although I’m talking in a cst-to-the-earth kind of way I guess. One of my books (Baby Bargains) said that service is the most expensive, then disposables, then doing your own cloth diapers.
I just wondered. What about environmental factors? As I say, I have no vested interest in any of this, but am curious as to the convenience factor/spend-spend-spend attitude of many parents when so many of our parents (presumably) had to do without so many of these luxuries.
also keep in mind that both types have improved dramatically in the last 20 years. Here’s a good primer on cloth: http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/03/qa_cloth_diaper.html
I have only done disposable, although I am thinking of starting to do a half-and-half thing, now that I only have one poop a day to deal with and I generally know when it happens.
Yeah, I don’t even want to start on the environmental costs of either. There are plenty of studies out there, most outdated and neglectful of some aspect (depending on who funded the study). People are an expensive burden on the planet, no matter their size.
My grandmother (circa 1930) claimed to have potty-trained her kids from birth. Basically, she just knew when to hold them over the toilet.
Hand-wash your nappies in a stream! Everyone’s a winner!
(seriously, I have no real bother one way or the other. It always seemed to me that real nappies would be better all round than disposables, but now I’m not so sure. I’m directing my rage solely at people with £200 baby monitors now)
One of my earliest memories of my mother is seeing her kneeling beside the bath with her sleeves pushed up as far as they’d go, wringing out my sister’s nappies before she could put them in the machine. And oh boy, that smell.
We have an enormous box of washable nappies which we were fully intending to use on Alice, but she is WAY too small for them at the moment (only just out of premature baby size disposables in fact). But when she gets big enough I will let you know how we manage! I must say it’s not a tempting prospect at the moment—more because of the extra time involved, which feels like a very scarce commodity right now, than because of smelliness/grossness. But I’m willing to try it.
And I’m definitely with you about needless gadgets ailsa. I think I spent a total of £9 of my own money on preparing for Alice (on clothes at an NCT nearly new sale) and everything else was donated/Freecycled/bought by parents. She’s obviously going to cost a lot more now she’s actually here but at least babies don’t know/care if their gear is second-hand or improvised.
It probably helps that we have no space for anything anyway. But thank god someone else fulfilled Alice’s pressing need for a giant corduroy bunny:
Archel, that’s totally precious :) Alice is such a doll! Do you find yourself just watching her sleep?
It’s my opinion that the most important thing you can give your children, the thing they will truly remember, is your time, and I personally think that the small conveniences of modern living that truly give us more time to spend where we choose are well worth it.
It’s my opinion that the most important thing you can give your children, the thing they will truly remember, is your time
Very true. I was going to say, with all this “can we afford it?” talk—the hurtin’ isn’t just on your wallet (and you can control that to a certain extent by being thrifty), it’s on your free time, which (with two or more kids especially) may well dwindle away to nothing.
example-now typing one-fingered with fussy T in crook of arm...gotta go
Twohundred pounds on monitor: that’ll probably be the one that prevents crib death, right? Not very useful as it tends to be *faulty* (will send of an alarm signal when baby’s just asleep). Even though I was so scared of crib death, I decided not to buy it. Not only because of cost price—we could afford it—but it didn’t seem trustworthy.
Toys? We have a lot but Ophelia prefers taking out all the paper out of closets. The first half year you don’t need much at all.
We didn’t think about the cost of having a baby. Mostly because it wasn’t a problem. (Being the worrier that I am, it does However I didn’t realize how much money can/is spent on a baby! WTF man. I did switch from yr fancy ass (hah!) Pampers to a cheaper (and imo better) alternative. Saves us a ton of money. Same goes with those towelettes: 1 euro instead of 3 euros. Hey and I knit her sweaters. ;-) Just kidding. But if I wanted I could save a lot of money on clothing by knitting all her sweaters (instead of buying’em). Still, no designer clobber for Ophelia. It’s ridiculous even if you have the money.
We get £127/month in Child Benefit
WTF! We get about 55 pounds. Oh wait is that for two kids? I put all the money on her savings account.
Archel, that’s one of my favourite baby pics EVER.
(Being the worrier that I am,
Oops, this is what happens when you turn around and look at Ophelia crawling around: you forget to type the rest of the sentence.
the most important thing you can give your children, the thing they will truly remember, is your time, and I personally think that the small conveniences of modern living that truly give us more time to spend where we choose are well worth it.
the most OTM post on any parenting thread evah.
The most important thing is not to be an absentee father....like mine was and still is. That’s why I’ll never get married or have kids.
My brother Charlie (25 years my junior — go Dad!)
