shining a torch out the window at them as they bolt - and it can hardly be considered cruel. I'm too lazy to be a proper beagle.

For what it's worth I couldn't contemplate the thought of a schedule until week 11. We had a reluctant daytime sleeper and unstoppable evening cluster feeder. Ok, I couldn't get much done during the day but when I look back on those precious first months both my husband and I derived huge pleasure from just holding our baby when she slept. Those first weeks go by so quickly and next thing you find yourself putting your baby down at 8pm, and the little head turns away and next thing she's asleep. The first night we tried that (at 11 weeks!) I felt redundant, I really did not know what to do with myself. What I am trying to say is I don't think there is a finite window for training your baby that you are in danger of missing. Some babies thrive on a routine, others will get into it later. Just enjoy these weeks. All of a sudden babies start to amuse themselves for longer periods, or decide they don't need to feed all night and actually fancy bed and at that point you will find yourself in a routine. I think the pleasure from holding your new little baby in the first months is so fabulous and it will fly by. Our 6 month old still only cat naps a few times a day but is in a decent enough routine despite our late start.

PRM beat me to it, my immediate thought was, a possible cold? I have a 6 month old and we had 8 nights like this when she last had a cold, combined with shouting loudly in her cot, not crying just shouting, and restlessness resulting in her ending up perpendicular in her cot several times a night. It passed, that is the only consolation I can offer, though in the midst of 8 nights of such broken sleep it felt like it never would.

we started weaning a fortnight ago and I have a pack of tommee tippee spoons and a three pack of their lidded storage containers and some bibs. I mix up the rice/veg in the storage container and feed from it using the spoon. Apart from ice trays and ziplock bags I haven't needed anything more. It's still very tiny amounts of food I am feeding. If I find I need more stuff I will get as I need it, but this "streamlined" system works for me now with minimal investment. Haven't even opened the high chair box yet.

I had a fantastic experience with The Lanes, but the midwives I saw at Nightingale in Kings when I was in labour were fantastic too. Just one thing Mirabelle, you mention a Lanes midwife being with you when you go into labour. They will come out and assess you or refer you to Kings and assess you there, but no one is likely to stay with you if you are in the early stages of labour, (for some women in can be a slow labour) so don't change midwives on this basis. Yes, Lanes attend Kings as well as homebirths. all the best