I first discovered Baltic Amber teething accessories when Mr Moo was a few weeks old, I had seen it in on a friends child and at a picnic at the University Parks I asked her if it worked… After a good chat about how she felt I decided to do a bit of reading and find out what it was about.

Baltic Amber is a resin. When the resin is warmed up by your body it releases natural oils containing succinic acid into the skin. Succinic acid is natures Ibuprofen. It has been used in Europe for thousands of years to ease pain and inflammation. In recent years it has made its way back into popularity as a natural teething aid.

I trawled the internet for a while to find someone in the UK that sold them, but at the time a lot of places had removed them from sale until they were safety tested. So to eBay I went and found a place to buy them. I imported them from Lithuania.

Mr Moo has been wearing his necklaces (I bought a few) since he was two months old and we have had a surprisingly easy time with teething. There is a peak in his teething process where he is incredibly huggy and cries a lot, I’ve found a single 2.5ml dose of Calpol and some cuddles when this peak hits will knock him out and he will sleep through the worst of it, even then he doesn’t seem to suffer as much as some babies I’ve seen. He will still sleep through the night and it only seems to upset him when he’s tired (hence the knocking out with Calpol).

So far we have bottom two front teeth (these came through together), top two front teeth and an incisor (these all came together too!). I currently don’t believe anyone when they say teething is a nightmare because Mr Moo sails through it…
…is this the Amber working it’s magic? I’d like to think so, I put a lot of faith into natural healing and am now considering getting a bracelet/anklet for myself… Alex has said he’s not sure but if it doesn’t work at least it looks cool…(Men eh?!)

I highly recommend spending money on a teething necklace/anklet before considering any form of medication… I have been offered granules to try and Dentinox but they’re still in the medicine box untouched…Amber and a bit of Calpol has worked wonders! Even with the molar that’s attempting to surface…

My top tips are;

• Ensure the amber is BALTIC AMBER
• Make sure each bead is individually tied off so if the necklace breaks you don’t end up with a massive choking hazard
• If you buy a necklace wrap it around their ankle at night under a sleepsuit
• Take it off at bath time so you don’t weaken the thread or coat the resin in chemicals from bath products
• Buy a few, they’re incredibly pretty and will last a long time!! Also I have a habit of taking one-off at bath time and forgetting where I put it!! (Oops!)
• Give it time, it will take a few weeks to notice a difference, patience is key.
• Always give your child the lowest dose of Calpol possible so they don’t build up a resistance to it and only give if ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. I’ve taken so much paracetamol in my life that I have a resistance to it and only prescription painkillers work. I avoid taking them if possible and usually only take them if my wheat pad, a hot bath, a glass of water, or a rest doesn’t fix it.

Hope this helps? Tata for now!

Our decision to use cloth nappies was led by Alex. When I was pregnant he told me that he would be happier if we used cloth over ‘sposies as that’s what his mum did. Admittedly when he said cloth nappies my mind instantly went to terry cloth and safety pins… So we looked into it and did our research.

I was very surprised to see the advances in cloth nappies. Terry squares are still around and going strong, safety pins have been upstaged by “nappy nippas” but there are so many “new” types of nappy. They now come as a proper formed nappy that you can buy as an all in one, stuff with absorbent fillers, line with fleece…They can be made of PUL and suedecloth or bamboo cotton with a separate waterproof outer!! I was amazed and suddenly became very daunted and confused!

My reading went on for weeks! I was trying so hard to make sense of what was what and what worked best for most people, it was exhausting. Especially as I was researching wraps and slings at the same time. After many headaches and looking at pictures of nappies, instructions on how to use them and coming no closer to a final decision…TADA!!… someone was getting rid of 16 cloth nappies on Freecycle!!! I couldn’t believe it after seeing that a starter kit in some brands were £250+, so we luckily ended up with 16 pre-loved BumGenius Birth to Potty! I was so happy that we finally had some cloth that I could figure out and hopefully end up using on Mr Moo when he arrived. I learnt how to use them by trying them on one of my poor teddy bears!! They were washed and put away in a box awaiting the arrival of our squishy boy. I needed more though and bought 7 pre-loved on eBay for £30. So I have 24 nappies in total.

We didn’t start using them on Mr Moo until he was 8 weeks old. I was scared of using them and in the end we just decided to jump in head first after a nasty bought of nappy rash. We took six Nappies with us to my Nan’s house for a family gathering and we all learnt how to use them together. 24 weeks later, we are now in love with cloth!! They are easy to use, easy to wash and has saved us a fortune on disposable nappies!

