Breast fed DGS causing havoc!

The early days of parenting is so exhausting, isn't it? We forget how hard it was I think. I started with twins! Was in tears of exhaustion every day for about 6 months until I got a night's sleep. Watching my DDs brings it all back!

Sounds like the your DGS is doing a growth spurt though Katek. I do remember that my BF children did this every so often which I was told was building up the milk supply.

He had the bottle, not me!!

My ds was 9lb 6oz and I only lasted 6 weeks before resorting to a bottle before bedtime. It made a huge difference. He would sleep from 5pm until I woke him about noon (!!!) and then I would have to make sure he was well fed before he nodded off again at 5pm!

My milk just wasn't enough for him.

Meant to say DGSs in that last post, not DSs, though they were quite hungry babies too.

Two of my DSs had a supplementary bottle at night partly to help them to sleep longer and also to get them used to Dad feeding them part-time when Mum was ready to go back to work. The older of the two was a big, hungry baby of 10lbs 9oz and the younger about 1lb lighter.

That's certainly changed in the last 21 months Iam! No wonder new mums are so confused by advice from the 'experts'

iam, that's interesting. Did your DD say why swaddling is banned?

My DGS is a similar age- just over 5 months. DIL was trying to stick to no solids till 6 months but gave in a few weeks ago. He is now taking pureed veg and fruits regularly . He has also tackled a bread stick- carefully watched over for fear of choking. I think the trouble with these rules is that they take no account of the differences in the size of babies. DGS is a big baby as well. He doesn't like a bottle- refusing even to take expressed milk when I baby sit, but wil eat from a spoon for me. DIL uses home made purees and pouches of puree which are very liquid. Might be worth trying some.

DDIL has said that she wished that the pressures to breastfeed were tempered with common sense, DGS was constantly hungry but she felt that she had to persevere regardless, to the point of exhaustion. Even when he guzzled a full bottle of expressed milk following a feed she felt she was 'failing' if she didn't carry on.

Somewhat later she found out that 7 out of the 9 mums in her NCT group had stopped bf by 4 weeks, but didn't feel able to tell anyone for fear of being considered not doing their best

DS was a long, skinny baby with hollow legs, all the bf in the world wouldn't have satisfied him! At 6 weeks he was on a bottle and slept through the night, after me feeding him virtually 24/7.

It saved my sanity.

I had a similar baby. He was permanently hungry even when he couldn't be. He was gaining weight but I was exhausted mentally and physically. I tried leaving him to cry, swaddling him...all the advice but nothing worked.

One afternoon when he was 3 months old my health visitor (a very sensible lady) visited and found me in tears. I was so tired I didn't know what to do with myself and he was grizzling for food again.

She summed up the situation at a glance and told me that whilst breast was best sometimes it just didn't fill a baby esp he/she was very big (my son was 10lb 5oz at birth) and that he needed a bottle. I was horrified. It was the time of breast feed or you're a total failure as a mother. In fact when he was born the ward was split into to halves. One had the breast feeders and the midwives called them the good mums. The other half were know just as the mums.

She went to her car and came back with a ready mixed bottle. I sobbed as I put it in his mouth but the look on his face was amazing. It was as if he was saying, "At last, foooooood!"

When he'd had enough he promptly fell asleep which was unheard of and woke up happy not grizzly.

I felt terrible. Blamed myself. Thought my milk was no good etc. but she said it was perfectly good milk but I just couldn't produce enough to fill him because he never left me alone long enough for my breast to fill.

After that he stayed on the bottle. He slept and woke happy. I slept and recovered. Motherhood became the joy it was supposed to be.

My DDs use a mixture of bottle and breast and that seems to work for them.

thatbags - I suggested my daughter wrap her baby as you describe and got the horrified look Evidently, it's now banned along with lying them on their side or tummy.

glass,

The hover and Motown on the stereo always did it for my two, dont know if the noise soothed them or they gladly went to sleep at avoid my very tuneful singing

DS2 lived on my hip until he could crawl. I'm not sure which situation was more nerve-wracking. He never slept through the night until he was 4. His own DS2 is every bit as much of a nightmare live-wire as he was. They do grow up to be lovely, kindly adults but you just have to take the rough with the smooth.

The white noise (or radio, or hoover) can be a sanity saver. I used slings a lot but once DD1, at about three months old, simply wouldn't stop crying even in the sling and every other 'box' ticked. When I got to the stage of wanting to shake her I told myself sharply to "put it down!", 'it' being the baby. Yes, that stage of frazzlement. I wrapped her tight in a shawl, put her on the floor in a bedroom, walked away and turned the radio up loud. Went to check ten minutes later and she was sound asleep.

as Katherine Whitehorn once said, it's not a case of what you ought to do, it's a case of what you can stand!

karma -

FarNorth - to be honest, I meant both, the noise would sooth and also enable the frazzled mother not to hear the baby crying, if only briefly.

