After the recent success of the Tuff Spot play with water, I was keen to see what other easy activity I could come up with for Monkey that didn’t involve much prep but would keep him entertained. Ages ago a post from Loving Life with Little Ones reminded me how much fun could be had with lentils and I had wanted to get some out for Monkey to play with for a while.
#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!!
The Gadget Show Live with the OmniO Rider
Last week I was contacted about a fantastic new product, the OmniO Rider. A lightweight stroller which can be folded up and worn as a backpack. Straight away it sounded like a great idea to me for any parent with a toddler who wants to walk, but then gets tired out for the journey home.
I am not the only person to think it is a fantastic idea and the OmniO Rider has just won the Gadget Show Live’s “British Invention of the Year Award!” The OmniO team invited us to go along to The Gadget Show Live and take a look for ourselves.
Sunny
My word of the week this week, is Sunny.
Firstly in the literal sense because the last few days have been gloriously sunny. The end of last week was wet and miserable and I was so fed up of the cold but the last couple of days have been the absolute opposite. We had a lovely day today at our local country park enjoying the sunshine with some friends and it was lovely relaxing in the sun – well relaxing as much as you ever can with an almost 3 yr old and a 5mth old!
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.
Making time for me – 2 weeks in
It’s 2 weeks since I started my renewed efforts to take a bit better care of myself and to lose some of the excess baggage I am carrying around, and for the most part it is going quite well.
#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.
Tuff Spot Play with Water
Much as I love doing more structured activities with Monkey, to make cards, or pictures or baking, some of my favourite activities are a lot more free play based. Activities I can set up pretty simply and then leave him to it. Watching where his imagination takes me always cracks me up and it’s also great to literally watch him learning as he plays.
Since LM was born and with all of the illness we have struggled with this year, I have gotten a bit lazy with regards to setting up activities, mainly out of fear. Fear of the mess I have to clean up. Fear of how stressed I am going to get dealing with him and the baby at the same time. I have pulled myself together a little though and one day decided to get a job done that has needed to be done for ages, and involve Monkey in a bit of free play at the same time.
Adding some spring colour
So our house is full of illness again. Honestly this year has been a year of bugs and to tell you the truth I am fed of talking about it. So I am not going to write about the horrendous cough that Monkey had and now poor LM has, or how I had to doze in a chair all night last night so she could sleep upright and stop coughing so hard she was sick every time she tried to go to sleep… no I am not writing about that. Instead I am looking outside and writing about the lovely spring colours in our garden. In the hopes that spring will bring less bugs… eventually!
What a difference a year makes. This time last year we were very much in the throes of Operation Garden Renovation and our garden was basically a mud pit at this point I think! It has since been well and truly transformed but is still very much a work in process. (Excuse the toddler toys but hey, it’s his garden as much as ours :))