Pregnant with prolapse - thanks Christine and forum users

Congratulations Mumwithone, you lucky, lucky girl finding the right OB! Looking forward to hearing progress reports.

Cheers

Louise

And a happy and healthy pregnancy (and post) to you. I hope you will keep us all updated through your journey :-)

Sue

Look into the eyes - They hold the key!
http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/img/maddy544x150Banner.jpg

CONGRATULATIONS Mumwithone and thank you so much for believing in this work. Will so look forward to hearing of your progress and your beautiful home birth!

Christine

congrats on the pg mumwithone!
wishing you a very healthy and enjoyable pg, do keep us posted. I know that reading all of Jane's (fullofgrace) posts helped me feel ready to have another baby even with a prolapse.
before you know it, so many of us will have gone on to have babies with prolapse that it'll be common knowlege that its possible in no time at all.

about babies makes me want to get pregnant too........congratulations mumwithone......may you have a wonderful pregnancy.

Hi All

With all this talk about babies, maybe we should add another thing to Wholewoman posture for women who don't want to have any more babies. It is called keep your knees together!!! Perhaps this should be in the contraception topic?

Cheers

Louise

I know! all this baby talk and even I'm wanting another! I've been giving away all of our outgrown baby equipment, maternity clothes etc, as I promised dh this would be IT for us.

but everywhere I look I seem to see pg mama's and babies and oh...I could have a million of em.

this baby lust feels like 'life's longing for itself', did I read that phrase here? don't remember, but I like it.

louise - the best form of bc, ime, is a baby who will only sleep when in close contact with a boob

Yes Granolamom, I agree. I just don't get it when women don't want to let baby fall asleep at their breast, and insist on baby sleeping in her own cot, away from Mum's warmth and touch, in another beautifully decorated room. Maybe they just want more babies? Or maybe they like sleep deprivation? We are all different I guess.

I got over the 'baby sleeps in a cot in another room' thing the first time I walked straight into our half-closed bedrooom door to get to a crying baby, in pitch darkness at 2am. And if a woman with a black eye tells you she walked into a door, don't believe her! Not a bruise to be seen for all the pain. She needs help.

I have always been a bit of a lazy bones. Don't like getting out of bed in the middle of the night, and I don't like getting cold.

I keep telling my kids not to invest a lot of money in a double bed while they are single. Save their cash for a good solid kingsize bed for when they have babies later. It is ironic that a kingsize bed could turn out to be responsible for very good contraception. Our kingsize bed is the best piece of baby furniture we ever purchased, and it is still going 29 years later. Let's see A$1200 over 25 years, that's about 13 cents a night.

Cheers

Louise

1.bedding. I rarely use a pillow, but when I do, we have those heavy posturepedic type pillows, so they don't move at all. I don't worry about baby 'cuz he's down by the boobs, not at all near the pillow.
I use cotton knit blankets, which are breathable, but they really do not ever wind up near baby's face. I was a bit worried about that when he was a wee newborn, I stopped pulling the blankets up around my neck and learned to keep them lower. now that he's bigger, he has shown me that he is quite capable of pulling a blanket off his face (I tested him a couple of times while I was watching to see). now that its starting to get cold I will be switching to a down quilt, like I said I keep it low and baby can pull it off if he needs to

2.bedtime. sometimes I wiggle out of the bed once baby's asleep. but we are bad parents and sometimes its easier to just hold him while we watch tv or type on the computer, etc.
he usually doesn't go to bed for the night until 10 or so and I shouldn't be staying up past then anyway. In the beginning I really did try to sleep when the baby slept, its good for you! but there were times that I left him in the bed or carried him around in the sling while he slept.
now when I leave him in the bed I put the heavy pillows (which are more like firm bolsters, they aren't fluffy) around the edge of the bed so he doesn't roll off.

