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Listography – Inventions

Jun21

This is my first entry into Kate’s Listography linky over at Kate Takes 5.  This week the theme is Inventions we would invent to make our lives easier.  As you can imagine a lot of them are “new baby” related.

1.  The Complete Baby Steriliser.

This fantastic gadget would pick your bottles up (by some clever magnetic radar thing) and draw it into the sterliser.  It would then proceed to disassemble all the bottles into its varioues components, wash them thoroughly and the finish the job off by stertilising them.  It would even have a timer on it so you’d have freshly sterilised bottles waiting for you when you woke up or came home from an outing.

2.  The Baby feed maker

This not only makes up a baby’s feed for you but self fills itself when baby has decided he wants more.  How many panicked trips to the kitchen would that save.

2.  The self washing and cleaning car

No car would ever need washing again, ever.  Inside or out.  As soon as it detected you had left it would scan itself and hoover up, get rid of all the empty bottles, toys, wrappers etc and clean itself inside and out.

3.  The Meal Dispenser

You pick from the gadget (or even the app on your iPhone) what you want to eat and the Meal Dispenser goes about making it.  Completly nutrional and healthy.  It even washes up once you’re finished!

4.  The Ultra Light Baby Seat

How heavy are they! Are they filled with cement?  Anyway, this ultra light baby seat would be just as safe and weigh about the same size as your clutch or handbag.  It might even just clip itself into the car so no more faffing with seatbelts or bases.

5.  The Tummy Firmer

A magical pill that snaps your tummy back to EXACTLY what it was before you were pregnant.  No more need to excercise like crazy or watching what you eat.

What Not To Do When Weaning

Jun10

I’ve linked up to Flashback Friday. I started weaning Baby Z about May last year and it was very interesting at first…

Well, we’ve been weaning for about 4 weeks now. I’m still no expert and as expected its all a bit of trial and error and generally experimenting with lots of flavours. And, my god, the poo, the POO!! I thought one could not get anymore obsessed with poo than I already was. I had obviously never weaned before though.

At the moment we are going through “why is his poo like goat poo? Why!! Why!!”. Is that too much information? It is though, like little pellets. It feels like a bit of a seesaw balance of omitting foods, adding a lot more liquids, a bit of orange juice, a lot more massage and todays latest; prune juice. I think (THINK!) we are about halfway to finding the right balance, but I get the feeling that it will only be until the next new flavour, taste and texture is added. I hate you poo!

So, really, there’s no way I can class myself anywhere near masterful at this weaning malarkey. What I can tell you though, is the stuff you probably shouldn’t do. I have plenty of those. Don’t get me wrong, I am really enjoying it. I, no, we, are on what looks like a bit of a learning curve.

So here goes, what NOT to do. (so far!)

1. Don’t stand in the supermarket fruit and veg aisle staring at a Butternut squash wondering whether you should buy it, and if you do, how the hell are you going to cook it? Actually, how the hell are you even going to peel it? I have to admit we don’t really (ok, never!) have eaten the thing. So why do mums get obsessed by it for babies? Anyway, point is, all that staring will, at some point, result in one of the staff asking if you’re ok and if you need any help. Aka “move along lady, you’re blocking the fruit and veg aisle!”. At this point you’ll grab the squash anyway and scurry along sheepishly.

2. Don’t dress the baby in white. Mostly, enough said. But has anyone else noticed that even with a bib on, food will find it’s way behind it, over it, under it. Bibs seem a bit useless to be honest.

3. When making purees, make sure you peel the fruit / veg. It is very messy trying to get skin off afterwards and not really worth stress levels going through the roof.

4. Don’t puree everything in sight and then expect the baby to like it all. I made the mistake of getting “adventurous” and then getting sick of all the puree that all looked green. We went back to a flavour at a time. It works really well. And I LOVE (well baby does) the Ella range. It’s very nice. (and yep I taste everything I give to baby, especially if I’ve bought it ready made).

5. Balancing a bowl of baby porridge between your legs whilst you feed baby is a bad idea. He will knock it a clean 180 degrees straight onto your jeans. Trying to wipe porridge OFF jeans is a worse idea. It spreads everywhere and seems to dry into something looking like dried glue.

