Quick and easy dinner

An extremely easy meal to cook while the baby sleeps. Followed by some coconut tea while watching Friday Night Lights

Weekend snaps

It was insanely hot here over the weekend, so we didn’t get outside as much as we’d hoped. We read books and had plenty of tummy time though.

Block party!

Our little south philly block had a party today- Max pretty much slept through the whole thing. Party animal 😉

Backyard gardening

Our tiny south philly cement backyard has given us apricots, and now the first tomatoes

Quick snack break

Found this Squarebar on Vitacost.com the other day. No scary ingredients and pretty tasty if you like chocolate. 

My Pregnancy and Postpartum Essentials

 

Everyone has their own list of “essentials” that they absolutely couldn’t live without during their pregnancy or postpartum period. I’d like to share mine. I’ve found that while some of these products are targeted specifically toward mothers, they can be used by everyone, pregnant or not. Here’s my current rotation of products I’m using:

1. L’Oreal ever creme nourishing leave in spray: I’ve always used leave-in conditioners because I have extremely thin hair and I’m always looking for ways to protect it or make it thicker, etc. When I was pregnant my hair looked pretty good, but started falling out in excessive amounts shortly after giving birth. Luckily that only lasted a few weeks, but I’ve continue to use this spray throughout. It has a nice smell and leaves my hair feeling good.

2. Heritage Rosewater: this is probably my favorite beauty product ever. Pregnant or not, everyone should buy it. I usually just spray it all over my face and body after I get out of the shower. It’s nice and cooling and smells amazing, nothing fake about it.

3. Lanolin nipple ointment: you’ll be glad you have this when your nipples are cracked, sore, or bleeding (can be prevented). A must have for all nursing moms.

4. Lavanila healthy deodorant: I’ve always used Secret Clinical Strength and it’s still my favorite deodorant/antiperspirant for how well it works. However, now that I’ve breastfeeding, Max is literally consuming everything I put in and on my body. This is a natural alternative to your usual deodorant. No, it doesn’t work as well, let’s be honest. It does smell really nice ( i have the vanilla grapefruit scent) and you don’t need to worry about your baby ingesting aluminum or other scary ingredients used in mainstream antiperspirants. 

5. Josie Maran coconut water cheek gelee…also known as cream blush: You know that healthy glow you get when you’re pregnant? That disappears pretty fast after you give birth. I like this blush because again, it’s free of your typical make-up ingredients such as parabens and sulfates, doesn’t make my sensitive skin break out, and lasts fairly long (not all day..but it’s easy enough to reapply).

6. Mother’s special blend toning oil: During my pregnancy I applied a lot of various oils to my stomach to prevent stretchmarks. I’m still using this brand postpartum, although not religiously like I used to. I don’t have any stretchmarks on my stomach. Maybe it’s because of this, maybe it’s because of other factors. I still like to use it, even though it mildly smells like popcorn. 

7. Hydrolyze Intensive Under eye treatment: I never used this during my pregnancy, but OMG get yourself a good eye cream because you will be running on anywhere from 1-4 hours of sleep once your baby is home. 

What products were your must-haves? 

Thoughts on breastfeeding + pumping

 

I can’t even begin to count how many different articles I’ve read on breastfeeding ranging from “things they don’t tell you about breastfeeding” to “power pumping” and beyond. I wanted to share my own personal experience. One thing I can say for sure is that it was a learning process. Maybe later I will write a long post about my birth story, but in a few words, given the fact that Max was born premature, it was a while before I was able to breastfeed him, so I had to pump. I truly had a love/hate relationship with my Medela. I knew I was doing a good thing by providing milk for my baby, yet I felt like I was tied to the machine 24/7. Here are a few things I’ve found to be true about pumping, and then breastfeeding.

1. Engorgement was a very legitimate fear of mine. It happened several times during the first month post partum and it was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced aside from actually giving birth. Nothing really helped, I just had to struggle through it and continue pumping. 

2. I was producing enough milk to feed a small village. Now I know this is definitely not a bad problem to have, as I met many mothers in the hospital who were struggling with their milk supply, but it did mean I had to pump religiously every 3, and sometimes every 2, hours in order to keep up.

3. Your bra size will change- a lot. Or maybe it won’t. All I know is mine changed so drastically I am still learning how to live with it three months post partum.

