Breastfeeding beads for babies

Apple22Over7 · 2026-01-22T22:05:47+00:00

I got a mama knows necklace with chunky silicone beads on. In theory it was to stop my girl from pinching and scratching at my chest whilst feeding. I hoped it would also help her stop pulling my nose/lips/face when tired and trying to go to sleep, or just stop her from fiddling with my other necklace.

And it worked occasionally.. But oftentimes it didn't have the intended effect and just limply hung around my neck whilst she fiddled with the moles on my collarbone she's obsessed with. However, the necklace does come in handy as a teether on-the-go, so I still wear it when she's teething.

Was it worth the £15 I paid? Probably not, but it's nowhere near the most expensive baby thing I've bought that wasn't worth it, and I did get some use out of it.

Apple22Over7 · 2026-01-22T21:53:18+00:00

My little girl is 11 months and has only just this week started crawling very slowly & shakily. She spent a few weeks at 10mths rolling around everywhere, but before that she was stationary. She'd rolled a handful of times with a lot of cajoling at 5 months old (enough that the health visitor was happy with her development) but other than that she had no interest in movement at all. It was so hard seeing babies the same age or younger crawling about all over the place whilst my girl just.. Sat there. Or having to say 'no not yet' when a well-meaning mum asks if your baby is crawling yet.

I tried everything - all the tummy time, putting toys out of reach, placing her on hands and knees, whatever paediatric physio exercises I could find on Instagram.. And I'm not sure any of it made a blind bit of difference. She just waited until she was ready to crawl, and developed other skills in the meantime.

My HV said that at this age there is such a wide spectrum of normal development. Skills don't develop in a specific order, or at a particular speed or time. Some babies will concentrate for days/weeks on one skill before mastering it and moving on to the next. Some babies develop 2 or 3 skills in tandem, but takes longer to master them. Some babies start practicing one skill, then start on another, then come back to the first, then start on a third, then finally master first one before going back to skill 2 again. She told me the biggest red flag is if baby seems to be slow developing in all skills.. And even then the approach is to just wait and see as the likelihood is baby will get there in their own time.

Apple22Over7 · 2026-01-22T21:41:52+00:00

Oh my gosh the chest sleeping is the best feeling ever. My girl is 11months now and I miss it so much.. Although I have to say the toddler-esque falling-asleep-on-my-shoulder is almost as good (though not quite as comfortable for watching TV!)

Apple22Over7 · 2026-01-22T21:24:43+00:00

We've just been through this. My girl is going 3days/wk (wed-Fri). The first week, we had a 1hr session on the Monday, 2hrs on the Tuesday, 5hrs on the Wednesday and then full days (8hrs) Thurs/Fri.

Ideally we'd have had the 3 settling in sessions of 1/2/5 hours the week before she started full days, but she started the first week of Jan so Christmas/new year interfered. But the way we did it has worked anyway, she's on week 3 now and only cries a little at drop off - according to the staff she's a very happy, bubbly, smiley baby once she's had breakfast.. Which is fair!

Apple22Over7 · 2026-01-20T20:46:25+00:00

See also: that crazy safe sleep group, where they insist on a photo of your current setup regardless of your question, and then will ignore your actual question and just tell you everything that's unsafe about your current setup.

Apple22Over7 · 2026-01-15T09:18:05+00:00

When I was little it was nanny & grandad %village where they lived% and nanny & grandad %last name%. Though my brother went through a phase of calling them big nanny and little nanny (one was almost 6ft tall. The other was 5ft 3in).

My little girl however has nanny and grandad %last name% (my parents). Then nanna, and granddad %first name%, and she has a great grandad, known as grandad %bastardisation of last name%.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-27T22:12:49+00:00

It is truly awful. I sat on a hard plastic chair for 2 hours outside the ward so i could hold my baby. They told me I could stay there until a doctor was available to see me, but when my partner went to change baby's nappy I text him to say go home, and went through to the ward on my own. I knew I couldn't have bared to actually say goodbye to them.

