First time your baby is sick

Monkey was kind of whiny the other day so I changed her dipe and put her back down on her mat to play. Normally, when I do this she just grabs the nearest toy and entertains herself. This time she just sat there and cried so I knew something was wrong. I scooped her up right away and touched her head only to feel it was HOT. My heart started pounding. My poor baby!!

Out came the thermometers. I had options: rectal or ear... Ear won!

Every time I stuck it in her ear I got a very different reading from 37C (where the thermometer gives a happy face) to 38.9C (where a very sad face appears). Monkey started panting and I thought I was going to go nuts with worry. I called Telehealth Ontario and they counted her breaths and advised me to go to the hospital.

I started running in circles. My baby was unwell and I was supposed to go to the hospital! Instead of putting my food in the fridge I put it in the cupboard. I couldn't find my keys and I didn't remember where I left my cell phone. Somehow I managed to locate my car (in its usual parking spot of course) and make it downtown not forgetting the monkey or her health card.

When I got to the hospital, Monkey was breathing more normally and didn't feel quite as hot. I was wondering whether or not I should go home as I pulled her out of the carseat. Just as I wondered, Monk threw up all over me. I decided to go ahead and get her checked out.

Long story short, she had some gastro bug that's going around but was sent home with instructions to rest and keep hydrated. Am very happy to report that she's feeling MUCH better today :)

I'm sure all the doctors had a good laugh as I brought my otherwise healthy baby into emerge with only a slight fever and one incident of vomiting. I knew they were thinking with a smirk "first time parent".

Oh well! There's nothing quite as scary as when your little one is sick for the very first time!

First words...

I carried her for 40 weeks and 4 days.

I delivered her. I got up with her all night long. I feed her, cuddle her, bathe her, play with her, take her to doctors visits and let her touch my purses and her first word is DADA?!?! 

 What the ....

No wonder they say kids are so expensive!

I've seen all kinds of quotes about how much a kid will cost you over the 18 years you are directly responsible for them. Cost estimates seem to start at $400,000 CAD and up!

I knew babies were pricey because of diapers, clothes that last an afternoon, daycare and toys etc but today was yet another eye opener!

Husband and I were driving the other day and thought to ourselves...Monkey is really very heavy...I wonder when she'll outgrow the weight restrictions on her car seat. Fortunately, the manual is attached to the car seat so I just had to reach back and pull it out to have a peek. Shocker! The car goes up to 22lbs. Monkey is 20lbs!

Honly smokes! That means if Monk has one big meal or extra heavy diaper, she's outgrown her car seat!!!

So her infant car seat cost over $250 and lasted only 7.5 months. We had to bolt to the baby store this afternoon and purchase another seat and plunk down another $300+ for that one!

Ouch!!! Fortunately, that seat should last till 65lbs. Unfortunately, with the rate that my little one gains weight, that probably won't last long at all! :\

Not only that, but since they 'expire' in 6 years, you really won't be able to get much use out of them for any subsequent kids you might have. Double ouch!!


I'll post a review once that one gets delivered and installed.

Babies grow...bored

Ah, I remember the days when Monkey was just a teeny thing, I could cradle her in my one arm...those were the good (and tough!) old days.

Those were the days when Monk would sleep all day (and want to part-ay all night!), she would stay put wherever I set her down, and I could go out on coffee dates with my mama friends and Monk would lie quietly in her stroller bassinet or in my arms while I managed to chat and eat.

Those days are gone.

I used to be able to entertain Monkey by jiggling my keys or making funny faces. Now she just stares at me with a furrowed brow that seems to say, "really, mom, how old do you think I am?! That's OLD NEWS."

Now I have to come up with new and exciting games...every 10 minutes. I have to put on elaborate puppet shows to be able to keep her attention long enough so I can change a diaper without having her flip over on her belly and moon me. In order to shovel a spoon of food in her mouth, I have to make helicopter noises and then fight to get the spoon back after she rips it out of my hand.

Ah, those good old days, when all Monkey wanted was food in her belly, a clean diaper on her butt and a soft place to sleep are gone. I wouldn't trade where she is right now for anything :)

Lessons learned...

Monkey grows so fast sometimes it seems like she’s literally growing out of her clothes as she wears them. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if one morning I put her in a sleeper only to find her feet poking through by the evening.

The past few months have been quite the eye-opening, parent-appreciating-sorry-for-every-bad-thing-I’ve-ever-done-mom-and-dad experience. I can summarize the experience in 14 lessons I’ve learned:

1. Baby’s cleanliness - you will start out gun-ho about baby being clean and you will change her outfit 17 times a day after she spits up. By week 2, unless the outfit is truly a biohazard, you will conclude that she’s ok to sit in it for the rest of the day. This does not make you a bad parent. This is survival.

