BellendenBear

Mr Bear and I debate this issue frequently. Our only conclusion is to get out of London before they are 7!

The morning nap is crucial and the success of this seems to make or break the whole day. Back in bed by 9am (2 hours after waking) even if others are telling you they don't seem tired. Also agree with the baby whisperer EASY thing being good - less regimented than GF but still works on the approach that babies thrive on routine, just a routine that you have found to suit them rather than a generic one. For me and my 5 month old, the morning nap and a good feeding routine were the keys. Again I found the baby whisperer useful to fix a 4 hourly daytime feeding pattern with a blissful 8 hours overnight.

I am going to attempt to explain centime charts, or at least my understanding of them. Centime charts are like a plot of the normal distribution of height, weight or whatever for a particular population. It is not that you are only 'normal' or healthy if you are on a particular centile as clearly some of us are short or tall, have a slightly bigger or smaller head, but can all be normal. At 5'2'', I am on the 25th centile for adult women, so not surprisingly my baby girl is on the 25th. Similarly a woman could be 6 inches taller than me but we would both be within the normal spectrum. Another way to look at it is that in a room of 100 women, 75 will be taller than me, 25 will be shorter. Same with babies. The important thing with babies is that they grow along a centile, or don't deviate too much so that you can see their growth is steady. And that if they are on a particular centile for one variable (eg weight), they are on a comparable centile for others (eg height) so that they are in proportion. My baby has a relatively big head (so do I) on the 50th centile. So her head is the average size for baby girls of her age but because the rest of her is smaller than average, her head looks a bit big. So, back to your scan, the AC has dropped from one centile to a lower one. Doesn't mean that his abdomen has got smaller but that the growth has slowed so they need to keep an eye on things. The other thing to remember is that scans and measurements and centile charts are for screening, they are not always diagnostic. Unfortunately this means that some people will be put through unnecessary worry to enable problems to be detected in most cases. Please try not to worry too much, it sounds like they are being cautious. Finally, I know KCH had its problems, but I found their antenatal care and scanning excellent. Had a private scan too which was nowhere near as good - less time, less measurements, much less qualified sonographer. Hope some of this makes sense.

I never understood why you need parent and child bays til I had a baby either. You do need more room to open the door fully to get them out of the car. No real reason why they need to be close to the store I guess. In fact, might be better if they were further away so then only the people who really need them would do so.

I know it's not East Dulwich, but for the best chips (and fish) you can't beat the Flying Fish in Camberwell. Really friendly staff, BYO restaurant, and a lunchtime small just right portion of fish and chips for ?2.50 or something ridiculous. A million times better than the Sea Cow.

Lemon polenta cake, mmmmmmmmm, tastes a lot better than it looks. And the bread is way better than the ED deli.

It's Emeline not Emily Pankhurst

there's no "aberdeen steak house" in ED. think on...

Can you ask that they are more vigilant in policing the parent and child parking bays. Having an empty child seat in the back of your offensive SUV shouldn't mean you need extra space to get your lazy fat rear out of the car. I urge more people to report this to the store, they generally respond politely but I don't know if they enforce the ?50 fine. perhaps they could set an age limit on the people who use the self check out. They can really speed things up unless you are stuck behind a 55+ fumbling around with their bottles of shloer Re the clock. Why do you need one in sainsburys if you don't need one the rest of the time? Do you time your shopping? What's your record?