There is a fugus amoung us...

I spied on my list of 8 month+ safe foods MUSHROOMS! Seeing as though every man I have ever met (aside from my brother) has a deep seeded hatred for mushrooms, I thought I would do Jack's future wife a favor and get him hooked on them early. Little did I know how awesome mushrooms are! Not only do mushrooms help immunity with their beta-glutens and antioxidants, but they are the only non-animal (or non-sun) natural source of vitamin D!

I decided not to start too fancy and went with organic white mushrooms. Because part of the great thing about making your own food is introducing your baby to foods they will grow up eating in your house, I decided to make mushrooms the way I normally make them for myself, with zucchini and garlic (both of which he has already had).

I would normally saute these veggies with olive oil. However, since baking keeps in more nutrients, I decided to bake them. I took some of the skin off of the zuccini because it is a little hard to puree, but I kept some on because it is where most of the nutrients are kept. Don't worry about the seeds. They are so soft and small they blend right up. Make sure you wash the mushrooms VERY well, even if they are organic. I rough cut everything, sprinkled some garlic on top, and baked it at 350, covered for about an hour.

I let it cool over night, blended it up (didn't need to add water, just used the natural juices).
And...ta-da:

I can't compare this to store bought because there is no store bought mushroom baby food. However, I will say, it tasted yummy and cost about $0.25 an ounce!

Jack was a HUGE fan!

Overnight Peeing Machine

Jack has always been a heavy wetter. Throw on top of that an 8 ounce bottle and 12 hours on his stomach and what do you get? Fresh sheets EVERY day! I am sick of changing sheets, doing laundry and frankly, the wet hug I get every morning when I pick him up out of his crib. So what is a girl to do? Experiment.

At about 5 months this issue started. First, we solved it by double diapering, one facing forward and one backward to cover his stomach. That was great for a few weeks. Then we moved to Huggies Overnights, our godsend! That worked up until a few weeks ago at around 7 months. I CD during the day, but won't give up my Huggie Overnights, well now that they have failed, I am willing to explore our options. Many people suggested wool. First, I do not knit or crochet and secondly, I find wool uncomfortable on my skin, no matter how fancy or soft it is.

So, let the games begin:

Night 1:
Huggies Overnights with a microfiber insert inside of them stuffed into a pocket diaper (yes the Huggies diaper was stuffed inside of the pocket diaper)...very creative I know....Epic Fail!!! In fact he peed all over more than ever.

Night 2:
He skipped a bottle so I decided to just do the good ol' Huggie...it mostly worked, there was some pee on his onzie, but nothing soaked through to his pj's or sheets.

Night 3:
People kept telling me about diaper boosters or liners. They are basically like an extra maxi-pad you put inside of a disposable diaper. Okay, so I folded up a prefold and placed it inside of the Huggies Overnight. This seemed to work pretty well, but I was running out of Huggies Overnights and was determined to find another method without having to buy more diapers.

Night 4:
Success! With complicated folding, tucking and 3 inserts....it worked! So here is my cloth-overnight-stomach-sleeper-OMG-this-boy-can-pee solution!

I used bumGenius pocket diapers (though one night I used a Kawaii Baby and it worked fine) The inserts are a mix of bumGenius and Kawaii. You have to use a diaper with a strip of the outside fabric on the top inside. This prevents pouring out onto the rest of their stomach. You can see what I mean by the strip here at the inside top of a bumGenius. (Kawaii Baby diapers also have this strip)

Here is the layout on the outside (bottom left). This is with only two inserts. When I use only two inserts I put a prefold on him as well. As you can see in the front view (bottom right) they get so full I have to leave all of the snaps open (where I normally have him on the lowest setting). This way the diaper goes up high on him and covers his stomach that usually gets wet.

Here is how I get all three inserts in...

Now, I am sure that this isn't going to be full proof. I have no clue what I am going to do when he gets bigger, since I have the diapers on the largest setting, but this works great for now! As you may have guessed, these things are HUGE! Jack looks like his tushie is in the front of his body, but he sleeps like a baby!

It's Never too Late to Lactate!

