Ole

Hi, in the past I have read some comments about night cough and a medicine you can get over the counter which is good for this kind of thing?? My 14 month old has a horrible night time cough and he is not sleeping, and neither are we, any suggestions welcome!

I just wanted reassurance really that my 14 month old is going through a phase, and that it will pass quickly! Mealtimes have become a no-win situation for me - he refuses to be fed so I let him feed himself, but with cutlery it is a very hit and miss situation (about two thirds of food end up down his front), and if I encourage him with finger foods he starts playing with it. The few times he does manage to stick something in his mouth he chews for a bit and then pulls it out and hands it back to me. Lovely! So he ends up hungry and I end up fed up! Can't wait for this phase to be over!

Hi, have you asked his GP to check his ears for infection? My eldest nephew had something similar, he was 4 and would be fine during the day, smiley, happy and chatty etc etc, but once in bed he would cry and scream for hours until my sister in law took him to the GP and they discovered an ear infection of biblical proportions!!! Lying down would make the pain of an ear infection much worse, so maybe that is why it is only at night, and once the Calpol wears off.

I'd ditch the aqueous creams and use Cetraben 3-4 times a day. My son had awful eczema (so bad I could not see what he really looked like for the first few months because his face was covered with it) and now he is completely clear of it. Also, I found Doublebase bath emollient more gentle than Oilatum. I would also put the steroid creams on 1 or 2 hours AFTER moisturising with Cetraben.

I posted something similar when my son was about the same age and what I ended up doing was offering food at set meal times, if he refused to feed from a spoon then let him feed himself and when he lost interest not make a fuss but take it away and no snacks or anything until next meal time. After a couple of days he got the point and would eat very well. Since then every couple of weeks he'll have off days where he refuses either lunch or dinner, but if he carries on like this for a few days I revert to 'the method' and a couple of days later he is back to norm. I also stopped weighing him so often (I was weighing him every couple of weeks and becoming obsessed with it), as long as he is happy and thriving then his exact weight is unimportant (also he is growing in length a lot, so I know that he is getting nourishment). I also cut back on the breastfeeding because he learnt that if he wasn't eating meals later on he'd get breastfed anyway. He is 1 year now and still has his off days but on the whole his eating is pretty good.

I had an induction at 42 weeks and I wish someone had told me it can take several days for something to happen. I went to Kings on a Friday morning and in my head I expected to have a baby by Saturday morning. As it was, I did not start getting proper contractions until Sunday evening, and the baby was not born until Monday night by emergency cesarean (failure to progress). This was just my experience though and for some people induction works very quickly.

Oh good, I'm not the only one, I thought my son who is 10.5 months was a bit of an anomaly but glad to find he is just normal! He has tantrums too, he refuses to sleep some naps, he screams, kicks and tries to escape when I change him, trying to dress/undress him leaves me sweating and exhausted from the battle, if I pick him up he cries and wriggles out of my arms, if I sit him down to play he cries, he throws toys and things in a fit of rage, he picks up food and throws it on the floor while looking at me, he pulls my hair and slaps me around the face if I pick him up when he wants to play, he bats food away when I offer it to him, he arches his back and refuses to sit in buggy (or car seat), he follows me around the house crying for my attention but when I then try to read to him or play with him he screams until I let him go, somedays it feels like all I have heard is crying and whining!

Hi, I also had the throwing up with mine, exactly the same thing 2 hours after giving him solids (and quite mucosy sometimes too). This started when I weaned him at 6 months so I started a food diary and realised that he was throwing up 2 hours after eating potato (!!!!), so I stopped giving him potato and so far no more vomiting. He also started going through 10 nappies a day but that didn't last long about 2 weeks. The GP at the time said it was a bugs. he is nearly 10 months old now and one day soon I will give him some potato see how he gets on. Looking back he was also starting teething at the time so who knows if it is related. I used to worry too but now I know it is just 'one of those things'! My baby also rolls and at the moment he likes to sleep facing down with his bottom in the air. Sometimes he wriggles into impossible positions against the cot bars and wakes up with bar marks all over his face, but if I try to change his position he wriggles back, so it must be comfy for him!

