Moms Like Tech Too!

Isn’t it crazy how quickly technology can change? Kristin found a couple really interesting articles about new tech for breastfeeding and pumping and we thought it would be fun to write about new tech out there and what’s on the horizon. Not going to lie, we’re pretty envious of what is new and coming soon! We do not endorse any of these products and cannot speak to their effectiveness. We just found them interesting and want to share. 🙂

Pregnancy

Reliefband

Nausea/morning sickness got you down? Hate the taste of ginger? We’ve been seeing an uptick of these nausea relief bands. I am super curious if they work, because it could make a huge difference for so many pregnant mom’s early (and for some poor souls majority) pregnancies. (Photo from Reliefband’s website)

BabyBuds

Ok, this one is lost on me. I’d heard of playing music for baby in-utero… but this just feels too far for me. If anyone has tried this and believes it had a positive impact, I really want to know. All I can think of is the game my siblings and I played as kids, attempting to have a conversation under water while at the pool. Did any of you do this growing up? How well did it work for you? (Photo from BabyBuds’ website)

Breastfeeding/Postpartum

Nanit Baby Sleep System

This is no regular video baby monitor. Nanit mounts above the crib to show you a bird’s eye view of your lil’ babe. It tracks baby’s movements and gives you insights into theisleep habits, giving your average sleep and wake times and rating how well they are sleeping. This information is then used to give you tips on how to improve their (and your!) sleep for future nights. (Photo from Nanit’s website)

Willow Wearable Breast Pump

Confession: we both are jealous of anyone who owns this. A breast pump that is truly wireless and cordless? Game-changer!! Instead of using bottles, the Willow pumps directly into self-sealing storage bags, so you can just take them out and pop them in the fridge or freezer without having to worry about spilling a drop of that milk you work so hard for. The pump comes with one unit per breast, and you can pump one at a time (how cool if you need/want to pump while baby is nursing on the other side) or simultaneously. PLUS it hooks up to your phone via Bluetooth and will tell you how much you’ve pumped! Seriously amazing. (photo from Willow’s website)

Yoomi Self-warming Bottles

Unless you get a magic baby who will take cold bottles, you’ll probably need to try to figure out how to warm them up when your baby is hungry. Enter Yoomi, who made a self-warming bottle!! The warming part is “charged” in your microwave, then is ready to go whenever you need it, which is perfect for those on-the-go feedings. (Photo from Yoomi’s website)

What amazing tech did we miss? Let us know!

~ Kristin & Karen

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Traveling for Work While Breastfeeding a.k.a. Guess what? You have a bunch more crap to lug around in the airport

A few weeks ago I took my first work trip to attend a conference in Portland, Oregon. I was excited and then instantly anxious. Why? I’m still breastfeeding so I need to pump around every 3 hours when I’m away from my son. PLUS, this would be the first time I would be away from Finn overnight so…anxiety. (Now, of course, he would be with my husband so obviously he would be fine and happy to get solo dad time but it was still weird to think about!) This post is focusing on the logistics of pumping while traveling but we’re writing one addressing being away from baby overnight for the first time later!

Winning at Weaning

The time has come. Every breastfeeding mother arrives at this point sooner or later. I am talking about weaning. Initially, Kristin and I discussed my writing this post about a month or so ago as my intention was to wean Ellie on or soon after her first birthday. I’ve mentioned before, I am a planner. I like to have things in order and to be able to plan out, at nauseum, how things will play out.  What is it they say, the best-laid plans often go awry? That seems to be a quote that many parents can live by. Sort of a delightful take on Murphy’s Law for parents. Regardless, I find that with most mom things, life works itself out in its own way. Often not how you planned.

When Kristin and I discussed this post and I began writing, I quickly realized that I wasn’t mentally ready to share my weaning process. It took an emotionally toll on me I wasn’t ready for. Ironically, I can relate some of my feelings surrounding weaning to learning to breastfeed. Frustration. Exhaustion. Struggling to understand my kid in a whole new way. Crap. Maybe I actually have a pre-teen on my hands.

There are plenty of ways to wean, some people do the cold turkey method and others come up with some master variation of gradually reducing their feedings. I chose the latter. Mostly because I try to avoid pain and the possibility of getting mastitis at all cost. Plus I wasn’t in a rush.

Just a day in the life of a nursing mom.

My pump/nurse schedule on a typical (pre-weaning) day looked something like this:

6am – nurse on one side and pump on the other

9:30/10am – pump

1pm – pump

4pm – pump

7pm – nurse

10/11pm – pump

I was provided a lot of advice and did a fair amount (hours, let’s be real) of research. What I ended up doing is slowly cutting out the pumping at work. For the first couple weeks, I went down to two pumping sessions a day at work. Then the following week I pumped once a day at work. Then I stopped pumping all together at work and only pumped/nursed twice a day – and how glorious it was to no longer have to drag around that cumbersome pump. Initially, I then planned to cut the evening nursing, and finally, the morning feeding. Most people recommend cutting out the night nursing session last, because that’s the most challenging one to wean baby from. Zach puts Ellie to bed at night, so it’s actually the morning nursing session that will be hardest to wean for me and the one I intend to wean last.