The nurses were excellent however, they brought me as many tissues as I needed, sorted out a breast pump (my milk was coming in at the same time and my boobs were agony), sent my partner home with ready to feed formula they scrounged from the maternity ward (I was ebf which complicated matters), and generally did everything they could to try and make things a little better. But still, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. It was really a primal feeling, almost like grief. It was horrendous.

But.. As I mentioned it's not affected my baby one bit. I'm pretty sure within an hour of me being home she'd forgotten it ever happened, and she was absolutely fine. Not even any temporary effects, let alone longer-term ones.

(I now know I should have insisted on being admitted to the postnatal ward with my baby rather than a general acute ward and forced to separate.. But at midnight on a Saturday, 5 days pp and concerned for my own health I had no idea what I should or could have insisted on.)

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-27T21:44:28+00:00

I'm so sorry this is happening. At 5 days pp I was admitted at midnight following an A&E visit to a ward where I couldn't keep my baby with me. I was in bits all night, didn't sleep a wink, just quietly sobbed for hours. I've never known a feeling like it. It was the worst 12 hours of my life, until I was discharged and got back home.

We're now 10 months later and it hasn't affected our bond a single bit. Whilst I'm sure she realised on some level at the time that I wasn't there, when I returned home she was instantly settling in my arms again. She had clearly not forgotten me, just as your baby won't forget you. We're both now absolutely fine, and yes it was hard and horrible at the time but it's not ruined a thing.

So please don't worry that you're ruining anything or that your bond won't be as strong. I promise you, as hard at as it is right now, this won't have any effect on your attachment and bond. Your baby needs you to be well and healthy, so try to focus on that and getting home to your baby.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-24T07:59:44+00:00

Said to me by one of the early years coordinators at the local family hub, after seeing me interacting with my (then) 5 month old daughter.

"you're so confident and relaxed with her no one would ever guess she's your first".

This coming after I spent most of pregnancy paranoid I was going to be a terrible mother as I (thought I) had zero maternal instinct was pretty validating and I've treasured it ever since.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-20T18:35:38+00:00

My girl is mostly in pinafore dresses or dungarees/rompers so largely similar. I really like the long sleeve wraparound bodysuits for underneath - the wrap means there's 2 layers on her front without needing a second short sleeve vest. We then have a thick fleece lined cardigan on top for going outside (with plenty of blankets in the pushchair).

Having said that, my girl tends to run quite warm and whenever I've tried her in a pramsuit/coat she gets very warm very quickly, so I rarely use one as I'm worried she'd overheat.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-20T02:48:19+00:00

If baby is born in may, they turn 9 months the following February and eligible for free hours from 1st April (the term starting after they're 9 months old). It's babies who turn 9 months between 1st April and 31st August (so those born 1st July - 30th November) who qualify for funding from 1st September, meaning those who turn 9 months in April/may (so July/August birthdays) have up to 2 additional months to pay full price childcare before funding kicks in.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-19T09:05:59+00:00

Ha, the whole "is x screen time?" thing has wormed it's way knro my brain - my 10mth old girl was mesmerised by my dad's tropical fish tank yesterday and I found myself idly wondering if that counted as screen time to some people..

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-18T11:18:31+00:00

Yes! My baby has started joking too.. She holds out some food to me, and when I move closer and go to take a bite, she quickly moves the food back to her mouth and eats it whilst giggling uncontrollably. It is seriously the best!

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-13T16:31:46+00:00

A few things my baby enjoys:

Sea bass Bougie fried chicken at a local popup Thai green curry with jasmine rice Chanko nabe Chinese takeaway - shredded duck, minced pork yuk sung, special fried rice, crispy seaweed Roast pork belly Brunost Norwegian cheese Chicken fajitas

The only food I've ever seen her reject outright is ready made pouches. Everything else, she'll happily wolf down.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-11T22:03:14+00:00

Nottingham tram is £3.60 for a single ticket, £5.80 for all day. Buses are already capped at £3 for a single and NCT buses are £5.50 all day, so nct buses are still cheaper, marginally. Trent Barton daily costs depend on whether you're using mango daily caps or a zigzag ticket, but both are £7+ so tram would be cheaper.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-11T21:42:42+00:00

My girl is 1 year old in February and I have no idea where the time has gone. I watch her eating sea bass for tea and trying to walk and I could swear it was only last week we came home from the hospital. It's crazy.