One month:
Three months (on Boxing Day):
babies are expensive? it the teenage years that scare me!
by then i’ll have trained her to work for me. hey, she can already crawl behind the counter. wink wink
We avoided one of the biggest teenage expenses when Sarah showed no interest in driving. Auto insurance rates for teens be buggin’!
Well, if it’s in yr genes: GREAT cause neither me nor the husband drives a car. :-D
Your mileage may vary (HAW!) re: Belgian insurance rates.
I had to work to get enough money to get my own car and insurance. You lot are really nice parents, or your kids are all spoilt.
I’d like to think it’s the former. My parents paid mine, and my wife’s parents did for her as well even though they were pretty poor. I wonder what percentage of parents do that for the kids, and what percentage put that on the kids to take care of?
I was covered until my first ticket. Then the parents told me I was on my own, insurance-wise. Pretty fair in hindsight.
Can one of you lot adopt me please?
I added my daughter and my step-daughter to my insurance until they were 23 (cheaper than getting them their own policies). I also gave them AAA (and am continuing this) to prevent me having to deliver them gas/unlock their cars/tow them/worry so much. Neither my son nor step-son drove before that age (my son just got his license, a few weeks ago). I didn’t think about PPlains parents’ very sensible limit—thankfully, neither daughter had a ticket!
Can I ask what may be a daft question? In both my childcare books (Dorling Kindersley and Miriam Stoppard) there are handy charts as to how many sheets and cot blankets one should use on a crib/cot depending on the room temperature. But neither of them is very clear on whether your baby should be put to bed in a sleepsuit, vest and nappy, or just a nappy. What do/did your newborns find most comfortable?
(My baby overheating or getting a chill during the night is just one of the things I’m looking forward to worrying about!)
I think it just depends from baby to baby. Mine hated being swaddled, even in the hospital. I should have used a sleepsuit right away. Now I just put her in PJs and a sleepsuit. She also hase a onesie (?) on as well. Sometimes I just leave her in the onesie and her long sleeve shirt (and of course her sleepsuit).
Ah shit, sleepsuit is something different. Replace sleepsuit with sleepbag. Worked wonders for me!
So it’s onesie+sleepsuit+sleepbag. Room temp about 21 to 18 degrees celcius.
your kids are all spoilt.
There are few things that cause a knee-jerk reaction but the line ‘you’re kid is spoilt’ is one of them. I know you don’t mean it the wrong way—or at least I hope not—but argh how I hate that line. :-)
From a just-had-twins perspective:
1. No freaking WAY we would use cloth diapers. My mother-in-law disabused us of any thoughts of cloth diapers, and I’m glad she did.
2. With twins there is no chance for anyone to be an absentee parent, which is good, except when you want to take a break.
3. Last night, we switched from those fluffy terry-cloth-like baby suits to thin cotton ones, and wrapped them up in fleece swaddlers. They slept for 8 HOURS! I don’t know if it was that, or the fact that we tanked them up with milk and formula before bed, or if it was just random, but it was awesome. Maybe they had been getting too hot in the night. If you use swaddlers, and the houe is relatively warm, I don’t think you need blankets at all, at least at first.
Nathalie, you can take it any which way you want—if the cap fits and all that. My parents were, and have continued to be, very loving, caring, generous and supportive. But I didn’t get stuff like driving lessons, car insurance, a car, etc etc—I didn’t expect it and didn’t want it. I was old enough to work and earn my own money, why the hell should my parents still have to give me stuff (I mean, I wouldn’t have complained if they had decided they really wanted to, but I don’t believe it to be as necessary as the need to feed and clothe me when I wasn’t able to do so myself)? YMMV, obviously, and I didn’t mean it as an insult so much as a casually tossed-away observation about what does and doesn’t count as a necessary expense of parenting.
Meg—while we were still in the hospital one of the nursery nurses insisted that Alice needed to be in three layers (ie vest, sleepsuit, swaddle blanket) plus a blanket on top, so for the first few days this is what she slept in. And a hat too! But having got home she seemed perfectly warm (feel the back of the neck or the chest, not the hands or feet) in just a cotton sleepsuit with one or two blankets over her (and disliked being swaddled) so that’s what we go with mostly now.
Yeah, cos Tallulah was so small and fragile, we were also advised to go with three layers, a hat and a blanket for the first few weeks. She still sleeps with a blanket. Ava has rarely slept in more than a sleepsuit or a onesie/T/pants/socks—and she’s never had a blanket.
My Ava’s been keeping a “diary” of late. Pictures accompanied by surreal stories. This is her explaining one of them to Tallulah.
Stop it with the Ava and Tallulah confusions! I read that before the picture loaded and thought, wow, Ava’s one clever kid, keeping a diary and writing stories before she’s two. Then I realised it was a different Ava.