2. Your cleanliness - cleanliness is fleeting so don’t bother – you will always be covered in baby goo. If you’re all dressed up to go out and temporarily have regained some sense of looking anything other than haggard – baby will nip this in the bud and remind you of your new role.

3. You can sleep when you’re dead – cause you ain’t sleeping now, and not for a very long time...Even if baby sleeps for a whole two hours straight, you will still startle awake, and poke her to make sure she’s ok. She will now wake up...very angry.

4. If strangers peer into the stroller to admire your lovely baby, she will inevitably and shamelessly use that exact moment to have a bowel movement...loudly.

5. You can slave away all night feeding, changing and burping baby, spend all day cleaning, bathing and comforting baby, but when daddy comes home, he’s still the favourite.

6. Babies have these amazing gummy smiles that they bust out right after they’ve vomited in your laptop that make it impossible to be annoyed.

7. You will somehow find that it is 6pm and you haven’t eaten anything other than cereal for breakfast all day. You then eat a dinner that comes out of a wrapper because it’s quick, easy and you can do it one-handed. This repeats every day until you come down with scurvy and decide that you best start eating like a normal human being.

8. You very quickly learn that some babies are very picky about certain things. Some babies (who shall remain nameless) will only make a mess in a fresh, clean diaper that has just been changed.

9. You become adept at doing everything using just one hand, your teeth, your feet, or a combination of all of the above all the while balancing sleeping baby in your other arm and quietly chanting, “stay asleep sweetie, please, please, please, stay asleep.”

10. You can dress your baby girl head to toe in pink, in a onesie that has the words “BABY GIRL” embroidered on the front, and strangers will still ask you if it’s a boy or girl.

11. If you ask your husband to use the sound machine (the "sleep sheep") to put the baby to sleep in the bedroom, you will enter said room a few minutes later to find the sound machine on, the husband asleep, and the baby wide awake.

12. Everyone will claim your baby looks exactly like some member of their family - aunt Erma, uncle Bill or cousin Larry, and yet somehow Erma, Bill, and Larry look nothing alike.

13. While you might think that you are deeply adored by your little one, never forget that the second someone dangles a plastic toy in baby's face, you cease to exist.

14. You will find your keys in the fridge, your cell phone in the laundry hamper and your wallet in the dishwasher. Simple arithmetic will baffle you. For reasons why – see number 3 above.

Review: Angel Care spoons!

Monkey just recently started her first foray into the land of solids, which are mistakenly referred to as such since they're really goopey, messy purees but anyhow.

As I mentioned, I research the heck out of ANYTHING before I buy it so even something as small as baby spoons was no exception!

My mother thought I was ridiculous devoting so much time to...spoons, but let me tell you, I think it was time well spent! :)

I was weary of spoons with 'heat indicators' not knowing what chemicals were in them and I was scared of plasticy spoons that didn't indicate they were BPA free.

I ended up purchasing Angel Care spoons which come in packs of 2 for $8.

These are AWESOME! They're made of food grade silicone so they're safe and super bendy for when Monkey tries to poke herself in the eye with them. The handle is long enough for you to get it all the way in the baby food jar. So far, no staining from any of the foods we've tried and Monkey sometimes likes to use these spoons as teething aids (2 for 1! A spoon and teether! Sweet!)

Be warned, due to the bendiness of this spoon, it may be used as a catapault.

They're super easy for even babies to hold so Monkey was self-feeding with this spoon from the first day we tried solids (and I use the term "self-feeding" loosely as most of the food went everywhere but in her mouth but anyhow...).

I would definitely highly recommend these as baby's first spoons.

Review: California Baby - Bath time...time for joy and time for terror

I spent an inordinate amount researching baby products, trying to find the most natural and least harmful lotions and potions to slather on Monkey.

I used the Cosmetics Database as well as some other sources to find a product or line of products I felt comfortable using.

Finally, I identified a line of products that seemed very popular and very natural and so obviously unavailable in Canada.

That line is California Baby.

California Baby includes a full line of shampoo/body washes, bubble baths, lotions, diaper care etc that are eco-friendly and toxin-free and eschew ingredients that are potential allergens, DEA, sulfates, dyes and numbing agents.

I asked my uncle to send me some from the US and he very kindly obliged. We started with the Super Sensitive Shampoo & Bodywash (8.5oz, ~$12) and it was lovely. Just the right amount of suds, didn't dry out Monkey's skin or scalp and didn't irritate her eyes. I was pleased with it but I wanted something more. Since Monkey doesn't seem to be overly sensitive at this point, I wanted to try something with a bit of a scent to relax her before bed. We went on to get the Calming Shampoo & Bodywash (8.5oz, ~$12) and I was in LOVE. This stuff is very lightly scented with French lavender and calmed both me AND Monkey during bath time.