Daycare has been great about transitioning Ellie to whole milk, she actually is just taking sippy cups there now. This is amazing for me because I no longer need to prep bottles in the morning.

Nursing wears us out.

As a final note, weaning is something that is specific to baby and mom. No one can or should tell a breastfeeding mom how and when they should wean. I was taking in a lot of this static noise and putting unnecessary pressure on myself. Interestingly enough, not one single mother who is or has breastfed gave me their opinion on when a nursing mom should wean. I only got this unsolicited advice from mothers who never nursed or people who do not have children, yep, because their the experts (insert eye roll here). It wasn’t until I allowed myself a little grace that I was in a way better place mentally to accomplish this. In the end, Ellie and I will continue nursing twice a day until we decide we’re done. And I’m happy with that.

xoxo,

Karen

When You Drop the Ball

So I was sitting up with Finn at 3am this morning, nursing him overnight (even though I told myself I’d try to be better and just let him cry) and I realized we hadn’t written anything to post for today. Oops. But that can happen when you have to take care of a tiny person…it tends to consume all your time and some other things can fall to the side. BUT. We’ve never missed a week and this will be no exception. So I present to you…some stuff that made me laugh. Yes, it’s meme time because…

~Kristin

And Happy Pride to all our friends and family out there!!

Things We Like: Breastfeeding Edition

As two breastfeeding moms, we’ve tried a ton of stuff to try to make ourselves and baby more comfortable and these are the winners! Do you have any others you can’t live without? Let us know in the comments!

Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means that if you click on a product link, we may receive compensation. This compensation comes at no additional cost to you, and we only recommend products we love! We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Prices are subject to change. 

Spectra S1 Breast Pump – $200

amazon

This is my #1 recommendation for you if you’re planning on pumping.

When Baby Gets Sick

It’s inevitable. Our babies will get sick. As first-time moms we wait in fear of that first time baby gets sick. Every little sniffle we scrutinize. When someone across the grocery store coughs, we run and cover. Sure this is a little exaggerated, but not by much. It’s frightening. But, like most other things we face, we as moms can handle way more than we give ourselves credit for.

Today has been a day. And it’s only 10:17am. Please allow me to set the stage.

What’s in My Diaper Bag?

 

So this thing definitely has way more than diapers in it. It should be called a “Parent Emergency Bag” instead. Every parent has their own way of packing this thing (Kris even packs his a little differently than mine!*), but here’s my way:

Thoughts on Breastfeeding: Part 1

It’s one of the first questions your friend, mom, or grandmother-in-law will likely ask you and everyone seemingly wants to know, “how do you plan to feed baby?”. Both of us have chosen to breastfeed, at least for the time being. And let us tell you, it was not easy to figure out. If someone says it came easy to them, they are either a. Lying or b. Not human.

So, let’s begin – here you’ll find some quick thoughts on some of our most talked about parts of breastfeeding. (As you can tell by the whole “Part 1” thing, we will absolutely post more on this kind of stuff, so if there’s a specific topic you want to hear about – let us know!)

Pain, WHAT PAIN?

Why I Took a Vacation Without Baby

Today, friends, I write to you from the beach. I had originally written the majority of this post prior to my trip, knowing the key points I wanted to share. Now, after being away a few days, I still want to discuss some of those points, but this post is going a different direction than I had originally intended. In part, this had to do with a book I began reading while on the beach. The book is called I Thought It Was Me (But It Isn’t) by Brene Brown. I plan to do a future post or two later about this book as I believe the concept of shame is so relevant to all of us as women and mothers.

Supplementing: or the thing you probably start because your doctor scares you into thinking your baby is underweight

We’re so excited to share our first real post with you! Here’s the deal – both of us have our own unique experiences about mom stuff (like all of you), so we’re both going to chime in on some posts. This may mean we’ll throw a lot of text at you, but we both want our say…so too bad.

Kristin

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Something you may not know (yet) is that babies lose weight quickly after being born. This is totally normal, but if baby loses 10% or more of their birth weight then your pediatrician will start to worry. Generally all babies will get back up to birth weight with no problems, some taking a little longer than others. (Now, here’s the disclaimer for this post where I say we’re absolutely not medical professionals and each baby is different).

Both of our babies took longer than 2 weeks to get back to birth weight, and both of us as moms were horribly stressed about it. Why? Doctors scared us into thinking our babies were basically not thriving and we needed to work harder to get them to gain weight. As if being a brand-new parent isn’t stressful enough.