Category Archives: Babies

Feb 14 2013

First Case of the Sniffles

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Tuesday night I was thrilled, my son slept through the entire night and I thought, “It’s happening! I’m going to be able to sleep again!” Unfortunately the universe had some other plans for me. Wednesday night we were up 3 or 4 times because he was having a hard time breathing. It seems that he’s caught a case of the sniffles from daycare (and only 3 days into it!), so he was super congested last night and just couldn’t get comfortable. Meaning this morning, I was exhausted! Poor little guy was too though. After I got up and took a shower, I let him sleep to try and catch-up, finally woke him up at 6:30 to get dressed and eat.

Since he’s never been sick before, I’ve never had to use that bulb syringe thing for his nose. Well, it definitely works, but Child's nasal aspirator isolated on a white backgroundhe did not like it one bit. He would squirm around when I tried to put it in his nose, and when I finally got something out, he would start to cry. I guess those things are something that you just have to get used to using. I took his temperature too, since you’re not supposed to take kids into daycare with a fever, and I’d have to use a sick day if I couldn’t take him to daycare. He didn’t so much like the thermometer either, and it is the least invasive one I possible could have used. When I was registering for baby stuff I had thought an ear thermometer was the way to exergen-temporal-thermometer-2267477-01go, but then when I was in the hospital with him they used a forehead (or arterial) thermometer on me and I thought if it’s good enough for the hospital, it’s good enough for me. They’re pretty handy little items. You just place the tip in the middle of your kid’s forehead, push the button, and then move it up into their hairline. I believe it uses IR to measure temperature, so it’s not going to be quite as acurate as say a rectal thermometer (but really, do we need to be that accurate at home?). Now like I said, this has got to be the least invasive type of thermometer for kiddos, but still I could not get him to hold still. That’s the thing about a 5 month old, you can’t reason with them and say, “Hey, hold still for just a few seconds.” After around 10 attempts, I got enough average readings that I assumed he didn’t have a fever, and we got packed to go to daycare.

Even though he didn’t feel great, he was still all smiles and snuggles. He’s just so sweet, it would be impossible not to love that little boy. So now I’m at work, hoping that he’s feeling better and that I won’t get a call during the day saying I need to come get him. I just wish he didn’t feel bad on his first Valentine’s Day. Just means I’ll have to give me extra snuggles tonight.

Jan 22 2013

Inside the Orchestra

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So I was browsing around on Yelp the other day checking out upcoming events and stumbled across a pretty cool one called Inside the Orchestra. Inside the Orchestra is an organization that is focused on bringing orchestra music to young children. They have different programs for different ages, but the one that caught my eye is called Tiny Tots. At their events, they bring the kids up onto the stage and surround them with the orchestra musicians. So they are litterally “inside the orchestra”. The events are about 45 minutes long and are for kids ages 6 and under. Dade happens to love classical music, so I emailed them about infants attending. They said they have had kids of all ages attend and kids under 1 year can attend for free! The regular ticket price isn’t bad either, it’s only $7.50. We’ll be checking out one of the upcoming shows, and I’ll be sure to post on how Dade liked it!

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Jan 22 2013

Can’t Live Without – Baby Rocker

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There are so many things out there for babies that it can be really hard to decide what you really need. This is my first posting of the things that I personally “Can’t Live Without”. So here we go….

I think everyone has heard how important it is to have a baby bouncer chair. It’s amazing how quickly a seat that vibrates can calm an upset baby, sometimes it can be the only thing that will calm them (think back to Samantha watching Miranda’s baby on Sex and the City!). There are lots of seats P3334_b_4[1]out there that will fit the bill, but this is my suggestion for a seat that you can get much more use out of. It’s Fisher Price’s Infant to Toddler Walker. It runs about $45, and you can get it most places. I think I got mine at Wal-Mart. It’s got your basics: an arch of toys for the baby to play with (one that rattles, one with that crackly material, and one that has a pull and plays music – granted it’s pretty terrible music, buy babies seem to love it), a vibrating base (uses 1 D battery), and a seat that you can strap the baby into (totally necessary once they start rolling over and trying to sit up).