I'm not sure if it's pure coincidence or not but after the first night of using this stuff Monkey went from waking up every 2-3 hours at night, to sleeping at least 5 hours straight. It was magic.

Now the Calming Shampoo & Bodywash has become part of our bedtime routine. When Monk smells the lavender she knows she can eat her bath toy and splash water all about but it will soon be time to sleep.

Why fix something if it ain't broke? Cause I like to try new things. Since Monk LOVED the two California Baby products we had tried so far, I thought I'd be Supermama and take it up a notch and give her a BUBBLE BATH.

I drew a nice bubble bath for her with the California Baby Overtired & Cranky (13oz, ~$14) bath stuff and she just screamed and screamed. The bubbles seemed to terrify her. No amount of coaxing and playing with the bubbles would settle her down so bath time was over for that night.

I love California Baby stuff and we now have and enjoy pretty much all the products they make. As for the bubble bath, we'll try it again in a few weeks and if she still doesn't like it, I'm going to save it for myself.


For Canadians, to get your hands on this stuff you can order it online directly from California Baby, make nice with a friend in the US and see if they'll ship some to you, or take a road trip down to the US for some shopping and pick up a bunch. It's worth it.

Reviews: Baby "Really Nice to Haves"

I'm a list person. I make lists every single day outlining everything I need to do on that day. I'm sure if I robbed a bank, I would go directly to jail after police located my To Do list with "rob bank" listed below "pick up dry cleaning."

So as such, I'm going to throw together a list of my most beloved baby purchases (besides the obvious of a good stroller, carseat etc). I don't like calling these things 'must haves' because you don't really HAVE to have them, your parents raised you just fine without them. These things are great if you're able to get your hands on them and they'll make life a bit easier, but your child won't be scarred for life if these don't make their way into your home.

1. Bouncy chair - this is heaven sent for having a place to put baby down for just a few moments so you can, oh I don't know, brush your teeth or comb your hair so you don't look quite so frightening. We got the Baby Bjorn Babysitter Balance Air (~$220, Moms to Be and More). Now this was a very pricey purchase but it's totally worth it and here's why. This chair serves from newborn to about 2 years (or 29lbs). Many bouncy chairs don't go up so high with the weight restriction so you can't get as much use out of them. This chair folds completely flat in 2 seconds and weighs very little which makes it excellent to use while traveling (we've used it as a place for eating and napping and playing!). It's got a beautiful neutral design which means less clutter in your living room with things in primary colours, and it doesn't need any batteries. The chair bounces using baby's own momentum. If you've ever used disposable diapers on a baby and put said baby in a bouncy chair, you know that the odds of having a diaper explosion are extremely high. Having a bouncy chair that is easy to clean is imperative. The seat fabric on this chair pops off in 2 seconds flat (held down by two elastics) and comes back on the frame just as easily. The material is mesh so it's very easy to clean and dries in minutes. Excellent buy.

2. Baby tub - some people say not to waste money on a baby tub and just get a sling for the sink. I disagree. After having the baby, I had little to no energy to stand at my sink and bathe a slippery baby. Using my Whale of a Tub by Fisher Price (~$30), I was able to bathe the baby while I sat on the floor in the nursery (instead of hunched over a bath tub). The baby was comfortable in a reclined position and I could concentrate on getting into her millions of folds instead of making sure she wasn't sliding all over the place. If I could do it again, I'd seriously consider purchasing one of those foldable tubs. Those are apparently great for travel and take up less space than the whale. Monkey is just about to outgrow this tub at 8 months so I consider that to be a good lifespan of usefulness for an infant.


3. Activity gym - these are great! We got the Skip Hop Funky Farmyard (~$80) because we liked that the design wasn't over the top with colours and patterns that just make you want to vomit. The toys that dangle from the frame are well thought out and feature different things to distract a screaming infant - a cow mirror so baby can admire the baby looking back at her, a lamb that plays Old MacDonald (which never ceases to get Monkey to smile, even now at almost 8 mos!), a pig that chimes, a spotty duck with crinkly wings and a bunny rattle with a teething ring. There are a few different patterns and nice colours and I'm sad to actually put this away now that baby can crawl and would rather explore exposed power cables and rip curtains off walls.

