Pregnancy Dos and Don’ts

Posted on February 22, 2012 by brieanne

(image courtesy of Edyta Szyszlo Photography)

When you are pregnant, there is always the question of what can you eat/use/do and what you should avoid.  One thing that began to bother me was when people would say “well, look at what previous generations did and we all turned out okay…”  Yes, this is true, but I would like to see the data proving the miscarriage/infant mortality/birth defect rate was the same as it is now.  For example, when I was an infant babies slept on their stomach and yes I survived.  However, the rate of SIDS has dropped I believe around 40% (I read this somewhere but now can’t remember where) since babies have started sleeping on their backs.  When you have the whole picture it seems less “paranoid” to have your baby sleep on his or her back, right?

At the same time, you will drive yourself crazy if you are over-the-top paranoid.  You are supposed to at least try and enjoy pregnancy, and I do think there are some pregnancy guidelines that can be followed more in moderation than strictly by the book.  Here is the question I asked myself to help make my decision of how closely will I follow all the guidelines:

If I do this/eat this and something goes wrong, will I beat myself up for making this decision?

That may sound pessimistic, but I think it’s true.  Yes, in some countries women drink throughout their pregnancy and the babies turn out fine.  I personally was comfortable with having a few sips here and there and so I had them, but I had my own ground rules.  No alcohol in the first trimester and never hard alcohol.  That is what I was comfortable with.  I realize I’m going out on a limb stating that I had alcohol while pregnant, but again it is all what you are personally comfortable with (I am not a health professional and this is not meant to be advice on drinking while pregnant.  Please follow the guidelines of your health provider).  I also did not drink in public because I didn’t want unnecessary judgement–it’s all about time and place.

(images courtesy of Edyta Szyszlo Photography)

Soft cheese.  Another supposed “no no” while pregnant.  I LOVE cheese, especially soft cheese so this seemed a little extreme for me.  Upon further investigation, it’s unpasteurized cheeses that are not recommended; therefore I would always find out if the cheese was pasteurized (turns out most cheese in the US is pasteurized).  If I couldn’t figure it out, I skipped the cheese.

I guess all of this is to say future moms out there, don’t beat yourselves up trying to be perfect during your pregnancy–you are supposed to enjoy this time!  At the end of the day you have to make decisions you are comfortable with.  And maybe skip the controversial decisions in public–there’s nothing worse than unsolicited advice/judgement from strangers.

Anyone else want to weigh in on this?

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Baby Monitor

Posted on February 21, 2012 by brieanne

I procrastinated buying a baby monitor.  After all, we live in a one bedroom apartment and the baby sleeps in the bedroom with us for now.  In fact, at night she still sleeps with us which means the only time a baby monitor would be needed is during the day during naps, and then when she eventually moves out of our room.  Some people swear by a video monitor, some the Angel Care sensor monitor, and my sister has always used the simple old fashioned sound-only monitor.

In typical me-fashion, I had option paralysis.  Reviews for every monitor I found were mixed at best, and I really wasn’t looking forward to shelling out $99+ for a monitor that may or may not stop working in a month, interfere with our other electronics, etc.  I liked Erica’s thought with the video monitor, that if you can prevent yourself from watching obsessively it’s great because you can see if they are fussing and going to go back to sleep, or if they are truly up.  I liked Mone’s thought about the sensor monitor, that it keeps your mind at rest that your baby is breathing, but prevents you from obsessively watching the video or flinching at every fussing sound.

The other day I came across an app which seems to be at least a great placeholder–it’s called Best Baby Monitor.  For $2.99, I now have a fantastic video, sound or both monitor.  Although it says it has night vision using your phone’s flash (if you have an iPhone 4), I tested it out and it shines the really bright LED in your baby’s face.  No thanks.  We don’t really need the night vision anyway, since we won’t need the monitor at night.  I’m beyond excited about this–so far it works great.  You can even turn on the microphone and talk to your baby from another room if you want.  I’m not sure about the range for this since I’m just using it in my 1 bedroom apartment, but it works across the wifi network so I’m guessing as long as you are in wifi range it will work.  The only issue we’ve had so far is that the connection seems to flicker on and off, but it hasn’t been a big problem for us.