Ash Tree, when I was talking to my daughter about the hoover/washing machine trick her mil was with us. Mil is a former nurse/health visitor and a lovely woman. We're a similar age and shocked my daughter with tales of babies of our age being put into prams, which were left at the bottom of the garden between 4 hourly feeds. We were on some kind of solids by 6 weeks, rusks/baby rice in bottles so sleeping through around the 6 week mark. We've somehow all survived and both the grannies shared sympathy for young mother's today who have such long lists of what to do/not to do pre-conception, during pregnancy and thereafter, for ever

Absent...'creating havoc' wasn't meant to be taken literally-I used hyperbole as a device for emphasis. DGS is quite difficult at the moment and I merely wondered if anyone had any ideas that ds/DIL may not have tried. They're also only just trying him out with tiny bits of food that happen to be on their plate and the banana was reduced to liquid. They managed perfectly well with other DGS so have no qualms re their parenting.

Thanks for the other ideas-I've passed on the link to the White noise generator thingy AshTree, it's worth a try!

There's actually a bit of me wondering if this is karma . DS was a dreadful sleeper himself!!

Iam64, I think the younger generation would be scandalised by a lot of the methods that were de rigueur when we had our babies! I adopted the hoover method when my DS was going through a period of crying every time I lay him in his cot, even though he'd been fed, changed, winded, cuddled, sung to... We were all encouraged in those days not to let our babies become too 'attached' to us, to let them get used to being alone. It makes me sad now - I wish we'd had slings in those days so I could have had him with me while I got on with things. Their little baby lives are so fleeting - so what if they're attached to you? They'll soon enough be wanting their independence

This doesn't sound like havoc to me – just fairly normal stuff. By four months most babies have doubled their birth weight. Indeed, if a baby hasn't, it is a cause for concern at the four-month check-up. They also have growth spurts when they seem to feed pretty much constantly. If the parents are going to try solids, surely the tried-and tested route of baby cereal mixed with breast milk would be better and more nourishing than mashed potato. (Btw banana can cause choking in young babies.) Breastfed babies have a "push out the tongue reflex" so may well shove a spoon out of their mouths at first. If that's what he's doing, then it's probably sensible to delay trying solids for another couple of weeks. That said, I think the general consensus among professionals (and WHO) is that babies require nothing more than breast milk for the first six months of their lives. I think most babies (there are always exceptions) will sleep for most of the night by the time they are four months old with a couple of naps during the day. It can be a problem – for parents, not the baby – if the daytime naps are prolonged (i.e. more than a couple of hours).

It is exhausting caring for a young baby, but it does all change quite quickly.

Iam64 might your DD have misunderstood you to mean "put the hoover on so you won't hear the baby and can ignore the crying"?
When you actually meant " the sound of the hoover will soothe them and send them off to sleep".

My babies were fed 4-hourly from birth, as was the law in those unenlightened days. My grandchildren have all been fed more or less continuously, day and night, for the first year or two. Babies adapt to whatever regime is imposed upon them.
I wish we hadn't been told to give solids so early, my grandchildren had nothing but breast milk for 6 months, which seems sensible. They can't need food until they have teeth and many allergies are the result of too-early solid food.

The BOOK

DS had 'the BOOK' and apparently DGS was going to be in a routine in days (if not hours )........

After a number of weeks I tactfully pointed out DGS hadn't read the book, at which point it was given to a pregnant friend!

Goes with the 'perfect baby' idea.....

Ash Tree, one of my daughter's had her first baby 5 weeks ago, not an easy pregnancy resulting in a csection and small baby. She's doing brilliantly, despite having been a reluctant breast feeder. She quoted me to her younger sister earlier this week, in fairly scandalised tones "mum says hoover the sitting room and the baby will be asleep by the time you stop" - both girls looked at me in their "worst mother in the world" mode

I didn't leave my babies crying but certainly didn't pick them up the minute the grizzled. A 2 minute hoover would usually do the trick

Oh dear I'm sorry - we went through this my GS was permanently starving and seemed to grow day by day (DD2 had lots of milk) I thought GS might explode and could never persuade DD2 to leave him for a while or give him a bottle of water - she thought that was a terrible suggestion and not recommended in the BOOK.

loopylou I never left mine to cry for long, I could not have stood that, but they would often fuss and grizzle a bit when you put them down.

I left DGS to do this a few times for his nap when I was baby sitting and he would usually grizzle himself to sleep in about 10 mins. You just know when its that "tired cry" with the winding down tone to it.

I have to admit though that I was very lucky that both mine were very easy babies from the begining.