Imagine this...your child is born from an un-medicated, pain free birth and the doctor puts the child on your chest. This beautiful newborn locks eyes with you, falls in love and nuzzles its way to your breast where it latches on and drinks the sweet milk you made just for him. This was exactly what my experience was going to be. It's pretty much what the breastfeeding class said was going to happen. I would then go on to exclusively breastfeed my son until he was done with it. If I came across any issues, which I wouldn't because it is so natural and easy, I was giving birth in a "pro-breastfeeding" hospital so they would help...in case the sarcasm wasn't clear, this was NOT my experience. In fact, my experience was basically nurses slamming my son onto my boob, commenting on my nipples, a nurse pulling out every artificial piece of equipment my insurance would pay for, and excuse after excuse as to why the lactation consultant couldn't see me.

I left the hospital convincing myself that Jack was doing fine with nursing and went home. The first night Jack had pink powdery urine. We googled it and were informed by the great authority of Google that he was dehydrated, that combined with no wet diaper in the last 12 hours we freaked out and gave him a bottle of some formula that we got in the mail (those sneaky formula companies). He slept and seemed fine, the next feeding I tried to nurse him and he screamed. That was it, I wasn't going to torture my newborn baby so I gave him a bottle. I called the LC at the hospital the next morning, crying hysterically about my formula fed baby. She told me to pump every 2 hours to get my milk to come in and to get nipple shields. Pumping every 2 hours when you are home alone with a newborn is near impossible. Every time I sat down to pump, he cried...I resigned myself to not breastfeeding. I cried every day about it. I think I was more emotional about this than I have been about anything in my life, even someone dear to me dying. I felt like a failure, a mutant...I questioned whether I was committed enough to my child, and whether our relationship was doomed.

About 2-3 weeks later I took my son to his doctor because he had mucus and blood in his stool. It turned out he had, still has, a milk protein allergy and needed special formula. I was crushed, I was convinced that if I breastfed, it would not have happened. I started to read online about relactating. This is something so rarely talked about that even my computer thinks that it isn't a word and marks it with a red-dotted line. This IS a word. In fact there have been cases of adoptive mothers relactating and breast feeding their adopted child.

Now that the initial overwhelming new baby chaos was dying down, I was committed to do this and saw it as a second chance. So this is what I did (this was about 3 weeks postpartum)

• I rented a hospital grade pump from Babies R Us. This cost me about $80 a month and the flange and tubing kit was about $45 (should have kept the kit from the hospital)
• I went on a dairy-free diet
• I pumped every 2 hours 24/7, this meant setting my alarm at night and getting up to pump
• I did 1 power pump a day (pumping for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off for an entire hour)
• I took 3 pills of fenugreek and blessed thistle 3 times a day! (I smelled like honey)
• If Jack wouldn't let me put him down, I was able to hold him in the Bjorn while pumping
• I did at least 1 hour a day of skin to skin
• When I gave him a bottle I did it in cradle hold position and put the bottle near my armpit, like it was my breast
• I would try to get Jack to latch, but until I was producing more, he wasn't so interested
• Once he began to latch I did a few nursing vacations. This is where you spend the day in bed with the baby latched most of the day and nursing continually. It is great for building supply and a sweet bonding time.

The first few days I got nothing, but still pumped. After that I would get drops here and there. After a few weeks I was getting maybe an ounce total. I called a lactation consultant. She set me up with a nipple shield and an SNS. I fed Jack his formula from the SNS and got him to latch. At about 2 months old I had him latching without the SNS (with the nipple shield). He still needed formula as I was not producing enough. At my best, Jack was getting about 75% breastmilk. Not bad for not breast feeding for the first month of his life.

With a baby already suseptable to prefering the bottle, when I went back to work when he was 4 months we developed issues again. He would cry hysterically when I tried to latch him and push away. He just wanted a bottle. Between this and the fact that I didn't pump well (never more than an ounce each side), my heart broke and after long talks with the lactation consultant and a local LLL leader, I threw in the towel. I still consider this a relactating success story, and don't want wishful moms looking for hope to be disappointed. I am fully confident that if I had not gone back to work at this critical time in our nursing relationship, I would have continued to breast feed fine.

Many months and almost $500 later (lactation consultant and pump rental), what am I left with? Well I am not left with the breastfeeding experience I imagined. I am not left with a breastfed baby that I sweetly nurse to sleep every night. Honestly, I am still left with shoulda, coulda, woulda's, guilt, and sadness. However, I am also left with an amazing, healthy, intelligent, cuddly child, and a wealth of knowledge, commitment, and conviction for my next breastfeeding experience. I am glad that I had the few months of nursing that I had.

