Welcome to week 15 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to all you lovely bloggers who are continuing to link up very week, I am loving our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general. I am finding myself really excited each week now to see if we have any more babies being welcomed into the world! I know a lot of you are very close now!!
Parenting
Siblings April 2015
It’s that time of the month again where we have a look at some shots of our cutie siblings and see how they are getting on with each other! Little Miss still worships her big brother and looks at him with pure adoration which melts my heart. As she is growing and getting more responsive, Monkey has started to pay a bit more attention to her, and there have been some gorgeous moments between them this last month.
One day when she was feeding, Monkey decided to come and sit with us and play on the tablet. Of course this was far too distracting for LM who wanted to see what her big brother was up to. Initially I was frustrated but they had such a lovely moment that the frustration didn’t last for long. The shots aren’t great as she is on my lap but you get the idea of what a cute moment it was!
A few days later, when LM was on the floor, Monkey had to lie down with her and give her a cuddle (so cute though it did look like he was crushing her slightly!).
She was astounded by the fact that Percy was flying through the air so he let her have a look at him.
Then he held her hand and said Oh I love Percy and (LM) and (Monkey). He said their real names of course but it was so cute and I love that he said he loves himself too 🙂
I love my children so much. We’ve had another tough month with poorliness and I hope we are coming out the other side now as I so enjoy seeing them happy and interacting with each other. It melts my heart every time!
#MaternityMondays week 15
Welcome to week 14 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to all you lovely bloggers who are continuing to link up very week, I am loving our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general. I am finding myself really excited each week now to see if we have any more babies being welcomed into the world! I know a lot of you are very close now!!
Teething Pain Relief
Our Little Miss is really struggling at the moment with teething pain. She goes from being a happy smily baby who sleeps well and feeds well and is full of chuckles… to a grumpy girl who can’t sleep for longer than half an hour at a time, and is just totally miserable. And it is all down to her teething.
It is hugely frustrating as a Mummy as there is nothing visible to prove that her unhappiness is caused by teething. So you look for the signs.
Drooling
Chewing on fingers
Rubbing on ears
Runny Nose
Flushed Cheeks
Chin Rash
Fever
Of course with babies, they may have many of these symptoms for other reasons too so it is difficult to be sure until you actually see a tooth, and they can be suffering for weeks before you finally spot the culprit poking through their gum.
So we do what we can in the meantime to provide relief. We try a multitude of different things to try and find the best thing that works, as all babies are different, and what works for one won’t necessarily work for another. Thankfully there are places online where you can find and order teething remedies, like Mistry’s Online Chemist, so you don’t have to drag an unhappy baby round the shops.
Here are some of the things we have tried to provide LM with some teething pain relief.
Teething Gels
Teething Gels are basically as you would imagine, gels you can rub onto your little one’s gums to provide temporary relief to the area. I think that this can definitely make a difference to LM and she quite visibly relaxes sometimes when I have applied the gels and it definitely calms her down. Hubs is less convinced about the actual pain relief element and wonders if she is just distracted by the flavour or rubbing of her gums, but I think there is more to it than that. Either way though as long as it helps her I don’t mind why!
Teething Granules and Powders
We’ve used teething granules and powders with both our little ones and again find that they can help. One of the many side effects of teething can be tummy pain and I read somewhere that this may be related to the excess drool they are swallowing. I am no expert but for whatever reason both my little ones have had tummy troubles associated with their teething and teething powder and granules have definitely helped relieve them of this.
Teethers
Teethers are like toys in that they are designed to appeal to babies, with the added bonus that when chewed they provide some relief to a teething baby. I know many parents who swear by teether toys and there are so many on the market to try. There are ones that can be kept in the fridge to provide cooling relief to gums, some that are quite firm and others that are a little softer. So far we have found that LM actually prefers to chew on soft toys rather than the harder plastic on some teether toys but again all babies are different.
Amber
Amber is said to have anti-inflammatory properties when worn and heated by your skin. It is said that because of this it can help to relieve the pain of inflammation caused by teething. I have read various stories of parents who swear by these which was enough for us to try it. You can get necklaces or anklets but we felt happier with the anklet personally. unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have had any effect on LM but that is not to say it won’t work on other babies!
Paracetamol/Ibuprofen for children
When all else fails we do at times turn to the good old children’s medicines to provide some pain relief. We are of course careful to follow the instructions on the bottle and do try to keep it as a last resort but there are times when nothing else will work. As adults most of us will know how uncomfortable toothache is, and we wouldn’t hesitate to use pain relief ourselves when we need it so we try not to beat ourselves up about giving her some.
It really is one of life’s little cruelties that babies have to go through this pain and we just have to find the best ways to help them through it!
What teething pain remedies have you used with your little ones? What did you find worked the best?
Please note that this is a sponsored post. I have received compensation for writing this post however all thoughts, opinions and images are entirely my own.
