Why is my hair falling out??

Real talk – did you know that gorgeous hair you had while pregnant comes with a price? After you have your baby, your body is like, “hahahaha, you thought you had nice hair?? JUST KIDDING!” And then your hair starts falling out.

I had heard about postpartum hair loss (which is caused by your hormones going back to normal levels), but I was 3 months in and I still didn’t have anything happening out of the ordinary, so I thought I was safe. I have been blessed with pretty nice, thick hair, so I wasn’t anticipating any weird hair stuff after having Finn. And then it happened. Around 4 months postpartum, my hair started falling out like crazy. As in, handfuls in the shower crazy. It’s disgusting and scary. I became convinced that I would look like I had a receding hairline or bald patches at the end of this whole thing. (This can happen, I guess, but most women won’t have hair loss to that extreme.)

This insane hair loss kept happening for weeks, but it did finally stop. However, how all that hair is regrowing at the same time, leading to a fun halo of fuzz around my hairline. Since I am lazy and wear my hair up a lot of the time, I’m pretty self-conscious about it, but as my stylist said, “at least that means it’s growing in!”

So load up on bobby pins and hairspray and brace yourself, the hair loss is coming…but you’ll survive it.

~Kristin

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Family leave is important!

This past week, General Mills was all over the news in the Twin Cities. Not for a cool new cereal, but because they overhauled their family leave policies to better support their employees. Instead of 3 months maternity and 2 week parental leave, now General Mills employees are eligible for 18-20 weeks of paid maternity leave for a birth mother and 12 weeks paid leave for partners and adoptive parents…how amazing is that?? This news, along with the fact that it’s Labor Day weekend, got us thinking about parental leave policies in general and why they are so important.

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

The Joy of Hand, Foot, and Mouth

What a doozy the last couple weeks have been around our households. As you can assume from the title of this post, Hand, Foot, and Mouth (HFM) Disease has been running rampant in our babies’ lives, and in turn ours. If you don’t know what HFM is, it’s not to be confused with the merry childhood song “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”, although all of these body parts feel awful in kids who get this. HFM is this annoyingly contagious virus that takes out daycare centers across the nation one slobbery toy at a time. The most common symptoms of this are blisters/sores in the mouth and rashes on the hands and feet. It shows up as varying levels of severity and discomfort. Ellie had a rash on her belly and hands and a REALLY bad diaper rash. She did not have a fever, which is a fairly common symptom, but she drooled a ton which tells me her mouth/throat was bothering her. She was certainly uncomfortable, the surly teenager in her was in full force. Sometimes the symptoms can persist for a week. For more information on what HFM Disease is, including symptoms and treatment, check out the CDC’s website here.

All in all, we had to pick up Ellie Friday morning from daycare and she was ready to go back Monday. This seemed somewhat short and was not too terrible if you ask me, but like any other time your kid gets sick, it sucks in the moment. To be honest, it was actually surprising Ellie was able to stave off this bugger for as long as she did. There had been reports of HFM going around daycare for a little over a week and a half prior to Ellie showing any signs.

Oh, and for funsies, this is not just a kid virus. Us adults can get it too. I picked this really fun virus up from sipping off the same cup as one of my nieces a few years back. She rode it out like a champ, not me. I felt like I was hit by a train for a couple weeks, as if I had been walking around on Christmas tree needles, with a fever, and a sore throat to boot. My advice, try your hardest to not pick this up by sharing cups, etc., if you know your kid has this. It’s a million times worse to care for a sick kid when you are unwell too.

So what can you do for it?

Sorry to say that I have little good news here. Nothing. Zippo. Just ride it out. It is not any fun for a few days while your poor kid is a puddle of discomfort. We did take Ellie to the doctor to confirm what she had was HFM and to see if there was anything we could do for the discomfort. Ellie’s pediatrician prescribed some anti-fungal cream that we mixed with Vaseline and diaper rash paste to help with her bad diaper rash. This brand (Boudreaux’s Butt Paste) of diaper paste is the only one that worked for us. Other than that, yogurt and other chilled food helped a little with her mouth/throat, but that’s about it.

Lastly, as a PSA, if your family comes down with HFM please keep your kid(s) home until they are no longer contagious, as with any illness. Your pediatrician can tell you when your child is no longer contagious and ready to rejoin the general public. Other parents will thank you immensely for not sharing this super pleasant visitor with their kids.

Be well, friends!

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.

Our First Mother’s Day

In this very special blog post we share what we did for Mother’s Day. Never having been through this, we weren’t sure what to expect. Our husbands and kids really made it special for us.

Karen

It’s actually a rather bizarre feeling to know that this Mother’s Day it was my turn to be celebrated. For my entire life up to this point I have spent Mother’s Day with my mom and the other moms near and dear to me and it feels so strange to be on the other side of the table. It’s like a super secret club I have now earned my membership to. This super secret club even gets a day for which we all get a fancy brunch. I am not one to be a part of the secret club, but if someone mentions “brunch”, I’m in. If I would have known having a kid would get me my very own day with brunch included, I would have had a kid long ago. Kidding, not kidding.

Adventures in Crib Transitions

One week ago we decided it was finally time to move Finn to his crib, meaning for the first time since birth he wouldn’t be in the same room with us! Honestly this was probably overdue (he’s definitely outgrowing his bassinet!) but it’s harder than I thought to actually do it – it’s so nice to just look over and check on him, not to mention how easy it is to pull him into bed and feed him in the middle of the night. Well all that aside, the time had come. We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. What follows is my log of our very long night.

Postpartum Survival Guide

You had a baby! Congratulations! …now what?

Take it easy.

Take a minute and think about what your body just went through. You pushed a kid out of your body or had a c-section! It’s hard to force yourself to slow down and allow time to heal, but do it. I was probably 5 weeks postpartum and got really confident and started trying to go out and about like I did before baby. My body let me know REAL quick that I needed to cool it. I was sore again like I had been weeks before and my bleeding increased (I’d say TMI but whatever, we’re all adults here.). So listen to your body and allow yourself that time on your couch guilt-free.

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.

Welcome!

Hi there! We’re new(ish) moms and when we were going through our pregnancies and new mommyhood we realized no matter how many books we read or googling we did we weren’t prepped for how weird and hard things could be. Morning sickness, weird pains (before and after birth!), breastfeeding, and feeling like we were going crazy – why didn’t anyone talk about this stuff more? Well here we are. Let’s talk about it.

Kristin & Karen

p.s. check out our intro posts here & here!