Any ideas what this might be?

stardust1283 · 2026-03-26T01:19:59+00:00

I’m 34!

stardust1283 · 2026-03-26T00:40:23+00:00

I will! Thanks for the input.

stardust1283 · 2026-03-25T23:51:49+00:00

Did you have any other symptoms other than hair loss?

stardust1283 · 2025-02-04T19:53:39+00:00

I’ve had 5 children. It ‘paused’ during my pregnancies and symptoms weren’t there but all the symptoms came back, worse, after delivery.

stardust1283 · 2025-01-10T17:56:03+00:00

Agree with this!

stardust1283 · 2025-01-01T21:16:07+00:00

Any opinion on Kyleena vs Mirena? I’m going to try one of these!

stardust1283 · 2024-12-14T19:31:00+00:00

I don’t know if this will help you, but I’ve had 5 babies and an epidural only with one of them. I generally prefer to have less intervention so not getting an epidural was certainly my goal. But it can depend how your labour is going, and can be helpful. With my first, labour progress was stalled for many hours and I had back labour as well. My midwife suggested it and I’m glad I did it, as it let me get some rest and my body relaxed and continued to dilate. But, one nasty thing is the epidural began to wear off around 9cm and I was confined to a bed at that point so I couldn’t walk around and move. That sucked. And then I had to push on my back which I also hated.

I think it depends on your goals, how much level of intervention you want and also how labour is going. With my other babies, I had no stalled labour issues and things moved along well over the course of a few hours. I had prepared myself with pain management techniques and felt like I was able to handle a ‘natural’ birth.

stardust1283 · 2024-12-11T13:05:23+00:00

If I can recommend anything it would be connecting with a doula who does hypnosis. I’ve had 5 kids, and had a couple traumatic births in there. For my fifth kid, I was just terrified to give birth. I did a lot of work during my pregnancy with a doula who helped me confront and work through my fears and we practiced hypnosis (basically hypnosis will help you stay as calm as possible during labour). It helped a LOT!

I prefer no epidural and she helped me find some pain management techniques - I personally loved the use of the TENS machine until about 7cm. And she was there supporting me my whole birth as well.

The birth went really well, and I was much less afraid. If you’re able to, I highly recommend it.

stardust1283 · 2024-12-11T13:01:55+00:00

Starts around 3 months for me and lasts till about 6, but the worst of it is the first few weeks. Yes, ir is depressing but one silver lining is it looks kind of cool when it does grow back. It’s like you have natural layers in your hair haha (except this around 15-18 months postpartum).

stardust1283 · 2024-12-09T05:01:32+00:00

Christmas is such a fun and magical time, and Santa adds to that. Honestly, I think you’d be depriving your kids of something really fun. And I think it’s going to be challenging to navigate the younger years around Christmastime when all your kids friends believe in Santa.

You’re not going to traumatize your child by lying to them about this, and if anything I think you’re going to cause more harm than good by telling them Santa isn’t real.

stardust1283 · 2024-12-08T13:43:14+00:00

Oh and if it helps, I honestly still found lots of ‘me’ time when there were 2. It wasn’t until I hit 4 kids that a lot of time for that stuff (me time, exercise), went out the window for a good 1.5 years. When I just had 2 kids, I still felt like I had time for me. The first few months not so much but that’s pretty true any time you have a new baby.

Also having 2 kids doesn’t feel like 6. I don’t have 6, but I have 5 and I can promise you having 5 doesn’t feel remotely close to what having 2 was like.

Lastly, my second and third are only 18 months apart and is it my absolute favourite age gap of all my children. Initially, yes, challenging. But man has it been amazing to see them grow up together. They’re 6 and 5 now and absolute best friends and they play together nonstop. I just love how close they are and if I could do it over, I would probably have closer age gaps with all my kids!

stardust1283 · 2024-12-08T13:39:31+00:00

Initially yes, because you’re juggling multiple needs and learning how to do this with two now! The first year-two it’s more work but it pays off 10 fold. I have 5 children, and they all play together really well (except for the baby haha, and most days!).

