Monthly Archives: February 2010

Sleepy Wrap Review

I’ve heard many moms say that if you’re only going to get one carrier, you should get a sling. I can see the convenience in one and I even made myself a Maya Wrap from the pattern on the website. I really, really wanted to like a sling, but for me, it was always the Sleepy Wrap.

Peanut has always been one of those babies that Has. To. Be. Held. ALWAYS. So when she was just under two weeks old, I dragged my postpartum self an hour away to go to a breastfeeding store called The Lactation Station. The lovely lady who owns the store (and is a lactation consultant who has many-a-times given me free advice may I add) explained all the carriers to me. I was immediately drawn to the Sleepy Wrap, but at the same time, horribly intimidated.

Tip #1: Have someone who knows the wrap show you in the beginning. They have wonderful tips online that I used multiple times in the beginning, but I don’t think I wouldn’t have figured it out (or it would have taken a lot more effort) without her physically putting it on me and Peanut into it.

The biggest reason why I love the Sleepy Wrap more than any sling is comfort. Slings make my shoulder hurt after a half hour. The Maya Wrap eventually makes both my shoulder and my hips hurt. I have literally—on many occasions—worn Peanut all day long in the Sleepy Wrap and it never hurts.

Tip #2: Breastfeeding in the Sleepy Wrap is difficult at first. To be more correct, breastfeeding is difficult at first. I got frustrated when I wanted to breastfeed her in it when she was just a couple months old and couldn’t figure it out. I think size plays a big part in the ease of breastfeeding in the wrap. Bouncing to get her down helps too.

I think holding her head up played a part in it. She has always had a strong neck, but there comes a point where she can hold her head up for long periods of time and not tire at all and that is where breastfeeding in the wrap suddenly got easy. Now I commonly breastfeed her while walking through the grocery store or the like.

As I said, I’ve had my Sleepy Wrap since Peanut was a newborn, but they were nice enough to send me an organic one for this review. I would definitely recommend spending the extra twenty dollars for the organic if only for the piece of mind. If your babe is anything like Peanut, you’ll be carrying them around in this constantly and their little baby skin will be touching the wrap all the time. Why not splurge a bit so you know that only the best is touching your bundle of joy? Also, I noticed that the organic Sleepy Wrap just feels softer. Softer = better for baby, right? lol

Tip #3: Dry on low heat! One thing I didn’t expect to notice with the organic versus non-organic is the elasticity. I think this has less to do with organic materials than the fact that I was drying my old wrap on normal in my dryer. With this new wrap, I’ve been drying it on a special mode that doesn’t actually heat, just blows air. Yes, it takes longer, but it’s worth it to preserve my wrap so I can use it with future children.

Have I talked you into getting one? I sure hope so, because I love it! And I have a coupon!! Use the code “Adventures” (get it, because I’m The Adventures of Lactating Girl?! hehe) at check-out on the Sleepy Wrap site and get 10% off your entire order! Yeah, I’m cool like that. I get you coupons and stuff. Coupon is valid until March 27th 2010.

Baby-led Weaning Wednesday: Spaghetti Round Two

I already did a post about spaghetti, but with such a vast change in the procedures for eating it, I decided it was a topic worth re-addressing.

I’m a big fan of noodles. Really, grains in general. If I had to pick one part of the food pyramid that’s my favorite it would probably be either produce or grains depending on the day. Needless to say, we eat a lot of grains in my house. My husband loves red meat so grains + red meat = frequent spaghetti eating. Since we eat spaghetti frequently, I decided to use it as the example for how eating behaviors for Baby-led Weaning babies change over time.

It starts with a mess. As I’m sure most of you know (or are soon to know), Baby-led Weaning is messy. This is a picture of Peanut after eating spaghetti from around 7.5 months old. Back then, I would strip off all of her clothes and even her diaper to eat spaghetti. She would grab handfuls of it and try to shove it in her mouth, inevitably smushing it all over her face and body in the process. She’s always loved spaghetti, but at this time it seemed like a big hassle.

