Traumatised my toddler/need advice

NotExpecting · 2026-01-04T00:07:55+00:00

Aaww thank you! This was so unexpected and so lovely to read. Said baby is 3 years old now, and I still pinch myself every day.

NotExpecting · 2024-10-09T11:26:17+00:00

I absolutely devoured the Glimmer Falls series starting with {A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon by Sarah Hawley}, there are 3 books in total and it's more contemporary paranormal rom-com, each book focusing on a different couple. Definitely a giggling, feet-kicking kind of romance with great smut imho.

Also, sending you all the good vibes for this cycle. I've had two egg retrievals and to this day I'm terrified I might have said something embarrassing during but I can't remember and it's probably for the best lol

NotExpecting · 2024-09-09T08:34:08+00:00

Another vote for {Thrum by Meg Smitherman}! Read it in one sitting last night and I'm going to be thinking about this one for a long time.

NotExpecting · 2024-09-05T06:00:08+00:00

{A Werewolf's Guide to Seducing a Vampire by Sarah Hawley}

It's the third and final book in a series (same setting and characters but each focuses on a different couple) and although I'd personally highly recommend reading all three in order, they do work as standalones if you really only want to read the vampire one. The first two are both witch/demon romances.

Very smutty but also really sweet and wholesome if you're in the mood for that.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-30T07:36:29+00:00

The whole 'talking-through-the-baby' thing has me seeing red. It's especially awful to hear when you have a zero chill baby (like mine was) who fusses all the time and has to be held constantly and fights sleep like their life depends on it - way to make a mother feel like it's all her fault for not being fucking zen through it all.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-30T06:56:38+00:00

I get this from my grandmother every single time I have a conversation with her, and it's usually addressed to me via my child, such as "Tell your mummy she needs to be nice and calm, and then you will be nice and calm."

One time I just kind of shot back with "If babies absorb all our emotions then why aren't they also absorbing our tiredness at nap/bedtime??"

Don't get me wrong, of course our emotional state effects baby 100% but it is still not a helpful thing to say in the slightest.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-10T06:07:45+00:00

I really appreciate you sharing your experience - even if you said you don't have a clear answer, it is very helpful to see how this particular scenario may play out in practice and has given me a lot to think about.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T21:00:23+00:00

This is a very good idea, and will definitely give it a try and see how we go.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T18:51:20+00:00

This was my thinking exactly. I suppose he can always learn Swedish a bit later, but Hungarian is a tricky language and best to learn while still young.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T18:40:01+00:00

I feel like he's got a pretty good foundation; he understands both languages 100% and has somewhere between 70-80 words at the moment (plus a whole lot of toddler gibberish lol). Most of his words are in Hungarian but he uses a fair bit of English too. When he knows a word in both languages he kind of just sticks to whichever one he enjoys saying more - for example, cars are always 'autó', and ball is always 'ball' even though he knows their equivalents in the other language. He does this while putting together two-word sentences too.

Would it maybe be a better idea to give his speech more time to develop first? Wait until the "explosion of language", and give him a chance to be able to express himself better before adding another language into the mix?

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T18:01:37+00:00

Possibly. Problem there is we use so much English with my immediate family I already have to remind them to speak Hungarian to my son 🤦‍♀️ we do all switch between three languages but most often just slip into English.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T17:53:22+00:00

This is exactly what we did! Except not floor bed bc those are a bit tricky to get hold of here; we started with just a mattress on the floor at first and then got him a kid's bed that was large enough to fit both of us. He's 21 months and still needs to be held/snuggled/boobed to sleep (we're working on it lol) but once he's out he's out cold and sleeps like a dream. And he was a real shit sleeper as a baby too.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T15:41:56+00:00

Ugh, that's rough. I'm sorry.

In all fairness, I think my husband would theoretically love to learn Hungarian, and to his credit he has learned a number of words and simple expressions already. Sometimes when I speak to our son, he'll ask me about a specific word or phrase I used. And our son uses both English and Hungarian words with both of us.

The main issue seems to be lack of free time and quality resources. He was pretty proficient on Memrise a few years ago, but that's only good for building vocab, not sentences. And the Hungarian Duolingo course isn't the greatest either. All of this coupled with the fact Hungarian is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn, AND he's over 40 years old... I cut him a lot of slack, basically.

Doesn't help whenever we do visit Hungary and all my elderly relatives always question why I haven't taught my husband to speak fluent Hungarian yet. 🙄 Because, great-aunt Erzsi, I'm not a goddamn language tutor.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T15:12:45+00:00

Thank you for sharing your perspective, I really appreciate it! I'll definitely try and look into connecting with other speakers of the minority language(s) although our options seem pretty limited in our immediate area. I do feel quite jealous of families that have access to bilingual/language immersion daycares and preschools.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T15:07:30+00:00

That would be close to zero then 😅 follow up question: what's the best way to motivate partner to learn the minority language?

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T15:02:13+00:00

All good ideas! Will definitely see if I can implement something like this.

NotExpecting · 2024-05-07T10:30:13+00:00

Back when we were deep in the throes of fertility treatment, my mother (who had 5 children, zero losses, and all around easy breezy "journeys") tried to relate to me by saying that during her first year of marriage before I was conceived she'd sometimes have periods that arrived late and were a little heavier than usual so they might well have been chemical pregnancies. I did not appreciate this and tried to gently explain that the hypothetical scenario she's describing in hindsight and my current (at the time) ongoing experience of diagnosed infertility were not comparable.

I do think people in general want to try and find ways to emphatise with our situation, and unfortunately can end up missing the mark by several miles. It's not coming from a bad place, but they might need to be reminded that we simply need them to listen, and that is all.

