Cool Timer

I saw this super cool contraption from one of my good friends while we were both pregnant, she with her first baby, me with my second. I think it’s one of the coolest gadgets any mom could have.

The ITZBEEN is a timer that records your baby’s last diaper change, feeding or nap, and reminds you of your next one. It has a 4th button for anything else you may need a reminder or a timer for.

Its name couldn’t have fit it any better, because it will tell you that “it’s been x hours y minutes since your last ___.” It’s a great thing to have, considering how many other things I have to think about and remember. Too bad I didn’t get to think about this first. This I highly recommend.

Signing Time

*Another old entry that sat in draft mode for over a month.

11.10.2008
Since my baby was 6 months old, we’ve been teaching him baby sign language. It’s not exactly a special set of signs, just some words from the American Sign Language (ASL) that we use in our routine such as milk, eat, food, water, cracker, shoes, and a lot of other words that will be helpful for our baby to communicate with us.

We bought Baby Signing Time volumes 1 and 2 and he watches them after lunch every single day that we’re home. It’s been part of his routine since then. We love how its cute animation and adorable babies signing with Rachel, the teacher, make him really pay attention (and how it allows me to eat my lunch while he’s watching signing time!).

He hasn’t started signing back to us, but a few weeks after we’ve used it as we talk to him, he’s been responding to some of them already. When I sign milk and he DOES want milk, he flaps his arms up and down and gets so excited – so I offer milk and he is content.

We are so excited for the day he makes his first sign – I read that most babies start signing at around 9-12 months. That’s a few weeks away!

If you’re interested in learning more about baby sign language, here’s a couple links I found that has other words not in both volumes of Baby Signing Time DVD.

http://babystrology.com/baby-learning/baby-sign-language/dictionary/cold.html
http://www.signwithme.com/002_browse_signs.asp


Happy Signing!

My Happy Baby

Thanks to Zoe, one of my mommy co-workers, for giving me this book by Dr. Karp, “Happiest Baby on the Block.”

Its premise is quite simple – your baby isn’t ready for the world when he is born, so he should be transitioned very gently by recreating the environment he was used to now that he is outside the womb.

Therefore, the 5S’s: swaddling, side-position, swinging, shushing, sucking – in that order. It explains the reasons why these seemingly random things work to turn on baby’s “calming reflex.”

I was excited to read it from cover to cover, especially when I saw the DVD in both newborn baby care and prepared childbirth classes. It’s amazing how my baby reacted to the loud shushing direct to his ear, knowing how incredibly annoying we as adults find it to be – but it does work. I swear by it.

I highly recommend this to all new parents to help you keep yourselves from pulling your hair out when baby just won’t quiet down. Learning these techniques didn’t just calm our baby – it calmed us, too.

Coping with 9th Month Pregnancy Woes

Even before my last month of pregnancy, I was tired of being pregnant. I wondered why people calculated pregnancy as 9 months, when I had to be pregnant for 40 weeks. Each time I had to run to the bathroom for the 709th time, or I had to assist my belly to change positions in bed, or I had to ask Nino put on my socks in the morning, I told myself that there’s a light at the end of this long-a*s tunnel. Baby was bound to leave my belly SOMETIME. This too shall pass, and our darling boy will soon be in my arms.

But while I was in that tunnel, I had to learn to cope with the pains and discomforts of the last month of pregnancy. These below, together with a very supportive husband, co-workers and friends, helped make the longest month of pregnancy a little more bearable.

Sleeping
Being limited to sleeping on my left side for most of the night, there was little I can do to help me sleep soundly, if at all. I tried sleeping on the couch one night, because I always ended up crashing there when we watched TV. It didn’t work – my back felt worse and hubby Nino and I (yes, Nino stayed with me in the living room) had to go back up to bed in the middle of the night. However, I did discover one way that finally let me sleep: one pillow for my head, one pillow between my knees, a tiny pillow below my belly and Nino behind me to support my weight. It worked perfectly. Oh dreamland, we meet again.

Swelling
Even with avoiding lots of sodium (that meant no instant noodles or frozen dinners that contain LOADS of sodium and don’t help with the swelling at all) and drinking over a liter of water a day, I couldn’t escape edema. My feet were so swollen, they fit only into 3 pairs of shoes – all FLATS and not very stylish, which, along with my huge belly, put a limit on my wardrobe choices. My rings didn’t fit my stubby fingers anymore, so I wore them in a chain on my neck instead - at least it made them closer to my heart. Just think of swelling as a good excuse to buy new shoes (and to ask your partner for a foot rub at night).

Stretch marks
I lathered Cocoa Butter from The Body Shop all over my belly, back, butt and thighs because so many people swore by it, just like I did. Until flippin’ stretch marks crept on me in my 36th week. My skin looked great up to that point, so I didn’t consider that stretch marks could appear 2 weeks before I gave birth. At least I lasted 8 and 1/2 months without it.

Other helpful things
The Bella Band. I bought this tube-top-like garment to wear over my pre-pregnancy jeans to hold up my pants because I wore them undone. I stalled for as long as I can until maybe around my 7th month when I finally gave in to wearing maternity pants. But even with those, I wore my trusty band (or bands – I bought 2 in different colors) to support my growing belly and to give a layer-effect under shorter pre-pregnancy clothes to make my outfits work.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The 3rd edition isn’t as updated as I hoped it to be, but together with the rest of my resources, it was good enough.

www.babycenter.com – this site sends weekly updates of baby’s development and what you can expect to feel at every stage of the pregnancy, and even goes on even when baby is finally born. It has so much info, I spent days just reading on this website. The forums also made me feel better knowing I wasn’t alone, calming my fears and reminding me that millions of women have gone through this, too, some with even much worse experiences. I knew I’ll be fine.