Oscar

Am I really just another paranoid mum?

14 years ago

by dawniebrown in Oscar

Maybe I am. Maybe I am just moaning because I’m overtired and Oscar isn’t sleeping well but I know something isn’t quite right and I feel like nobody is listening to me.

I don’t know what it is about doctors that has the effect of making me feel incompetent and useless. If I have to leave one more appointment and sit in the car crying then I think I will lose the plot completely. If I hear the words “he is still gaining weight so there can’t be much wrong” once more I think I am likely to strangle the doctor.

You see I am not just a paranoid new mum. I’m intelligent (I’ve got a first class degree and I’m a chartered accountant for goodness sake), I’ve had a baby before, I spend 24 hours with Oscar and I know him better than anyone and I’ve asked 100 questions, researched so much online and tried so many things to see if it will help.

I’m not just moaning because he cries a lot, I am concerned because babies aren’t born “miserable” they cry for a reason. I’m concerned because something is causing my baby distress and seeing as he can’t tell me himself it’s up to me to fight his corner.

Looking back the signs were there from about 4 weeks old after I switched to formula. The HV commented on him being so snuffly and the rash on his face. The doctor at his 8 week check up prescribed us some cream for his face and some nasal drops for his snuffly nose. We also had gunky watery eyes which we thought were an eye infection so they gave us an antibiotic cream.

By about 8 weeks things were getting more difficult, Oscar was bringing back up large quantities of most of his bottles and screaming, arching his back and going rigid when we tried to wind him. Zara had colic and this didn’t seem like colic it seemed more like reflux so we go back to the doctors who prescribed gaviscon.

The gaviscon reduced the amount of sick but Oscar was still unhappy so I decided to try a soya based formula to see if the lactose was upsetting him. This helped slightly but it seemed to go straight through him, he had really runny poo and we were getting through about 3 nappies a feed. He was pooing so much it was making his bottom bleed.

Because I wasn’t convinced the soya milk was agreeing with him, I am now trying Staydown milk. We’ve been using it about 36 hours now and already the rash is back on his face, he has a snuffly nose again, gunky eyes and wheezy breathing. It’s only seeing this happen that I realised he didn’t have any of that when on the soya milk.

So yes he is gaining weight but I’m
Suspecting a milk allergy now as the rash, runny eyes, runny nose and wheezing have all reappeared really soon after introducing milk back into his diet. It’s also seems like the soya milk is also upsetting his stomach but I need to feed him something.

I’m going to ring the HV today and see what she thinks and then try to see if the doctors will at least listen to my concerns and maybe prescribe me some hypoallergenic formula for us to at least try. I’m running out of options of what to feed him otherwise!

So yes he is gaining weight and yes I may just be overtired and stressed but I need somebody to listen to me and take me seriously. His health may not be being seriously affected by it but he is so miserable I have to keep trying for his sake. When a 13 week baby doesn’t do anything except feed or cry when awake there is something not right. We don’t have happy times with smiles or giggles like I did with Zara.

I’m sorry for such a rambling post but I need to get it off my chest somewhere before I explode

This is a photo of the eczema type rash which has come up just 36 hours after putting milk back in his diet.

The Real Nappy Challenge – Day 1

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Oscar, Real Nappy Challenge

So today was day one of the real nappy challenge so how did we get on? All I had to do was use one real nappy today instead of a disposable one, simple! So here are my initial thoughts. I’m going to be completely honest on this one because I think the whole point of this is to show an honest account of how we are getting on warts and all.

Pros

It was easy to fold and put on.
It felt nice and soft.
It looked very cute with the funky nappy cover.
It didn’t leak after wearing it so the cover did it’s job and kept everything inside and the outside layers dry.

Cons

The nappy looked very bulky when Oscar was wearing it, with it almost reaching down to his knees.
After 2 hours of wearing the nappy Oscar became unsettled and so I had to change him again.
The nappy inside the cover felt very wet and his skin was damp so his nappy rash looked a little sore.
The poo had leaked off the liner and the nappy and had gone into the nappy cover which meant I wouldn’t have just been able to put a new nappy inside it, I will have to wash the nappy cover before I use it again as it was heavily soiled.
Because I don’t use real nappies I don’t have a nappy bin, reusable wipes or other accessories needed to make changing the nappy easy and so I ended up still using nappy sacks to dispose of baby wipes and the nappy liner, I also had to find something to put the dirty nappy in until I can get round to washing it. This made the nappy changing process more complicated and time consuming than when using disposables.