4. Toy tethers (~$8) - any kind will probably do. We have two and they have saved us mucho dinero. Monkey is at the stage where she insists on toys in her stroller/carseat to keep her occupied but then accidentally (or purposefully?) launches said toys out of stroller/carseat. If it wasn't for these tethers, we would have lost and had to replace many a cherished baby item. These are also helpful for keeping toys off the dirty floor and saving you from constantly cleaning baby's favorite chew toy.

5. Muslin - this is just the greatest fabric ever. Super breathable and absorbs quickly. We got the Aden & Anais Dream Blanket which is five layers of muslin and sometimes I don't give it to Monkey for naps because I want to horde it for myself. We also got a bunch of Boots "muslin squares" shipped to us from my brother in the UK which were absolutely awesome for use as burp cloths when Monkey was going through her projectile spit up phase (where spit up would just roll off receiving blankets and onto our clothes, these squares actually absorbed it and kept us clean. Priceless!). Now that Monkey is managing to hold her food down better (or maybe I'm not overfeeding the little bub as much), we use these for everything from baby care to dust cloths. Now THAT is multi-use!

6. Sound machine - we live in a noisy area with obnoxious, noisy neighbours which means that after 7pm, Monkey's bedtime, every last little noise wakes the Monkey and creates a nightmare for me to get her back to sleep. The travel Sleep Sheep was an awesome gift given to us that plays soothing sounds (like ocean waves, rain, babbling stream and whale sounds (which I find a bit creepy but anyhow...)). Monkey LOVED this from the moment she was born and it's still going strong at almost 8 months. As soon as she hears the white noise, it helps lull her to sleep and also blocks out background noise such as that coming from my neighbour who loves to yell into all hours of the night. I should also mention that my husband loves this thing and, as a sailor, asks for me to play the wave sounds to help him to go to sleep :)

7. Play mats - these foam mats give baby a safe place to play and learn to sit up where they're constantly falling over. I don't worry as much about Monkey hitting her head on the foam mats as I would if she was directly on the floor. We got a set by Skip Hop (~$99) which are nice but you could probably find something a bit more practical as Monk loves to pull up the joining pieces and eat them.

8. Nursing pillow - there are two favorites out there. I know the My Brest Friend (~$60) is very popular since it has a flat top (so baby doesn't roll off) and a pocket for anything from your cell phone to a remote control. I've never actually used this one so I can't say anything more about it. I was given a Jolly Jumper pillow and I LOVED it because it worked perfectly well as a nursing pillow but also worked beautifully to help with tummy time and as a safety pillow which wrapped around Monkey while she was learning to sit up. I use it for myself to put my feet up (yeah right! Like I ever have time to do that anymore!) and for a variety of other uses.



9. Baby monitor - these are essential if you have a house with multiple levels. We also found this very useful for listening in to what Monkey was doing when we didn't want to actually go in the nursery and check on her. It was so sensitive that we could even hear her breathing which was always very reassuring. At one of our baby showers, we got the Philips Avent DECT baby monitor which has a bunch of additional great features like a temperature sensor, a visual noise indicator and most important of all; lullabies. For whatever reason, when baby is inconsolable, when the Sleep Sheep has failed to soothe, the lullabies on this thing work like magic to quiet her and put her to sleep. We often refer to this as our 'secret weapon.' We never bothered buying a baby mobile which would probably have some lullaby tunes on it so this thing was priceless.

10. Hand blender - another multi-use item. These are great for making baby purees but also double for making grown up smoothies or mixing batter or what have you. I've seen things like the "Baby Bullet" for sale but really, you can get a hand blender for much cheaper (ours was ~$30 by Cuisinart), takes up less space (throw it in a drawer when not in use), it's easier to clean and will be useful well after your baby wants nothing more to do with purees.

So those are my top ten. It was really hard choosing just 10 but those are the ones that stand out the most in my mind. Some of these things are expensive so it's always good to explore other options like registering for them, borrowing them from a friend or buying them used. I find with baby things, you really do get what you pay for.

Time to rename Monkey...PigPen?

I swept and Swiffered the floor so it would be nice and clean for crawling daughter.

Left the pile for just a moment to get a dustpan only to return and find daughter had crawled from the other side of the room directly INTO the pile of rubbish and was playing very happily in it. *sigh*

Sometimes I wonder why I bother...!

Where to begin? How about at the beginning...

Well, maybe not THE beginning...this just isn't that kind of blog. But how about with the story of how monkey came into the world?

I love reading about other people's birth stories. They range from super-dramatic to super-easy as in the-baby-kind-of-fell-out-as-I-was-cooking-dinner type stories. I guess mine fell somewhere in the middle.