I hate the looks I get from nursing mothers when I pull out my formula and bottle. I know they think I don't care, wasn't strong enough, or gave up. Little do they know what I went through and did. I think this experience has given me an awesome new appreciation for how people provide for their children. The lessons that I have learned from this experience are innumerable. Most importantly, I learned that life doesn't have to be one way or the other, a happy medium sometimes is just right. Even if that happy medium is actually settling, and maybe not what you really wanted, the perspective of being in the middle makes the paths to both ends much more visible for next time.

This is a picture of Jack during one of our nursing vacations when he was about 2.5 months old.

Homemade vs. Store Bought (a fight to the death)

I decided to embark on an experiment to compare homemade baby food to store bought baby food. Is it really worth the effort? Is it really better? In this highly scientific experiment, I will compare 4 different foods in 4 different ways: Color, Smell, Taste, Cost (tax not included). Unfortunately, because my science lab is just my kitchen I am unable to compare these items in nutritional values.

So here is the experiment (in photos all homemade food is on the right...just think REAL-RIGHT):

PRUNES: 

Oh wonderful prunes, guarantor of poo! I did not buy organic, I bought Gerber Nature Select (whatever "nature select" means) because the organic has lots of additives like tuna oil for DHA because someone convinced us that without DHA we all will become complete morons, but I digress)

Color:

The color discrepancy here, I think, is because the prunes I used to make this were unsulphured prunes.

Smell:

Both had a similar smell, though the homemade was a little more potent.

Taste:

Major after taste on the jarred, and the homemade wasn't as sweet.

Cost:

Store bought: Gerber Nature Select $1.49 for 2-2.5 ounces (about .30/ounce)
Homemade: Unsulphured Prunes $7.98 for the bag got 20 ounces  (.39/ounce)

Mango: 

Jack's favorite part of when I make him mango? After I cut off the "meat" he loves chewing on the "bone" as we call it. He sucks off anything left on it, and it keeps him busy for an hour...always followed up by a bath.

Color:

The difference is obvious. The homemade (on the right) is certainly more vibrant.

Smell:

Both smelled about the same.

Taste:

There was a little more of an after taste with the store bought, but not much. Mango is always yummier fresh. I generally use the frozen mango to mix in things, like with chicken or beans.

Cost:

Store bought: Happy Baby Organic Pouch $1.39 for 3.5 ounces (about .40/ounce)
Homemade: 2 Organic Mangos $5 (2/$5 on sale) I got 22 ounces  (.23/ounce)
Organic is hard to find, but mango is not one of the dirty dozen so I generally do buy regular. I get organic when I can.

Blueberry: 

One of Jack's favorites! Because organic blueberries are so expensive I couldn't find store bought that was ONLY blueberry. So I am comparing an Apple and Blueberry mix, which I mixed Jack's Blueberries with Applesauce to have a good comparison. The issue I ran into was what was the ratio? See my explanation under color.

Color:

The top left is the store bought. I was interested to figure out what the applesauce to blueberry ratio was since organic blueberries are expensive. The top right is a 50/50 ratio of homemade...WOW! Still no where near the color of store bought. On the bottom I did 80% applesauce to 20% blueberry, still more vibrant and blue. I am not really sure how much blueberry you are getting with store bought, which is a shame since it is so good for brain development.

Smell:

Obviously the homemade had a more blueberry smell to it.

Taste:

Not sure what was done to get the store bought the constancy that it is (straining), the homemade is without a doubt more grainy. The store bought tasted pretty much like applesauce with a light blueberry flavor.

Cost:

This is hard to figure out since I don't know the ratio so I am going to show you JUST the blueberries..obviously it will be much cheaper with the apples as they are not expensive.
Store bought: Earth's Best Apple and Blueberry $0.80 for 4 ounces (about .20/ounce)
Homemade: Organic blueberries 2 baskets $9.98 for the bag got 30 ounces (.33/ounce)

Chicken: 

Jack LOVES meat: chicken, lamb, salmon, tilapia oh my. The store bought is not organic as I could not find plain organic chicken baby food to compare.