#MaternityMondays week 14
Welcome to week 14 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to all you lovely bloggers who are continuing to link up very week, I am loving our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general!
A few fun (and not so fun) firsts for LM at 5 mths
This was originally going to be an entirely happy post celebrating some of LM’s lovely firsts this week… and I am going to include those but I can’t not mention another first which is less happy.
LM had her first trip to A&E :(. She has had a horrible cold all week and Saturday afternoon she seemed to get worse and was not feeding well at all. Sunday morning her breathing was a little laboured and we noticed a distinct wheeze. She was also hardly eating at all, barely drinking 40ml (about 1 oz) of her milk compared to the 140 ish she usually has in the morning. Being the bank holiday weekend we didn’t want to wait until Tuesday so called the out of ours GP service who wanted to see her because of her age and let’s face it, you don’t mess around with breathing! We wondered if it was a chest infection and assumed we may be home with antibiotics or something.
#MaternityMondays week 13
Welcome to week 13 of #MaternityMondays! Thanks so much to all you lovely bloggers who are continuing to link up very week, I am loving our little community, celebrating the joys (and sharing the challenges) of pregnancy, life with babies and motherhood in general!
Monkey at 34 mths
I can’t believe my little Monkey is only a couple of months away from being 3! It feels so grown up and impossible for my baby boy to be that age… but at the same time it makes sense as he has grown up so much lately and is such a lovely little lad, he melts my heart daily (as well as driving me crazy multiple times a day 😉 !
So what is he up to? Well lots and lots he is always on the go! You may have read the recent updates about him – Monkey Says and Learning to Read but there is lots more going on too.
Am I living a Groundhog Day?
At the moment I feeling like my life is like Groundhog Day. I am living the same thing over and over and over every day. Does anyone else ever feel like that? Please be warned that this is quite a moany and definitely rambling post so be warned and feel free to stop reading at any time!
Monkey’s chatter at the moment, is very cute and lovely… but it is also incessant. He just never stops and just jabbers away constantly. When he was younger and was a bit delayed in his speech people used to say to me that there would come a time when I wished he was quiet. Oh how right they were!
It doesn’t help that LM stresses me out a lot at the moment with her teething and lack of sleeping. When she is screaming, moaning or unhappy my tolerance levels for any noise reach zero and I can’t even have a conversation with hubs while she is crying without getting stressed. Monkey’s chattering at these times drives me completely potty and I do sometimes tell him to just be quiet. I feel like an awful parent but my brain just can’t take it! He generally doesn’t listen to me anyway and carries on jabbering away. Occasionally there is a couple of seconds pause, or he whisper shouts instead of normal shouting but mostly he just carries on at normal or shouts even louder to spite me!
He is also massively contrary at the moment. It is worse when he is tired or not feeling himself (we still seem to have a cold continually in our house with at least one of us snotty and grouchy at all times!) when it reaches extreme proportions but he is contrary a lot of the rest of the time too. Reverse psychology is in constant use and even that backfires a lot. Here is an example of a conversation this morning. Me in purple, Monkey in blue
Eat your breakfast please. It’s not breakfast, it’s dinner. (Sigh) Fine, then eat your dinner please. It’s not dinner it’s breakfast. Fine. Just eat it. I don’t want to. Ok then shall Mummy eat it? No I wanted it!
If only that one conversation actually meant that he then ate his breakfast without further chatter and debate! It’s not only food over. We have the same conversations over TV, clothes, activities. Even when he was helping Daddy make biscuits at the weekend ( an activity he loves) he was deliberately arguing against every suggestion Daddy made. Would you like to roll the dough? No I don’t want to. Right I’ll do it then. No I wanted it! …Oh I don’t want to! I have to admit it was a little gratifying when Daddy got stressed out by this as it made me feel like less of a terrible impatient Mother when I get annoyed by it on a daily basis!
It’s not just Monkey related though. The laundry is doing my head in at the moment. The step up from 3 of us to 4 of us seems to have trebled our washing (I think Muslins take up a huge proportion of that) and it just feels relentless and never ending. No matter how much laundry I seem to do the washing baskets seem to be constantly full! It doesn’t help that LM refuses to sleep when the washing machine is on so it has to be timed to be on when she is awake, and we daren’t put it on at night at risk of it disturbing her. Our sleep is too precious! Then there is the tumble dryer which again is on all the time – a constant ( well I was going to say hum but it is a lot louder than that) rumble(?) in the background which also drives me crazy.
I went on a bit of a subconscious laundry strike last week. I just couldn’t face it and ignored it (which is very unlike me) and well that certainly backfired as of course the piles reached epic proportions! Hubs said later in the week he wished I had said something to him as he could have tried to do it instead, but with it being a subconscious strike, in that I didn’t consciously decide to stop…. I just didn’t do it for a few days.. I hadn’t thought to mention it. Plus mentioning it would have meant actually admitting to myself that I was doing it and would have forced me to stop being so daft and just do some blimming laundry.
