More Things I Love!

I'm adding to the list of things I love for babies! The items on this list are mostly things that I didn't use with Taelyn but that have been very helpful with Lillian!

...continued from the previous list...

#4: Peanut Shell sling: I had a sling with Taelyn that my sister-in-law passed on to me, but I never felt comfortable using it. I only tried it a few times and then I gave up. I wanted to get a sling that I felt more comfortable with this time around because with a 3 year old I knew it would be important for me to have both hands free. I LOVE this sling! I've used it a pretty good amount at this point and I have gotten really comfortable with it. And Lillian loves it! She gets so snuggled in and comfy in there and it is just like I am holding her. She usually falls asleep in it. I was worried at first about all of the negative publicity surrounding slings and babies suffocating in them, but if you get the baby positioned in it correctly I don't think it is a concern at all. I plan on using this thing with all of the different holds as Lillian gets older. I even carried Taelyn on my hip with it one day and was perfectly comfortable!

#5: Summer Baby Touch monitor: I am in love with this monitor! We didn't have a video monitor with Taelyn and both agreed that we wanted one with Lillian. I did some extensive research on video monitors (as I am prone to do) and the Summer Baby touch had the best ratings and reviews across the board. The video screen is about the size of my iphone and it is a touch screen. You can pan and zoom the camera from the monitor. We found one for a great price on ebay about 3 or 4 months before Lillian was born and put it in Taelyn's room. I don't know how I lived without a video monitor when Taelyn was a baby. I would have gotten so much more sleep with her! About a month before Lillian was born we had really gotten used to having a video on Taelyn during the night (even though she doesn't do anything but sleep!), so we thought it would be nice to get a 2nd camera for the monitor. That is another great thing about this monitor - you can have up to 4 cameras. Haylie got us our 2nd camera as a baby gift and it is wonderful! The monitor switches between both cameras throughout the night so I can keep an eye on both girls! I absolutely love it. And the picture is so clear - see for yourself! And this is the picture on the  monitor taken with my cell phone!

#6: Miracle Blanket: This is another item that Haylie let me borrow. It is a swaddle blanket, but it has the little cloth tabs to wrap around baby's arms so that they can't break loose! It was featured on the Today show at some point. It has really been great. At first Lillian would squirm when I would start wrapping her up in it, but now she seems to really like it. She is perfectly calm as I wrap her up in it. And she doesn't try to break out (I guess she figured out that she can't!). This isn't Lillian... it is just a good picture from the internet that shows how the blanket works!!

#7: Bebe Au Lait nursing cover: I never used a nursing cover with Taelyn because I was never comfortable to nurse in a place where I would need it! But I knew with Lillian that I would have to get comfortable because with Taelyn I can't just stay in the house all the time the way I did when she was a baby. She needs to get out and get rid of some of her never ending energy. So I got a nursing cover. It's ironic to me that nursing covers are so brightly patterned and colored. Isn't the point of the nursing cover discretion? Well, after some searching I found this white eyelet cover by Bebe Au Lait and I love it. It is double lined but not hot at all for Lillian. I have already used it a ton. It is nice to not feel like I have to leave the room now when people are visiting and Lillian needs to eat. I'm sure it will get a ton of use over the next 11 months (geez... 11 more months until she's one!?).

That's all for now! I'll continue to add to the list!

Good Morning Girls Bible Study

My friend, Krista, posted about a bible study on Facebook the other day. I had just been thinking about what kind of study I was wanting to do for the summer and so I visited the link that she posted. The study looks so good and I am so excited about it so I wanted to share. Visit www.goodmorninggirls.org if you would like to look at the study as well.