Overall I think I will still need some convincing that real nappies are for us. The main issue I had was having to change the nappy after 2 hours and the poo leaking into the nappy cover but I have to bear in mind Oscar still has quite liquid poo so I will be interested to see how the ladies with older babies got on with them. If I’d have gone with real nappies myself I always planned to start using them once the messy newborn stage was over and as we currently have a dirty nappy at pretty much every feed I think I’m still in the messy newborn stage. Of course this was my first ever attempt at using a real nappy so it may just take a bit of getting used to Hopefully tomorrow’s nappy adventure will be a bit more successful! I certainly couldn’t cope with having to change nappies every 2 hours so I’m hoping that today’s wet nappy was a one off

cloth nappy Real nappy real nappy week

Three months ago today

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Family Life, Oscar

Has it really been 3 months since Oscar arrived in the world, back then he was a tiny, scrawny little thing…

Just look at the size of him back then… (excuse the dodgy photo of me but my excuse is I’d just had an emergency c-section so a girl is entitled to look a bit rough around the edges)

And 3 months on just look at my little man now…

He certainly isn’t quite so scrawny anymore

It seems like it’s been a long and difficult road to get to where we are today, it’s slowly getting easier and at some point in the future I’m hoping to still be asleep at this time in the morning and not writing blog posts whilst waiting for him to go to sleep

Oscar

The Real Nappy Challenge

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Family Life, Oscar, Real Nappy Challenge

Next week 16th-22nd May 2011 is Real Nappy Week and I have been asked by Bambino Mio to take part in The Real Nappy Challenge along with 7 other bloggers.

Real nappies are something I’ve always been interested in, I always planned to use them with Zara. I decided I was going to use disposables initially over the newborn period and switch to real nappies once things had settled down. In the end this never happened and I have always used disposables with her and now she is almost 18 months old and we are considering potty training so hopefully it won’t be too long before she is no longer wearing nappies at all. Unfortunately that won’t be the end of nappies in this house though because of course I now have Oscar who is 12 weeks old. In this household we are currently getting through a crazy amount of nappies between the two of them and I do admit to feeling guilty every time we put the bins out, we recycle everything we possibly can in this house but because of all the nappies we use our bin is always full despite this.

This time round with Oscar I didn’t have time to consider real nappies as he caught us a bit by surprise arriving early, when he arrived I didn’t even have a hospital bag packed or any clothes for him so nappies were a quick afterthought and an emergency trip to the supermarket once he came home from hospital. The last 12 weeks have been playing catch up so when I was emailed to ask if I wanted to take up the Real Nappy Challenge I of course said yes. Maybe now is the time to see whether real nappies could work for me.

So what is The Real Nappy Challenge? It is actually quite simple (I hope!), all I have to do is use one reusable nappy a day for a week during Real Nappy Week. One nappy a day, how hard can that be? We have been sent a pack from Bambino Mio containing 2 mionappies, 1 miosoft nappy cover, 50 mioliners, some miofresh nappy santiser and 3 mioboost inserts for extra absorbancy. This should be enough to keep me going over the challenge.

I’m looking forward to taking up the challenge however my husband did look at me with a look of horror when I mentioned it and has told me that I’ll be changing the real nappies, let’s see if the Real Nappy Challenge can convince him aswell. Towards the end of the week on the 21st May I’ll be visiting The Baby Show at the NEC so you never know, if I’ve been convinced I could be turning up to buy myself some more real nappies Check back here over next week to see how I am getting on with my Real Nappy Challenge and to see whether it can convince me to ditch the disposables and switch to real nappies full time.

The Gallery – Chilling Out

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Oscar, The Gallery

This post is this weeks entry for The Gallery over at Sticky Fingers

The prompt this week is Chilling Out.

Now having 2 children under 17 months old, I don’t personally get much time to chill out anymore, pretty much the only time I get to relax is in the few hours sleep I manage to snatch each night, Zara is 100% livewire at the moment and so the only person in this household that really gets to chill out is this one…

Today could be the start of something beautiful

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Family Life, Oscar, Zara

Well it could be You see this morning I woke up to silence and not the sound of a baby crying for the first time in about 12 weeks. After the inital panic I realised something special had happened.

After the recent weeks of battles with reflux, vomit, hours of screaming and general new baby lack of sleep – last night Oscar slept and when I say slept I mean I put him in his cot at 10:30pm after his 9pm bottle and that was the last I heard from him until 8am this morning. Yes that’s right Oscar slept through the night for the first time To top this off Zara also slept all night without waking due to teething etc

It may not last, it may just have been a blip in my chaotic life at the moment but maybe just maybe this is where things start to get better. I daren’t count any chickens but Zara started sleeping through at about 6 weeks old and Oscar has just passed 6 weeks corrected age so maybe just maybe he is finally going to start sleeping.