The thing about this seat though is that it’ll last you a while. The weight limit goes up to 40 pounds (thus the toddler part of the name) and it can be used as either a rocker or a bed. When my son is awake he likes to kick and make it rock himself, P3334_b_2[1]the little bugs on the toy arm keep him very entertained and he really does seem to love the song that the lady bug plays. But we’ve also been using this chair as my son’s bed for about 3 months now. When we first brought him home from the hospital, I tried the bassinet thing. I’d already heard how much of a waste of money a stand-alone bassinet was, so I got a play yard with a bassinet insert so that we could use it for longer. However, my son still didn’t want to sleep in it. And because those play yard are so big and my bedroom isn’t, we had to put it at the foot of the bed which didn’t make for the easiest night feedings. With this little rocker we can put it right next to either side of the bed, depending on whose turn it is to watch him that night, kick out the footbar so that he’s leaning back, and we have a great little bed for him. If he gets fussy at night he’s right next to us to give him a bottle, so no need to get out of bed. And if that’s not helping, you can turn on the vibrations to help put him to sleep. He’s strapped in there, so there’s no worry that P3334_b_1[1]he’s going to fall out, and the front of the seat belt actually makes a great place to clip on a pacifier tether for easy access in the middle of the night (I highly recommend pacifier holders on each seat your baby finds themself in frequently). For us this has been a fantastic solution. And the great thing is, that once he’s not sleeping in it (for now I can only dream of the day that he sleeps in his crib all night), he can use it as a rocking chair. It’s a great way to get extended use out of something that really does make life with baby easier.

Jan 21 2013

The Path to Formula

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Before my son was born I was very adamant about a few things, some of them went my way, some didn’t. The topic of breastfeeding went partially my way. When Dade was born he was not exactly a tiny baby, in fact he almost hit 10 pounds. So feeding him became a stressfull topic right away. I wanted to breastfeed him, but on average it takes 5 days for your milk to fully come in, which is exactly how long it took me. Prior to that you have this thing called colostrum. It’s kind of yellow and a bit thicker than milk. It’s full of great stuff for your baby, but you don’t produce a whole lot of it. Which is a problem when your kid is the size of a little monster. On average babies lose around 7% of their birth weight in the first few days, but put it back on within a couple weeks. Doesn’t seem like a big deal right? Well, it was for us.

First, since Dade was so large, the nurses would come to take his blood sugar levels every few hours for the first couple days. And if you’ve ever seen how they take blood from a baby, you know that it isn’t pleasant for anyone involved. They make a small puncture in the baby’s heel and then squeeze out enough blood for the test. The first time I ever saw this as a kid when my little sister was born, I nearly passed out. I don’t mind blood, but I don’t have much of a stomach for seeing a baby in pain.

Then came the pressure to feed him. Breastfeeding is not easy. No matter how much you’ve read about it or how set you are on doing it, there are very few women that breast feeding comes easy for. So before Dade or I could really get the hang of it, the nurses insisted that we supplement his feedings somehow. Since at this point I was still dead set on breastfeeding, I went the route of donor milk. It may seem strange at first, but if it’s available it’s a great alternative to having to use formula StSNS-02[1]right away. However, it pretty much necessitates the use of a bottle. There is a setup that you can try to use that entails putting a tube next to your nipple so that the baby gets milk from the tube as well while nursing. But quite honestly it’s very difficult to do, and makes the process of getting used to breastfeeding even more difficult than it already is. We didn’t last too long using that. We had one nurse that suggested Dad feed him with the bottle so that Mom wouldn’t get associated with a bottle. It was a good idea, but it didn’t really work for us. Once Dade got a bottle in his mouth, he didn’t really want to have anything to do with my breast. The reason being that milk comes easily out of a bottle, with a real nipple the baby has to work at it. So who can blame him for choosing the bottle?

So to make a long story, well still pretty darn long, is that I started out not wanting to use formula at all. Fast forward 4 months, and formula seems like a lifesaver to me. With all the troubles we had with breastfeeding, I had been exclusively pumping since pretty early on (more about that in a future post). Formula gave me a way to make feeding Dade seem easy and not cause me so much stress and time away from him.