The maths:
I have 24 clot nappies… I wash a load every 2 days (containing around 12 nappies) meaning we can use around 6 nappies a day. If I were using disposables I would probably using around 8 nappies a day as they are nowhere near as absorbent as my cloth. (I use disposables in emergencies..i.e. I’ve run out of cloth on a day trip because I underestimated how long we’d be out for.) A normal starter set of 20 nappies is between £200 and £320 depending on the retailer. I’m going to use £295 as my base price… you will also need two mesh bags for your dry pail and a wet bag to keep in your changing bag. My nappies came with mesh bags and I use a cheap plastic bin with a twist lock lid as my dry pail. I think my bin was £2 and my wetbag was £5. So if I had bought my nappies I’m now up to a total of £302.

A wash load doesn’t cost me too much as I have an eco-friendly washing machine and only use the Eco settings on it so I’m going to ignore that. It is also impossible to work out the cost of a wash load…

However at 8 nappies a day I would need 56 disposables a week… pack of 60 Pampers simply dry is £7.99. So times that by 52 weeks is £415.48 Times that by 2.5 (average age of potty training) = £1038.70 spent on disposables… Whereas a set of cloth birth to potty nappies can cost £302 and last multiple children!!!

The other benefits that I have noticed is no nappy rash, less leakages, and a better nights sleep. So all in all cloth has worked out to be pretty amazing for us. I highly recommend that you look into it. It is an expensive outlay but when people spend £500+ on a pushchair, I don’t see why can’t they spend £300 on nappies? It will benefit your bank balance and your baby’s bottom and skin health in the long run. I will definitely be buying a few more when we have a second baby in cloth!

That’s it for now!

Lynne x

I have always said, before I ever found out I was pregnant, that I would breastfeed my child because it is what’s best for them. It is natural and beautiful and every child, man or beast deserves mothers milk. It didn’t work out that way for us though…

As you know I was rushed into surgery after Mr Moo’s birth, I was told I would have a spinal block and return in twenty minutes and hopefully be able to try feeding. This didn’t happen… I was gone for 3 hours and the midwives asked Alex what he wanted to do. Luckily we had talked about what to do if I couldn’t breastfeed and he ended up giving Mr Moo formula for his first feed.

Once I was conscious and able to lift Mr Moo, I asked a midwife to help me figure out the basics of breastfeeding. I was manhandled and getting stressed with the midwife and Mr Moo kept screaming and getting stressed. After a few minutes I asked her to stop and find another way I could give him my milk. I ended up expressing into a syringe and feeding a few ml mixed with a bit of formula whenever he was hungry.  Still with every feed I attempted to feed but he wouldn’t latch no matter what the position was and I kept getting wound up and wanting to scream at all the helpful hands who just weren’t fixing my issue.

On day 3 my milk came in properly, I kept trying to get him to latch but it just wasn’t working. In the end I expressed as much as I could to feed him and kept topping it up with formula, I just couldn’t get a good enough flow and he just seemed upset every time we tried to breastfeed. I was at my wits end and I had no idea what to do. My depression and BPD were starting to kick in and I felt inadequate. Why couldn’t we do it? Why did we seem to be so incompatible? Am I being a bad mum by not being able to breastfeed?

In the whole of our time trying to breastfeed he latched twice for ten minutes and wouldn’t do it again. I gave in and after hand expressing for a couple of days I spent £95 on an electric breast pump and expressed every few hours. I got what I could and topped it up with the daemon that was formula milk. I felt defeated… I said so to my GP and she responded that I’m not the only woman to not be able to breastfeed and what I was doing wasn’t wrong. She admired my perseverance and offered me advice and help. We still couldn’t do it though…he wouldn’t latch and I kept getting upset. In the end, for the sake of my mental health, I stopped trying after 6 weeks and kept expressing until my milk dried up at 14 weeks, mixing a small amount in with his formula until it ran out…My dreams of breastfeeding were over and I had to give in to formula. Formula on demand isn’t easy but it is do-able. I found that making smaller bottles more often was easier than making a larger feed and letting it go to waste.

I am happy that I persevered and that I didn’t give in to formula straight away, he had the important colostrum, he had breast milk…maybe not in the most conventional way but he still had it. I did all I could, I went to classes, I asked my GP for help, I asked midwives to help me, I asked friends for advice, I read books and forums for tips… I believe I tried almost everything. Hopefully I will be more successful when we have a second child.