4. Now that Max is home and I’m breastfeeding exclusively, I no longer have to pump as much (maybe 3 times a week), but I still have to use a nipple shield. His preemie status means he just can’t latch on as well without it yet. This also means that I am sometimes crawling on the floor in the middle of the night looking for this invisible nipple shield that is impossible to find.

5. The baby is now the boss and I have to be available to breastfeed as soon as he starts fussing and rooting. Aside from 1-2 bottles of breast milk that my husband feeds him, Max is pretty much a little leech hanging on me nonstop. 

6. It’s not intuitive. I wish I could say I just lie back on my bed and the baby feeds. Unfortunately I have yet to find a super comfortable position for myself that doesn’t activate at least some minor muscle pain. Oh well, it’s a work in progress.

7. Ignore the first six things- it’s the best bonding with your baby you will ever experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Thoughts on babywearing + solly baby wrap review

Long before I knew who Dr. Sears was or what attachment parenting meant, I knew I wanted to wear my baby. It was the practical aspect of it that appealed to me- I could do things around the house without constantly running back to wherever the baby was at that moment, and I could have both hands free. This was also before I realized that getting anything done with a newborn is next to impossible. My to do lists went from: do laundry, clean bathroom, play with cat, make breakfast, feed baby, catch up on emails to: shower (maybe), do everything it takes to keep baby happy. Most days I accomplish those two tasks.

I ended up buying a Solly Baby Wrap for no reason other than I thought it looked cute. I bought it before I had Max and had planned on using it for reasons stated above. Then our world was flipped upside down when Max was born at 28 weeks and 3 days. Everything that seemed to matter before no longer mattered. It was all about the intensive care unit and sitting by his incubator as long as I could handle it. Long story short, everyone made it home safely 51 days later, but my mindset had changed drastically. Here I had a baby that should still technically be inside for another month, yet he was home, crying, laughing, eating, trying to crawl and making all sorts of preemie noises.

I put him in my wrap constantly not to get things done around the house, but to have him close to me. The doctors and nurses explained to us the importance of skin-to-skin contact and kangaroo care. It was my duty to make him feel as comfortable as humanly possible and the best way to do that was to keep him wrapped up on me. Max loves the solly baby wrap. He falls asleep as soon as I put him in there and only wakes up when I take him out. Sometimes he will open his eyes and watch the world around him in a quiet state of alertness. All in all it was a great buy and while I don’t necessarily practice all aspects of attachment parenting or swear by the Sears method, babywearing is something I’m 100% for. And having both hands free is just a bonus 🙂

Blissful baby

Might be too early for his first cheese steak

 

Dads love to wear their babies    too!

Wimmer Ferguson and other designer baby toys

Before Max was born, I thought that baby toys essentially fell into one of two categories: toys for boys or toys for girls. In compiling my baby shower registry I discovered a whole world dedicated to baby toys. Developmental, interactive, teethers, and crib toys just to name a few. I scoured the internet for “must haves”, reading numerous mommy blogs and best selling lists, in search of what to put on my registry for baby Max. The fact that my baby shower never happened is a story for another day, but what we have here is a list of toys/baby equipment I ended up purchasing myself and (mostly) liked. I’d never heard about before, but in summary they are interactive toys that have actual research studies to back them up. The following items I bought from Amazon since they were a lot cheaper than on the actual website.

1. Crawl and discover mat: I like this more than the traditional play mats because it’s comprised of mainly three colors that babies can see: red, black and white. Now that I know how a baby’s vision develops, I’m not sure why so many play mats are in pastel colors, rendering them a lot less stimulating and interesting than this one.

     

2. Infant Stim-Mobile: Same idea as the play mat, this mobile comes with various cards that you can change out once your baby starts seeing more colors. So far we’ve only used the black and white cards.
    
3.3-in-1 : I probably wouldn’t buy this again because it’s kind of similar to the play mat, just smaller. It can also be attached to the side of the crib, which is what we did. So now Max is completely surrounded and has no choice but to look at something stimulating (lol).
   ( no pic of this in use, it’s on the side of the crib though!)
4. Look Look! : Seemingly simple, this book is actually awesome. While some of the images are downright terrifying to adults, babies seem fascinated by it (my baby at least). I just put him on my lap and show him the pictures, he loves it.
   

 

Max is only two months, so of course the “interaction” with toys is limited, but these are my favorite finds so far.

 

Xoxo,

Janna