6. When baby looks like he’s going to sneeze with a mouthful of food, get out of the way quickly. Don’t start wondering if he will a) sneeze and b) will he spray food everywhere. He’ll do both and it’ll be on you.

7. Don’t put baby on the carpet immediately after eating. Food will get transferred onto toes that will get shoved into his mouth and, if you’re very unlucky, also get sicked up onto carpet.

8. Don’t exclaim “is someone doing a poo poo” straight after weaning. Slink away to do the dishes and casually call out to OH to change baby’s nappy. Then listen out for the horrified “oh my god!! It stinks!!”

9. Don’t give your baby coke. I haven’t done this but I’ve seen someone who has. It was just so shocking!! But I’ll stop mentioning it now, honest.

Come link up to Flashback Friday…

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Feed me, Seymour! (I mean, mummy)

May6

I used to dread the night feeds when baby was first born. Mainly because I’ve never been a night person. I’ve always been a morning person and would usually start dozing off on the couch around 9.30pm. Yes i know. That is very very early for an adult but I would be in bed, by the latest around 10.30pm, and sleep for a good 8 to 9 hours. Anything else was deemed “an awful nights sleep”. Little did I know.

Obviously the hibernation style of sleeping went out the window when baby boy arrived. The first few weeks were a wee bit hard as baby boy would wake every 2.5 hours. Each feed in itself would take an hour so I’d sit and clock watch and think about how much sleep I was going to get that night. After the euphoria of a new baby wore off, I would sit feeding, and feel my head loll, and then jolt upright violently. Thankfully, over time, I settled into a good night time routine. It became slightly more interesting after i switched over to full bottle. Bottles can be faffy at the best of times. But when you have to actually leave your bed to prepare a feed, in the middle of the night, it can feel like hard work!

After 4.5 months of night feeds you would think I’d have it all mastered into a smooth intrinsic quick operation. And I have. Well. I have kind of mastered it. If you disregard the bumps, kicks, quick shuffling in the dark and occasional “what’s the noise? Oh, the baby needs feeding”, then yes. Yes of course! I have it all mastered.

It goes something like this:

1. Baby starts initial shuffling and noises for a feed

2. I wonder what the noise is, establish I indeed have a baby that needs feeding and reach for phone in the dark to see the time. I am usually half wishing it’s around 5am and that baby has slept through the night. It’s usually around 3am though. Quick loud whisper to OH to put lamp on.

3. Shuffle out of bed in the dark and quickly exit room to make feed, without further stirring the half awake baby. Bang into various objects on the way out and make mental note to clean it up in the morning. (Mental note will erase itself about 5 seconds after this as memory is so shite post pregnancy)

4. Make feed and count the number of scoops of formula out LOUD just to be sure. (Do you know how hard it is to count to 4 in the middle of the night when you’re half asleep?). Shake bottle violently in an attempt to cool down and stick under cold tap in an attempt to speed up cooling down process.

5. Shuffle back into pitch black bedroom and hiss at OH to put lamp on.

6. Pick up baby who is now very much wanting feed and search for feeding / maternity pillow frantically on the bed. Find pillow being hugged by OH and prise from his hands.

7. Now this is the crucial bit. Settle with baby with feeding pillow under one arm, phone in one and bottle in other. For any Friends fans out there you’ll remember how Joeys agent Estelle would light up a cigarette every time the phone rang yelling “hold onnnn, hold onnnn, hold on!! Go!” that’s me, but the bottle version. Obviously I’m only yelling in my head. Else that would be bad.

8. Feed baby and switch Twitter on. Aaaand relax. Or at least try to keep awake through feed.

9. Burp sleeping baby and settle him back into basket. Try to quietly clamber over OH and turn lamp off.

10. Settle back into bed and wonder if baby will now sleep for 5 hours straight.

11. Repeat whole process 3 hours later (unless it’s day time. In which case I am already hugging the feeding / maternity pillow!)

Anyone else do it smoother? I think not ;)



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