For the record, something like 75% of women give birth AFTER their due date, which begs the question, why the hell is 40 weeks considered the official date, anyway? I have to say that aside from a swollen foot (which I injured last weekend, mysteriously) I have no major physical complaints so I am not at the point that I hear about so often ("Get out , get out, GET OUT!!") I am actually quite fine to hang out here for a while though turning over in bed is 1) increasingly necessary, every thirty minutes or so; and 2) increasingly difficult and I feel that I have a 20-lb sack of flour attached to me at all times.
Thanks for all your sweet comments on the nursery. Honestly, I was feeling a bit behind the curve with my cast-off furniture and mismatched decor, but I am glad y'all liked the corner crib! It was a very generous hand-me-down from a friend of mine (who has also filled my closet with clothes from 0-18 months, and, provided Speetus is a girl, will probably continue to do so.) I love it, and I hope that Speetus gets some good use out of it. We haven't really determined the final sleeping arrangements: we have a bassinet in our room and one upstairs for naps, plus the crib. I hear that in-room sleeping is best for the first six months but I guess that depends on what kind of sleeper we have. I would have loved a Kanoe but it didn't seem practical for us.
Hey I have a question about bottles/breast pump supplies. I literally have half a closet full of them-- about 30-40 bottles of various brands (Born Free, Avent, Medela) and sizes (with different nipple types); and about 50-60 breast shields & phalanges for the breast pump complete with about 25 little tiny pump bottles and about 50 yards of tubing. What do I really need, because I would like my closet back and I would like to properly clean & store all this stuff before I really need it!
I hate to throw anything away if I might need it, but right now I have a closet full of plastic hell that I avoid as much as I can because the mere sight of all that clutter makes me anxious.
I'm not experienced, obviously, but my friend's baby wouldn't latch on without a nipple shield. She uses one with a tip similar to the bottles she uses so that the baby only has to deal with one type of sucking.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to bottles, we also had a bunch of different types. We picked the ones we liked best and she picked a kind we didn't have at all that a neighbor lent to us. It wasn't a flat refusal to suck, it was more of a "well, she's really fussy after eating. it could be the bottle type (among 20 other things) and since it's easy enough, let's try a different one." followed by "what can we give her that mimics breastfeeding AND fits in this particular baby's mouth?" which got us to the bottles we use now. I'd keep a few different kinds on hand and ready to go and store the rest.
ReplyDeletei felt the same way at the end of my pregnancy, i wasn't quite ready for it to end...
ReplyDeleteas for pumping supplies, i'd start by chucking all of the nipples - it's nice to replace those. i'd keep the different variety bottles until you figure out what speetus likes/will take and maybe just buy one or 2 nipples at a time until you figure out which system you'll use. we used one variety when she was small (breastflow) and then switched to medela later on.
as for pumping pieces - it probably depends on much you will pump. are all of those breast shields different sizes? 'cuz 50-60 is a LOT! if they are, you should probably hold on to them until you figure out which size works for you.
i pump 2x/day at work and like to have clean parts for each pumping session so i dont have to wash anything in our gross break room. so, i need 4 shields, 4 connectors, 4 valves, and 4 bottles (i pump right in to the bottles) per day. since there are some days i dont get everything washed in the evening, i have 8 of everything. that is enough for me and seems to work well.
speaking of - you can probably ditch the tiny pump bottles; you can pump right in to a regular sized bottle.
good luck - i totally get that urge to purge the plastic!! :)
I’m totally behind. Love the room and the crib!
ReplyDeleteWe have tried to put the stinkers in their crib as often as possible but have found that more often than not, they sleep in our bed during the day (V’s feeding/ pumping area is in the corner of our bedroom, and I guess it’s easier just to put them in bed and cover them up than to take them to their room). At night, we try even more to keep them in their cribs, but sometimes they’re just too snugglable and we keep them in our bed. We also discovered that they sleep longer in our bed than they do in their cribs. It will probably be much easier for you to have Speetus in your room b/c when s/he gets hungry in the middle of the night, you can just shove a b00b in his/her mouth (not so easy w/ twins, so V has to get up anyway. But if for some reason only one gets up hungry, she can just give one the b00b and go back to sleep. It’s amazing).