3. sex life. to be honest, there's not been much action here, but not because of cosleeping. I am just so tired and am always having to stay up late to catch up on laundry and things like that. but some nights we do put baby in his crib for the first part of the night. that rarely lasts longer than an hour or two, but that's enough time for me! and there's always the floor, the shower, the guest room... any room that has a lock so the older ones don't barge in on us is fair game.

4.the longest we coslept was about one year. the transition was alot easier than I thought it would be. I started putting ds into his crib for the first part of the night and then taking him into my bed when he woke up. the first part of the night gradually became longer and longer, by 16 mo I night weaned and stopped bringing him into our bed.
I never limited napping in our bed though, as I enjoyed the snuggles.

Hi Mumwithone

I'll use Granolamom's point numbering and refer to her responses because my experience was very similar, with a few add-ons.

1 Just use whatever pillow suits you. I found that my head had to be well supported or else I got a sore neck, but that goes for any time for me. I can't remember what pillow I was using at the time. It possibly varied. I think it is a good idea to have a few pillows close by so you can grab what you need at the time. I used to also find that one behind my back was useful, so I could keep the bottom boob reachable for baby, and kind of sleep half on my side. I used to wear a nursing bra and washable nursing pads 24/7 because otherwise we would all drown when my milk let down. Breastmilk makes for a very sticky bed after a couple of nights! Then I would just turn over a bit more for the top boob. Sometimes I would nurse lying on my back with baby on top for a bit. It is a bit like sex. Whatever works, works.

We have always used sheets and woollen blankets. I would just make sure that baby's side was pulled down a bit further so s/he had some air at the top. I always seemed to have a kind of awareness of where baby was. It was like I slept lightly during those years but I always seemed to get enough sleep. Baby was always on the the outside, and we had a wooden bedrail that was made for the bed when we purchased it. There was a set of bunks in the same range, so we just arranged to purchase one of those bedrails and had holes drilled in the base of our new king-sized bed, so we could use it the same way as on the bunk beds.

2 Bedtime. We are bad parents too. No control over our kids' bedtime at all! (Slap on the wrist!!) They went to sleep when they were tired, and always had a story to go to sleep with once they were old enough to appreciate it. So we never had any whinging about going to bed. I think our three kids used their safecot for a total of about 1 month between them. They all used to try and tip themselves out of the bassinet by about four months, so there was a bit of safecot use, but I used to mostly go and have a lie down when baby was feeding before going to sleep so we used to end up on the big bed most of the time anyway. I would often drift off to sleep too. Or else get up again and go back to bed later, after chores.

Once they were crawling well, and could back down a step, I made up a mattress on the floor in their room, particularly the second two babies, because prowling toddlers and pre-schoolers, impatient for baby to wake, would often want to go and 'see if baby was awake' if s/he was not behind a closed door. This was a great arrangement because they could get themselves off the mattress safely and come out when they were ready, if the door was just pulled to. It also meant that once they could walk, they could with assistance of a nightlight in the hall, come to me in the middle of the night instead of vice versa. (You see! I am a bad and lazy parent.) It also meant that I could nurse them off to sleep on their mattress bed then sneak out again. This changed to reading them a story down on the mattress for them to go off to sleep once weaned.

A woman's boobs are the most powerful weapon on earth, able to floor a fractious toddler in seconds, reduce a wail to a whisper instantly in a quiet meeting, reduce a grown man to an affectionate puppy in the blink of an eye, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound ... My advice is to use them for all they are worth!

Anyway, when the baby could master getting off the big bed unassisted, maybe 2 1/2 years, we put their mattress back up on a normal sized bed, which is where it stayed for about 20 years. By this stage we were playing musical beds a bit, with early childhood wogs and teething, so I never knew which bed I would be in at any time of the night. Sometimes I would climb in bed with the toddler, and feed them off again if I felt like just sleeping with DH, or if there was already another baby in our bed, but mostly they just came into our bed if they wanted company. I really couldn't ever be bothered standing or sitting there patting them off dutifully when I could be tucked up snugly with them going off to sleep as well. (Another black mark against my name.)