I had not seen this thread before now, so...
CONGRATULATIONS ARCHEL FAMILY!
I did wonder about you at one point during the hoilday, you know.
Thank you!
I managed to sleep from 3am until 9am today thanks to Matt doing early morning feeds, hurrah! Alice and I may even venture out later on to celebrate my relative lack of tiredness.
Andrew’s Ava is a beauty. (His Tallulah is too but that’s Overstepping The Mark and beyond the scope of this thread.)
Apologies for the confusion; I could call my kids by their middle names, if you like—Galvin and Greer. But that makes them sound like sheet music publishers from the turn of the 20th century.
Do you want to see something sad? Do you promise not to forward to Social Services? Ava, the morning after clocking herself on the edge of a chair (check out the shiner on her left eye):
She looks like she’s gone 12 rounds with Cuddles the Monkey.
Aww, ain’t nothin’ cuter than a kid with a black eye.
Stop it with the Ava and Tallulah confusions!
Mine were first!
One time my younger son had TWO black eyes when we went for a well-baby check-up. The pediatrician didn’t even blink. He had rambunctious kids of his own—he knew how it is. I remember that one of the black eyes was from him lurching from my arms as I held him in my parked car and whacking his face on the side mirror! The other one was from falling onto a toy.
This same kid later broke his nose with his own knee when he lost his balance while squatting down to tie his shoe.
Aww (wee) Ava...
This same kid later broke his nose with his own knee when he lost his balance while squatting down to tie his shoe.
Oh, bless!
Ava’s eye really coming on a treat now—will post some more pix to Flickr when I get the chance. She’ll love me for this when she’s 13.
Ophelia’s been pointing the remote control at the telly the last couple of days. It’s so darn cute but also somewhat scary in a way.
I’ve opened up this here ILX Sandwich Box specifically to find out how Archel was getting on—great to hear that everything is going well and very many congratulations on Alice! Do get in touch if I can help in any way—dunno if they recommend going for a pint in any of your baby books, but um, it certainly worked for me.
Louis does that with the remote too and we don’t watch a lot of tv! just imitation I guess, he sweeps with the broom too.
I just recovered from a 24-hour stomach flu that had me puking every hour or two. I don’t know what I would have done if my husband couldn’t have stayed home with me, it was miserable. I lost six pounds and I was already underweight. I think my milk production went down, we tried giving Louis cow’s milk and he was totally not having it! Everyone is fine now though.
Oh! Poor Teeny!
Shiner, day three:
Shiner, day four:
ava looks like shes in bikini kill
Oh I gotta tell you all this! It’s the funniest thing. I’ve been telling it to everyone IRL (heh). Every night I’ll read a little to O and then she’ll stand up and page through the book (I’m holding). She loves to point to pics and text and then I’ll tell her what it is. After about ten min I’ll put the book away and say:“Now it’s time to sleep, don’t you think?” OPHELIA TURNS AROUND, FLOPS ON HER BELL! And she puts her thumb in her mouth and turns her head away from me. Yep, she puts herself in the sleeping position IMMEDIATELY.
Teeny, man, that’s so crap. Hope you recover quickly. :-( I’ve been having mad crazy migraine attacks and they SUXOR. :-(
OPHELIA TURNS AROUND, FLOPS ON HER BELL! And she puts her thumb in her mouth and turns her head away from me. Yep, she puts herself in the sleeping position IMMEDIATELY.
That’s wonderful. I get Ava to sleep that easily maybe one night in six or seven.
(So, are we staying in the sandbox? I think we should. It feels a bit like lingering in the pub when everyone else has gone to the gig that was the original reason for meeting up.)
I kinda feel that way, too—there’s been some good stuff here!
Bunch of youngsters with no kids over there anyway...
(lucky bastards)
No, I don’t mean that—it’s just sometimes when you’ve been up till whatever the hell the time is and you’ve still got ironing and clothes sorting out to do and you’ve just been on your hands and knees on the kitchen floor scraping godknows what off it and and then you go into the playroom and there’s just stuff EVERYWHERE and you can’t find the remote and all you want to do is crash and then one of them wakes uo and goes ‘dad, i want to go to the toilet’ and that wakes the other one who wants a drink...and...zzzzzz
where’d everybody go...
I get Ava to sleep that easily maybe one night in six or seven.
Ha—it’s all about routine and things have been a lot better in the last month. “Dummies and puppies?” Ava asks as I’m towelling her down post-bath; her cot contains a few pacifiers (yes, we’ll phase ’em out eventually) and a couple of plush dogs, y’see. And off she goes.
