shmontel

bottles vs boobs

Any of u ladies bought these bottles for your LO?

The First Years Breastflow bottle

Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature easi-vent bottle

I need reviews, please :*

I saw these bottles at a babyshop recently, thought of trying them out as baby dJ recently started to reject feeding thru bottles! *argh*. She used to drink from Medela’s bottle/teat, but i couldn’t find any shop selling this bottle anymore, and she didn’t like Avent & Pureen’s wide neck bottle teat. omg, i’m freaking out. Help!

Reality of cloth diapering a newborn

10 notes of a first timer cloth-diapering a newborn with v.e.r.y..f.e.w modern cloth diapers and dozens of traditional lampin (muslin squares) ;)

1. Your granny’s-time lampin (muslin squares) for the win!

Easy drying, not bulky & cheap. Go buy 3dozens! if you think that’s too many, you can always use it as burp cloth, wiping here & there…. it’s mulitpurpose! Oh and *standing ovation* for the inventor of nappy fastener/snappi. Can’t imagine mommies used to poke sharp baby (safety) pins so near to the delicate baby skin!

2. I heart Thirsties Duo Wrap <3

The best diaper cover over a lampin/fitted cd for a newborn, eva!! fullstop. Never had any leakage even after a fatal explosion inside there. A trim fit all the time!

3. Go for hook&loop (like velcro) cds.

Believe me, it’ll save you LOTsa time. It is easier to zap-unzapping the velcro then snap-unsnapping buttons when your baby is wailing miserably while you’re changing her (Hmmm…if only the Rumparooz cd i got was the pattern aplix type. oh well. love ya anyways Tiny Tapir! :P)

4. Everybody wants to poo in a clean toilet.

The lampin is a winner coz you have so many of it you won’t feel like you’re going to run out of diaper at the end of the day, but if you do, it’ll only take half a day to line dry it after you wash it the next morning. Therefore, you won’t be pulling your already falling hair everytime your baby poops just after you change her into a clean nappy.

5. Saving money by choosing one-sized doesn’t necessarily save your sanity.

So we blame the cd for it’s bulkiness. I did pre-test a one-size cd on my 2.5y.o. and the cd wass too small for her (& yeah, my 2.5y.o. is not even near to be potty trained, her choice *sigh*). Most one-sized won’t do justice to your (then) petite baby and your not-yet-toilet-trained preschooler. Choose fitted! It fits nicely on your baby (when you buy according to her size la of course). I so love the trim of Thirties Fab Fitted Size S on my shmontelness 2.5m.o.! (she started wearing it from when she was 1m.o.)

6. Since you have so much moolah & bought those imported cds, why not buy a dryer as well?

Coz it’s not ‘green’ using a dryer? Then don’t blame the rainy weather! I did say lampin’s a winner, didn’t i? Half a day dah kering dahh….
Btw, the easy peasy “just toss the cds in the wm” only works if you have like two dozens of cds?= which i don’t. Boohoo.

7. Do not afraid to soak

So i soak the lampins…..as well as the modern cd! Sorry peeps, the dry-pail system only works for me from morning till evening- i can’t stand the idea of letting the poop and poop stain set on those pristine white cloth for 48hours. Everytime i take my evening shower, i would start rinsing the cds and soak them overnight so that when i wake up the next day, there will be no more stain on the cds (or very minimal) & i’ll just have to rinse them & they are ready to be hang to dry under the sun. *Weee!*

8. Newborn/breastfedbaby poop stain are like permanent marker.

I realized it’s utterly difficult to remove poop stain from some of the cds, like the GroBaby soaker. O.M.G…. tensionzz ok. GroBaby is the only brand that i bought more than 1 set of cd & unfortunately it sucks during cleaning time *grr*. Is it because it’s made of cotton? It iS harder to remove stain from the lampin too, but i think because the lampin cloth is (much more) thinner, it’s easier for the stain to break off and when i dry it out under the bleaching sun, it would look white and clean again. All my OS cds and (my fav) Thirsties Fab Fitted are so super-easy to clean!!! I loike. Eh, but the os inserts are difficult to clean„ *haihh**. so does this means my next step would be buying only fitted diapers (which are easiest to clean)? hmmmph…