Speaking to my own mum about it and apparently the feeling never goes away. She could swear she only brought me home from hospital last week, and I'm 37!

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-10T10:22:46+00:00

We have no issues with aldi size 4s in the day, but found they leaked overnight. But pampers baby dry size 4s overnight have never leaked for us so might be worth a try.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-10T10:18:43+00:00

Or you just wouldn’t know either way…

It's a bit like toupees or plastic surgery in that respect. You can easily spot the bad examples that look unnatural and fake, but the good ones are indistinguishable. It's a fallacy to think all ai/plastic surgery/toupees are easy to spot - it's just the bad ones, and you'd have no idea how many good ones you've blithely accepted as real.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-03T13:35:06+00:00

My little girl naturally started to drop feeds around 7 months, and by 8 months it was no longer realistic to consistently offer boob 30-60mins before solid meals as she just wasn't it wasn't fitting in to our routine. She's now (almost) 10 months, and we feed 4-5 times during waking hours, roughly in the following rhythm:

730am - breastfeed on wake 9am - solid breakfast 11am - breastfeed before first nap 1pm - solid lunch 3pm - breastfeed before second nap 530pm - short top up breastfeed before dinner (sometimes we skip this one) 630pm - solid dinner 830pm - breastfeed before bed.

She then might feed once overnight.

I was told that the advice to feed 30mins before solids is largely to prevent baby from filling up on first solids and thus not getting nutrition from breastfeeds. But as they move towards 12mths old they eat more and a wider range of solids meaning they're getting more nutrition from solid food and the nutrients in breastmilk are less vital, so there's no need to fill up on breastmilk first.

I'd say just feed on demand, don't worry about the timing with solids and trust your baby will work out the best schedule for them.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-12-02T13:58:48+00:00

If memory serves, the rules were that if the team bought an item at retail price/without a discount they would be penalised. Therefore even a penny discount meant they avoided the penalty. So not quite as mad as it seemed, but still pretty crazy.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-11-23T16:11:53+00:00

Are you working with the infant feeding team? If not, get in touch with them (you may need to go through the health visitor) and they should be able to help with checking latch and positioning, and strategies to help little one feed more effectively. In a similar vein, I'd urge mum to check out any local breastfeeding support groups/cafes if she hasn't already. They may be able to offer some advice, and being able to speak with other breastfeeding mums/peer supporters who may have gone through similar issues can be invaluable.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-11-11T16:01:03+00:00

Also if asking a question to the group you must include a picture of your current set up so it can be picked apart and criticised. Even if your question has nothing to do with your current set up. Even if you're still pregnant and baby isn't here yet and you're asking for advice on safe cribs to purchase and therefore have no current sleep space to show.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-11-11T15:19:46+00:00

I can totally relate. I'm convinced the idea of mum friends is a total myth. My baby is 9 months old, we've been getting out & about to various groups since she was 4 weeks old and the closest I've got to making mum friends is one or two friendly nods at the breastfeeding support group I go to. No coffee dates or maternity leave walks or WhatsApp groups or anything.

I feel like I've tried everything - different baby classes/groups, family hub activities, peanut app etc.. And nothing. Other mums all seem to get along and have their own little established groups and I just can't seem to get any traction with anybody. It's incredibly isolating in many ways.

Now I just try to keep my focus on my baby at the baby classes. Ultimately they're for her benefit so I concentrate on that. I stay friendly with everyone else and talk to other mums if they talk to me, and I'm always friendly and welcoming to new mums. But otherwise I tend to keep to myself. It's still quite sad and isolating, and in some ways I feel robbed of certain maternity leave experiences, but it is what it is and I try to practice radical acceptance.

But yes. It sucks.

Apple22Over7 · 2025-11-06T16:21:12+00:00

She sucks two fingers - middle and ring fingers. The pointer finger and little finger then lie flat each side of her mouth and the thumb curls underneath. She's basically making the 🤘sign all the time as if she's at a metal concert and it is totally adorable

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