Bottles: you probably will need to wait and see what Speetus likes, since I hear that kids differ (and if a baby is refluxy, it makes a big difference). We bought several kinds, but used Medela in the hospital (that’s the brand of the pump we used in the hospital, also the kind we bought, and the kind the insurance rented for us). The stinkers were totally fine using those bottles, and it is so much easier just to use those than any other. Also, they’re much smaller than some that we had bought, so they take up less room in the cabinets. And they’re easy with only three pieces as opposed to say, Dr. Brown’s, which I think has something like 7 or 8 parts. So it’s less to wash. Definitely start w/ the slow flow nipples b/c even then, they’re not really all that slow flow, and we found our kiddos would choke on them a lot when they were tiny (we had to be very vigilant the first few weeks).
We liked the little tiny pump bottles and still use them a lot. They’re great in the beginning when you’re not pumping very much, and we also still use them to give the babies their trivasol (sp?). We give them maybe an ounce in the little bottle and mix in their vitamin. Then again, we were given about 25 of them in the hospital, so you may be getting new ones. The hospital also gave us an entire pumping set (tubing, phlanges, the whole bit) and one also came w/ the pump we bought, and we also got a new set w/ the pump we rented.
One more piece of advice: don’t skimp on a bottle brush. I picked one up at the everything’s-a-dollar store, thinking that a bottle brush is a bottle brush. Turns out not to be the case. We bought a $7 one at BBB and it was worth every penny.
Thanks for the advice! Adventures- I think Blogger is full of $hit ;-) I got the comment up anyway.
ReplyDeleteThis is all making me feel like I am going to have to keep that goddawful bag of bottles until Speetus can make the call in person >:-( A Schroe with excessive clutter is a very grouchy Schroe indeed! Guess I'll have to let that go and get ready for a slow encroachment of brightly colored plastic cr@p...
Ha, so true about due dates. Why are they even necessary? It's common for some doctors to induce at 40 weeks +1 day now, which to me is jut absurd. I also think it's absurd that they start counting from your period, even for people like us who know exactly when we conceived. My dr's office insisted on using my period, which I though was so strange. It's not like they don't know when I got knocked up. // off soapbox now
ReplyDeleteI say ditch the tiny bottles, hold onto the nipple shields and tubing until you figure out what size works for you. I'll bet you'll want more than one set, so it will be nice to have all those extras. I have been researching pumps, and I hear good things about the plastic bags you use for microwave sanitizing, which might be nice for work if and when you need it.
Oh, and I'm glad that your friends have been so generous, too. I do love that crib. We're thinking maybe a Moses basket and stand for our room? I have a long time left to decide, though, and a lot can happen in the interim. I like that they're portable and I could tote the thing downstairs as well. I like the Kanoe, too, but it's just way too freaking expensive for me. And the less expensive ones are just hideous!
Come out (soon), Speetus!
Wow, I'm glad you're not in the Get out camp yet. I'm there, unfortunately. Not necessarily in the Get out NOW camp but getting close. Maybe you'll have the Speetus on Dec 18th which is my step dad's bday. :) He's one of my favorite people.
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the bottle decisions - we're in the same boat. Lots of bottles and pump parts without any clear direction yet!
We found that we needed way more bottles than we thought we did. Once I went back to work, she was drinking 5-6 bottles a day and I was pumping 5-6 bottles a day, so that's 10-12 a day that are dirty and if you don't do the dishes every single night (not always a possibility) you need another 10-12 for the next day. So that's a minimum of 20-24 bottles.
ReplyDeleteAs for what type are best, both medela and evenflow work with the medela pump. But for drinking, the baby needs wide-mouth since this is more like the breast and minimizes nipple confusion. So we had a set of pumping bottles and a set of drinking bottles.
You may want to keep it all for now and get rid of what you don't like after you go back to work and see how it all goes. Good luck!