Infant Bathtub Review

When our daughter was born, we didn’t give her a bath for a long time. We for sure didn’t want her to get the usual bath most newborns get within hours of being born. The vernix (white, waxy-looking substance covering a newborn’s skin) has many health benefits for babies, and we wanted it to be absorbed into her skin, not washed off.

When her umbilical cord fell off and we finally felt comfortable giving her a bath, we were excited to try out her infant bathtub.

The little hammock that came with the infant tub was great, because it kept her secure while we washed her. We didn’t have to worry about her slippery body sliding out of our hands, and her head was nicely supported.

As she got bigger and was better at supporting herself, we took the hammock off and let her sit/recline in the tub while we bathed her.

When she got to be about 6 months old, it became apparent that she was outgrowing the tub. Even with the infant tub completely full of water, the water only came a little past her bellybutton, and she looked like she was freezing. In addition, when I would take her out of the tub, she had red marks on her back where the plastic dug in to her skin.

For Valentine’s Day, we decided to buy her a new tub. We didn’t feel like we wanted her in our big bathtub yet because it seemed a little too big, plus we didn’t want her sitting in any remnants of the cleaner we use in the tub.

We got many recommendations for an inflatable tub sold at Target. It’s in the shape of a duck, and it is, quite honestly, fabulous. It is the perfect size for our now 7-month-old. It is soft on all sides, so if she loses her balance while sitting up, she falls on something soft. It’s deep enough that the water keeps her warm. When she sits in it, she is secure, warm, and plays happily as long as we let her stay in it. We love it.

What’s even greater about the tub is the price. It’s about $10.00.

If you’re wondering where on earth you’re going to store a large, inflated duck, have no fear: it comes with a handy suction cup attached. We hang it on the back side of the tub, and it’s completely out of the way when we take showers.

Free Indie Art

When I got pregnant, my husband and I were temporarily living in another state while he completed a year long, paid internship. My due date was right around the time we had to pack up and move back to where his school is located. Because we knew our departure would happen soon after our daughter was born, we didn’t set up a bedroom for her.

Our living situation this year is also temporary, because my husband graduates from school in May, and we’ll most likely move to wherever his job takes him. Since our daughter cosleeps with us and we’re moving soon again, we decided it would be wise to put off decorating a room for her for yet another year.

I have to be honest: This is making me a little crazy. I want to decorate a nursery!

I see all of my friends and their babies’ cute rooms, and I get jealous.

I think about all of the nursery décor I picked up along the way, and lament over the fact that all of it is neatly packed into boxes, waiting to shine in its full glory when we finally live somewhere permanent.

Even though we’re putting off the majority of the buying and all of the decorating for the nursery, I’m definitely not putting off the planning.

As I read and research, I’m always a little amazed at how overpriced some baby room items are. One of the most expensive items desired for a nursery always seems to be wall décor. New parents can easily find themselves spending anywhere from $30 to $250 for wall hangings and wall art.

I’ve been thinking of creative, do-it-yourself ideas for my daughter’s future bedroom. These include pressing and framing leaves and flowers, or having my husband make cute shelves himself.

I found an awesome website today, and I’m so excited about it. It features Indie art, and people can download and print featured art for free. I totally plan on doing this next year, and putting some of the framed art up in my daughter’s room. I’m not crazy about all of the pictures, but I really like a few of them. They are bright and colorful, and definitely go along with my decorating style.

I can’t wait to decorate, and I can’t wait to do it for free.

DIY Baby Proofing: Curtained Storage

Our baby just turned 7 months old today, and she’s getting eager to be on the go. When we put her on her tummy, she’s kicking, reaching, and wiggling. She can’t move forwards yet, but she can scoot backwards, and turn her body in circles.

Our living room furniture faces the TV. When I see what’s underneath the TV stand and think about the fact that our sweetie may soon be crawling, I shudder.

Lurking under the TV stand are piles and tangles of electric cords. Cords that lead to the TV. Cords that connect the TV to the VCR and DVD player. Cords that go from our modem to the power strip. Cords that go to our Wii, and to our Rock Band equipment. Cords, cords everywhere!

Our TV stand, unfortunately, does not have doors or drawers. In fact, I think it is supposed to be a coffee table. The result: an insane amount of exposed, unprotected electric cords, easily within the reach of a curious baby.

If we had extra money, I’d buy a new TV stand, but we don’t have extra money. We definitely could store our Wii, Wii equipment, and other electronics in a different room, but that’s not very convenient.

I’ve been trying to brainstorm ways to make the coffee table/TV stand baby friendly. So far, I’ve been coming up with nothing.

I stumbled upon a fabulous idea today, and I am excited to give it a try. I didn’t find it under “baby proofing” or “TV stand” – I found it under the heading of “curtained storage.”

