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November 16, 2013
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the best things – month 2

Product photos of this months best things.

Second month round-up already! These are our favourite things this month.

  1. Medela Symphony breast pump
    A complete lifesaver. Before I had Edie, I didn’t realise that there were other options besides either breast feeding or formula feeding (more on this in a later update I suspect!). When Edie hated feeding, the hospital started me pumping milk for her initially. The goal was to get her breast feeding but when it became apparent that it wasn’t going to come together, we hired this hospital grade pump from the Baby Factory. It’s been amazing. I can double pump enough for 1 bottle (and often more) in about 15 mins.
  2. Fitbit Zip
    I didn’t wear my Fitbit Zip much when my steps started to reduce as I got more and more pregnant. However, this month I used it to help motivate me and it really worked – I walked and/or pushed Edie approximately 200km in November without even realising it most of the time. The steps add up pretty quickly! It’s great to be getting out of the house (I find it much easier to walk with her plcaes than deal with car, car seat and pram) and it has been great to feel like I’m getting fit again.
  3. Philips AVENT Microwave Steam Steriliser
    When we came home from the hospital, we initially used the Karitane steriliser tablets in a large plastic tub of cold water. After a few weeks had passed, a couple of the bottle parts were getting a bit cloudy and we had the head space to get the steriliser out of the box and start using it. It’s been so great to know that we can have anything sterilised and ready for use within a few minutes – especially when I realise that I don’t have all the pump parts clean or something like that. Plus: not having to plunge your hand into a cold tub at 3am rules.
November 4, 2013
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October 28, 2013
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travelling with baby

At 5 weeks old, we had to take Edie with us to her uncle’s wedding. This meant a 1 hour plane ride to Wellington and then a 1 hour drive to Featherston. We started to plan early and with a bit of trepidation – we have travelled a lot and are pretty organised about packing well and minimising unnecessary luggage, but travelling with a baby was a completely new experience.

Organising the flights with Air New Zealand was easy. When I booked, Edie hadn’t been born and their form required an infant’s birth date to book her place on my lap.  I booked the 2 adult seats and then called them to ask about what to do for Edie – we just had to call when she was born and advise the date. It’s recommended that when you travel with little babies you try and book when they would ordinarily sleep but…well… when they haven’t been born yet it’s a bit hard! (At 5 weeks she doesn’t have a set nap time yet either.)

Rental car-wise, I booked with Thrifty because of the AA Member discount (though didn’t book their car seat option because we would take our own). Usually we book a tiny zippy car but I went for a slightly larger zippy car this time knowing we’d have extra cargo.

As it got closer to the time (and we started to have a bit of an idea about what were the must have things for our daily routines with Edie) we started to compile a packing list. The main things I was worried about not remembering for us were our wedding outfits and our iPhone chargers.
Checked in
Edie’s list was much longer: several changes of clothes, several swaddles, scratch mittens, hats, nappies, wipes, nappy cream, nappy bag, capsule, stroller, breast pump, bottles, sanitiser, etc. And were we also going to take her travel cot? I was undecided but we realised she could sleep in her stroller, removing one piece of luggage. It still ended up being one bag for her and one bag for both of us, plus the stroller and the capsule! Luckily Air NZ are great and let parents take a stroller and car seat/capsule as additional baggage without having to pay more – you just have to get help from someone when you are at the check in kiosks to override the payment requirement.

And how did Edie react to the two flights? Like a star. We had been given the advice that either feeding or giving her a dummy would help with equalising her ears – we had both a dummy and bottle on hand – but didn’t even really need them. Edie slept the whole way there and back!

Without going into detail about how the weather interrupted our plans and what happened (though we did make it to the wedding), there are a couple of things which could have been better.

I need to make sure before time that I know where the parent rooms are in the airport. Though they say change tables are available in all female toilets, the one in the most central female toilet was either in an occupied stall with no sign or not present when I went in there. (Not sure why only female toilets too. This is an Equal Opportunity Nappy Changing Family.) 
Air traveller
Even if flying domestically, the prolonged stay in the very busy domestic terminal was pretty average. Could now be worth forking out for a Koru Club membership we think.

Also need to take Louise’s recommendation of creating a ongoing packing lists which then get updated when you get back home (you can also read some of L’s other tips on her blog). I know there were a few things I thought would have been useful the day after the trip but I already can’t quite remember what those were…

Overall, I hope this was just the first of many trips. We’ll see!

October 20, 2013
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youtube, teacher of new parents

So many of the things we’ve needed to learn about recently have been much more easily explained by a video, rather than the limited manuals many come with.

Cases in point: Phil and Ted’s Dot buggy (wherein we found out that we had configured the stroller all wrong for Edie at this age)

Or the Baby Bjorn baby carrier (wherein we discovered that Swedish people always dress in white and khaki).

Go forth and YouTube!

October 16, 2013
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the best things – month 1

Image collage of mentioned products.

In our first month with Edie, we’ve been really pleased we had a couple of things in particular and very much recommend them.

  1. Merino Kids Cocooi swaddle
    I didn’t buy any newborn sized clothes because I figured Edie would be big enough to wear 0-3 sizes and then she was born at 37.5 weeks! She’s long but skinny and everything is just far too big. We were given this swaddle by my mother – the design and stretchiness makes it really easy to both put and to make her comfortable. It’s been so great we bought another two so Edie can always have a clean one if the others are in the wash.
  2. Howie B’s “Music for Babies”
    This is an album that Darren found – apparently made when Howie B had kids of his own. The tracks have a filter over them based on the research he did about the sounds of the womb. Edie loves this and we don’t mind it either – the whole family falls asleep sometimes listening to this on Spotify. (The link is a video made to promote the launch of the album.)
  3. Bach Rescue Remedy
    I’m not a huge believer in natural remedies but this is one that I feel really works. I put the drops into my drink bottle and add another set each time I fill that up – with the drop in hormones and interrupted sleep we’ve had in the last four weeks I think this has been amazing.
October 2, 2013
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the first ten days

First there is the hospital and that passes in a blur.