The ladies behind this blog are going through the book The Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson as part of the book club. They have 2 chapters of the book assigned per week The then have a scripture passage assigned for each day with a very neat way to study scripture. They use the "SOAP" method which stands for:

 1.  S- Write out the scripture passage for the day.

2. O- Write down 1 or 2 observations from the passage.

3. A- Write down 1-2 applications from the passage.

4. P- Pray over what you learned from today’s passage.

They encourage you to get with a group of women to do the study; however, it can all be done via the web. On Monday's they will post a video by the author of the book. On Wednesday's they encourage you to share comments on their blog and then on Friday's you discuss answers from the discussion questions with your group. This can be done through email, facebook, twitter or you can meet in person to discuss. 

This study begins on Monday and I am really looking forward to it. I will probably be posting about it in the upcoming weeks. If you would like to check out the study, click on the Good Morning Girls circle on my sidebar.  If you want to join our email group, just email me and let me know and I'll put you on the list!

New Moms Lie

This is a phrase that gets repeated a lot in our house. It started when Taelyn was a baby and has gotten used several times since we've been home with Lillian.

Let me digress a bit. I've found it interesting how many comments I've gotten on my past few blog posts and my honesty about our life when Taelyn was a baby. Other mom's need to hear that everything isn't all sunshine and baby laughs every single day when you bring a new baby home. However, we, as mothers, have a tendency to want to give this impression to others. I think the reason is because it makes us look like we have it all together as a mother. That we know exactly what we are doing and do not ever have a down day, or a day when we are just frustrated, or melt into tears every time our darling angel melts into tears.

When we came home with Taelyn and I was a complete mess (as I've described in previous posts), I needed to know that there were other mothers who were going through what I was going through. I would call the other moms that I knew who had delivered around the same time that I did. I would ask how nursing is going and I would get a, "Great! We haven't had any problems at all," while I had mastitis 3 times.  I would ask how the baby was sleeping and I would get, "Doing so well. He/She started sleeping through the night at 3 weeks," while I was a complete zombie waking up sometimes 5 times a night with Taelyn. It seemed like all of the other mothers had it all together while I was the only one seriously struggling with life with a baby. It made it so much worse not having someone else to be able to sympathize with me or tell me how to handle what I was going through.

I would vent to Scott about this and complain that God had given everyone else these perfect babies while we had one that didn't sleep and wanted to eat every hour and a half. And Scott's answer to me was always, "Casey, they are lying." My nature is to trust people until they give me a reason not to, while Scott tends to be... skeptical... of others. So, I automatically just believed all of the other moms that were saying that baby was sleeping through the night with no problems, never cried, and never had dirty diapers (okay, that one was never said). But it just made things worse for me. I finally got to where I knew Scott must be right... New Moms Lie. I couldn't figure out why, but after a lot of thought I came up with what I mentioned earlier - just to make themselves look like good moms. But I wish that we, as mothers, could see how hurtful this is to other mothers. If things are going great, then it is fine to say that, but I do think we should be HONEST about what we are experiencing. I remember talking to one mother who had her little boy 2 weeks after Taelyn was born and asking her about nursing. This was in the midst of my extreme pain with mastitis. She said that everything was great! I remember having a conversation with her almost a year later... after we had both finished nursing, and she told me that she had also had mastitis. Now, I would have greatly benefited from hearing that when I had it. But she chose to keep that information hidden when I needed to hear it.

There was one wonderful family in our sunday school class that was honest about their trials with their first child. I completely attached myself to this family and loved hearing them tell their hilarious stories about what they had done in the middle of the night when up with baby. From this I learned how to laugh at the situation the way they did. Nothing was ever funny in the middle of the night, but the next day I realized that I could laugh at how ridiculous I had acted. Bless this precious family for being honest and letting me see that there were other people out there that weren't blessed with perfect babies! I will never, ever stop appreciating them for their honesty at a time in my life when I truly needed it. They continue to be great friends of ours and I continue to love their honesty about life!

All that to say that this is why I choose to be brutally honest about our difficulties with new baby. If you need someone to sympathize with you, please call or email me and I will listen or tell our new baby stories or whatever you need from me!

For now I have to get lunch served so that I can go get a nap to catch up from a lack of sleep last night while Lillian grunted for hours!!!