New Baby Must Haves -- Clothing

So, you think you are ready to start your baby registry? Go to Baby Superstore, gun in hand (no, not a real gun. that would be...bad.) and like a brisk wind on the first Winter morning, it hits you, wow! The options are truly endless! What do you really NEED to be prepared for welcoming your little one? In all honesty, the baby only needs momma's loving arms to sleep in and booby juice. Alas, what do you, the parents need, to make your transition into this new season of your lives easy manageable? This will be one post in a multipost series, otherwise we may be here for a while and one thing you won't have much in the very near future is time for yourself. Hopefully, my experience can help you out!

CLOTHING
Warmth from the elements for the wee one, the poopy and pee-pee one, the spit-one, the apple of your ever-loving eye one! :) What do they need?

1.This is where I am going to tell you that Function>Fashion. For the first two weeks or so, there will be wardrobe upon wardrobe changes that put Bey, Britney, and Janet to shame. To keep that to a minimum, I would suggest these little kimono shirts, this will be the only item that I would recommend to purchase in the newborn size 6-8 of these would be perfect. Otherwise the baby will be swimming. Depending on the time of year, this little shirt and a good Swaddle are all that you need.


2. After the umbilical cord comes off, I found I could get a little more creative with their clothing options. They are still regulating their digestive tract (pooping without shame or shyness) so you are still changing the diaper about 8 times a day (and night!!) so I fell IN LOVE with zippered sleepers, buttons are for the birds. PS if someone gifts you any outfits with an ungodly amount of buttons in the configuration you can be sure of one of two things, a. the giver doesn't have children or b. they don't like you very much. There is a slim chance they don't know about zippered sleeper, if you are a benefit of the doubt kind of gal, go with that. Wal-Mart, of all places, has some really cute zippered sleepers that wash and wear well. The brand is Faded Glory, Carter's also has nice options. My littles were born in beginning of Fall and the middle of Winter, so we used these under their swaddle blankets to keep their tootsies nice and warm. I would say 6-8 of these. The point is to have a couple leftover between washes and blowouts.


3. White Onesies. You CANNOT have too many. Serious, and if you have a boy, you need double, because these are GREAT for putting as little under shirts anytime other than Summer, to make your little man look dapper like his daddy. Love! Love! Love! I would say 5-10 for each size starting at 3 months, would be good, so 1-2 packs. Love these. Did I mention that I love these?



Publishing for now -- have a Little who just woke up. More LATER!

xoxo,
Melissa

How To Swaddle A Wriggly Baby

So, most of the people who are coming across my blog are wondering how to swaddle a wriggly baby. My post on swaddling, shows you how to properly tie the blanket to get a secure swaddle, but that can be tough to do once your baby has become a more active and won't stay still long enough to complete all the folds.

First things first, people. Make sure you are pulling the swaddle tight at every fold. You want to make it tight, because a tight swaddle mimics the warmth and security a baby feels when being held and cradled by their momma and helps the baby fall asleep fast and stay asleep long. That's all we really want, isn't it? Especially, after the Momma Bootcamp that is the first 3 weeks.

The next important item on our agenda is how to get that baby to stay still long enough for you to swaddle. Well, all you need is a singing, light-up bunny rabbit. No, seriously, the answer is to distract your baby with blinking lights and a fun song while you do all the wrapping. By the time the bunny hop song is over, your baby will be swaddled nice and tight and ready for a good night's sleep or a nice long nap. Sound easy as pie? Well, it is!

We also use this technique for changing a wriggly baby's diaper or keeping a tired baby happy while we dress him after bath time. Distraction. It's where it's at.

This is Baby A with the singing bunny. By far the best distraction toy that we have. The little chicks move about and the bunny's cheeks light up and ears flap -- all while singing jailhouse rock or something. The song last about 45 seconds, which is perfect length for swaddling my little angel. My mom picked this little gem up for us at Easter time from CVS or Walgreen's. Best $14.99 spent. Ever.

As you can see from the pic, Baby A is about to get swaddled for nap here. May seem silly, but works like a charm. And isn't parenting really just about being silly and making the baby happy, anyway? At least, at first, right?