Wearing her mum’s specs:
Out in the snow:
Tallulah gets ready for snow outing:
AW
AWWW AWWW AWWWWW AWWWWWWWWWWWWW
you just broke me
Two days to go, so looks like I may have a Sandbox baby...
Could be a Valentine’s Day baby like Ava! Fingers crossed for you.
Sunny & I toured the maternity ward today. Coffeemaker & microwave in the delivery room, ooo wee!
Thinking of you Meg!
Alice and I walked a very long way in the rain this morning for her first round of immunisations, only to find that the appointment card we’d been sent was totally wrong and we were supposed to book with our own GP (two minutes walk) after all. Argh. Still, defers the agony...
Question: how do you implement a ‘routine’ while still feeding on demand (and when feeds are demanded at fairly random intervals)? Alice slept from 6.30pm until midnight last night, neatly missing any bedtime routine window we might have had. And I hate to wake her up when I don’t know when we’re next going to get any peace...
the feeds float above the routine, don’t worry about it. at this age I would just have a few pre-bed things...a cuddle, a song. One thing I recently learned is that you have a great bed opportunity 30 min after a feed, that’s when the milk hits the gut and makes them sleepy.
Ah, here we go—an aerial view:
whoops:
Oh, that mass of curls. What a gorgeous little fella.
Your site reminds me that I need to take pix of Ava in the bath (she’s often at her hilarious best when splashing about), in monochrome (that great Jan 13 one!) and I need to take more videos.
Ava still pronounces her “L” as “W” despite Daddy’s best efforts at instilling palatalisation (“watch my tongue—LuLu.” “Yuyu!”). It’s cute, we’ll just leave it. Her command of numbers is still haphazard—one through twenty but rarely in order and she confuses 8 and 2 for some reason. She’s a bloody sponge though—it’s incredible to watch her absorb all this stuff and chuck it back at you.
Sending easy labour vibes your way Meg! Hope the little one doesn’t keep you waiting too long!
Now that morning sickness has finally passed, even though we’ve had a scan and a teeny bump is emerging, I’m finding it really hard to remember that I’m pregnant, it’s almost as if I’m in denial, which is very very odd. In 3–4 months time if I look back at this I’m sure I’ll have a bitter chuckle to myself.
Still, 136 days until I go on maternity leave!
More fluff please! Douglas, that’s such a gorgeous head of curls!
Aw, curly!
I felt the same Vicky—mainly because I always imagined I was going to look enormously visibly pregnant from about 4 months onwards, which was far from the case. Plus I didn’t have any morning sickness to speak of and generally felt ‘normal’ most of the time, so it was very easy to forget, sometimes.
Question: how do you implement a ‘routine’ while still feeding on demand (and when feeds are demanded at fairly random intervals)? Alice slept from 6.30pm until midnight last night, neatly missing any bedtime routine window we might have had. And I hate to wake her up when I don’t know when we’re next going to get any peace...
Just go with the flow. She’s still young and thus not open to much *coaxing* (in my opinion). But I did make sure that I would do the feeding in the same place and would also put her beside (with the telly on, so she got used to noise) after the feedings in the evening. That way she more or less got the hang of “night time is sleepy time.”
Ophelia has been extremely clingy (after Japan). It’s a bit difficult as I want to do my work in the shop. But it’s flattering as well of course.
Yo peeps
Oh, it didn’t work!
Ava is 2 today and that was supposed to be a little sequence of photos from birth to recent.
Here are the other two, FWIW...
She has such beautiful eyes!
So her birthday is on Valentine’s day? That’s so sweet and befitting for a cute girl like Ava!
She’s 9 days, 6 months, 13 months and 23 months in that sequence.
oh that pic in the crib is great! hb ava!
lou’s gone all mellow and snuggly lately:
the sweetest thing is when she wraps her arms around me and plays with my hair. i just melt
Happy birthday Ava!
Oh teens, I want to smooch that handsome boy. What a sweet face.
I want to pick Louis up and cuddle him.
Doesn’t look like I will get my Valentine’s baby after all, as he/she shows no sign of turning up today. So from tomorrow I am officially overdue and up for following any advice on how to get things moving, unless they involve castor oil.
Poor Meg.... for advice on how to get things going—lots and lots of sex apparently, what a hardship!
It worked for me!
Happy birthday Ava! May your third year make you even more adorable :)
Good luck Meg! If all the sex doesn’t tire you out, try walking up and down stairs a lot.
