Tiny Turtle Hatchlings

[Penny Century]

Both mine watched a lot of telly too. I thought CBeebies was great when they were younger, it was part of the fabric of our day-to-day lives. In fact I just looked out the CBeebies Spring Time song from when B was little and had a proper gut-punch of pure nostalgia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMuy2CrqFZg

That playpen is immense, Ken! The twins look very contented in there.

[cluefree]

I think tv programmes for children are loads better, quality and content-wise, now. Lots of good messages and learning opportunities. The absolute tat I watched as a child bears no resemblance to the excellence of hey duggee, or Sarah and Duck, for example.

[Cerise]

Yes! Octonauts is educational.

[Pippedydeadeye]

God, I love(d) CBeebies. A friend from uni is interviewing Chris Jarvis for his podcast today!

[Kenickie]

Thanks for the nail tips! I would make it a dad job if I hadn't seen the state of P's. It feels like I do it amid years and struggling and then the next day or day after they're scratching themselves again with them. I feel like Sisyphus, if he kept dropping the ball and letting it get dented.

That's really lovely to read about your return to work, Leap. She'll be getting so much from spending so much time with her grandparents too. I still don't know what I'm doing about work but I'm now thinking I'll go back full time, at least at first. It's not ideal but I'm really worried about dropping to part time and then P losing his job as surviving on less than my full wage would be a real struggle.

Was she sleeping through before, Leap? That's really frustrating if she was. Mine are still terrible generally but a couple of days ago they both did a five hour stretch, which is rare enough, but at nearly the same time for the first time ever. :toot:

We just had a massive nap time trauma as Topsy got her fat thigh stuck in the cot. I couldn't get it out either so had to call P for help, by which time she was totally hysterical. So I decided to let them nap on me instead of trying to get her to settle in the cot again.

[Penny Century]

looks like Topsy has recovered from her ordeal!

[olive]

Sleeping babies!

I loved CBeebies. T was a complete telly refusenik and it made life so hard whereas M loved it and genuinely learned loads.

Both mine watched a lot of telly too. I thought CBeebies was great when they were younger, it was part of the fabric of our day-to-day lives. In fact I just looked out the CBeebies Spring Time song from when B was little and had a proper gut-punch of pure nostalgia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMuy2CrqFZg

That playpen is immense, Ken! The twins look very contented in there.

This has made me look up the 2011 Summer song and it’s made me miss the boys being little and living in our lovely flat.*

* except it was miserable as we had 2 kids in a tiny first floor flat with no garden.

[Hazey_Jane]

God, I love(d) CBeebies. A friend from uni is interviewing Chris Jarvis for his podcast today!

Can you get your friend to tell him I still hate Josie D’Arby after she was rude to me? He was with her at the time.

[Pippedydeadeye]

It might be a bit late now.

[Leap]

Awww the sleeping babies All my timehops just now are Hop passed out on me or C, but we’ve only had the very rare boob nap in the last 6 months I think.

Sleeping through the night is still an imaginary concept here But after her jabs she’d started doing 5-6 hour stretches which was absolutely lovely, basically just one wake up for us, but then slipped back into this 3-4 hour pattern which is harder now that we’ve seen what it could be. It improved last night again though, so who knows. Sleep wise my goals were always regular naps and a long evening sleep so it feels lovely to be able to almost rely on that now we’ve made it here. C and I have fallen into a pattern of doing our own thing separately in the evening though It still feels like that time is precious and neither of us wants to watch Compromise TV, so most nights we’ll do a separate thing and then every so often do a longer dinner spending proper time together over a glass of wine. I do feel a lot closer to us having a proper evening out as lockdown eases and evening babysitting seems like an actual possibility, but until then this is fine. We do chat about it, i.e. is it okay that I want to sit in this room with the better light to sew? / Yes as long as it’s okay with you I prefer to sit in the cave (our very dim living room) to watch WW2 documentaries.

[Kenickie]

I think baby free time is so precious that it's important to do whatever you want with it. Compromise TV has made me laugh. We tend to watch rubbish at the moment as I often can't face concentrating on something and it's also up and down a lot once they've been put to bed. I'm sad that we've finished all the Drag Races as that was perfect.

I can't wait until someone can babysit for us, I'm not sure about a night out at the moment but a lunch would be amazing.

I definitely know what you mean about it being harder when things get worse. How is she now? Both of mine did five hours the other day which is totally unheard of, and would be so brilliant if it happened every night.

Topsy in particular is becoming really difficult to settle at night now as she keeps sitting up. She also managed to nearly kick over my bedside table this evening when I fed her at bedtime! And Tim has started trying to pull himself up the side of the cot, luckily only in the day/ evening so far rather than the middle of the night.

Hope all the other babies are doing well!

[Leap]

In classic Hop form, the night after I posted that she slept through the night She did it twice in a row, still waking up at 10 pm for a feed but that was before we had gone to sleep, and then straight through until morning. I still woke up after 4-5 hours, and actually found the morning harder as she woke earlier than she usually does, but that’s an adjustment for me that I’ll hopefully get the chance to make. She then had a couple of bad nights, but I think it might be new teeth coming in so I’m feeling hopeful things are still moving in a good direction. I’m only awake this long tonight because I can’t get back to sleep

Cot and feeding acrobatics sounds interesting! Do you have the mattress on the lowest setting yet?

[Kenickie]

Well done Hop! I thinking knowing that they can do something like sleeping through makes all the difference, even when it's not consistent. I'm sorry for your wakefulness though, and for the early starts!

The cot isn't on the lowest setting yet so I need to move it down. It's a bit annoying though as currently it's attached to our need so I can just slide them across, but when I move it down I think I need to put the fourth side back on so it won't be as easy to get them out. But hopefully it won't be so bad if they're waking less. so far tonight Tim has done a four hour stretch before feeding just now but Topsy has been every two hours.