I think the main thing to remember is, you’re not a bad Mum if you can’t breastfeed and don’t be afraid to take all the help you can get. I have now found out about donor milk and feeding experts that will come to your home. I’m hoping I will succeed next time, but if not…I’ll try those options. Also…Formula milk isn’t awful. Make sure that if you do decide to use it as your feeding option that you research and chose the one that has the best nutritional values for your child. Don’t just make your decision based on what so-and-so did.

Bye for now xx

Bringing Mr Moo home was amazing. I’d spent days in hospital following the birth because I was severely unwell, I had protested to the midwives and my consultant daily. I know they were being perfectly reasonable but I just wanted to be home with Alex and start our new life with our gorgeous newborn… I was being selfish!

Finally we were told we could go… With a car load of drugs… I was sent home on the condition that Alex kept on top of my medication and if I had any problems I came straight back to hospital. I was incredibly weak, recovering from birth, a blood transfusion, and a near death experience. I was only just regaining colour in my lips and was under strict instructions not to lift anything heavier than Mr Moo and to avoid unnecessary trips upstairs.

All I could think of? … YEY! HOME! BABY SNUGGLES! KITTY CUDDLES! MY BED! MY SHOWER! BABY SNUGGLES! 3 WEEKS WITH ALEX! YEY!! HOME!!… Followed by… Crap, Alex has to inject me daily and I have to have a nurse/midwife visit every morning… BUT YEY! HOME WITH BABY!!

It’s not until you get home with baby that it suddenly dawns on you that there is this little life that you have to mould and shape into a decent human being. I was still drugged, in incredible amounts of pain, dumbfounded, and shocked by this little person I was now responsible for. What kind of parent am I? What will I do when he wakes up and starts crying? How will I know what he wants?

Somehow I just knew… I don’t know how, it’s like giving birth flicked a switch in my head and I automatically became “Mum”.

We started off with disposable nappies, formula milk, expressed breast milk, visitors doing chores or cooking meals because I was still sick, and I had to have help with everything… I mean everything, some days I couldn’t even go to the bathroom on my own. It wasn’t until Mr Moo was 5 weeks old that I realised I was on my own… Alex went back to work and Mum had left to go home… I had to look after this tiny person on my own… Luckily, he was an easy newborn. I did everything on demand. Whenever his needs were met I found time to do something for myself… After he had a bottle, I had a snack. He slept? I slept. It was easier than I expected and overnight I stopped being afraid of this tiny, fragile little person and just doted on him. I did everything he needed me to do and rarely put him down, he slept in my arms during the day and either on my chest or in the moses basket at night. It was this attachment and need to be close to him that made my mind up about close/natural/attachment parenting.

I now knew the parents we should be.

So far it’s working really well. Mr Moo is such a happy and healthy baby and I’m always asked what I do to make him so content. My health has become so much better because I’ve stopped listening to nay sayers and am doing what works for us. It helps that Alex is such an amazing, hands on Dad and a massively supportive partner. xxxx

Tata for now!

xxx

Our relationship is a brilliant love story. Boy meets girl, boy and girl suppress feelings for years, boy and girl finally get together and start their life where they think it should be rather than at the beginning because they wasted too much time just being friends!!! Y’know…the classic…oh wait… maybe that’s just us??

We found out I was pregnant on 30th September 2011. I am one of those women who is incredibly sensitive to hormone and mood changes, so I knew I was pregnant before I even took the test. Alex found out by coming home to me waiting on our doorstep and getting in his car before he had time to protest. We drove around the Oxfordshire countryside for a bit before I told him and he pulled over, hugged me and cried. I had never seen him so happy!

Our happiness didn’t last long though, and we had a very turbulent first trimester. I kept bleeding and had to go for ultrasounds every 10 days until they were able to tell me I had a viable pregnancy. I had 4 scans before 12 weeks due to inexplicable bleeding, a history of miscarriages and poly cystic ovaries. Medical professionals doubted that our pregnancy would stick and I was told three times to prepare for the worst.

Luckily, they were wrong!

The majority of our pregnancy was pretty bog standard until the third trimester. I suddenly ballooned. My feet and hands were almost double their normal size, I was carrying a lot of water, my legs tingled all the time, I was anemic, I couldn’t walk due to SPD, and my bump rested on my knees when I sat down. I complained to both my midwife and a doctor about my symptoms but they brushed it off and put it down to the May heat wave. It wasn’t until I went into labour that I was told I had pre-eclampsia.