So... Ben had another set of spells, starting on Monday morning. He was diagnosed with having actual seizures after an EEG picked up a very mild seizure. It is unclear what is causing the seizures. They are of the staring variety. He does not shake, or clench, or do anything other than sort-of stare blankly for a few seconds. These seizures do not hurt him or damage his brain. Usually, seizures are caused by some sort of trauma or scarring of the brain, which probably occurred in-utero. He had a sonogram yesterday (with babies, they can look through the soft spot!), and they didn’t find anything macroscopic. He is going to go back in for an MRI at some point to get a much closer look at his brain. For now, and probably for at least a year, he is going to be on anti-seizure meds (because if he were to have a longer seizure, it COULD damage his brain, since he could lose some oxygen). He has been put on Keppra, which is a newish drug (at least in terms of its use for kids) that tends to have less drowsiness than some of the others, although it can make babies a bit more irritable. We’ll see, I guess. If it doesn’t work, there are some other options. Ben hopefully comes home tonight or tomorrow, barring any other unforeseen circumstances.
Poor little Ben. And poor you, how stressful. Is he home yet?
Hope he does well on the meds, and good luck with it all.
Oh David! What you must be going through. :-(((( How is your wife holding up? I saw the pictures and he looks so beautiful but oh so fragile. I really hope the medication helps and they can find out what causes it. You’re in my thoughts. :-(
Doesn’t look like I will get my Valentine’s baby after all, as he/she shows no sign of turning up today. So from tomorrow I am officially overdue and up for following any advice on how to get things moving, unless they involve castor oil.
FIrstborns are usually late. :-) Good luck with the delivery!!!
My friend’s baby was due last Friday, no doubt she’s climbing the walls by now. (Don’t feel like advising her to make with the sex tho, as her partner is my boss. Ew.)
I think Ophelia was about five days late. I was crawling around on all fours the last couple of weeks. I could not walk properly, but like a penguin, which amused my husband to no end and infuriated me. hah !
Funnily enough I can walk a bit easier now the head’s fully engaged—seems to have taken some of the weight off my back.
Sadly, as we live in a ground floor flat there’s no easy access to stairs for walking up and down. As for teh sex, we’ll see tonight ;)
Oh, David—hugs to you and you family!
Ben’s back home, as of last night! He seems do be doing well, although the thought of putting a three-month-old baby on brain drugs bums us out a bit. Anyone know of any alternative therapies for Partial Focal Seizures?
Here are a couple of pics from the hospital, when Ben got hooked up to an EEG.
Wow—poor little Ben. All those wires! Hopefully he won’t need the meds for long.
Meg, I never had any luck inducing with sex or anything else I tried. (Possibly because sex is so hilarious at that point, though). I do remember thinking, BRING ON THE PAIN I CAN TAKE IT. It is so uncomfortable at the end.
Um, that second picture might not be one your wife wants out on teh open internets.
But yes, poor wee Ben.
good point.
Did they miss each other while Ben was in the hospital? (Twins fascinate me.)
It’s hard to tell. The first time, when we brought Ben home, they had a little “conversation,” where they would each take turns talking and listening to each other. They are still a little young to really understand the presence of each other, but they do cute things like hold hands when they breastfeed together.
Awwwwww.
What Luna said.
omg awww.
I think I am feeling mine move! Lots of squirming movements and the odd kick—mostly when I have eaten too much and there is no space left for the baby!
Archel, you had SPD didn’t you? I have pain in one side of my groin when I walk so I am wondering if that is the same thing. Is there anything you can do about it?
omg david that’s so cute!
David, big hugs for everything that you and your family are going through, I hope things settle down soon and normality returns.
Liz, when are you due again? I forget and it’s on old ILE. I keep hoping to feel something (16 weeks and 2 days) but it’s still early days yet I guess, and the placenta’s at the front which could mask it until later :0(
I felt first movements around 16 weeks, it’s such a great feeling :)
Liz, there’s not a huge amount you can do about the SPD I don’t think—I was told to keep my legs together as much as possible (!) ie bring both feet together on each step when you go up stairs, get out of bed by swinging both legs to the side etc. Also, sleep on your side with a pillow in between your knees. I had a lovely V shaped pillow which was a livesaver (and is still handy now for support when feeding).
I’m 18 weeks and thought I wouldn’t feel anything for a couple more weeks but it must be an energetic baby.
Thanks, Archel. It isn’t a definite diagnosis but I’ll talk to the midwife next week & try the pillow thing anyway.
xpost to Vicki: I’ve got an anterior placenta too and although I had a few very faint flutterings from around 15 weeks, I didn’t feel an actual definite kick til 20 weeks. And even since then, I don’t seem to have felt as much movement as other preggos I know. Hopefully it’s a sign of a laidback baby—could explain why he/she is in no hurry to come out!