Picking a formula is kind of a difficult decision. For brand name I went completely off of our pediatrician’s recommendation. He said that if he lined them all up, he would pick Enfamil over the others. And rather than start off with any of the specialty formulas, he said to begin with the standard imagesCAXV7KM5and go from there. Made sense, but we only got through one tub of the standard stuff before I realized that we probably needed to switch to the gassy formula. In Enfamil’s brand that meant the purple tub, or Gentlease. That seems to be making a big difference. On the standard stuff, all of a sudden, Dade started waking up every couple of hours during the night and just screaming. I think the problem was that he was having very bad gas. I’m lactose intollerant, so I figured there’s a good chance he is too. This formula has proteins that are partially broken down, so it’s easier for a baby’s developing digestive system to deal with (I’m hoping eventually that means it will help him sleep through the night, no luck quite yet, but at least the screaming bouts have stopped). I can’t say enough how much easier this is on me than pumping multiple times a day. One scoop to every 2 oz of water….good to go. For me, it’s been a lifesaver. I wish breastfeeding had been a different experience for me, but I’m glad that we’ve gotten into a place that’s easier on all of us now.

I should mention, when I first read through the ingredients of Gentlease I noticed that the first ingredient was Corn Syrup Solids. Sounds terrible doesn’t it? Like you’re giving your baby high fructose corn syrup or something. After doing some research I realized that wasn’t the case. The Corn Syrup Solids are used as carbohydrate sources and replace the lactose in lactose-free formulas. They’re easily digestible, provide energy for the body, and help to make the formula’s composition as close to human milk as possible. I also read some posts from nurtitionists about how sugar is actually worse than corn syrup for your baby (about twice as sweet I believe) and is used in some other formulas. So don’t worry about the Corn Syrup Solids.

Jan 21 2013

Navigating the Daycare Maze

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My son is 4 months old now, and since he was born my husband has been staying at home with him. For a working mom, that is a great situation. You’re still able to go to work, but you know that your baby is with someone you trust. However, babies are expensive, and we’ve reached a point where my husband needs to go back to work. We don’t have any family that lives close enough, so we’re in the process of investigating the dreaded daycare center.

daycare-blocksThe first issue for me has been how surprisingly hard it is for me to deal with the idea of leaving my son with somebody else. When I went back to work I had a harder time than I thought I would, and that just meant leaving my son with his dad. I never thought that having a baby would really change me, and I’m still not sure that I would ever make a good stay-at-home mom, but the idea of it has crossed my mind more than once since giving birth. Unfortunately though, that’s not even a thought that can be seriously contemplated in my world. I just graduated from law school last year and have a whole pile of student loans to payoff, so working is just a necessary part of my world. So when we decided that my husband had to go back to work too, I once again had to deal with the nagging idea at the back of my mind that I wish I could be the one taking care of my son.

The second issue is the rest all rolled into one: quality, price, and availability of daycare. I want to be able to leave my kid with the best people and in the most fun and stimulating place that I can. The problem is that not only is daycare crazy expensive, but it’s hard to find a place that has an opening….especially for an infant. So far I’ve visited two locations, a Goddard School and a Primrose School. Both seemed great. The kids are happy, have lots of education opportunities, and the people that work there seem nice and like they genuinely like what they do. But believe me, you really pay for all that stuff. I’ve also called around to various places in the area to see who has an opening and how much it will cost me. Best I can tell, the average in my neighborhood is $1300/month or $320/week. Some are a little more, some a little less, but most fall right in that area. Now lets think about that price….that’s a mortgage/rent for most of us, and we’re expected to pay that just for the ability to go out and earn a living.

Now, there is the option of in-home day care providers, but I’ve got to be honest….that makes me a little nervous. It’s a lot harder to control someone’s home where they might have pets and their own children. I’m sure that option would be a little less expensive, but I’m not sure it’s worth it.

From what I’ve read elsewhere on the net, it seems like Denver may be on the higher end of daycare expenses. Lucky me right? For now I’m still looking, and hoping that my first choice doesn’t fill up its availabilities before I make a decision.