So here he is watching a you tube video of Hakuna Matata from The Lion King -- at least, I think that is what he was watching. I will be honest here, he is just mildy interested. If you really want to push a reset button, what you need is Baby Beluga. Seriously, it is like the M-80 of all baby tools. It is the Air Force One of my mommy tools handbag. I love it so much, I am going to link it at the bottom of this post, I love it that much. I may even love it more than Baby A does. True story.

Baby Beluga in all its glory!

There you have it folks, my tips for getting things done,even with a wriggly baby!
Grab your oversize swaddle blanket from Swaddle Designs.

xoxo,
Melissa

Schedule? Routine? Schedule? Routine?

As the days drew closer to my due date, I had very little idea of what a typical day was going to look like once Ajay really did arrive. I didn't know and looking back there isn't any amount of research or reading that could have prepared me for just how demanding the first few weeks with a newborn and subsequent months with an infant could be. We went from no schedule at all, to a schedule, to a period of "I don't know what the hell is going on", to now with what I would describe as more of a routine than anything else.

I delivered via C-section on a Wednesday afternoon and checked out on Sunday. I stayed in the hospital the maximum time allotted. I could have checked out on Saturday, but Ajay and I were having a rocky start with breastfeeding, so I want to focus ALL day on Saturday working with the lactation consultants to help make sure we could figure it out once we were on our own. So anyway, the first four days in the hospital you are broken in baby boot camp style. You are feeding every 2.5 hours and a good feed takes about an hour, because the baby is learning and mommy is learning and these things just take time. In short, mommy does not get any sleep for about 72 hours.

Then, we came home on Sunday and for the next week it is more of the same. Feed the baby every 2.5-3 hours. Feeds take about an hour. Then, the baby usually sleeps for the next 2 hours and is up to feed again. Ajay was jaundiced, so we couldn't let him wake on his own to eat. Basically, jaundice secretes a poison in the body and makes the baby very drowsy. It is very common, but can be very dangerous if not managed properly.  So, that was us for the first 2-5 weeks. Eat, sleep, poop, repeat. By week 3, the pediatrician gave the go ahead to put ajay on a feeding schedule, per se. He said every 3 hours during the day and let him go as long as 5 in the night. By week 4, I was thinking, "heh, easy as cake. I got this." Then, by week 5, hell broke loose.

Week 5, Ajay was going through a rough time. We didn't really have any kind of routine for the nighttime, so Ajay was up all the time. It was tough because daddy works long hours and gets home late most nights. I was trying to make it so that Ajay could be up for when daddy gets home, but it was just messing things up. Ajay had no idea what to expect and couldn't comprehend the idea of night=sleep. He was starting to learn how to break out of the swaddleme blankets and that was only making things worse. So, I got my Moms On Call  seminar password out and watched the 0-3 month online baby seminar. And watched it again. And watched it again. And again. And again.You get the point? And so a schedule was born. My good friend, Stacy, who introduced me to Moms on Call, also gave me her swaddle blankets and I learned to swaddle nice and snug so that he could get a good night's rest and nap really well.

Our schedule from about Week 5 to 12 weeks went something like this. Ajay wakes about 6 or 7 am, I am feed him and we play. Then he may go back down for a cat nap. Up again to eat at 9am and then every 3 hours from there on out. So he would be eating 9a, 12p, 3p, 6p, and last night feed @ 9p. Then, he would usually sleep for about 5 hours and then be up to eat at 2a, and sleep another 5 hours for the feeding cycle to start over again. After he would eat he would stay up for another 30 minutes, then nap for about an hour and half, then up to eat and repeat.

Then, I am not sure what happened from 3 to 4 months, but he was pretty much nursing all the time and playing and maybe taking 3-4 30-45 minute naps and sleeping about 8 hours at night. It was chaotic and I didn't like not knowing what to expect. So, then I got out my moms on call book, Guide To Basic Baby Care to see what it said for routines for 4 month+...and I think I am going to have to write that in another post...this one is too long and the baby needs to be fed!

