Porridge Fingers – fully illustrated for nervous cooks.

This recipe comes from the official Baby-Led Weaning Recipe Book

Age: 6 months plus
Texture: chewy
Ease of hold: good but crumbles easily
Serving: take out of container and hand over.
Extras: would be good for adding fruit purees to

Overall: quick easy breakfast to feed your baby

Sling Slang – a guide to baby carrier terms

We went to our first sling meet when Sprout was just a few weeks old. Mums there had all sorts of slings, and many had more than one, and everyone seemed to know what they were doing, apart from me. I was failing at remembering the names of babies and mums, even before I tried to understand the sling-slang that seemed to make up half of the conversation:

“Stretchy”     “Cushy”     “unicorn”      “DISO”       “permastash”

It was almost overwhelming. But what I failed to realise then was that everyone there had been in the same position once, and probably not very long ago.

First steps to weaning – a dodging tigers guide.

Weaning your baby is a major step for any parent. The difficulty of breast vs bottle seems to fade away when faced with the reality of a finding real food that is healthy, nutritious and that isn’t flatly rejected by your baby.

And that’s before you realise you now have to start bringing food with you everywhere. For those of us who breastfed this is a major revelation! It was much easier just to bring your boobs with you!

From home birth to emergency C-section. My birth story and your choices.

Choosing between home, a midwife led unit or hospital delivery suite…

Giving birth – for most women, it’s the most physically challenging thing you will do. You have spent months nurturing a small person inside you, growing them from the combination of two single cells into a baby. Already this is amazing. Now, you’ve got to get them out. Barring any medical complications, you will have a choice of where to give birth. I started at home, transferred to the midwife led centre and ended up on the medical ward.

10 reasons why babies are like annoying drunken friends…

1. They fall asleep randomly in the most inconvenient locations.

My arm is in agony

Like that friend who just wants to get all deep and meaningful, then cry on you and fall asleep on your shoulder, babies just love a long drawn out complaining session, followed by finally falling asleep and trapping you in position.

The trick is to try and let that take place in a comfortable position as you won’t be able to move for some time.

Product Review: Close Caboo Baby Carrier

Before I was a mum, I never really got why people used baby carriers. “Why don’t they just use a buggy?” I used to think, but I TOTALLY get it now. When you have a baby that is going through a clingy phase and doesn’t want to be put down it can be exhausting and sometimes you just need to get on with things! Also sometimes it’s nice to take her for a walk without having to push the buggy.

Our weaning journey

I had mixed feelings about weaning. After our massive failure to breastfeed, in some ways I was looking forward to it. Weaning puts everyone on an equal level – we all have to do it, and once babies are having solid food the breast or formula issue might seem less somehow. On the other hand, I had managed to try and stuff myself with just too much information from too many sources and somehow felt confused and stressed about the whole thing.

I felt that there was a Big Decision to make. A few, in fact. Do you wait until the government’s recommended age of 6 months? Do you do purees or baby led weaning? All organic and home made or is some ready made food ok? Suddenly, the more I thought about it the more confusing and stressful it felt.

Reflux Remedies – non medical

Like Emily’s baby A, my little boy also suffered from severe reflux in the early days. He was premature (born at 33 weeks) and severe reflux is very common in premmies. Managing it was the main focus of the first few months of his life, and due to his small size and failure to gain weight we went to a medical solution quite early. However this post is about the non-medical solutions we used.

This post is NOT MEDICAL ADVICE, just my experience.

Confessions of a combi-feeder

Before you got pregnant or had your baby I bet you never thought that much about your boobs did you? I know I didn’t beyond a wishful, cursory check every so often that they hadn’t disappeared – though I think my husband would’ve let me know if they had. However once I got that precious, long awaited bfp (big fat positive – positive pregnancy test!) all of the things I’d previously tried to stop myself thinking about came flooding in. What our baby would be like, how we would parent it, what we could call it, how I would give birth and where, whether it really needed so many giraffe based newborn items (answer: yes) and how to feed it.

T.I.C.K.S Rules for Safe Babywearing

 

T.I.C.K.S Rules graphic courtesy of UK Sling Consortium.