The idea is very simple: If you need to store items that you don’t want to display, buy a cheap curtain rod, buy some cute fabric, do a little sewing to turn the fabric into a curtain, hang up the curtain, and cover it up yourself.

This idea is perfect for what I need. I can easily buy 3 curtain rods, put them between the legs of the table (the back of the table is against the wall – that’s why I don’t need 4 rods), and hang fabric. Sure, it’s not totally baby proof – our baby could reach under the fabric – but it should at least serve as a deterrent.

I’ll let you know when I get around to doing it, and will for sure post before and after pictures.

Get Out of my Face!

My poor baby couldn’t catch a break this morning.

We have a morning routine. I hear her stirring (she sleeps with us), roll over to feed her quickly, then pick her up for some pajama snuggles. After we’re all snuggled out, I change her diaper, since it is usually saturated with pee.

It’s during diaper changing that I have a prime view up her nose. Yes, I admit it: I’m one of those mothers – the kind that hates boogers in her baby’s nose.

I could see a big one, so I got my bulb syringe and got to work. I thought it would be quick, but soon realized the booger was a little too dry to get out without the aid of some saline. My daughter was shaking her head back and forth and waving her arms in an attempt to ward of the “booger sucker,” and she grew more agitated when she saw the saline bottle coming.

I held her head still with one hand and squirted a few drops in each nostril while she yelled. Only a few sucks with the bulb syringe, and the booger was out. Freedom at last!

Or so she thought.

I noticed that she was wheezing. She’s had a cold for over a week, and was prescribed an inhaler because of the whistling, wheezing sound her breathing was making. I knew that she was already sick of me poking around at her face, but I wanted to get things done as quickly as possible so we could get busy playing with toys.

I shook her inhaler and attached it to the contraption the hospital sent home with us. Laying her down on my lap, with her head held stationary between my knees, I put the breathing mask over her face. I pushed down on the inhaler to release the medicine, then waited for her to take 10 breaths.

If only it was as easy as counting to 10. She thrashed, yelled, screamed, kicked, and did everything she could to knock the mask off of her face. If that wasn’t enough, the prescription called for two sprays from the inhaler, so we had to go through the whole ordeal again.

Needless to say, she wasn’t a happy camper.

Don’t worry, though. Five seconds later, I shook a rattle in her face, and she forgot the whole thing. Ah, the beauty in the distractibility of infants.

La Leche League Washable Nursing Pads

Having a baby sure changes a woman’s body. I’m not going to get into all of the ways my body will never be the same again after conceiving and giving birth, but I am going to talk about one part of being a new mom: leaky breasts.

I’ll never forget the day my milk came in. I still hadn’t left the hospital, because my daughter stayed in the Special Care Unit for a week. I had just walked out of the bathroom connected to my daughter’s room, and either a nurse or my mother asked me, “Has your milk come in yet?”

I responded, “I don’t think so,” and looked down at my breasts.

Imagine my surprise when I saw two huge, wet circles on my hospital gown. “Never mind – I guess it did!” I exclaimed.

I’d been preparing for this. I had researched different breast pads and decided to buy La Leche League Washable Cotton Nursing Pads. I didn’t have them with me at the hospital, so I used the “complimentary” pads the nurses brought to me. (When I saw the hospital bill later, I realized just how “complimentary” they really were.)

When we finally got home, I was excited to try my reusable pads. My excitement quickly faded when I soaked through the pads, my bra, my t-shirt, and the sheets on my bed within about an hour. Let’s just say I never had and still haven’t had a problem with low milk supply.

For about 5 months, I wasn’t able to use the reusable pads, especially not overnight. I’d occasionally use them during the day. They were okay at keeping me dry if I doubled up on each side.

Once I corrected a milk oversupply problem by doing block feeding, I decided to try the reusable pads again. Hallelujah, they worked!

It’s not that the disposable breast pads were all that expensive. It’s not that they were uncomfortable. It was more that it was a pain in the rear trying to keep track of whether I had enough on hand. There’s nothing like realizing you are out of breast pads right before you need to leave for the day. When you have reusable breast pads, you almost always have a fresh pair handy, because they get washed whenever you do laundry.

I’ve never tried another brand of cloth breast pads, so I can’t really compare, but I really like these. They are very comfortable, and pretty good at absorbing leaks. I leaked through them quite easily before my supply regulated, but I still have an abundance of milk, and I can usually wear the same pair all day and all night. (I switch after that because I don’t particularly want to smell like a gallon of milk that expired last month.)

They are relatively inexpensive. One package costs about $6.00, and each package comes with 2 pairs of pads (4 pads total). I bought 4 packages (8 pairs of pads), and that amount has worked perfectly for me. 

Again, these definitely did not work for me at first, but I love them now that I’m not making enough milk to feed a small army. It might seem a bit pricey at first, but you’ll definitely save money in the long run by using them over and over again.