9. Take it easy!!!

I find most mommies that are ‘experimenting’ cloth diapering their babies for the first time treat cloth-diapering like breastfeeding. Like “your baby MUST absolutely be exclusively breastfed for the first 6 months or she will die, die, dieeeee…!!!” *insert evil laugh here muahahahaha*. Hehe, a bit overreacting there, but i must say it’s true.. the mom-hormones sometime can give you the unnecessarily guilt/sense of failure when you couldn’t do something to the level that you had planned to. My advice (ecececece..): Start cd-ing according to your convenience. As far as i can remember baby dJ wasn’t on cd during her 1st week— super duper hectic week i tell ya, didn’t bother to think about cd bla bla bla! Then the whole confinement period, she was on cd during daytime, and wearing dispos at night. Now she’s fully on cd at home all day long, only using dispos for outings! Yay!

10. Go Green.

Spread the green message. I really do think that cloth diapering is more of us being kind to mother nature, and newborns do use the most diapers in a day! I think this is the stage which actually most crucial to go cloth…,no? *wink*

**This entry was inspired by [this article]

Keeping the production up

*Geeezz* i donno how u SAHMs can manage to blog (frequently summore), coz i totally cannot mengadap my lappie for merely a minute! (my elder dotter baru kena hangin dgn mama dia coz she kept pressing the power button, and the littlest one is sleeping soundly in the sling right now. And that’s how i manage to create this entry *phew*)

A friend texted me last week asking my opinion on buying a new breastpump. Of course i *pungpangpungpang* on FS hehe, but a few days later she texted me again. She did some homework, and came across a blog that the mommy (using FS) managed to stock up 200 packets of bm! *terrer*terrer* (suspen dgr sebenarnya) coz right now, i only manage to express a packet of between 2.5oz-3.5oz bm a day. 40th confinement day today, 40 packets of bm in freezer. Hmm, regret a bit that i didn’t religiously pump during the first 2 weeks, as my production was crazy 5oz everytime that time, and now it has settled to an average 3oz each session, i guess that’s dj’s intake every meal time.

Anyway, i foresee that expressing would be more stressful during office hours (going back to work in few weeks time *yikes*), so i’m listing out some bmilk-inducing food/drinks for future reference, compiled from readings from other blogs/books. I welcome more input on this from y’all. Only food ok! (tahu nk mkn saje skarang ni, hehe):

1. Fenugreek/halba (Very famous bmilk-inducing herb. Ppl took it in tablet form)
2. Milo/Horlicks (i’m drinking milo like drinking plain water during this confinement period, seriously. i’m hungry almost every second! And anything chocalatey is my fav :))
3. Barley
4. Milk
5. Oats
6. Yogurt
7. Lobak putih
8. Air mata kucing
9. Air longan
10. Sardine
11. Soya bean
12. Betik muda (ke pucuk betik??)
13. Habatus sauda
14. Kucai
15. Jantung Pisang
16. Sawi
17. Spinach / bayam
18. Dates / kurma
19. Water chestnut / sengkuang cina
20. Longan + kurma
21. And this is special…found this at JJ myself. Hot choc with fenugreek. Sedappp sgt!! Suppose to be diabetic drink, but since it contains fenugreek (and most importantly, it’s CHOCOLATE) so i guess it must be bmilk inducing too. i’m adding this to my list definitely! ;)

Pretty nursing tops, i want!

I was experimenting NIP (nursing in public) during a follow-up appointment with the paed for baby dJ’s jaundice recently. Supposedly i was all geared up (for NIP) as it was the day that i first wear a nursing top, but unfortunately the layering of the clothes was tersangatlah hampeh! (read: the inner layer was suppose to cover the chest/cleavage, but it didn’t. And Mr.Daddy attempt to be positive wasn’t helping— “I think it was meant to be a ‘feature’” he said. yeah right?!)