(this bottom photo looks grainy, but it was taken with the iPad as the camera.  I noticed an improvement in quality when we use an iPhone 4 as the video side.  The music note button is to play lullabies to your baby, and the microphone is so you can talk to him or her)

We’ve been using this for about a week now and I must say I’m quite pleased.  It’s great to be able to keep an eye on Eleanor and utilize the technology we already have in our place instead of adding to it…

(P.S. Please ignore all the things in my crib that you are not supposed to have in there)

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Treehouse Bedrooms

Posted on February 21, 2012 by brieanne

My husband was kind enough to send me this link to these treehouse beds on Inhabitots.  I would have loved something like this when I was younger (although I’m guessing I would have wanted something a little more over-the-top girly).

All I have to say is these are some lucky kiddos who get to sleep in these rooms!

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Baby #2?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by erica

No, no, this isn’t an announcement about me being pregnant.  It’s more of a question for you all.  I’m starting to wonder why people have another baby?  I’m starting to believe that it must be a mistake in most cases.  Could they really forget how much work the first year was?  Their first is finally becoming a pretty cool individual, almost a legitimate part of society.  And then they want to go on and bring a tiny, smelly, whiny little baby back into the picture?

Mike and I have always had a plan in our minds of when we would ideally want to have our second (FYI, this plan was made before we even had Jackson) but as that date approaches I start to wonder how everyone else comes about the decision to add one more to the brood.  I think our dog, Maddie, will be extremely disappointed when we walk through the door with another little baby.  I’m fairly certain she still feels duped with the one she’s stuck with now.

But our dog will deal.  We definitely want to try and have more kids, well, one more at least.  But now that we are parents it seems like a bigger decision than it did before.  How can we afford another one (how much will college be in 18 years!!!)?  Will I be able to give the next one the same attention as I was able to give Jackson in his first months?  Will the next one be colicky?  Please, I hope not.  So many questions come up about all of the unknowns.

But then I think about how much absolute happiness and joy Jax has brought into our lives and wonder if it multiplies with another one?  I imagine it does.  I always thought it would be an easy decision to have another baby, I loved being pregnant, I didn’t think child birth was so bad, breastfeeding wasn’t too hard, other than the nonstop crying I loved the infant stage, I loved the crawling, babbling, and now to see a little mini person walking around it’s amazing.  But also I know how much I care about and love this one little person, how do you add to that?

This is getting a little heavier than I wanted, so, here’s my question, if you have more than one, did you just take the plunge?  Did you dwell on the right timing?  How far apart are your children?

If you only have one, are you considering more?  What factors are weighing in on your decision?

 

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Cousin Love

Posted on February 16, 2012 by brieanne

I couldn’t resist posting this.  Yesterday I went to my sister’s house to hang out for a few hours to get some sister/niece/nephew time in.  We first went for a walk downtown and then we went back to her house for some hangout time.  After both babies were fed, the above scene unfolded.

The best part about those precious moments captured above?  They were 100% not initiated by my sister and me.  It began with Claire (3) saying she wanted to hold baby Eleanor, and asking me if that was okay.  We put Eleanor (11 weeks) facing out between Claire’s legs on the couch and that was okay.  Then Conor (1 1/2) indicated that he wanted to hold Kieran (5 weeks) and so my sister set Conor and Kieran up with the boppy.  Upon seeing their arrangement, Claire said she wanted to hold Eleanor like Conor was holding Kieran.  Lucky for Claire, my sister had another boppy laying around the house and therefore Claire’s request could be accommodated and voila, we had the scene above.

My sister and I silently giggled at how absolutely adorable the scene was while I snapped pictures to capture it while it lasted.  To both our surprise, it actually lasted for a little bit.  Conor tapped out first, deciding he was done with Kieran after 5-10 minutes, but Claire lasted quite a bit longer.  When Eleanor began to fuss a little, I asked if she wanted me to take Ellie, but she informed me that no, she was going to soothe her and began going “shhhhhhhh…..shhhhhhhh……shhhhhhhhh….”  Can I just say my heart melted even more than it already had?

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Does he do what you ask?

Posted on February 16, 2012 by erica

A few weeks ago Jackson had his 1 year check-up.  I think it must be pretty standard for the doctor to ask questions about whether or not he’s doing certain things, like, picking up small items with is fingers, babbling, walking, talking, etc.  Jax is, for the most part, on schedule.  (He was saying more words, but since he started walking he stopped talking as much.)

The question that threw me for a loop was the, ‘Does he act on your commands? For example if you say come here, does he do it?’
Me: ‘Uuuummm . . . ‘
Her: ‘ Basically does he seem to understand what you are telling him?’
Me: ‘Well . . . if by doing what I say, you mean the exact opposite of what I say, then yes, yes he does know what I am saying.’
Her: ‘So he’s a bit precocious, is he.’
Me: ‘That makes it sound like a good thing.’