This picture is from about 9.5 months old. By this point she had decided that she needs to eat each individual part of the spaghetti separately. It’s something to really explore and experiment with. During this stage she takes every food and runs it through a series of test. Can I smash it between my fingers? If I rub it on the table, does it leave a mark? What happens if I put it on the floor and step on it? One of the reasons we do Baby-led Weaning is because it helps her to learn about food and form a healthy relationship. When she throws it on the floor, I’m not assuming that she’s being defiant or testing me, but rather she is seeing what happens when she throws it on the floor.

Here she is hitting the noodle on the table like a whip. Not only is she exploring, but it’s fun too!

Now we’ve gotten to the stage where she’s trying to use utensils for eating. Sure, she’s still messy and still likes to explore and play, but I feel like we’ve crossed some threshold and now she’s more of an mini-adult eater. Really, it feels like she’s becoming more of a mini-adult in many ways. I’m sure that we still have far to go with our Baby-led Weaning adventure, but it’s amazing to look back and see how far we’ve come.

Newsletter — 11 Months

Hello Miss Dea,

You are one crazy walker! You have decided to officially change from a crawling baby to a walking toddler. At the beginning of this month you would only walk when coaxed into doing it, but now you use walking as your main mode of transportation.

Not only do you walk, but you want to walk everywhere. When we’re going out to the car, you want to walk out the door and through the garage. When we’re in the store, you want to walk over and take a skirt off the rack and then walk around the store with it while Mama tries to explain it’s not the right size, then you scream when I put it back. You’re Walky McWalker from Walksville.

Oh, the screaming. You are a champ in the tantrum throwing department. You throw yourself backwards and just screeeeeeam. When you don’t want to be picked up, when you don’t want something taken away, when something isn’t going exactly right… you screeeeeeeeam. It’s definitely made life more interesting around here.

My favorite thing you’ve been doing this month is mimicking. When I say “bye bye” you say “bu-bu” and when I say “thank you” you say “di-da” and it makes me laugh every time. You’re not necessarily mimicking the actual sound more than the tone in my voice, but I count it as one step closer to talking.

Other random things you’ve figured out this month: squatting, standing up without holding onto something, sort of running (which immediately turns to falling down within a few seconds), you’ve signed back “more” a couple times and I think you did “all done” once, you started letting me put you in the playpen for about 15 minutes before getting angry (a big deal for Mama), you think putting away toys is fun, if I ask you “can I have that?” you’ll give me what’s ever in your hand and even things out of your mouth. You’re really growing in leaps and bounds at this point.

I feel like you’ve turned into a little human—as opposed to a baby—this past month. What an awesome (and challenging, but mostly awesome) little human you’ve turned into.

Love,

Mama

Photo Credit: My Friend Alexis

Healthy Living Saturdays: Whole Foods

No, I’m not talking about the store. Whole foods meaning foods that are whole. My goal this week has been to each almost everything made from whole foods. I realize there will be the occasional processed food that makes it into my diet, but I’ve been avoiding it as much as possible.

So what is considered a whole food? Obviously, I’ve been making dinners that don’t use condensed soup as an ingredient (which is surprisingly difficult by the way), but it goes beyond that. It’s not just processed and unprocessed—there’s a lot of gray area.

I obviously use fresh organic produce and fresh hormone-free meat. Technically the organic dried herbs I use are processed, but I would consider drying and grinding minimal processing.

We’ve been trying not to use refined sugar, but it’s in everything and I can’t substitute with honey yet because Peanut isn’t old enough. I’m still figuring out substituting other things for sugar like pure maple syrup. What about corn starch? I’ve been listening to The Omnivore’s Dilemma audio book lately and I am beginning to question that corn starch I use to make gravy. What do you even use instead of corn starch?

I feel like I’m cooking “from scratch” when I use things like canned beans and chicken bullion cubes. How “from scratch” is that really? I checked out the ingredient list of my chicken bullion cubes today and was appalled at how much stuff there is in one of those cubes. So do I need to make all of my chicken broth from boiling bones? I don’t even know how to do that.

