OcUK Dadsnet thread

Is that a rest during feeding? How did she react? Our near 8 week old has a melt down if you take the bottle away (to burp him), even if you take it away when he's not actively sucking/having a breather.

Sometimes if you take the bottle away, he's in a milk coma like state as we're gently extending his body via his sternum to encourage a burp. Then a few moments later, he'll open his eye and almost realise he's not being fed and will kick off.

He genuinely acts like he's being starved but he's putting on a healthy amount of weight.

Yeah we would stop roughly every minute or every 30 ml, let her have a rest for a sec or even burp her, then get back to it. Not sure what to say to you though given he gets so upset
 
She's brilliant, such a bright little thing, so happy in nature but can't help but feel parenting must be a completely different game when your baby sleeps properly! It's been a tough 7 months, the lack of sleep catches up with you.

It is. Its literally the difference between absolutely fine and barely functioning. Most of us have work and other things we need/want to do and everything is negatively impacted by poor sleep. Our two being broadly good for sleeping after about 6 months was a godsend and long may it continue. We've done our best to establish a strong routine when it comes to sleep which I think helps but fundamentally some babies sleep well and other don't and that can change randomly.

He genuinely acts like he's being starved but he's putting on a healthy amount of weight.

If hes gaining weight and tracking the centiles as he should be then you are doing all the right things. All things pass. They can hold such a tiny amount of food in their bellies when they are tiny that they just get hungry quickly.
 
So 9 months into fatherhood, the wee man is simply amazing. I'm on the old side of becoming a parent which is a factor, but I'm starting to struggle with relentless tiredness at the moment, fatigue even, and my wife is doing most of the nighttime shifts too.

I appreciate 9 months is meant to be an awkward age with sleep regression and that but I spiraled earlier this evening thinking I'd never feel any different :eek:
 
So 9 months into fatherhood, the wee man is simply amazing. I'm on the old side of becoming a parent which is a factor, but I'm starting to struggle with relentless tiredness at the moment, fatigue even, and my wife is doing most of the nighttime shifts too.

I appreciate 9 months is meant to be an awkward age with sleep regression and that but I spiraled earlier this evening thinking I'd never feel any different :eek:

Mine turns 2 this week - he is a proper little human with his own personality and starting to show his emotions (good and bad). He ask never shuts up!

I turn 44 this year so I can completely sympathise with being permanently tired, but your body just seems to adapt and operate on whatever sleep you can get :D

Anyway, off to Diggerworld today!
 
  • Like
Reactions: DHR
The spiraled was more me thinking I may not just be worn down and feeling like poop because we're both wrestling a 9 month old. I think @Penfold101 has confirmed it though, could be more of a sudden age thing then the wee man :p
 
The spiraled was more me thinking I may not just be worn down and feeling like poop because we're both wrestling a 9 month old. I think @Penfold101 has confirmed it though, could be more of a sudden age thing then the wee man :p

Wait till he starts walking, then running and climbing - your life revolves around going after them and stopping them from doing things that will injure themselves, such that you breathe an internal sigh of relief when they’re strapped in to a chair they can’t get out of :D
 
Wait till he starts walking, then running and climbing - your life revolves around going after them and stopping them from doing things that will injure themselves, such that you breathe an internal sigh of relief when they’re strapped in to a chair they can’t get out of :D

Was like that for the first few years; my son is now 4 at the end of this month. I let him get on with it, if he is going to do something that might hurt him (Minor like a scuffed knee) then he must learn the hard way.

When he does fall down, I ask him if he is okay, if there is no blood, then get up and carry on. None of this kiss it better nonsense - unless he has properly hurt himself.
 
Our eldest daughter (5) looks like a Dalmatian from the waist down. A constant supply of fresh bruises seem to arrive each day from school.
She's pretty hardy though, generally she shrugs off knocks. I think it helps if you don't make an instant fuss when they have accidents, we try to react lightly at first and then if it turns out to be more serious we'll give more sympathy.
I think it varies from kid to kid though, some are just inherently more adverse to knocks than others. I suspect our youngest might be at the other end of the scale when she's older, but we'll see.
 
Our eldest daughter (5) looks like a Dalmatian from the waist down. A constant supply of fresh bruises seem to arrive each day from school.
She's pretty hardy though, generally she shrugs off knocks. I think it helps if you don't make an instant fuss when they have accidents, we try to react lightly at first and then if it turns out to be more serious we'll give more sympathy.
I think it varies from kid to kid though, some are just inherently more adverse to knocks than others. I suspect our youngest might be at the other end of the scale when she's older, but we'll see.
I love the Dalmatian expression! I’ll be using it :-D Our 3yo is the same, constant bruises and scrapes on her knee, she tends to just get on with it with little fuss bless her.
 
I honestly think it’s the way to be. Don’t make too much of a fuss when they hurt themselves (unless it’s serious) and more often than not they’ll just get back up and carry on.
 
Our daughter is nearly 16 months, now. She's had tonsillitis this past week and it's been pretty awful, but her attitude has been worse. She goes from being the sweetest little girl to being an absolute terror. This morning, she wouldn't let us change her nappy, so I had to pin her down. Dude, you've got a stinking **** in your nappy. Just chill!
 
Wait until you are firmly in the terrible twos, full body tantrums with all their might :-D

I learnt very quickly to keep my cool/patience as anything other than that fuels the fire so to speak!
 
Wait until you are firmly in the terrible twos, full body tantrums with all their might :-D

I learnt very quickly to keep my cool/patience as anything other than that fuels the fire so to speak!

