Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Me vs. the crib.. I WIN


When Anna was little she was a big spitter, puker, pooper. Pretty much if it could make a mess, she did it. This meant that I was changing her crib sheet almost daily. I found this to be a rather time consuming pain in the butt task. Anna had 1 bumper pad across the back (to prevent soother loss) and a skirt under the mattress. lifting the mattress out to change the sheet, meant undoing the bumper pad and messing up the skirt, then I had to wrestle the mattress till the crib sheet fit and put everything back together. talk about breaking a sweat!

Then one day I was reading my monthly todays parent and I saw a product that I thought would make my life easier. I hummed and hawed as it was a bit expensive but ultimately I went ahead.

I ordered the Quickzip crib sheets! from a website called cloudsandstars.com.

This is a sheet set where you put the sheet on the mattress what seem upside down and the top of the sheet zips off for easy changing and washing. then you only actually need to remove the crib mattress once in a blue moon to wash the base as the baby doesn't contact it.

This product has made my life so much easier and baby Max gets his sheet changed a bit more frequently than baby Anna did. Oh well, she turned out fine :)

the only downfall is that to have it shipped to canada is highway robbery!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Got Milk?


I am now on week 3 of life with my second child. Week 3 of sleepless nights and endless breastfeeding. As with my first child, I have no shortage of milk. I often soak through breastpads, spray my child in the face and face painful engorgement if I miss a feed. I have been trying to pump as little as possible so as to not trick my body into thinking it needs to create more milk than I really need. Enter this pretty cool invention which I assume was created by a mom like me.

Milkies - Milk Saver!. I purchased it from the Extraordinary Baby Shoppe for $34.99.

This neat contraption sits in your bra over the breast you are not using during a feed. your nipple sits in the hole and all the leakage during let down is collected. Believe it or not, I collect on average 1-1.5 oz of milk each time.

The downfall I have discovered is that this may only be collecting foremilk and not the fatty hindmilk. So be sure to mix it with some pumped stuff before feeding.

However, even if you don't save the collected milk you will save on breastpads!