[Leap]

Ah so near yet so far I was a bit worried about dropping the mattress as she is a ton weight, but the only back problems I've had are the ones that started after going back to work

We are back to 5-6 hour sleep stretches so I do think it was a blip and we are on our way I really need to trial not giving her the bedtime boob after her bath but it's one of my favourite times with her, I'm just not quite there yet.

We had Hop's 13 month check over the phone yesterday, and it was honestly a bit weird. It unfortunately wasn't my lovely HV who seems to have been off for a while, and the person I spoke to was so dour about everything I said I came away from it wondering if I'm missing something (I don't think I am). It was a range of questions on what she's doing so far in terms of communication, problem solving etc, and we had a good range of mostly Yeses and a few 'Not yets' which I felt was fine as the questionnaire is a gauge and not a minimum standard. Everything was a very quiet 'Hmmm' though, with some snippy follow up questions if I made a joke about it. Two of our not yets were related to her ability to draw with a pencil/crayon, which I quite honestly hadn't even considered trying yet because why would I want to teach her something that can cause so much havoc I said as much and I could practically hear her raising her eyebrows down the phone at me

We had some useful takeaways, but at the end of the call she then went off script and said I wasn't to worry about these questions but they just add them in. So...does Hop know her colours? And what about her numbers? Again I guess there must be children out there picking these things up, especially those with older siblings, but I looked at my little sausage baby who is still closer to puppy than human at the moment and said again it's not something we've spent any time on.

Her overall attitude just bothered me I think. I know she must be overloaded and possibly annoyed about my HV not being available, but it is a weird profession to have someone who doesn't smile or engage or give any kind of reassurance beyond a very blank "That all sounds...fine."

[Princess Morripov]

Oh I think those checks are always ridiculous. I remember at Tupac’s 15 month (we have them at different stages in Wales) they were asking if he could draw a circle, use a knife and fork, fetch and put on his shoes, which was just insanity.

[Princess Morripov]

Yeah, we had a 27 month check (we just seem to constantly be 3 months later than England for everything, we have 6, 15 and 27 month checks) and by that point I think she was expecting him to be able to recite the alphabet backwards and speak Welsh and English and dress himself

Anyway, I am sure I’ve posted about this before but I don’t really give a shit because I know that my chaps are fine and there’s nothing to worry about and it generally makes me laugh a bit about their insane expectations but I think it could make someone who is feeling a bit unsure/lacking confidence really feel like they are failing as a parent and for that reason I do think it is unnecessary bullshit.

I remember more recently for Biggie’s 6 month check (which was say, 2 weeks or so before he was 6 months) that they were tutting that I hadn’t weaned him yet but the guidance is 6 months so what’s the rush?

[Kenickie]

Yay for going back to the good sleeping, Hop! Bedtime feeding is definitely not my favourite time so I can't wait to stop, but I think if you enjoy it then it makes sense to carry on. She's so little still.

It's interesting about the different timings. We didn't have six month checks, and the next one I thought was a year, but it's actually anytime from 9-14 months. We've been booked in for a couple of weeks time so they'll be just 11 months. I have looked at the questionnaire but not gone through it yet but agree that some of the things seem crazy, and I thought exactly the same about the crayon thing. Knowing colours at this age must be very rare. I don't think mine even know their names yet. I guess they're useful to spot issues but I definitely agree that they need to be done really sensitively not to make people feel paranoid. I also have a different health visitor to the really good one I saw at first, strangely.

[Rhodonite]

I remember J's 2 year check (which was also at 27 months) and he was naming colours from a book he was looking at, and my HV said they don't check that until they are 4! Then she said to me, 'does he know (then spelled out) Y.E.L.L.O.W?` Me looking confused,' wait, what did you just spell?!' Poor kid won't stand a chance when his mum can't spell yellow!

Our checks seem really varied up here. I've heard some people tell me their children have been given little tasks to do, but so far I've only ever been asked questions.

Going back to sleep, is brilliant! Our sleep... Conchie has had some terrible nights recently, but it's usually followed by a tooth popping through, then his sleep will settle down again. He's been really unsettled today, so I'm expecting a bad night tonight.

[Leap]

I remember J's 2 year check (which was also at 27 months) and he was naming colours from a book he was looking at, and my HV said they don't check that until they are 4! Then she said to me, 'does he know (then spelled out) Y.E.L.L.O.W?` Me looking confused,' wait, what did you just spell?!' Poor kid won't stand a chance when his mum can't spell yellow!

Rhod

Fingers crossed for sleep tonight! We’ve just had a wake up after 45 mins and I’m sure it’s new teeth too.

[Paris Stilton]

I've just read through the last few pages as I now have a tiny hatchling and it's been lovely to read about your babies and their stages! I don't want to wish the time away but I'm excited to see him becoming more human than puppy (Leap ).

He's 10 weeks old now and seems to be a very relaxed little chap - he wakes up once during the night and we've even had a few nights of him sleeping through...! I believe we've got a sleep regression to look forward to so I'm expecting this to change (the child health nurse says that this is now called a sleep PROgression, the loon)

We had a rocky start to breastfeeding but that's established and going well now. He likes to feed around every two hours during the day so I expect my nipples will drop off from exhaustion soon.

I'm already enjoying parental guilt, worrying that I'm taking him out too much/not enough/watching too much TV (we're also Ru Paul fans, Ken)/not doing enough to support his development... The parents at my baby group seem to have whole programmes of activities set up for their babies while mine mainly gets to watch me drink lukewarm tea and stare blankly at TV drag queens

How is everyone doing?