So when I say I’ve been trying to eat whole foods, what I really mean is I’ve started the process of getting rid of processed foods. One day I would love to be one of those people who buy their meat from the farm and make mayonnaise rather than just buying a bottle, but it’s all in steps. So for now, I won’t use things like condensed soup in my dinner. I won’t buy frozen pizza and packaged cookies. I will take small steps to start eating whole foods and maybe one day I’ll be one of those people who don’t crave pop-tarts.

Starting Weight: 163 lbs

Current Weight: 158 lbs (still)

Photo Credit: Hart Healing Arts

Review: Nursling Necklace

I’ve always had a problem with Peanut grabbing, pinching, pulling hair, etc. while breastfeeding. People kept recommending a nursing necklace, but I was convinced it wouldn’t work. Eventually I started wearing regular necklaces, but they only kept Peanut interested until midday, then she would go back to pinching.

I eventually resorted to just unlatching her for a few second whenever she would hurt me enough that I would yelp, but of course that ended in her screaming. Luckily, she’s grown out of the behavior for the most part.

I really wish I would have found Little Nursling‘s necklaces while I was in the midst of Peanut’s mean nursing manners (alliteration FTW!). Peanutloves this necklace. The kind love that means she won’t even let me wear it because she must carry it around with her and chew on it (make sure to keep an eye on a baby playing with a necklace because they can be a choking hazard).

When she does let me wear it, she’s playing with it the entire time she nurses. It’s great! I haven’t had my hair pulled once since I started wearing it!

And this necklace is entirely natural!

Who wouldn’t want to own one? Guess what? You get a chance to! One lucky reader will win a free nursing necklace from Little Nurslings! How do you win such a thing?!?!?!

Mandatory First Entry: Comment and tell me which nursling necklace you’ll choose if you win!

Extra Entries: Please leave an additional comment for each additional entry.

1 entry — Follow me on Twitter.

1 entry — Tweet about this giveaway (i.e. “RT @LactatingGirl Win a nursling necklace from Little Nurslings! http://wp.me/pDcm9-cl #breastfeeding #giveaway”). You can RT once a day.

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1 entry — Vote for this blog on Top Baby Blogs by clicking this link.

2 entries (leave 2 separate comments) — Become a fan of The Adventures of Lactating Girl on Facebook.

2 entries — Become a fan of Little Nurslings on Facebook.

3 entries — Blog about this contest (leave a link in your comments).

This giveaway ends February 26th, 2010, at 11:59 MST. A Random Number Generator will be used to choose the winner who will have 48 hours to respond to my email before a new winner is chosen. Yay first giveaway!

Contest is CLOSED. Winner: Tweeting Mama! Congrats!

Baby-led Weaning Wednesdays: Spoons

With certain foods, spoons just make sense. Yogurt, ice cream, apple sauce, etc. all work much better with a spoon. For over a month, Peanut has been eating yogurt nearly every day with a spoon. We do it differently than traditional spoon-feeding, but I still control the spoon (she just controls where her mouth goes).

The other day while we were having some yogurt at lunch, it dawned on me that Peanut might be old enough now to handle the spoon herself. We decided to try it out and it was messy, but she used that spoon like it was second nature. I probably could have tried giving it to her sooner.

She did eventually decide to play with the spoon…

And she did eventually decide that biting the spoon was pretty cool…

And she did get very messy…

But it’s really cool that she can use a spoon all by herself now! She makes sure to suck every little bit of yogurt off and she doesn’t wine for more the second she swallows. It’s also really neat that she has the coordination to get the spoon in her mouth with very few misses.

I would suggest that moms with younger babies start trying to give them the spoon to handle themselves earlier. I’m guessing Peanut probably could have done it by herself over a month ago if I would have thought about it. Even if they don’t get it quite yet (as was the case with Peanut when I first tried to let her handle the spoon a few months ago), it’s still a nice learning experience and the only downside is cleanup. Go spoons!

Why Do We Co-sleep?