I'm A Poop Doula

"I'm a poop doula", I thought to myself as I picked up the phone to tell Arvind, "Ajay had a big poo and it was nice and smooth." Naive mom, checking in again. I had no idea how much thought I would have to put into my baby's bowel movements. Time, frequency, texture/consistency -- you name it, I've had to log it. No pun intended, haha.

Ajay is an interesting pooper (I am sure he will thank me for this post later in life). When he was first born, I heard he had the meconium poops -- they are black and tarry. The reason I say that I heard he had them was because I did not change a single dipe in the hospital, it never occurred to me. The nurses said he was pooping fine and that he had to get the meconium out so that he wouldn't get jaundice or something like that. Well, he was jaundiced anyway, despite our best poop efforts.

Another interesting thing I learned about newborn poop was that breastfed baby poo has a more pleasant smell than formula poop. Hmm, nice to know, considering we planned to exclusively breastfeed, we get the pleasant poo. After the meconium, comes the seedy mustard poop. I swear it looks like diarrhea, but we were told not to be alarmed with the consistency. He had seedy mustard poos that looked, literally, like seeds in the diaper. Someone please explain that to me. Then, we had cottage cheese mustard poos fairly regularly in the first 4-6 weeks. I'd say maybe 3-4 times a day. Then he slowed down to about twice a day for a couple of weeks. The poos were still runny, though. The just after his 8 week check-up, he was every other day. And finally, from about 8 weeks to 16 weeks, my boy was a once a weeker. Let's talk about this for a second. When he was only going once a week, the poos were still soft, so he definitely was not constipated. In fact, you can read all over the internet that it is very common for exclusively breastfed babies to poo only once every 7-10 days. Common? Looking back, I think we got lucky.

Then, at almost 5 months old, when we started solids we got to see firsthand what constipation was. He ate all the bananas and in no time he was backed up. He had to strain and strain and strain and what he produced was, well, interesting. First, it was shaped like a hamburger patty, but colors varied between yellowy banana color and some greenish color to almost a tarry black - it was speckled. I think it looked like a crab patty. Mmm, chew on that. So, we had to stop the solids and give him some prune juice and finally get things going again.

Well, he still gets backed up on a fairly regular basis. Which is why I like to think of myself as a poop doula. First, I had to wonder when he was going to poop because he was only going once a week. Now, I know he is going to poop, but I have to check consistency and texture. Nowadays, when he gets constipated, I can tell, because there really are little hard pebbles coming out and I get so excited when he has a nice, giant, soft poo. Oh, what my life has become and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well, I guess I gotta go -- there's probably a diaper that needs changing around here.

Starting Solids -- Can you say banana? buh-nana

A's first experience with solids didn't go so well. First, I am not sure why we thought it would be a good idea to introduce them all informally on the bed, of all places. But I think it was just a combination of that and this new runny substance and why's my dad coming at me with this spoon. I think we may have made the rice cereal too soft, too. What a waste of breastmilk that meal was. 

Anyway, so we gave it a break for another week before trying again. Then, I was in the kitchen preparing dinner or at least getting started and I decided to eat a banana. Ajay looked intently at my banana and then started squirming like he wanted my banana. So, I jumped at the opportunity and thought, "okay, let's try again" and so we did.

First, I just let him kind of suckle on the banana while I was holding it. He liked it. A LOT. A whole lot. So, then I mushed the banana and started feeding him that. Every time there was a pause between bites that was too long for his liking he would hit the tray with his right hand like saying, "more! more!"

 

He must have eaten a banana and a half the next day and boy you would know it, too. He was con-sti-pated. So constipated. Poor guy. So, we've put a halt on bananas and he only gets a very little bit as an occasional treat.

Changing The Diaper -- so to speak

I remember when Ajay was first born he wore these tiny, tiny diapers that they give you in the hospital and he wore those for about the first 3 weeks, maybe a month. I don't know, just until we finally made our first trip to Costco. After that, he wore Kirkland brand 1-2 diapers. He's 6 months now and still fits pretty well in the 1-2's.

Every time we would go for our diaper buying trip, Arvind would do the calculation of A's weight and age to see if we would need to buy a box of 3's. Well, based on his weight, he's just not quite there yet. BUT, ever since he was about 4 months old he has been soaking the 1-2's during the overnight AND I think that may have been disturbing his sleep. So, about 2 weeks ago, I moved him into the size 3 diapers just for the overnight. They looked a little giant at first, but have worked like a charm for keeping my boy comfy and dry so he can get a good night's sleep.