Thanks guys, it is exactly the kind of thing I would tell anybody else with the same problem, it is so difficult to get perspective when it is happening to you though! all i want is to see him eat (even if it means feeding him only chocolate biscuits, not that I'm going to of course, but the temptation is there!)

until recently he was eating very well, porridge with fruit or toast for breakfast, then breastfeed, then lunch (e.g.meat with veg followed by fruit), then at mid afternoon a snack (e.g. a yoghurt), then dinner (e.g. pasta with veg), then another breastfeed, and then bed, so I was very pleased because he was eating so well, but now even his favourite foods he won't eat. He used to scoff avocado sandwiches (which he would feed himself) but now he just picks at them and ends up on the floor! He seems to have one good meal a day (presumably when he is ravenous) but the rest of the day nothing. For example yesterday he had a great dinner but hardly had any lunch or breakfast. The previous day he ate breakfast very well but did not want to have dinner, and so on...he is so erratic there is no pattern!!

Any suggestions to my problem gratefully welcome! Baby won't be spoon-fed, he won't do finger food, yet he is hungry!! He pats spoon away and he throws finger food on the floor. If I give him a loaded spoon he will drop that too, so he ends up hungry and then won't sleep at night, yet in the morning the process starts all over again even though he must be starving! He is 9.5 10 months.

I'm spanish and my husband is english, when it is just the baby and me I speak with him [the baby] in Spanish, when my husband is with us or when I am with other english speaking people I switch to English. I want English to be his main language as he will grow up here and also my husband does not speak spanish so english has to be our family language, but I want him to know spanish too. I think he is probably exposed 40% to spanish and 60% to english, so hopefully he will grow up knowing both. My brother's wife is spanish and they live in england too and speak spanish at home but their three children speak better english than spanish although they understand spanish perfectly and can speak it too they just feel more comfortable with english because it is what their friends speak.

Thanks for all your replies, a week on and so far no more vomiting as I have given the potato a wide berth. He is loving sweet potato, pear, banana, baby rice, and even managed some peas, so going to stick with these for a while. The GP has acknowledged that viruses show up at random times of the day not specifically at 2:15pm, so looks like an intolerance type reaction which hopefully he will grow out of (can you imagine a lifetime without chips!!??). For those who asked, yes he does have eczema!

Hi, I just wanted to ask other people's experience of baby vomiting during weaning. I started weaning my baby at 6 months and one day after a couple of weeks he was very sick after eating potato puree. The doc at the time said it was a bug etc etc. That was 2 weeks ago. Today I fed the baby potato and broccoli puree and a couple of hours later he was so sick so many times I took him to a&e as he had started vomiting bile. Again the doc said it is a bug. It COULD be a bug, but it just seems to be a bit coincidental that he has been sick on the dot a couple of hours after eating solids (he is breastfed all other times). Has anybody elso found weaning their baby difficult? I am now scared to offer him solids in case he is sick again! Has anybody had a similar experience?

Hi, my 5.5 month old baby is cutting his first tooth and I just wanted to know what other people's experience is. For the last 2 months he has settled very well in the evenings after months of nightmare evenings, but since the tooth started surfacing a couple of nights ago getting him to settle at night has become a trauma again. What worries me is that after the tooth is out and the pain gone he will revert back to his old ways of not wanting to go to sleep, or is the unsettledness just a temporary thing? How do you know that he is not settling because of new bad habits rather than because of teething pain? Any advice? Thanks!!

My son is now 5 months and from 2 months started developing eczema, sometimes so bad he would scratch himself raw. The routine we follow now and which has done wonders (his skin is completely clear most of the time now) is slather on Citroben (sorry not sure of spelling and do not have pot to hand) at least 3 times a day everywhere including the scalp but except the nappy area (it is a chore but the point is to keep his skin as moisturised as possible). I have noticed he hardly ever gets flare ups now, but if he does then I put a little 1% hydrocortisone cream in the affected area before it gets really bad. In the bath I use doublebase and nothing else. This routine has really worked and now I only need to use the hydrocortisone cream very very sporadically (last time was over 2 weeks ago and I only applied a tiny bit to a very small area once!). I used Oilatum before, even the junior one, and I found it made his skin worse but Doublebase agrees with him. I also found that Diprobase irritated his skin as did aqueous cream. I think it is a case of trial and error until you find what works for you, we must have gone through a whole chemist worth of creams!