Of all of the “crazy” things we do (a.k.a. attachment parenting things), co-sleeping seems to be the the one people take issue with most often. I’m always amazed when yet another person disagrees with Peanut sleeping in our bed when at least 70% of people bring their baby to their bed at some point.

Why do we co-sleep?

Safety

Of course, there are certain things you need to do to make your sleeping area appropriate for an infant (read this fantastic article by PHD in Parenting for info on co-sleeping safety), but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Babies sleeping on a safe surface with sober, nonsmoking parents respond to their parents, and the parents respond to them. The chance of SIDS occurring in this situation is as close to zero as we can measure. For better or worse, most babies have never sneezed in their parents’ beds without their parents knowing it. How could they possibly stop breathing without our immediately being aware of the problem and quickly stimulating them back to a regular, safe respiratory pattern?… Newborn babies breathe in irregular rhythms and even stop breathing for a few seconds at a time. To put it simply, they are not designed to sleep alone. — Dr. Jay Gordon

Everything in this article just makes sense. Why do we spend so much of our days fighting our intuition? What feels right about taking this beautiful, perfect baby that was living in my belly for 9 months and put her across the house from me for at least 1/3 of the day? Would I do that in any other situation?

I truly believe that co-sleeping—when done safely—lowers the risk of SIDS. No, there’s no specific research that I can find that says this is true, but it just makes sense to me.

Convenience

I’ve said this many, many times—I think I would be insane right now if I weren’t co-sleeping. This is beyond true. I know many people who have gotten less sleep while co-sleeping, but for me it’s the only way I can get a decent amount. When I was pregnant, I was convinced I wouldn’t co-sleep. I was sure I would roll over on my baby (which is so ridiculous in retrospect. Do you roll off of your bed? No. That’s because you know there’s the edge there even when you’re sleeping. You know the baby is there even when you’re sleeping.) so I bought a crib. I even genuinely tried to get her to sleep in it (in the same room as me) a few times.

I would force myself to sit up and stay awake while I fed her, I would oh so carefully lay her in the crib so she wouldn’t wake (which she still did most of the time), then I would lay awake in my bed cursing myself for not being able to fall asleep. I’ve always had issues with insomnia and forcing myself to stay awake just told my body “Okay then, you’re awake!” and I couldn’t sleep at all. Next thing I knew, I was awake again a half hour after finally falling asleep to do the whole process again.

Along with not being able to fall asleep easily, I’m also a person who needs to get a significant amount of sleep to function. The recommendation is 7-9 hours of sleep, but it’s really a bell curve. The majority of people need that much sleep, but (as I’m sure you know) there are some people who need a lot less and some people who need a lot more. I’m one of those people who need a lot more. There are days when I get a 10 hours and am still yawning and in desperate need of caffeine.

I love it.

Yes, this sounds selfish. It is selfish.

Remember this baby that was inside of me for 9 months? Of course I want to be close to her! Why would I turn down the chance to cuddle my Peanut all night?

Having a very, very active baby means we don’t get many chances to just sit around and cuddle. Even with the fact that she likes to be held frequently, she is still playing the majority of the time I hold her. Even with how exhausting it is to have an active toddler (yes, I consider her a toddler now), I still enjoy it. That said, I also enjoy being able to cuddle my little Peanut and when she’s sleeping or eating (when she’s not doing breastfeeding acrobatics) are the only times I get to do that.

Bottom line: co-sleeping is what works for us. I don’t judge you for your decisions about raising your children, so why do you get to judge me?

A Thank You to my Husband

Welcome to the February Carnival of Natural Parenting: Love and partners!

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month we’re writing about how a co-parent has or has not supported us in our dedication to natural parenting. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Dear Curtis,

I know it’s a cliche, but you truly are my rock. You keep me grounded—even when I don’t ask for it or it isn’t polite. You help me see logic when I’m overrun by emotion. You stand up for me when I’m not feeling confident enough to stand up for myself. I could not be a natural parent without you by my side.