That's the risk. We're finding it very hard at the moment to keep our cool because it's been a week of this crap with little sleep.

Edit: our local doctor's surgery, which has been excellent for all the time we've lived here, as decided that as of today, you can only get appointments by contacting them online. Presumably, if they don't deign to give us an appointment, we'll have to take her to A&E again just for a routine check of her chest. Ridiculous
 
Last edited:
Our 3yr old suddenly decided around 2 weeks ago that she hated her bed. Any attempt to put her down for bed is met with "I don't like it!" which then evolves into one of those full body blood curdling tantrums @TommyV mentioned :o

This means she's been falling asleep in our bed and then getting moved, which is fine...until she wakes up and realises where she is which then ends up in her arriving in our bed any time between midnight and 4am where she falls straight back asleep but not asleep enough to not be wide awake if you even attempt to move her back.

We've tried everything including overhauling her bed/bedroom with new Bluey bedding as she's a big fan, a night light, some twinkly fairy lights, taking the side off her cot so she's now got a big girl bed all of which is met with much excitement as long as it's not bedtime at which point we're back to square one.

Last night was the first night in all this time that my wife did get her to fall asleep in her bed by sitting with her and reading a couple of books but the pitter patter of little feet and "MUMMY!" arrived at 0130 as usual this morning. I am ****ing knackered.
 
Our 3yr old suddenly decided around 2 weeks ago that she hated her bed. Any attempt to put her down for bed is met with "I don't like it!" which then evolves into one of those full body blood curdling tantrums @TommyV mentioned :o

This means she's been falling asleep in our bed and then getting moved, which is fine...until she wakes up and realises where she is which then ends up in her arriving in our bed any time between midnight and 4am where she falls straight back asleep but not asleep enough to not be wide awake if you even attempt to move her back.

We've tried everything including overhauling her bed/bedroom with new Bluey bedding as she's a big fan, a night light, some twinkly fairy lights, taking the side off her cot so she's now got a big girl bed all of which is met with much excitement as long as it's not bedtime at which point we're back to square one.

Last night was the first night in all this time that my wife did get her to fall asleep in her bed by sitting with her and reading a couple of books but the pitter patter of little feet and "MUMMY!" arrived at 0130 as usual this morning. I am ****ing knackered.
We had something similar when our daughter was just turning 3, genuinely felt like we had about 8 weeks of relentless wakeups and terrible sleep. I remember at one point even getting in the car at 1am and going to get fuel because I figured if I stayed in the house I'd have just exploded.

In the end we just bit the bullet and decided that we were going to accept as many nights of no sleep as it took - but she was absolutely not allowed to leave her room. She could be upset all she wants but fundamentally her bed was where she went to sleep and stayed in until the morning. We got a nightlight for the hallway so that helped address that side and then we got her an 'Ollie the Owl' nightlight / clock for her room. Now if she wakes up she can see Ollie is asleep still and he has a number of stars left before he turns orange / wakes up and she can get up. We also conveniently had birthday cake too - so it became a very clear reward structure of if you go to sleep in your bed, stay in your bed then you can have cake for breakfast (fully aware this is probably not great health advice...)

By night 3 she was going to sleep in her own bed no issues and only coming into ours in the morning. After day 4 she'd forgotten about the cake reward and sleeping in her bed just became the standard. It was such a pain at the time to go through it all but 100% worth it for the long term. I was just so exhausted every day working on a few hours of broken sleep - and probably wasn't overly healthy starting my day with 6 espressos.

Now we get woken up hearing her at about 6.20am singing 'Ollie wake up, Ollie Ollie wake up' over and over until 6.30...
 
Part of the problem is once she gets to that hysterical stage my wife gives in "I can't listen to her get that upset, she obviously just wants us" whereas my thought process is that we know there's nothing actually wrong, she's not hurt herself or anything so it's literally just a tantrum and I'm "happy" to ignore it until she screams herself out but I think even she might be coming around to the idea that we just have to close the stair gate to her room and let her get on with it.

I'd take being woken up by singing rather than screaming though :D
 
Last edited:
Part of the problem is once she gets to that hysterical stage my wife gives in "I can't listen to her get that upset, she obviously just wants us" whereas my thought process is that we know there's nothing actually wrong, she's not hurt herself or anything so it's literally just a tantrum and I'm "happy" to ignore it until she screams herself out but I think even she might be coming around to the idea that we just have to close the stair gate to her room and let her get on with it.

I'd take being woken up by singing rather than screaming though :D

Is there room in her bed / bedroom for one of you to fall asleep in there, instead of your daughter coming in your room? It's not ideal but it at least breaks that association between her waking up and her going in to your room.

It's been a good few years since we had any sleep issues (thankfully) but I do remember quite often it was just easier in the moment to get in our daughter's bed and sleep there.
 
Is there room in her bed / bedroom for one of you to fall asleep in there, instead of your daughter coming in your room? It's not ideal but it at least breaks that association between her waking up and her going in to your room.

It's been a good few years since we had any sleep issues (thankfully) but I do remember quite often it was just easier in the moment to get in our daughter's bed and sleep there.
Unfortunately not, I'm only short and I'd wake up bent into a very funny shape :D
I find the floor in our daughter's room to be exceptionally comfy and I quite often look forward to sleeping there hah
This does remind me though that we had a nice soft rug in there at one point that had to be washed and never made it's way back to the floor, so this could be a plan.
 
Back
Top Bottom