Yesterday he was awake most of the day, feeding very frequently and generally not settling inbetween feeds and so when I put him in his cot last night I was really expecting to be back downstairs with him within half an hour, there is no way within my wildest dreams that I would have expected to be only getting him up at 8am the next morning.

This morning I managed to get Zara ready for nursery and have a leisurely cup of tea with my husband at the kitchen table whilst Zara had her breakfast, I managed to have a shower, sort out my daily chores and have some breakfast all before Oscar woke up. This is how I like my life to be, organised, on top of things, peaceful, filled with nights of sleep and days of fun.

Will it last? Well probably not, tonight could be back to the old routine of 4 hours sleep if I’m lucky, 2 if we have a particularly bad one, Zara could be unsettled and refusing to sleep. It could all go pear shaped again but you know what? I will forever remember this morning and the night of the 9th of May 2011 as the day when I woke up feeling positive and smiling, when the sun was shining and I felt like singing. The day after the night I have been longing for for weeks So Oscar I would like to thank you, my clever clever clever little boy

Oh the indignity of being made to wear a pink bib

Silent Sunday

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Family Life, Oscar, Silent Sunday, Zara

Baby’s First Calendar Review

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Oscar, Reviews

I originally did this review as a guest post over on my sisters blog Mummy Loves and I thought I’d share it over here as-well

I was kindly sent a Baby’s First Calendar to review which was timed fantastically with the arrival of Oscar, although with his early arrival I’ve only just got around to decorating his nursery and putting up his calendar

Baby’s First Calendar is an A1 poster chart where you can record of all your baby’s firsts and create a lasting record of that manic first year when everything seems to happen so quickly. I never had anything like this with Zara and although we have hundreds, possibly thousands of photos I couldn’t tell you when she first smiled, crawled etc, I could tell you roughly how old she was but not a precise date. I’ve seen the memory books that you can buy but I never got one as knowing me it would just end up in a cupboard gathering dust and never get completed, the great thing about this calendar is that it’s on the nursery wall and the stickers that come with it allow you to record memorable occasions as they happen.

The stickers that come with the calendar allow you to record events such as:

• Due date (which with Oscar was 6 weeks after his birth!)

• Birth (14th February 2011)

• Home from hospital (16 days after his birth)

• First smile (still waiting )

• First step

• First tooth

• First shoes

• First laugh

• First clap

• First wave

• First bath

• First time they say Mummy & Daddy

• And a lot more!

Rather conveniently for me Baby’s First Calendar has bright colours and a cute woodland animal design which fits in perfectly with Oscar’s woodland themed nursery (well it will do when I finally put the finishing touches to his nursery in the next week or so!). The calendar also has a place to put in their first photo and first birthday photo and all the details of their birth such as weight, place of birth and name etc. It really does allow you to record everything important that you will ever need to remember.

Another important and extremely useful feature of the calendar is the build in thermometer. Temperature is a very serious matter when it comes to your baby’s sleeping environment. It needs to be just right – not too hot or too cold. A thermometer is included on the calendar so you can instantly see the temperature and make sure it’s perfect for your baby. Important safety information is also included on the calendar to help you remember the vital points about laying your baby to sleep. This advice is from the Foundation for the study of infant deaths (FSID) to keep your baby as safe as possible during sleep.

I really like this calendar and think it’s a great idea, they sell for £15 and can be purchased from their website here Baby’s First Calendar Website

Something happier to share with you

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Oscar

I’m very aware that Oscar hasn’t really featured much on here yet and that’s because the last 11 weeks have been pretty boring to be honest. With him being born 6 weeks early it’s been a long time waiting for a little bit of personality to show through and I’m only now starting to see something appearing. And just to prove that the male obsession with toilet humour starts at a very early age, I give you Oscar….

baby Oscar smiles

Two very different babies (Can you tell which is which?)

15 years ago

by dawniebrown in Oscar, Zara

Both of these photos were taken by my sister Sonia who is a professional photographer, you can check out more of her work on her website Sonia Thorpe Photography. I’m very lucky to have a photographer to take beautiful photos of my babies, below are two photos that she took of Oscar and Zara. One when Zara was 10 days old and one when Oscar was 5 weeks old. Can you tell which baby is which? (It’s far too easy isn’t it ? )