IMG_0006
(With this sweet face, I could never do anything wrong!)

He is a good, sweet boy, but I think there will be a day in the near future when this power struggle will not be such a fun game.  Right I basically tell him, ‘no, mommy doesn’t want you to [insert activity], why don’t we go into the other room and [insert good activity].

When did you start discipling your toddler?

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Sweet dreams.

Posted on February 15, 2012 by erica

IMG_0098
(Sleeping on our plane flight back from Phoenix in January)

I thought I’d chime in on all this sleep talk, with some good news. Even bad sleepers can become good sleepers. We had a rough go of it at the beginning (I’m starting to finally get over it so I’m not going to rehash) and sleeping was honestly the least of my worries until Jackson was about 13 weeks. I resolved to get him to nap, even going as far as declaring April to be get Jax to sleep month.

You will notice that I never posted again on how that declaration progressed . . . he wasn’t the model student. We I had some success at getting him to take longer naps, and even started to take them in his crib.  But it was day by day.  One day he was taking two three hour naps, the next there were none.  Sleeping at night was more of the same, up every three hours, white noise and swaddling.

Once we got his hiatal hernia treated in May/June (he was 5 months) he really made strides at napping.  Now that he didn’t have to worry about being in pain all the time he could focus on being happy and getting some sleep.  We started on solids at about 5.5 months and this seemed to help him as well.

There was still this matter of sleeping through the night.  It didn’t bother me too much that he would wake up every three hours.  I went to architecture school, and I once did five days straight with only a light dooze during my engineering classes.  Moral of the story, don’t ask me to help you with any structural calculations but I can last with zero sleep.  I was functioning at what I thought was a fairly high level for not getting anymore than 5 hours of sleep a day (and not all at once).  You think insomnia while pregnant is bad, I had it worse during these months.  I would lie there waiting for the next time Jackson would wake up all while googling things like ‘when do you give kids a pillow?’ or ‘how do I get my baby to sleep?’ or ‘will I die if I don’t sleep?’.  I’m kidding about the last one, but I would google the strangest things.  Random thoughts would enter my head and I would HAVE to know the answer.  I also played solitaire on my phone, ALOT.  Almost too much.  I think I started replaying hands at one point.  Oh and I’m still wondering about when you are ‘supposed’ to give babies/toddlers/children a pillow.  Jax has always slept with one  . . . and I know that is not the correct answer but lots of people say different things.

So on we went, sleep deprived, but alive.  Learning to crawl and turning into a boy.  My sweet boy would wake in the night and I would go to him, rock him, soothe him and get him back to sleep.  Sometimes he would be up at 2 am and alert and ready to play.  I would sit on the floor with him for a few hours while he played with toys (or his favorite toy of all — electrical outlets) and then at 5 he would look at me start to cry and I’d pick him up and lay him down in his crib.  But then I went back to work.  We lasted about a month of the up every 3 hours, waking up to play in the middle of the night crap before it wasn’t so cute anymore.  Something had to be done, and fast. No time to read any books.

This is my favorite part actually, I didn’t have to do anything.  We decided that either my mom (who was staying with us a few days out of the week to watch Jackson) or Mike would get up in the night and get him when he was crying.  Basically when the kid realized that I wasn’t coming he got over it and at 11.5 months he started sleeping through the night consistently.  It was the best feeling in the whole world when we realized neither of us had woken up once the night before.  I almost felt guilty.  But that passed.

Although I say he is sleeping through the night, technically he isn’t.  He will wake up, usually at least once, stand up, start screaming then quiet and listen to see if anyone is stirring.  If nobody comes in he will give one more scream then kneel back down and curl up on his pillow with his blankie.  Sometimes he won’t go back to sleep and I’ll go in there and find that it’s too cold or his diaper has not done it’s job or he has a poo or something and fix it and put him back to bed.

So although he’s not a perfect sleeper, he has come a long way from his colicky days.  I would love if he would sleep for 12 hours or more (we get 7:30pm-6am, sometimes 6:30am  . . . and once it was 8am) but I’ll take what I can get.  I do start to wonder why parents always want to get their teenagers UP and OUT of bed after spending so much time in the beginning trying to get them in a bed and trying to get them to sleep for long periods of time.  Seems counter productive.  Let them sleep, teens are obnoxious anyway, right?