Anyway, thanks to my favourite tudung awning, i did manage to avoid unnecessary skin exposure thus i consider my first attempt of nursing discreetly in public (at the hospital’s aisle :P) …  a success! *clap*clap*

Now, this ‘success’ really make me want to have more nursing tops! New year, new clothes! Why not eh? Found several tops that i like from a few online shops but, but, BUT, none are sold here *huhu*. Shipping cost are more than the price of the clothes itself, what the eff?! Oh i really wish there are more pretty nursing clothes sold here, considering more Malaysian mommies are breastfeeding now, true??!! *raise hands!*

Start drooling:

I like these pretty hoodie and pristine white top with neckline access. I believe neckline access is the most common nursing system for nursing clothes. Too bad, the inner layer may not necessarily modestly cover the chest as what you can see here.

I loveeeee these tops!!! Embroidered teal top and checkered red top. The checkered top looks very the covering the aurah *5-stars* and stylish summore. I want!! Both these tops are using the empire access. Interesting! However, i feel that it would be more practical if they’re worn with nursing bra that have the opening clasp at the bra/empire line, so that the action of unclasping prior to nursing won’t be so obvious. Are there such bra in the market already?

—Btw, in case you’ve been wondering wth is nursing system/opening, here’s a graphic explaination of the clothes’ access for breastfeeding.

Can’t wait to go to shopping complexes again! Care to share with me shops in KL that sell nursing tops? Pls pls.. *Q*

Introducing shmontel#2!

Thanx to all of you for the well wishes & doa! *muaahsss*!! (Thanx to mr.Daddy for breaking this great news at shmontel.com, heh). I’m so excited and preoccupied at the moment attending my lil newborn and the super loving kakak, so excuse me for the lack of lenghty birth story that i am so much want to tell everybodehh (which is an ‘almost’ perfect au naturale delivery i-am-so-proud-of-myself!! tapi xboleh celen birth story shida & farrah la yg got their labour cue naturally..hehe).

This lil shmontel #2 (with the same pipi dabuh sh-montel-ness as big sis) is named Khadeeja. I prolly refer her as baby dJ on the blog after this— for typing purpose je lah plus it kinda look cool muahaha but we called her Khadeeja still (kho-dee-jah «< kena sebut betul2 or my mom will nag us on correct makhraj (Arabic letters pronounciation) *yada*yada*yada* ;)). Born 11 December 2009 at 2.56pm, she weight a whopping 3.21 kg at birth (did i mention that i can’t believe that i had a painkiller-less labour? *ohshutupMye!*), with 52cm at length and 33cm HC (perlu ke detail ni semua? haha).

Unlike kakak Sarah, baby dJ is a soprano! No need for the doc/nurse to ‘pat’ her back once out of mama’s vajayjay tummy, and she doesn’t give any warning when she’s hungry. No “mama, i’m kinda hungry, can you make my milk please?”, it’s directly “i’m hungrehhh!!” kind of shriekkkk-screammm-cry! Even the nurses at the nursery where she was hospitalised for the past 2 nites because of jaundice said that baby dJ would really show her dissatisfaction when her tummy wasn’t full yet. Luckily i gave enough bm stock for her stay there…thanx to Freestyle babeh! *wink*

I already started cloth diapering her. Sikit-sikit la. Using the muslin squares, my folding of the lampin is quite serabai but who cares when i have yummy Thirsties and Grobaby as the diaper cover, rite? *Ahaks*.  On babywearing - have tried carrying her in a pouch, but a bit tricky coz pouch sling is fitted so a bit difficult inserting this fragile lil shmontel in the tight pocket plus this milking boobies is blocking the wayyy la haiyaa! I’m waiting for my ring sling to arrive, am so looking forward to try rs-ing pulak! *suka*suka*.

So, that’s about it for introduction yah. With current condition, looks like i’ll be tweeting more (from the phone), but i’ll be coming here for sure if i have more than 140 characters to write! See ya!