Then there’s the constant amount of crumbs on the floor and the never ending hoovering and sweeping that needs doing. (Even seconds after hoovering every inch of the downstairs I see a new crumb or get one stuck to my foot. I swear they reproduce or grow out of thin air!) And the washing up, and cleaning the table, and cleaning bathrooms and windows. Plus of course the formula preparation and the cleaning and sterilising and all of that rigmarole that needs doing every day. Loading and unloading the dishwasher… the list of housework goes on.
Oh and all the nappy changes…. I really wish Monkey was ready for being potty trained. Not that I am looking forward to actually doing the training, I am very much looking forward to him using the toilet rather than needing changes. Changing two of them all day every day makes it feel never ending . He is nearly ready I think and we are laying a lot of the groundwork, but I really don’t want to rush him as I know from friend’s experiences that that only ever makes things harder. In the meantime, all the hand washing and hand sanitiser from the constant nappy changing are making my hands so dry and horrible. I now wear rubber gloves for washing up and leaning, but they aren’t really so good for bottom wiping or bathy time!
My Mother in law said something the other week (about a totally different subject) that really stuck with me. If you can’t change your situation then you have to change your attitude about it. I can’t stop the amount of laundry that needs doing, or stop Monkey being contrary (hopefully he will grow out of that one day) and we have a while to go with nappies as LM is only 5 mths old. So I need to try and change my attitude. As ever with this kind of thing that is a heck of a lot easier said than done but I need to try as I am a bit of a misery guts at the moment.
A lot of it is down to LM’s randomness and continuing lack of routine (despite our best efforts we still have a mix of good days and bad) which makes me grumpy and I haven’t worked out how to manage my time best, when I don’t know what time I am going to have. I am trying to accept that she doesn’t have a routine and not expect to get things done, as that stresses me out when I don’t achieve things. But then I am still getting stressed because I never achieve anything and can’t even plan how to achieve the things I want to because of our lack in routine! It’s a bit of a vicious cycle.
I keep trying to remember how lucky we are, both kids sleep from 7pm at night and she goes through til 530am which is early but not terrible. Monkey sleeps til nearer 7 and he still naps a few days a week, for a good 3 hours at a time so I know how lucky I am with that. I also know that all of this is only temporary but I don’t like feeling like I am wishing away this time. I also realise that as an SAHM at least I don’t have to worry about all of this as well as being at work… but I also get no break from the monotony.
I made a choice to become a SAHM and I don’t regret it as I have loved watching Monkey grow and learn, and I know I will love doing the same with LM too. But it isn’t always easy and I guess that’s my point.. if I have one at all! I told you it was a rambly post! IBut I do feel better for having a bit of a vent so if you have made it this far, thank you for reading :).
#MaternityMondays week 12
Welcome to Week 12 of #MaternityMondays! Thank you so much to all our lovely linkers from last week, I loved our little Mother’s Day special and there was some gorgeous Mother’s Day themed posts in addition to some also fabulous #MaternityMondasy posts
As Emma and I co-hosted last week across the four days we thought we would both share our favourites from you all. We both loved reading your fantastuc posts. Emma Says:
“This amazing piece from 23 Week Socks documents the Thank Yous she feels she should have said to all the people who helped her after the birth of her baby. It is a documentary of the tough time she experienced because of depression and it really is an inspiration. Other mums will really be helped by this post because it shows, even in the darkest of days, you are not alone and there really are people out there who can help you.
My other favourite was from Treasure Every Moment with her 36 week pregnancy update. Things are hotting up and all the final things to do are coming together. I can’t wait to read all about another #MaternityMondays baby.”
And for me, I loved reading some of the lovely tributes to some fantastic Mummies out there and a few posts definitely bought a tear to my eye – soppy woman that I am these days! Another Bun started me off with a gorgeous post about what Mother’s Day means to her and then TwinMummy&Daddy shared such a beautiful poignant post about a Mum and Grandma who is sadly no longer around, and explaining why to her Grandchildren, and, well that was it for me!
This week has been difficult, we think LM is teething (though when do you really know, unless a tooth appears?) and she has been pretty miserable…. which makes Hubs and I miserable. What has cheered me up though was writing her little 5 month update, and realising it isn’t all misery, and I do know her, even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes when she is inconsolable and I don’t know what to try next! So this week I am sharing that happy little update of our gorgeous girl with you all.
Now it is over to you! Please grab our badge and share the linky love by commenting on a few other blog posts, it would be lovely if we could grow a little community to share the highs and lows of motherhood and parenting.
The linky is open Mondays only from 6.30am to midnight.
Don’t forget to tweet your link using #MaternityMondays, and if you tag us in we will retweet, we are @EmmaLander2 and @BecomingaSAHM