Then there is the second week and we hit the first weirdness about not working – there are of course the hormones, and the new schedule to adjust to, but the rules of the game have changed. The goal has changed.

What does success mean now? What’s a good day at the office – a marker to show how well we’re performing?

How do you tell what you’ve achieved in a day? Whether it’s been good or bad now depends on such a different set of parameters. You look for patterns of behaviour; try to rationalise inputs and outputs. You muse over tactics and strategies and then of course the midwife blows your list of questions apart with the sage answer: she’s a baby. Doing baby things. On a baby schedule – and this point, not even at her due date yet.

“She’s being a baby.” In other words, go with it. She’s too small for us to do anything else at this stage. We have to try and go with it. Relax…

September 21, 2013
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the beginning (which is, in some ways, more like the end)

I’m 37.5 weeks pregnant with a baby girl, Edith Zoe. I’ve had a great pregnancy (if you don’t count the dreadful 6 weeks of constant nausea and quite a bit of required sleeping). I went to Pilates until 36 weeks when I started to become less mobile and walk a lot. I still have my ankles and the weight gain is all baby. Working until this point hasn’t been an issue.

Yesterday was my last day at work for 5 months. FIVE MONTHS. I haven’t had this much time away from some kind of employment responsibility since I started working at 14. I like working. It is part of my sense of self and identity. I’m lucky to work in an area – and have a job – I love, collaborating with smart people who want to make great things.

At the end of my maternity leave – at this stage – Edie will go to a daycare which is very close to my work. I toured several local places and this one was the only one I’d be happy to go to myself. They have great facilities, a chef, well trained staff and it looks very well set up. A friend’s son goes there and adores it so much he’d rather go there than have a day off with his aunt to go to the zoo.

That should be the end of the conversation, because we have done a lot of research and we have a plan for how to move forward just as we would for any other aspect of our lives. However this is where people (you?) interfere: “But you’re having a baby. Things will have to change!”. “You won’t be back in 5 months. You’ll want to stay at home with your daughter.” “Work is just a job.” “Why have a baby if you’re just going to get someone else to take care of her?” (Or even less friendly ways of saying these things.)

None of these people are my husband, the only person who has a say in how our daughter’s care will be managed by us – her parents.

Of course things will change when we meet our baby! I may want to stay at home with my daughter – or I may continue to feel that she is better taken care of by a professional while I go and be a professional myself. Happy parent, happy child is our current parenting objective – and if it doesn’t play out like we hope, then we’ll change and adapt to do what is best for our family.

In my less emotional moments about this topic – one that I didn’t really expect to have to litigate so frequently – I know that some of this comes down to comparing choices. This is what I’m doing, so this is what I expect you to do. I would feel better if you were doing something more along the lines of what I expect of someone in your situation. This is what we have chosen for our family and what you are talking about doing is different to that.

Pregnancy has been a constant stream of decisions right from the start, from the important to the mundane. Doctor or midwife? Screening? What stroller to buy? Where will the baby sleep? What colour will her room be?

This is no different. It is no less our decision to make than any of the others. The only way forward is for us to be firm about our choices and as equally firm in the knowledge that it is up to us to manage or change what we have decided to do.

September 15, 2013
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working when you’re pregnant

I’m lucky to have a desk job in many ways – and I don’t at all think I would have been able to work almost the length of my pregnancy if I didn’t.

There are the days when you’re feeling sick in the first trimester but still trying to keep it a secret from everyone around you. Darren was insistent that we not tell anyone else (even my boss) until 13 weeks but I confided in one person at work because I knew I could trust her. I had to have someone nearby who understood what was happening if I seemed to be having an off day.

Once the news became public, the often well meaning advice and comments started. I was reminded by how random a collection people you work with can be and also surprised by how many people would tell me horror stories about their own or other situations. They would tell an expectant mother, hardly pregnant, excited but also nervous, about miscarriage, fraught labours with many interventions, chronic allergies and illnesses, never sleeping… some of the tales were outright frightening for a person who is already on a train that isn’t stopping until its destination. I learnt pretty quickly who had only bad stories to tell and started to outright avoid them, even on days when I felt great.

Midway through the second trimester I started to get the second wind I’d been promised. My 24/7 nausea was starting to become a dream and I felt great – almost not even pregnant! This was when I had to start making decisions like how long I’d be taking off, a topic which was wide open with no right path to take. I was sure a year just seemed far too long a stretch and decided to cut it in half to be safe – though I wondered if really 3 months might be enough. Without any real guidance it was hard to know what to do in this situation I’d never been in before – one where everyone’s statement was just that we’re all different.

I hit third trimester still feeling great. I’d only had 1 sick day the entire way through and I figured that while I had them there, it was going to be my goal to remain healthy and make it the whole way through the winter season without any of the bugs which travel through the whole office. The early nights, healthy food, drinking lots of water, hand sanitiser and the multi-vitamin definitely helped – I managed to make it all the way to my last day without sharing anyone’s bugs.

It was only at 35/36 weeks that the downside of my desk job started to present itself. By the end of the day I’d have a sore back, pelvis and/or hips; despite trying to take walking breaks (aided by the bathroom being on the other side of my floor) I really started to feel creaky.

What didn’t help was people at work asking about how tired I was feeling or expecting that I wouldn’t be able to do what I normally would. Apart from needing to swap a few lunch times to attend scans and appointments, I believe I worked at full capacity the full time – and would expect that unless someone isn’t, they should be treated like any other employee until they ask for help.