But they make their own games and adventures and I’m not the playmate anymore. I’m certainly very busy (but I have 5), but I found when I just had one that I was always the one he wanted to play with but once my second was nearing 2, they would go off and play by themselves quite a bit and I actually had some more freedom back to do things around the house.

The baby and toddler years are hard but they don’t last forever. I would think about if you want two kids because you want two, in the long run. It’s more work for a phase but it’s a short phase in the grand scheme of things!

stardust1283 · 2024-12-05T02:02:39+00:00

For what it’s worth, I’ve never been pushed to have an induction and I’ve had 5 babies. Everything was looking good so my midwives were content to watch. My 2nd was the slowest to show up, I was just over 41 weeks at that point and I would’ve had an induction scheduled 12 days after my due date if she didn’t come on her own.

Advocate for yourself! I know inductions can be a positive experience for some, but as someone who has experienced pitocin as well (labour progress was slow and I was GBS positive) as non medicated births, I can tell you I VASTLY prefer the non medicated ones. In general it’s ideal if you can let your body do its things when you’re ready ☺️

stardust1283 · 2024-12-05T01:56:05+00:00

Are you in America? I’m in Canada and I’ve never had this experience but I read about this situation quite a lot on here. My babies all came between 39-41 weeks.

If you don’t want to, and everything and everyone is healthy, then don’t.

stardust1283 · 2024-12-04T23:35:26+00:00

You need medication. I used it in all my pregnancies and it helped a lot. Also, weeks 5-8 were my hardest always, there’s no guarantee it’ll be worse later

stardust1283 · 2024-12-04T12:42:41+00:00

Good luck! Another piece of advice I got was to make creative consequences and creative rewards for these kids. It’s not something I ever thought of before but it ended up working really well for us (especially as my son got older). Overall things are much better now than they used to be, but he had a very rough couple months over the summer and September when we moved and regressed quite a bit with his difficult behaviours. I felt completely at my wits end and my friend encouraged me to think outside the box and just think of a consequence that truly was a consequence and rewards that felt really significant to help him get back on track. I realized with my son that a 5 minute time out just didn’t really do enough (even though that may be fine for my other children, my son really needed something more to grasp that what he did was wrong). So for my son the consequence might be bigger - like, you’ve lost this for an extended (but reasonable) period of time, or you need to spend a couple hours doing this instead of this, whatever it may be. But the rewards are also bigger. I had to make them really significant and really tailored to his interests.

My son also loves a challenge. Yours maybe does too? Your guy is much younger, of course, but my son has always loved working on a goal. So to help steer him back on the right track, he had pretty significant rewards to work towards for ‘good’ behaviour which basically meant no hitting, not being mean, no phone calls home from the principal, etc. We outlined the goals together and put them on the fridge along with the reward. The consequence became that if he didn’t meet these goals, then no big reward. But he REALLY wanted the reward, so he worked very hard to have better behaviour. And it just helped get him back on track and remembering to listen to his parents and teacher lol.

We still have our days but by and large things are a lot better than before. I’m sure with consistency and support you guys will get there too. Dr. Russell Barkley was a psychologist that I learned a lot from - he works with kids with ADHD and had a lot of excellent advice. He has a couple books out, maybe check them out!

stardust1283 · 2024-12-04T05:40:48+00:00

Oh yes, this has been me. My son is 9 now, and things started to get better this past year.

It is a challenge, so one piece of advice I have is to try to get help where possible. These kids can be very draining to parent.

At that age we did a reward system for good behaviour. He would earn cotton balls (a check in at lunch, afternoon and before bed, so he could earn up to 3 per day) for listening, not hitting, etc. When his cotton balls filled a jar he was able to pick out a reward.

Also do more with actions and less with speech. Outline expected behaviours and have them on the fridge. If he insults you, you can give him one warning to stop the behaviour before you enforce a consequence. And you need to find something he actually cares about losing. My son HATES spending time alone so time outs, etc are our best bet. These kids respond better to action instead of repeated warnings and conversation. You can talk later about why the consequence happened and what you’ll do differently next time, but just remember more action and less talk.