When your Child gets Sick on a Sunday

Does it ever seem like your child gets sick more often on a Saturday or Sunday than any other day of the week?

It has seemed like that at our house lately. Two Saturdays ago, I was sure our daughter had an ear infection, so I made an appointment for her. Luckily, despite the fact that it was Saturday, a pediatrician was available to see her.

We entered the nearly empty waiting room, and I questioned whether it was a good idea for us to be there. The only other people in there were a mother and teenage daughter, who was coughing up a storm, not wearing a mask like she should have been, and not covering her mouth.

This Sunday, after suffering from a cold for a week, she woke up with some pretty bad wheezing and whistling going on every time she breathed. I had never heard that from her before, and called the 24-hour nurse. She suggested giving her a steamy bath. If that didn’t work to relieve the wheezing, she said it would be good for us to take her in right away.

Take her in where? I knew that no regular pediatric office would be open on a Sunday.

After giving her a bath in a bathroom so steamy that water was running down the walls, the wheezing did not improve. We quickly showered, packed the diaper bag, and headed to the Emergency Room at the local Children’s Hospital (and by local, I mean the one that is 30 minutes away).

I felt a little silly walking into the E.R. with her, but we had no other choice. I also felt silly when they admitted her to her own room, and asked us to change her into a hospital gown.

This is a little off the subject, but have you ever seen an infant’s hospital gown? They are ADORABLE. Just like adult hospital gowns, only miniature.

Anyways, after listening to her lungs, the pediatrician decided to administer a breathing treatment to her, and sent us home with a prescription for an Albuterol inhaler. Thank goodness for Walgreens. Their pharmacy was open, and they were able to fill the prescription within 15 minutes.

Hopefully we won’t need to take her to the doctor again anytime soon. Just in case, I’m putting in a special request to my baby that if she feels a problem coming on, she puts it on hold until we can take her Monday through Friday.

Vitamin D! Get Your Vitamin D!

I don’t give my daughter the liquid vitamin supplement that many pediatricians recommend. I’m always in favor of doing less – less vaccines, less medicine, less supplements.

To be honest, I don’t think my breast milk needs any supplementing. I take plenty of vitamin D, and I eat a healthy diet. I know that people say vitamin D doesn’t pass through breast milk, but I have hard time believing that alcohol passes through, eating lots of broccoli can make her gassy, but vitamin D won’t get into my milk.

Anyways, none of these random thoughts are the main reason I’m writing. The reason I’m writing is that I know, without a doubt, that my daughter got her dose of vitamin D today. How can I be sure? It’s sunny, and we went for a walk.

Sunshine is one of the best ways to get vitamin D. For all the bad reviews the sun gets in relation to skin cancer, God put it up there for a reason. It’s not an evil, horrible thing to be avoided. Yes, we have to expose ourselves to it using common sense and moderation, just as we do with everything in life, but there are very good things about it.

When I hear people say, “You need to give your daughter a vitamin supplement because breast milk has a vitamin D deficiency, I want to respond, “No, my breast milk has everything it needs. Our society has a sunshine deficiency.”

It’s true. I’m glad we know the harmful effects sun can have on a person, but do we ever talk about the positive effects? All of the talk of skin cancer and other negative results of too much sun exposure have sent people into an anti-sun panic. No one dreams of going outside anymore without first applying their SPF 15. Children go outside on a 70-degree day wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a sun hat.

Don’t get me wrong – I know we have to be careful with sun exposure. But allowing our “unprotected” skin to be exposed to sunlight for short amounts of time each day is very beneficial to our health. Vitamin D is essential for building healthy teeth and bones, since it aids in the absorption of calcium. It also regulates the immune system, and can even help prevent certain cancers.

We can’t get all of the vitamin D necessary for good health from food alone, and the body doesn’t absorb nutrients from supplements as well as it does from natural sources. So, how much sunlight exposure does your baby need in order to get enough?

To begin, your body can only make vitamin D from UVB rays, and those are only present between the hours of 10:00am and 2:00pm. Experts recommend that a light-skinned baby (like mine) get 30 minutes of sun exposure per week during these hours if he is wearing only a diaper, and 2 hours per week if he is fully clothed, not wearing a hat. I understand that two hours of outdoor time per week during the cold winter months might sound a bit steep, but it translates into about 15 minutes per day. I also can sense some hesitation about exposing your baby’s tender skin in the summer months during the times when the sun is the hottest, but 30 minutes per week in the summer translates into about 4 minutes per day. I certainly think that is manageable, and not at all dangerous.

Are you unsure about giving your baby a vitamin D supplement? Stop worrying, and get outside! The sun is your friend, not your enemy. Just use common sense. Extra outside time will not only give you and your baby vitamin D, you’ll probably come back inside feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.