Labour was long and interesting. It started on the Wednesday afternoon, I had painful contractions with half hour gaps. Thursday morning I was admitted for observation after not feeling our little man wriggle since the previous night. We were sent home that evening to rest after a whole day of monitoring contractions, monitoring his heartbeat, and a stretch and sweep. The same happened on Friday… Saturday morning I had a bath after a restless night and I was immobilised by waves of pain four minutes apart. So… Off we went to the hospital again, where I was informed I would be staying in until he arrived! Excitement, fear, panic, anxiety, impatience, love… I felt such a maelstrom of feelings in that moment all I could do was cry and listen to Mum and Alex’s reassurance and silliness. Finally, after the most emotional 40 weeks of my life, our son was going to be with us today!

Our delivery room was lovely, it suited me perfectly. It was clean, comfortable and had the signs of the zodiac painted on the walls. Our midwife was a Spanish drill sergeant named Maria, and was exactly what I needed. She was commanding and knew exactly what she was doing! I however, was a scared first time mum who’d just over heard her talking to a colleague about ordering emergency blood packets and suspected late onset pre-eclampsia. I did what she told me to do, no questions asked, our lives were now in her hands.

After hours and hours of waiting to be fully dilated, Mr Moo and I were becoming distressed. Maria popped my waters to move things along. Unfortunately Mr Moo had grown tired and was becoming less active and my contractions were slowing, so I was put on a drip which helped me contract. At last it was time to push! Mr Moo was born at 19:46 weighing 7lb 9.5oz. After that my night was a blur… I remember lots of cuddles and kisses with a gooey baby, followed by signing a consent form for anesthesia, some brief activity in an operating theater, waking up in a recovery ward and being told off for taking my oxygen mask off. Alex and Mum were heading home and a midwife was taking my baby away so I could get some sleep… In my anesthesia, adrenaline, and trauma induced haze I passed out and woke up a coupe of hours later to a midwife bringing me some tea and toast and finally letting me hold my son!

Two days later I was finally told what happened in the operating theater. I won’t go into detail but I will say… I am so incredibly lucky to be here to raise our son. The day he was born was the best and the worst day of my life. I am so happy it wasn’t the last. I have never experienced the love I feel now. Alex and our son amaze me every day. My Mum is my hero, I have no idea how she coped that day, I’m so glad of her strength and bravery. She would walk through fire for me and my sister, on that day though… I think I took her to hell and back. She’s such an awesome woman and I hope one day my son will say the same about me. I really hope that I can be as good a parent as she has been. xxx

So our adventure has begun… I have never loved or felt as much love as I do now.

Until next time xx

I would like to share this with you… The Princess and the Poo was written by the wonderful Fairy Doula, Lara Fairylove. It is a great story about natural birth and how even “perfect princesses need to poo”

“It’s a lighthearted book for pregnant women, children, midwives, doulas and childbirth helpers, to support and encourage them to feel the light, love and joy of the natural birth we are meant to experience!” Lara Fairy Love via her blog on 31/08/2012

Find out more about Lara and her book here… http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/saarrukaa

Also check out her website http://fairydoula.co.uk/

Bye for now!!

Hello!!

By popular demand I have decided to start a blog!! (insert whooping, clapping and cheering here)

I know blogs have become increasingly popular in recent years and there are many out there that cover parenting. Mine IS different… I’m not any normal parent. I have a difficult history, my present is an ongoing battle, and we (me, my fiance, and our son) are working hard to achieve a bright future.

I am 26, mum of one, and lucky fiance to Alex. I battle depression and borderline personality disorder on a daily basis. I have to try a million times harder than anyone I know to be the best I can be for my family. I am a massive fan of happy, healthy babies and natural parenting techniques. I research endlessly and I want to share my findings and what works for us.

I am not going to sit here typing page after page complaining about my mental health issues. Instead I am going to tell you how I parent my child and my journey to becoming a good housewife and mother. My bad days are bumps in the road, I HAVE to get over them and carry on. I cannot sit and wallow in self pity and let my mental issues take over. There are more important things in my life. I manage my BPD and depression WITHOUT drugs, I have built an amazing support network which includes my family, my partner, my GP, Health Visitor and local nursery nurse.

But don’t let that phase you or put you off… I’m still a parent and my parenting skills are as valid as any other parent or parenting author. I just like to do it differently so that it works for us rather than forcing ourselves to do something that changes the fabric of who we are.

We’re what most people would call alternative. Alex is a unicycle riding, long haired, fire spinning (and juggling), video gaming, indie movie loving, rock and punk listening, computer nerd!!! I on the other hand am a book reading, rock and metal listening, cat owning, home comfort liking, Victoriana/hippy fashion loving, rom-com, indie, and comic book movie geek. Mr Moo (nickname of our son) is our world! He entered into it on the 9th June 2012 and is the best thing we have done so far!

Please join us on our journey, I really hope it helps you and many other people!