So, what am I trying to say with a this babble about sleep?  I don’t really know.  Just that it will get easier, and again my mantra ‘It gets worse before it gets better.’  And it’s bound to get bad again.  But we kind of just went with our instincts on the whole sleep training thing, I read speed read/skimmed Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child and parts of the Sleep Lady’s book and used tactics and strategies from both.  Every child is different so don’t expect there to be a simple solution.  But you can find your path to sweet dreams.

What tips or tricks or methods did you employ to get your baby to sleep?  Do you remember your first full night of sleep?

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

Posted on February 14, 2012 by erica

(from darling clementine)

Happy Valentine’s Day!  What could be a better way to celebrate the day than by reading a classic love story to your baby?  We love this BabyLit book we found at Darling Clementine.  Never to early to get your little one started on Shakespeare, right?

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Bedside Basket

Posted on February 10, 2012 by brieanne

A bedside basket is something I wish I had put together in the early days after Eleanor was born but didn’t.  Instead, I had a stash of things on the headboard of our bed (our headboard has a ledge on it).  Brandon frequently woke up to me blindly feeling around behind me, looking for a particular item.  Or to me knocking things off accidentally.  I think this little collection of things in a small container that you could stash by the bed would make a great baby shower gift.

What is this bedside basket, you ask?  It would be a collection of things that are useful in the middle of the night with a new baby.  Here is a list of things that would have been in my basket had I assembled one:

  • Nipple Cream
  • Chapstick
  • Nipple Shields (for me during my breastfeeding issues)
  • A water bottle (preferably a large one–it’s amazing how thirsty you can get while nursing)
  • Burp Cloth(s)
  • Pacifier(s)
  • iPhone/iPad (perfect for playing games and watching Netflix during those night nursing sessions, and also to keep track of feeding sides/times)
  • Hand sanitizer
  • Hand lotion

Did I forget anything?  What items did you need nearby after you had a baby?

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Cloth Diapering {Brieanne’s take}

Posted on February 9, 2012 by brieanne

(images courtesy of Edyta Szyszlo Photography)

Erica wrote about cloth diapers a while back (her first post here and her follow-up here) and now I’m here to throw in my two cents.  After reading Erica’s post, speaking with a few people, doing some online research and then finding some good deals online, I ended up with 6 bumGenius 4.0 One-Size (I must say, looking on their site I’m kind of annoyed because they’ve added some new colors that I would have liked to get since I purchased mine.  Might have to get a few more…) and 6 FuzziBunz One Size.  I bought that many because I found some great deals, and I figured I would use one of each and return the others if I wasn’t happy.

I have to say so far, I love both!  I know that there will probably be stages where I like one over the other, but as of right now both are working great.

First, the bumGenius (which Eleanor modeled in her 6 week portraits).

These are simple right out of the package.  It’s easy to figure out which setting to put the diaper on, and you’re ready to go.  I have had some urine leakage problems with these diapers, but that was my own fault–I was adjusting to the fact that cloth diapers hold much less “content” than disposable.  The inserts are a little thin, but still everything seems to work pretty well.  I got the ones with the snaps, and they are quick and easy so far.

Now, the FuzziBunz.

These are a little more complicated because there is elastic to adjust around the legs and in the waist.  You have to figure out the right setting through trial-and-error (FuzziBunz has a loose guideline on their website, but it was not so helpful with Eleanor.  She was a little bit of a chunk I guess).  You basically find the proper setting by getting the diaper tight without leaving red marks when you remove it.  If it’s too tight, loosen up a notch and try again.  Once you figure out the setting, however, you can just adjust all the diapers to those numbers and you are good to go (until the baby grows again).  I prefer the feel of the lining of the FuzziBunz to the bumGenius, but Eleanor doesn’t seem to notice.  Also, the FuzziBunz liner is much thicker, which is nice.

Overall, I like both of these diapers a lot.  They wash easily and seem to help prevent diaper rash for Eleanor (I notice she gets a little red when she is using disposable all the time).  It might change, but so far I don’t mind the laundry which is good.  If I had to choose, I would be inclined to say I like the FuzziBunz better only because I like the feel of the inside of the diaper better, and I like the thicker insert.  Also, it is reported that they give less of a diaper butt; however, I haven’t noticed a big difference since both are pretty puffy on such a small baby (not that Ellie is small for her age, she’s just young).

What is your favorite cloth diaper?

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