Body
BODY
Oh, home renovating! Some of you will read this with a smile, while others will feel an anxiety attack coming on. Whether you love it or can't stand it, making improvements to your home is a part of home-ownership and gives you the opportunity to give your place a fresh look and feel. After buying our first home, something my husband and I learned late in the game is that things like new paint, hardwoods finish and flooring also bring in an uninvited guest: toxic materials. These range from harmful VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in paint to respiratory toxins in wood finish to hormone-disrupting chemicals in carpet backing. Exposure to these materials can lead to short-term and long-term health problems , especially for children whose systems are still developing . Sadly, household materials are not well regulated and are not regulated at all by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). If you and your family are able to plan ahead before executing your home reno, try to choose materials with low or zero toxicity levels . If you already started or finished the work on your house (like we did), there are still ways to foster a non-toxic living space for you and your little ones. Here are some resources to help you avoid toxic materials as you plan your home renovation or eliminate nasty chemicals from your newly remodeled home.
It's the terrible "t" word that upsets your nights and your days and puts you and your little one on edge: teething. I had no idea babies have it so rough as their little teeth painfully poke through their gums, sometimes slowly or other times all at once! I'm so glad we don't remember those achy, tear-filled parts of our childhood. Now, keep in mind that horrible teething pain is not a guarantee with every child. It varies from child to child and depends on factors like how fast they come in, how many home in at once, how distracted they are with other things and what their sleep patterns are like. If you need some tricks to keep up your sleeve just in case the worst happens, look no further! Check out these excellent resources to help your baby deal with teething trouble.
What to take and what to avoid during pregnancy
You may have heard of "Breast is best" out there in the world of baby feeding philosophies. The phrase advocates for exclusively breastfeeding because of the extraordinary nature and components of breastmilk that science can't perfectly replicate. But there's another popular phrase that offers a different perspective: "Fed is best." To be honest, when I first heard it I disagreed with that claim because I was learning about breastmilk and was amazed by its design and sufficiency for my newborn. However, as I learned more and more from my mama friends about their nursing journeys, I started to understand it. Some friends struggled with bad latches and the painful effects of tongue and/or lip ties, which I had never heard of before then and didn't experience with Koda. Others had trouble keeping up a good milk supply because of health, work or other issues. I heard the pain and even shame coming from my friends as they shared these difficulties or even simply their dislike for nursing. I started to understand that a fed baby - from a bottle Mom pumped, from formula or directly from Mom - is indeed better than an underweight baby. Or an upset baby Or a baby in pain. Or a mama in pain. Or a tense, stressful mother-child relationship. And so many other situations mamas experience. I would like to think that my own perseverance and commitment to nurse Koda were the sole things that got me though the first few difficult months before we got into a rhythm, but that's simply not true. A week after Koda was born, we met with our new pediatrician and checked his weight and other levels. She told us he had lost a concerning amount of weight and she was going to test his blood for bilirubin. I later realized that Koda's bad latches were preventing him from getting enough colostrum, which came out in slow drops after a lot of effort. If I hadn't had a 30-minute meeting with an incredible lactation consultant who changed our lives, I might have given up exclusively breastfeeding and pursued other options. (I considered becoming a lactation consultant for a while because of the difference she made!) Suffice it to say that getting in the groove of breastfeeding is tough, whether it's your first baby or your sixth. Sometimes it's hard to even begin learning how to breastfeed and how to get past frustrations and setbacks. It takes lots of practice for mama and baby to figure out what works best for them, and it doesn't stop at the newborn stage - as baby learns and grows, so do we! Here are some of my top resources for getting started with nursing your little one (the videos were especially helpful for me). I hope it can help you find a feeding plan that works for you. You can do this!