I was 40 weeks and 4 days pregnant and parked on a blow up mattress in the living room beside the A/C unit like a beached whale. It was a heat wave of a summer and I had such excruciating back pain for the last few weeks of my pregnancy that I literally could hardly get out of bed. I waddled into my OB's office and literally begged to be induced (if begging didn't work I planned to threaten and/or blackmail...whatever it would take...).

Sensing my desperation, she agreed and I was induced the very next day. We got the call late on Friday, July 30th to come into the hospital for the induction.

At 10:30pm we arrived, nervous as anything, carrying luggage like we were planning on moving into the hospital for the next 3 weeks.

Shortly after we arrived and I put on my stylish hospital gown, I had my water broken. Never in a million years did I expect what happened. It was literally about 10lbs of fluid that came rushing out at once and my stomach instantly went from super-massive-carrying-quadruplets to something more along the lines of perhaps incubating just one baby.

The staff anesthesiologist came in to talk to me about pain relief and suggested I just get an epidural right there on the spot. I informed him that I wanted to give it a go on my own, just to know what it's like. He almost rolled his eyes at me and implied that he'd see me in a few hours. I was defiant.

From that point on, Hus and I just had to wait for the contractions to start. Since it was already late at night, the hospital halls were pretty empty so we just paced the halls trying to speed up those contractions. We'd talk and laugh nervously and every so often I'd double over and moan for a few seconds and then we'd carry on like nothing happened. We did this for about 5 hours.

Finally, the contractions started to get really bad and I didn't want to walk anymore. I didn't want to do anything actually. I just wanted to curl up in a ball (a BIG ball since I still had a massive belly...) and just cry.

I begged Hus to fetch the man with the big needle and bag of drugs. Hus tried to encourage me to go a little longer without drugs (as they advised us to in prenatal classes). As soon as the words came out of his mouth I gave him a look that said, "I. WILL. END. YOU... GET ME THE DRUG MAN!!!" and off he went.

Hus couldn't tolerate to watch the man stick a ginormous needle into his wife's spine so he discretely stepped out. I didn't care. If they needed to use a hammer to get the drugs into me, I would have been ok with that too at that point. I was literally shaking from exhaustion and pain so that made drug-man's job that much harder but he was a pro and got my epidural going in no time.

I never knew how wonderful it would feel to, well, to not feel.

From that point on it was fairly easy street. We napped, I Facebooked, we joked, I munched ice chips. Closer to the afternoon of the next day I was told I was getting close to 10cm so I should ease off my 'epidural drugs on demand button' so I stopped pressing it. Silly me.

By the time it was time to push, I had minimal drugs in my body so I felt everything. And it was not at all pleasant.

I wasn't pushing very effectively because I was told early on in my pregnancy that when you push on the delivery table, women have a tendency to do a number two. My husband was sitting RIGHT BESIDE me so I was REALLY self-conscious about that and only pushed half-heartedly. As soon as the OB came in to check on me and saw I wasn't progressing, he started suggesting we head for a c-section. Well, that was my breaking point and I told Hus to leave the delivery room and come back in 20 minutes. He knew better than to argue at that point so he left and I pushed like my life depended on it.

Literally after about 10 minutes the nurse had to call the doctors back in because baby was crowning. Husband was still out in the hall somewhere but fortunately came back to peek in the room a few minutes later. When he did, the OB asked, "you wanna see some hair?" and in came Hus, completely shocked to see his baby's head coming out.

Husband had said the entire pregnancy that there was NO WAY he was going to watch anything below the waist. He said he was squeamish and he couldn't take it and there was just no way. After Hus walked in the room he sat down beside me and just STARED at the baby being delivered. I don't mean stare like he was enraptured. I mean stare like it was a train wreck.

I kept pushing and the OB asked me if I wanted a mirror. In my head I was thinking, "NO! I DON'T WANT A MIRROR. I don't want to sit in this agony while someone runs around to find a mirror and then holds it up at different angles and asks me 'can you see? how about now? now?"" I just wanted it OVER WITH. So NO THANK YOU to the mirror (besides, the whole time I was pushing I had my eyes tightly squeezed shut).

Monkey was delivered less than 10 minutes later. She was 7lbs 15oz, healthy and lovely.

The OB was amazing in that they basically pulled the baby out and pretty much handed her straight to me. Monk cried a bit but settled very quickly and just sort of stared quietly at me and her dad while we stared bewildered back at her. I was pretty much in shock that a baby came out of me and I had NO IDEA what I was supposed to do with her now. Fortunately, we figured it out along the way.





Monkey's birth story went against everything my prenatal classes urged us to do (don't induce, don't get an epidural, birth on a ball or in the shower or a tub or whatever blah blah blah) but you know what? It was perfect.