NUGirl. Liam came 6 weeks early!

In the sentence: "ist der haushalt nicht mehr stätte gemeinsamer Produktion, sondern ort gemeinsamen konsums"

I am specifically concerned with whether stätte can, in this instance (or any usage) mean a "unit" rather than a concrete physical place. Or does the term always imply a concrete physical place?

The quick question: In terms of your relationship with your siblings (or your own children):

how far apart in age were you/they?

did you/they play together as children?

were you/they close growing up?

are you/they close now as adults?

The Background: I was 4.5 years older than my sister and we were never never close because we never wanted to do any of the same things. I have always been envious of people who had closer friend-like relationships with their siblings. So i developed this sort of fixation on having kids who were 2 years apart, because it always seemed like siblings who were closer in age were also closer friends.

My son is 18 months old now, but right now is not a good time for my job for me to get pregnant. In the short term it would be much better if I could wait until either later this year or sometime next year to get pregnant. That would mean at the very earliest kids who were about 30 months apart in age up to about 40 months apart. So about 3 years give or take a few.

But I am worried that the short term logic of what is good for my job now will condemn my kids to not being close for the rest of their lives. I need some real life experiences to either confirm or dispell my impression (based on my own life really) that kids 2 years or less apart tend to play together as kids and be close for life, whereas kids 3-4 years apart dont play together much as kids and dont have much in common as adults.

My son used to be a champion napper, went down without too much fuss. I think there were probably half a dozen times in the first six months that I really needed to use a trick to get him to sleep (eg take for car ride, carry in sling, ride in stroller) but in the last week and a half I have had to do those things for every nap every day. all day degenerates into a continuous effort to get him to sleep. then if i'm unlucky he sleeps for 30 minutes and wakes up still tired but wont go back down (he smiles at you but if you pick him up and try to put him back down he starts fussing right away).

I dont want to do cry it out, but this morning I got so frustrated I let him fuss. If I leave him he wont sob his eyes out, but neither will he stop. I sat in his room while he fussed for 2.5 hours this morning and he still didnt go to sleep. He's only 6.5 months old and he got up at 6am this morning and looked tired from 7am onwards but I couldnt get him to sleep until 1030.

I am desperate for suggestions to help this. He previously had a pretty decent schedule (eat every 3 hours, 2 naps of about 1.5 hours and one of 45 in the late afternoon, asleep in bed by 630 or 7ish because that was his natural sleep window). But now when he wont nap everything goes to heck in a handbasket. So if your suggestion is "more schedule" then I need some tips about how to get back to a schedule from this mess.

He may be teething in that he drools and has an increased interest in chewing things, but offering him something cold to chew on doesnt seem to get him any closer to bed, and I cannot feel or see anything starting to break through his gums.

Did this happen to you? If I wait it out will it get better? Help!

I am sick to death of hand washing bottles in hot soapy water, especially since we had to get anticolic ones for our son and so there are like four small parts for every bottle. We recently started washing them in the dishwasher, but the guide online says to do it on the antibacterial cycle. My only problem with that is that it literally takes like four hours to run through, so it keeps the bottles out of circulation for a while and seems sort of wasteful and unnecessary, since we were formerly just using hot soapy water to hand wash them anyway.

What do you all do? Do you dishwasher them? If so, do you always use the antibacterial cycle or ok to use regular wash sometimes? (maybe alternate between them?)

Also, how many bottles do you have at home? right now we only have six, but my son eats like 10 times a day still.

I had always heard you had to wait 6 weeks to have sex after a normal vaginal delivery, which I assumed meant vaginal penetration of any kind. But when I was discharged from the hospital 4 weeks ago, the docs said any kind of sexual stimulation was out for 6 weeks, including receiving oral sex (of course giving was ok) or masturbation w/o any penetration.

I have felt 100% recovered since about 2 weeks post delivery. I had only a superficial tear, so I got one stitch. The swelling was totally gone by the end of the 2 weeks, which was my only source of discomfort, and so was the bleeding. I feel great great great physically now. And I have wanted to have sexual contact of some kind since week 3.

I can't imagine I'll actually do something horrible to myself if I masturbate, but I wanted to check out with you ladies on here first. Did you all wait the 6weeks for any kind of contact, or did you go ahead with some stuff earlier if you felt well? what do you think?

I am planning for a non-medicated childbirth. But I recenty discovered that at the hospital where I am delivering it is their universal policy to administer Pitocin to help the uterus contract after the baby is delivered, and stop blood loss. When I asked my OB about whether there were any downsides or what it would feel like, she just said there were no downsides.

I would love to hear from women who were not on pitocin until after delivery who got a shot of it after the baby came out to help the uterus contract. What did it feel like? was it uncomfortable? I have heard that Pitocin used to start or augment labor contractions can make them stronger, longer and more painful. Will it also feel that way about afterbirth contractions?

I am 26 weeks pregnant. I have always enjoyed the experience of taking communion at church. When I go to Lutheran church with my parents they offer individual cups, including some that are non-alcoholic, so I take those. But when I go to Catholic Mass with my husband, they only offer common cup of wine.

Things brings up a few things for me, so I wanted to see what others out there were thinking and how you had resolved this.

First, the common cup poses some risk of getting other folks' germs, especially during the winter cold/flu season.

Second, wine is wine. In general I don't think the thimble sip of wine on sunday will cause FAS.

Third, now that I am really showing, I worry that people would judge me if I did decide to take the communion wine. If people were judging me elsewhere it probably wouldn't matter much, I could brush it off (although truthfully, there is no where else I am contemplating having any alcohol at all). But being judged at church would feel worse to me somehow, more crushing and isolating.

Have any of the rest of you dealt with these issues? What experiences did you have? How did you resolve them?

Based on my LMP, my EDD is March 14, 2009. I went for my 20 week ultrasound. Based on the measurements, the EDD was March 10, 2009. The OB informed me that they do not officially change the EDD unless the ultrasound results are more than 2 weeks off from the EDD based on LMP.

So here's my question:

FOR THOSE MOTHERS WHO HAVE ALREADY DELIVERED AT LEAST ONCE: For those of you who had slightly different EDD based on ultrasounds, did you wind up delivering closer to your LMP or ultrasound due date? If ultrasound puts me slightly four days earlier, does that mean I might have a better chance of delivering slightly before March 14th? or not really?

I'm now 20 weeks pregnant and so I'm into the phase of sleeping only on my sides, not my tummy or back. I find that the pressure of being on my hip all night long makes my hips ache terribly by morning, so that I sleep poorly and always wind up waking early.

I'm trying the pillow/bolster between my knees, which brings some relief. But it is still pretty uncomfortable. Although I'm 20 weeks, I'm not showing very much and I've gained about 10 lbs, so I wasn't anticipating this problem so early. I thought this happened more when you were really rotund.

Did this happen to anyone else? Any suggestions for relieving the pain so I can sleep better?