First off, I could not have brought Peanut into this world the way she deserved without you. You were there with me every second of that 33.5 hours. Many speak of the experience that the woman goes through during childbirth, but the man (with the Bradley Method) goes through a very profound experience too. You pushed to give me counter pressure until your arms shook. Told me that I was strong enough when I wanted to give up. And when the ultimate moment came (sooner than we had expected, but not soon enough!) you handled it with the grace and efficiency that I was in too much pain to have.

In those early weeks of breastfeeding, you helped me as much as you could sans feeding the baby yourself. You brought me water, you helped me position her, and you fought (and continue to fight) the few people we’ve come across that weren’t 100% supportive. I feel confident that if I am ever confronted by strangers while breastfeeding in public that you will defend me.

When your parents hint that they don’t like our co-sleeping, you’re just as likely to explain the benefits as I am. When I show you funny things that OB’s have said on MyOBSaidWhat.com you laugh because you understand. You went with me every week to our Bradley Method class even when you had homework out your ears.

You stay up with Peanut so I can sleep. You play with her so I can cook dinner. You watch her so I can go to class. You’re a great father and I am lucky to have you as my husband.

Thank you for choosing me.

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Carnival of Natural Parenting -- Hobo Mama and Code Name: MamaVisit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be updated Feb. 9 with all the carnival links, and all links should be active by noon EST. Go to Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama for the most recently updated list.)

Healthy Living Saturdays: Spot Training

Sorry to break it to you, but spot training doesn’t work. What is “spot training” you say? It’s when those late night infomercials try to tell you that their product will make you lose weight specifically in your midsection. Or this new product I just saw on the TV that sends jolts into your tummy and supposedly gives you fantastic abs without working out. Really, I feel bad to be the one to give you this news (don’t kill the messenger).

What does work? Burning fat in general. Numerous studies have shown that you can’t just work on your butt to get fantastic buns. Even tennis pros (who generally have a dominant arm) don’t have less fat/more muscle in one arm than the other.

Sure, you can do weight lifting to get more defined in certain areas, but none of it will work until you get that layer of fat already sitting there off. So if you want those fantastic abs, you’re going to have to do more than 5000 crunches. Maybe go run a mile first?

Starting Weight: 163 lbs

Current Weight: 158 lbs (again)

With Teeth

Peanut waited beyond the “normal” time to get her teeth. Quite honestly, it worried me a bit. Then BOOM! she gets 5 teeth over the span of one month—believe me, it wasn’t fun. Now, while I’m quite enjoying her toothy grins, I’m amazed at how many people expect me to stop breastfeeding.

For some it was the first response. I showed one friend her newly acquired first tooth and she immediately says “I guess your ‘relationship’ is done?” Of course, being the knowledge spewer I am, I go off into an inappropriately long explanation of how breastfeeding with teeth works.

How does it work you say? According to all of the internets I’ve read on the subject (because I was quite afraid of teeth before they started sprouting) your nursling shouldn’t be able to bite you so long as the latch is correct. It makes sense because so much of the nipple is in their mouth that they can’t really bite down (at least not very hard).

Even my mother-in-law has asked me whether or not we’ve had problems with biting. Yes, there have been instances of her starting to unlatch and accidentally biting in an effort to get the nipple back in her mouth. Yes, there are times when it feels a little weird because I can feel her teeth while she’s eating. Yes, there have been a couple times when I shout in pain and have to set her down for a moment.

From what I hear, it’s just another learning experience. We will eventually get used to these new teethies being involved in our breastfeeding relationship and avoid upsetting situations. I bold the word “we” because they’re new to Peanut too. It’s a learning experience for both of us.

I’m sure that teeth is just the beginning of the “Aren’t you going to stop breastfeeding because of (insert event)?” questions. When Peanut was six months old my mother’s friend asked when we planned on stopping. Six. Months. Old. In a month and a half, we’ll get the “Aren’t you going to stop breastfeeding because she can have cows milk now?” When she’s two I’m sure I’ll get “Aren’t you going to stop breastfeeding because you’ve reached the WHO recommendation?”

So a quick answer to all of you out there reading this—we’ll stop when we’re ready. When that will be, I don’t know. So. Stop. Asking.