So, I guess the whole point of the post is just to say, that a good rule of thumb for going up a size in diapers is not just taking weight into account, but how much your baby is soaking their current diapers, especially for the overnight. Who wants to sleep in urine?? Haha, I mean, I am sure it is all warm for the first minute but after that I'd be waking up, too!

How To Swaddle (even Houdini can't break out of this one!)

Hey there, new mom! How's sleep these days? Oh, you probably don't remember what that is, do you? Well, here is a refresher. In the meantime, the main purpose of this post is to help you and your baby get more of it. At least a couple of hours anyway. So, the first two weeks, all the baby does is eat, sleep, poop. repeat. And for a brief moment in time, you think -- piece of cake, I can do this new mom thing. Then, week 3 hits and BAM! where's your sweet, sleepy baby. Gone. Or at least you think. But alas, there is hope and it's name is Swaddle! Below, I give a step-by-step guide to swaddling your baby. My little ham is 5 months and we still swaddle. He goes to sleep in less than 5 minutes every time. EVERY. TIME. So, I'm not sure how we are going to wean from swaddling. But that's another time, another post. Would you like to learn how to get your baby to sleep soundly in less than 5 minutes for naps and help him on his way to sleeping soundly through the night? Yes? YES!!

First things first. In order to have a successful swaddle, you need a large, sturdy blanket. At least 40x40 inches, but all the way up to 45x45 will do the trick. DO NOT use a muslin blanket. These blankets allow to much give and the result is a wriggly baby wiggling out of the swaddle and out of sleep.

Now this next item is very important...before beginning the swaddle make sure your baby is tired (or it is naptime or bedtime), diaper is changed, tummy is full (unless you plan to feed after wrapping) and baby is burped. Baby doesn't have to be calm, he can be crying -- the swaddling will actually help to calm him and you'll watch as he drifts happily into dreamland.

Without further adieu -- here's your guide to swaddling your baby.

1. Lay your large blanket on a flat surface (don't get all Dr. Karp on us, trying to wrap the baby in your lap. That's just showing off.) The floor or a bed work great!

 2. Bring the top corner down, just so it is about parallel with the left and right corner.

3. Place the baby slightly off-center on the blanket with shoulders just below the folded top corner.

4. Bring the bottom corner up with your right hand and tuck the blanket under the baby's waist on each side. Make sure there is plenty of kick room for baby at the bottom.

5. Holding the baby's right arm down by his side with your left hand. Reach over and grab the top left corner of the blanket and bring it down across the baby's chest. Move your left hand on top of the blanket (holding the baby's arm by his side) and immediately tuck the blanket underneath the baby. Pull it snug by placing your left hand at the baby's waist and pulling the blanket from the top right corner.

6. After pulling the blanket snug, hold the baby's left arm down by his side with your left hand and bring the top right corner of the blanket down across the baby's chest with your right hand -- essentially, creating a V-neck at the top of the wrap. Now watch and read carefully, this next part is essential to a snug and unbreakable swaddle. This is your "good night's sleep"!  We are going to create a pocket to hold the remaining fabric in the swaddle.

7. Keeping your right hand as seen in the picture above, take your left hand and grab the remaining fabric of the blanket. Left it up and over -- pull it tight.

8.  After pulling the fabric tight, bring the slack around the baby and give it all one more tug. Baby likes it snug (the womb was very snug)

9. Finally, tuck the little tail into the pocket. Voila!

Now, you'll just need to pick the little lovebug up and cradle him, pat his little butt, give a pacifier (if you offer pacis) and he'll be out in less than 5 minutes! Adding a white noise machine will also help expedite the process.

And here's a recap photo montage of all the steps. Good luck! 

You can get a good oversize blanket from Swaddle Designs (although their swaddle instructions are not as good, so better to ignore them and use this technique here) or Moms On Call . 

I also did some digging around and found this video on YouTube -- remember the key is to pull TIGHT at every fold. You can do it!