3 Sex life. Pass. Not really a priority when we had little kids. DH was flat out with building his business and I was just in mother mode. We were just too tired. It was always a matter of finding a time when we didn't have company in our bed (usually late at night while they were all tucked up in their own beds). I can remember that I slept in a nursing bra and high waisted knickers for so many years. I finally ditched the bra for a long t-shirt and knickers once the youngest was weaned. The knickers were because I couldn't stand it when they got their baby toes wriggling around in my pubes. That was all just too much. LOL

The other thing was that I had a lot of trouble getting through to our kids that PJ's were worn at night, and clothes during the day. If Mum and Dad slept without PJ's that was a bit of a double standard. DD took quite a bit of convincing that the only time you were supposed to take your clothes off during the day was when you were making serious mud pies. Now at the age of 22 PJ's are things you put on when you get up in the morning! And she always wears clothes during the day. So I won in the end.

4 How long we co-slept. I used to sit up to feed newborns but as soon as they could hang on while I was lying down to nurse I had them in bed with me. I was a little nervous about it with the first, and he used to throw up all the time so he would have been nine months old before he slept with us, then I was hospitalised for a month when he was 16 mo so he got into storybook mode to go to sleep. The second was in bed with us as soon as she could manage to hang on, and weaned at night by about 12 months from memory, but she still came in with us during the night occasionally. The third was in bed with us pretty quickly at night and spent most of his nights with us or playing musical beds until he was about 5, though he weaned at night about 2 1/2. We finally found out that he had glue ear, which was masked by breastfeeding until 2 years 9 mo. After that he just woke frequently at night and came in to us. Once we addressed the ears he slept happily in his own bed from then on, just coming in of a morning to snuggle up to my boobs until he was about 9.

So there you go. Do what works. Use a bedrail for safety. Don't use sleep-inducing medication or drugs or alcohol yourself in the evenings. Be flexible. That was my experience back in the 1980's before babies were put to sleep on their backs in a sparse cot. I think I would do the same again, even under pressure from health professionals, but I would probably lie to them about doing it. (See, bad me again.)

Cheers

Louise

ll will go well :) And a new baby will come into the family :) Wonderful!
Congratulations...

Sue

Look into the eyes - They hold the key!
http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/img/maddy544x150Banner.jpg

I'll add my 2 cents to the co-sleeping question:

1. It's hot enough in our apartment that so far we have not needed more than a cotton sheet, and maybe one extra blanket. 3 bodies do keep a bed warm! In the beginning, hubby and I had our own sheet each, because he tends to keep rolling over unil he is a cocoon and I am completely uncovered. I still use one pillow. I also put a receiving blanket under the baby, to catch any wayward drool, spit-up, or possible diaper leaks. Saves having to change the sheets a lot.

2. Baby and I tend to go to bed between 9 and 10. If I want to stay up later, I sneak away after he is asleep. Sometimes, if I want to watch TV I'll let him fall asleep in my arms on the couch.

3. I'm lucky my husband is a graduate student, because most of our sex happens mid-morning on the couch while baby is napping. I don't know what would happen if he had to work regular hours! Sometimes we put baby in the bassinet(which otherwise I only ever use to store his blankets)so that we can use the bed and he can't see us.

4. Baby is 5 months old and still with us. At this point, I'm not sure what to do, because it's getting to the point where baby is like a cat who eventually manages to have half the bed to himself, completely sprawled out, while both hubby and I are scrunched up on the other side (we have a queen size). I'd love to get one of those special co-sleeper arrangements that you attach to the side of your bed, but sadly our bedroom is not wide enough. I don't yet want to put baby in his own room because then I would have to get up in the middle of the night, and I'm just lazy!

Oh, and for some stats on the safety of co-sleeping and SIDS check out www.babyreference.com. Interestingly, co-sleeping, breastfeeding infants have a lower SIDS rate than formula-fed infants in a crib in their own room. For reasons that I can't figure out, it seems that co-sleeping while formula feeding is riskier.