Lessons on Loss

This week, our post is a heavy topic we feel necessary to bring to light, albeit heartbreaking. A friend of the Where’s My Epidural moms has been gracious enough to share her miscarriage story. This, as we all can understand, is an extremely sensitive topic and for that reason our friend will remain anonymous. If you have ever or do ever face this and need assistance, the Pregnancy and Postpartum Support website might be helpful. This resource is specifically for Minnesota, if you reside elsewhere, check online to see if there is another support group.

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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

Cravings

This week, Karen and Kristin discuss their experiences with cravings. Most people will tell you that cravings are just this cute little part of their pregnancy that they and all their gal-pals chuckled about as they sip their tea, pinky finger up. Ha. It actually looked more like this (sorry Kris and Zach):

What should I pack in my hospital bag?!

At some point during your pregnancy, this becomes a frantic thought that spins around and around in your head. If you’re anything like Karen, you may be anticipating being in the hospital for the next several months and pack your entire house. Ok, so that was a little tongue-in-cheek (not really, just ask Zach), Karen really did pack far too much. Kristin was much more mindful of what was necessary while in the hospital, mostly because she obsessively read recommendations on what to bring.

Read on for our own recommendations – and let us know if we forgot anything you think is essential!

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

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

Things We Like: Pregnancy Edition

We all know there are about a billion pregnancy products that boast that they are an absolute necessity. Some totally are (here’s looking at you prenatal vitamins), however there are a lot of products that are not awesome and definitely not worth the money (maybe we’ll write a future post on products that just are not worth it, but for now, you should definitely race to the store to buy this). Here is a list of things we could not live without during our pregnancies. And don’t worry, we will be writing future posts highlighting the products we loved after our babies arrived. *Note: pricing listed is what we could find as of today, don’t let that stop you from hunting around for hot deals if you can!

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.

Karen’s Picks

Leachco Snoogle Body Pillow – $59.99

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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?

Morning Sickness (spoiler alert: it’s terrible)

A few days before I found out I was pregnant I threw up after dinner. It was the first time in years that I had gotten sick, so I thought it was super weird. Little did I know how much that was going to become a daily part of my life in the next few months.

My first eightish weeks of pregnancy were pretty uneventful. I felt a little tired but nothing crazy. Then all of a sudden everything made me sick to my stomach, and then everything made me barf. Awesome. It became necessary for me to know where the closest bathroom or garbage can was at all times – oh yeah, because “morning sickness” is the worst name for how I felt. I was getting sick probably 4-5 times a day, all day. At work I kept mints and a sleeve of saltines open at my desk in hopes that I could put off my nausea a little longer before having to hit the bathroom again. At home I sat in front of the blandest meals Kris could think of and pathetically ate two or three bites. I puked outside walking to my car, pulled over on my way home and puked on the side of the road, you name it.

My best friends for most of my pregnancy

Ellie’s Birth Story

I found out that I was pregnant in mid-September 2016. I could not wait to tell Zach. I took two pregnancy tests and did the first thing anyone does in this situation. I ran to Target and bought a box of Star Wars Lego and a box of fairy Lego. You see, I am married to an engineer who has a very large Lego collection – this was my version of pink and blue onesies to announce the pregnancy to my partner. Next, was announcing the pregnancy to our families. We’re Harry Potter fans as you can see from the picture below. Ellie’s name in utero was Dobby, we REALLY like Harry Potter. Here are our dogs letting the world know of our news.

Finn’s Birth Story

My due date was October 18th and that came and went very uneventfully. At my 40 week appointment with my OB we talked about scheduling an induction, and since I was definitely ready to be done being pregnant (oh, and meet this baby of course…) I agreed. We were scheduled for October 25th at 11am, and no surprise I couldn’t sleep the night before. Around midnight I realized I was cramping pretty regularly…”oh shit, I guess these are contractions!” Not convinced this was the real thing I stayed in bed for about an hour before getting up to fill up my water bottle in the kitchen and whoops! My water broke! (This is the thing I was told and read many times would not actually happen until I went into the hospital, but I guess I’m special that way)