Color:

I am assuming the store bought is white meat, this particular batch that I made is organic dark meat. Don't underestimate the good in some healthy oils and fats that come with meats.

Smell:

I know I may be partial, but I almost threw-up when I smelled the jarred one.

Taste:

The jarred, which took a lot of guts for me to eat, was gelatinous and bizarre in texture...I felt like I was eating gefilte fish, no meat should come from a jar. The homemade was a little dry (I usually mix it with mango or apples) but tasted just like the chicken you lightly blend for chicken salad.

Cost:

Store bought: Beech-nut Chicken $0.95 for 2.5 ounces (about .38/ounce)
Homemade: Organic Boneless Chicken from Costco $16.20 got 48 ounces (.34/ounce) cheaper and organic.

Last but not least....the TRUE test of the chicken situation, my dog, Murray, who does not have a descriminating pallet at all. The homemade was on the left here. He actually left the store bought and walked away until I called him back and pointed, "Take it!" Eventually he ate it:

Other benefits to consider

Shopping and Cooking
I don't know if this is more of a parenting concern, or a nutritional concern, but part of the great thing about homemade is the child's involvement in what they put into their body. Sounds weird, when my son is only 7 months old. However, when we are shopping he gets to sniff the fruit I buy for him. I am often holding him while I am cooking and he can taste as we go. I look forward to him helping me cook as he grows.

Absorbic Acid What?
I must note that I noticed EVERY food that I bought, except for the chicken, had absorbic acid in it. Although this is ultimately vitamin C, because it is not naturally in the food, I consider it an additive. There seems to be a lot of controversy about whether these levels of absorbic acid found in jarred/pouched baby food can contribute to increasing reflux. Regardless, my opinion is, if it is organic and natural, why is it in there?

Going Green
As I have said before, most of what I do isn't because I am "green", it is for my son's health and well being, but there are some "green" reasons to make your own.

• Less Waste (reusable storage container, no jars or plastic waste)
• Local Grown Food

How did we get here...

As I sit here typing I have a stock pot of organic cotton prefold diapers boiling to prep them with organic parsnips roasting in the oven which will turn into baby food tomorrow. I wonder how I got here. Well, some might say it isn't so odd that I got here, but the fact that my family got here...my husband, that may be a little more shocking...

I was raised by Buddhist hippy parents.  I should say that most people probably couldn't tell. Although they were hippies in college, they weren't overtly hippie looking. We had a large house in the upper middle class suburbs of New Jersey. Aside from the Buddah statues, meditation cushions, tofu, Socratic questioning and lack of sugary cereal, most of my friends didn't know my parents were like that, they just knew something was a little...odd.

My husband, well my husband is a Jewish Republican Conservative Financial Adviser...yes that is his job title. In many respects he has pulled me to the right.

Although I love the environment and used to cry when I saw black smoke coming out of trucks because my dad told me that it was pollution, I generally subscribed to the idea set forth by my favorite geology professor, "No matter what we do to it, the planet will far outlive we humans, it is much more adaptable than we are." I still must admit that most of what I do isn't as much an environmental thing as it is a protect my child from chemicals and do what feel natural kind of a thing.

When the recycling bin is full my husband and I throw bottles in the regular garbage, I drive an SUV (not a hybrid), I do not eat raw (that was the worst month of my life), I am not 100% organic, my son gets vaccinated, I love my air conditioning and my fancy chemical laden face cream.

This is why I, we straddle the grid. I dream of moving to the mountains and never seeing another person besides my husband, kids, and dog...but the fact is, we love the movies, Carvel and making enough money to buy things and go on vacation.

Most of my "crunchiness" or "off the grid tendencies" stems from my son who is now 7 months old. Most of my husband's crunciness stems from my pressure or him not wanting to answer to "the man". We cloth diaper, I make my son's food, I make my cleaning products, I practice baby wearing, I believe in Attachment Parenting, and so on.

So here we are straddling the grid...seeking our independence from societal norms and government dependency, while enjoying the social aspects of well, of society. I think my point is that nothing has to be 100%. My life and parenting is led by what feels right in my bones, in my soul...not by society. For every personal rolling their eyes in disgust at a mother breastfeeding in public, there is a crazy breastfeeding Nazi who thinks that a mom formula feeding her child is a failure. My point is that it doesn't have to be one or the other.