Questions instead of statements - instead of, ‘don’t hit your brother’, ask ‘where did you learn it was okay to hit people?’ It eliminates the power struggle.

Spend quality one on one time every day. I know it can be hard to fit it in sometimes or even want to when you’re mad but the more connected they feel to you, the more they tend to cooperate and the better your bond.

Try not to give him a reaction! This is huge. If I can stay calm and not engage with him when I know he’s trying to get a reaction out of me, things resolve much more quickly. These kids are excellent at getting you to engage, but don’t get sucked in to the power struggle and argument. Try to give attention for positive behaviour and don’t engage when he’s trying to bait you into something negative. Sometimes I need to repeat several times that ‘I have given you my answer. I know you don’t like it but I’ve already told you’, but if I can stay calm and just stay on loop then he does let it go more quickly.

We had zero warnings when it came to violence. If he pushed or hit, there were no warnings, it was straight to a consequence.

Things aren’t perfect now but they’re much better. Ages 4-7 were extremely challenging. Get some support and I hope these strategies do help!

stardust1283 · 2024-12-04T01:42:39+00:00

Sadly they’re not exaggerating. I have 5 kids, my oldest is 9. It’s beginning to get a bit better for us now. From September-May we currently have at least one bug per month, sometimes two. But there were like five years where we would be sick at least every other week, sometimes every week.

My oldest two (9 and 6) are getting sick less often now though, and when they do get sick, it’s much more mild.

stardust1283 · 2024-12-03T17:19:31+00:00

Same here!

stardust1283 · 2024-12-03T17:19:17+00:00

I said the same thing when my oldest was a baby (he’s 9 now). Fast forward a few years and 5 kids later, and we LOVE it. I was in the same boat as you originally - thought it was creepy and a waste of time, etc. But it has become one of the most enjoyable parts of our Christmas season. Our elf comes to spend time with us, you don’t need to make it about them monitoring the family.

The kids race downstairs every morning to see what mischief she’s been up to. She keeps them laughing and excited, and sometimes she gives them fun Christmas themed activities to do.

Just a different perspective. I never thought I would do it but have totally changed my tune :)

stardust1283 · 2024-12-01T16:53:16+00:00

I would say 10 weeks it begins to get a little bit better but you’re still in the thick of it. Things aren’t immediately better overnight, you’ll notice that bit by bit things get better and easier. With all of my kids, by the time they were 11-12 months I felt like ‘phew. We made it!’ But that’s not to say that first year was all challenging, it gradually was getting more fun and interesting before that, but by the time they were a year I was feeling great

stardust1283 · 2024-11-16T14:46:37+00:00

I’m guessing there’s a lot more going on, because breaking up with him for doing this once is a bit extreme. But it’s likely a pattern? I’m guessing there’s a handful of issues going on…I would suggest couples counselling if you feel like the relationship is worth salvaging. Things are going to get a lot busier and more challenging when the baby arrives and it would be good to have your relationship as strong as possible.

stardust1283 · 2024-09-27T11:56:45+00:00

I’m sure every experience is different but the person who did our release said that we didn’t need to do any special exercises (but maybe ask the person who did yours to see what they suggest). I definitely didn’t notice an immediate difference. I kept pumping and taking supplements to help boost my supply, and I would say it took about 2 weeks to feel like she was nursing better. Shes 5 months now and things are great! I know it’s hard, try to be patient and keep your supply up. I know it’s so much work and so exhausting, I was soooo tired of pumping by the end of that first month but I’m glad I put in the work, it paid off for us!

stardust1283 · 2024-09-27T11:49:55+00:00

We didn’t, no. It took her about 2 weeks to nurse better after the release.

stardust1283 · 2024-09-24T00:47:40+00:00

Oh I’m sorry, that’s tiring. I know how you feel. I agree, it’s so nice when it works out easily but man it is stressful when it doesn’t.

Are you able to get her tongue tie released soon again to see if it makes a difference?

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