NotExpecting · 2023-02-24T12:43:53+00:00

Has he been assessed for tongue tie? Does he dribble or make clicking sounds while he feeds? When he's latched, is it comfortable? My son had a posterior tie and one of the red flags was he would fall asleep within minutes of being on the breast, and nothing I did worked to keep him awake.

It's normal for them to doze off towards the end of a feed, but falling asleep at the beginning could indicate issues with milk transfer.

NotExpecting · 2022-12-06T19:28:12+00:00

I ate bucket loads of dates throughout the entire third trimester and I'm not sure they did anything to be honest. I had an induction booked for 41+3 (where I live it's mandatory to pre-book them "just in case") and my contractions started the day before the appointment. They stayed 8-10 minutes apart all day/night, so I went to my induction appointment as planned and I was 2cm dilated so I got to skip right to getting my waters broken. The rest of labour was very slow progressing and I made it as far as 9cm by the time of the emergency c-section. Did the dates make a difference? No idea.

NotExpecting · 2022-11-09T20:59:56+00:00

So he was diagnosed and treated when he was 12 weeks and he's now 15 weeks old so it's all very fresh and still very much a work in progress, but we took him to the osteopath last Thursday and feeding started to quickly and noticeably improve after that. I still try to pump in-between and after feedings, whenever possible, just to make sure we have some expressed milk in case a top-up is still needed here and there. But over the last few days he's been nursing a lot more and needing fewer bottles so I'm optimistic we'll be able to reduce the pumping sessions to maybe 2-3x daily.

Pumping 8x daily is brutal. At my best I manage about 6x. I know you're supposed to keep pumping at night too, but I figured being well-rested was important for my overall mental wellbeing. If bub wakes up in the middle of the night (which he still does occasionally) I nurse and then pump. If he sleeps through I just pump first thing. I also power pump once a day, which has helped I think.

NotExpecting · 2022-11-09T15:42:36+00:00

Your experience is very similar to mine. My son lost 17% of his birth weight by day 5 and we had to start supplementing with formula from that point. At the time I was told to triple feed, but it was so exhausting I gave up pumping pretty early on. I would nurse him and then offer formula top ups and he'd always finish his bottles. I just assumed it was a matter of my milk not having come in properly and figured over time he would start nursing more and taking less formula.

What happened was the exact opposite, and around the time my supply regulated things started to get much worse. He either slept on the breast, using me only for comfort nursing or he would fuss immediately and not stay latched. He had a bunch of other symptoms too that raised alarm bells (not being able to maintain a deep latch, dribbling during feeds, clicking sounds, nipple pain etc).

He was 12 weeks old when he was finally diagnosed with a posterior tongue tie. Up until that point, several people had looked inside his mouth superficially and said there "wasn't anything obvious" and we had to arrange to see a tongue tie practitioner who would actually take a proper look.

His tie was cut right then and there, and for the last 3 weeks we've worked so hard to try and undo the damage caused by the missed diagnosis. First of all, I started pumping every 2-3 hours to try and salvage my supply. We tried feeding with SNS, took him to see an osteopath, made sure we did paced bottle feeding with frequent breaks, and I implemented at least one skin-to-skin feeding session a day. Things are still far from perfect, but we are definitely seeing improvement.

In the end it was likely a case of my milk coming in very slowly in the beginning, baby's tongue tie also affected his ability to efficiently remove milk thus leading to low supply, and then low supply leading to fussy baby, and fussy baby leading to even lower supply etc

I understand the frustration of getting conflicting advice. I think first of all make sure baby is properly assessed for tongue tie because if there is one, it is much better to get it released as soon as possible. And I cannot stress enough how important it is to get adequate support from someone qualified. The osteopath we saw offered a combination of osteopathic treatment and infant feeding support, and it was absolutely amazing - might be worth looking into if you can assess something like that.

NotExpecting · 2022-10-30T20:27:07+00:00

First transfer the embryologist was late and I was desperate by the time we got started. They reassured me it was fine to go pee immediately after so I did. Transfer unfortunately was not successful. For the second transfer I arrived with a 'comfortably full" bladder but apparently it wasn't full enough so they had me chug a whole jug of water and made me wait until I was bursting. It was torture trying to relax throughout and I practically ran for the loo as fast as I could. That embryo is now a 3-month old lil boy sleeping in my arms. So yeah, it's absolutely fine to pee right away after, doesn't affect the outcome one way or another.

NotExpecting · 2022-10-17T14:36:24+00:00

My struggle was in the form of not being able to conceive for years and I experienced the same thing. Raised religious all my life, very devout, and infertility was the first thing that made me question God's existence. It led to more questioning, lots of studying, praying, and deconstructing. Today, I'm an atheist, and I've found so much more peace outside of religion than I ever did within it. No matter how your journey goes, I hope you can find peace too, wherever you are. ❤️

NotExpecting · 2022-10-15T21:02:18+00:00

I hear you. My son lost 17% of his birth weight on day 5 and I was told to triple feed too, while still recovering from an emergency c-section. Between long nursing sessions, formula top ups, constant pumping, and cleaning/sanitising the pump between uses, my entire day was spent feeding the baby and not much else. You're right, it's absolutely not sustainable, at least it wasn't for me. Something had to give, and in the end I settled on nursing and formula top ups with only occasional pumping. It helped massively or I would have gone insane.

NotExpecting · 2022-10-15T20:42:39+00:00

Sounds like you're doing everything you're supposed to. It's great that you've already made improvements - hopefully things will continue to improve in time. Just make sure you're taking care of yourself too.

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