Baby Products

I've raised 3 babies of my own, almost gotten through raising 3 toddlers of my own, and taken care of lots of other peoples' babies.  During this time I've bought many different infant products for our kids and tried out many more that came in the door with my daycare babies.  That said, I've formed some opinions. :o)

Everyone has their personal preferences, and what is perfect for one baby might not be ideal for another.  That said, as a starting point, here are some of my favorites.

Formula:  If you are going to use formula, unless your doctor recommends something specific for your specific baby, I recommend starting with a generic brand.  We used Up and Up (Target brand) regular iron-fortified formula for our babies.  It is exactly the same as Enfamil and costs about $10 less per can!  When you are buying several cans per month that adds up fast!  The consistency is a little different, the smell is a little different, but the nutritional content is exactly the same.  So with all the expenses babies can bring, do yourself a  favor and save some dough!

Bottles:  Again, if your doctor doesn't advise a specific bottle then here are my thoughts.  Babies often don't care what kind of bottle you use, but they often have a preference for nipple shape.  Get a couple bottles of the narrow variety and a couple of the wide variety and see what your baby likes better.  If your baby likes the narrow kind then I recommend the Gerber bottles pictured above.  They are really cheap, easy to clean, and in my opinion just as good as the fancy ones with the vents and the special gizmos that redirect air.  If your baby has a bad reflux problem it wouldn't hurt to give a fancy bottle a try, but I wouldn't go out and buy a bunch of them until you know that it will help.  The gerber ones are cheap enough that if you are away from home and leave one somewhere, you won't be kicking yourself because you're really only out about a buck or two.  The playtex bottles with the drop-in inserts are really nice for clean up, but it's hard to tell exactly how much milk your baby has drank from it unless he or she drinks the whole thing.  Might be a good option for a baby that routinely drinks the whole bottle of milk.  

Diapers:  When our babies are newborns I really like the expensive Pampers Swaddlers.  They are soft and they have a yellow line down the diaper that turns blue if the baby has peed, which is helpful when they are just born and you are literally counting wet diapers.  When they get a little bigger and outgrow the swaddlers we switch to, once again, Up and Up brand.  Pampers are nice, but expensive for something that is only going to be worn for a couple hours or less and then pooped in.  I don't like Huggies because they seem so rigid to me which appears uncomfortable.  Luvs and Up and Up are my favorite diapers to buy.  You'll be buying diapers for years so you might as well start saving that money for more important things and give the good-but-inexpensive ones a shot!

Wipes:  Once again... Up&Up.  Nobody from Up&Up is sponsoring this post, they don't know who I am, and I'm not making a dime on this post, I just really like their products!  I HATE Huggies brand wipes.  When I wipe baby butts with the huggies ones there are often wipe-fibers coming off and giving me more to wipe up, also they can be a pain to get out of the wipes container once they get down a bit.  Pampers are ok.  I love the Up&Up unscented cloth-like wipes!  They are soft, don't fall apart, easy to remove from the container, do a thorough job, and are inexpensive!  I was at the dollar store once and saw they had wipes, so I figured I'd give those a shot... they were awful and I ended up throwing them away.  They were so strongly scented with this horrid perfume smell that it grossed me out more than the poop I was cleaning up!

Diaper rash cream:  Now this is a category that I have tried the heck out of!  I am constantly recommending Desitin Maximum Strength to all my daycare baby's parents.  I've tried various ointments, boudreaux's butt paste, burt's bees diaper cream, Desitin creamy, and a wide variety of others.  What I've learned is that Desitin Maximum Strength is hands down the only thing worth spending your diaper rash treatment money on!  The maximum strength desitin is the same as Desitin Original.  Every other kind of rash cream takes at least 4 times as much to gob onto their little rear-ends, and far more applications to work.  With the maximum strength stuff you just need a little bit to coat the rash, apply it at each diaper change and the rash is usually gone in about a day.  

The only negative is that it can sting if the rash is severe.  If the rash is severe then skip the desitin until it's healed a little more and then use it.  In the mean time try A&D ointment, pictured below.  It is a soothing ointment that can be used for not only diaper rashes, but dry-chapped skin in other areas too.  It doesn't work very fast to treat a diaper rash, but it can help heal it enough to use the desitin maximum strength.  Please do not buy Desitin Creamy... it falls into that category described above that doesn't work... repeat after me... "Creamy is Crap".  Desitin Maximum Strength is where it's at!

So there you have it, take it or leave it. :o)  

The one where I show you our toilet paper

January of 2009 I found myself unemployed.  People all over were losing their jobs, and this effected me... the daycare provider, since if there was no job to go to there was no need for childcare.  I was getting calls from parents looking for daycare, but I was due to have a baby less than 3 months later, no one wanted to enroll until after my maternity leave. 

Suddenly down an income and expecting our third child, it was time to cut costs.  We cut down on a lot of things like going out to eat, entertainment, cable, auto insurance (yay Progressive!), almost everything we could, including finding ways to stretch a dollar at the grocery store.

My husband is a sewer and drain cleaner and has insisted on 1-ply toilet paper since we moved in together, so I found myself the perfect 1-ply - Cottonelle.  I loved that toilet paper because it wasn't like the stuff you find in public bathrooms and schools, but it made my husband happy.  The only problem with that stuff is the fact that we have a lot of people going to the bathroom everyday at our house, and we were burning through toilet paper like nobody's business!  In the spirit of cutting back I bought a big pack of Scott toilet paper.

I was adamant about not using this stuff before.  It was thin and flimsy and it takes more sheets to...um...do what it does than other toilet paper.  I can't believe I'm talking about this!!  But we were cutting back and I was going to sacrifice.  What I found out was this:  A roll of Scott toilet paper lasts forever compared to my precious Cottonelle!!!  I used to buy toilet paper all the time, but no weekly pack of toilet paper anymore!   And this giant pack I bought recently (that I haven't had to open yet) will last us about 14 years or so!   Well, maybe a little less, but, you get the idea!

I generally buy store brand whenever I possibly can, and I've found that several of the Target brand items I buy - I actually prefer over the name brand!   One example: I am a big fan of the Market Pantry milk at Target!

Also while trying to pinch pennies I gave the plain looking loaves of bread at the bottom of the shelves a chance.

I wasn't expecting to like this bread, it was only about 74 cents per loaf, but I was pleasantly surprised! I actually like this bread just as much as the bigger brands of wheat bread and it's dirt cheap which is good since we go through about 4 loaves per week!

I've also recently switched Little Man from Luvs diapers to Target's Up and Up diapers, and I like them better for him!  I think they fit him better than the Luvs did.  I'm not a fan of Huggies at all, but I do like Pampers diapers, but when you look at the price difference per diaper Pampers are just ridiculously expensive for something they're going to wear for just a couple hours or less before it gets changed.  Little Man also drank Up and Up formula back when he was using bottles.  I want to say the Up and Up formula was about $10 cheaper per can than the name brand can... with identical nutrition info!!

I also tried to be a coupon user, but haven't gotten myself disciplined enough to find them, print them, remember to use them, etc.  A huge money saver was planning all our meals for the week and making one trip to the store rather than 3 or 4!

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about toilet paper, milk, bread, and baby stuff!  And just for the sake of keeping with the toilet paper topic... I changed 7 poopy diapers today between the 2 babies!  SEVEN!

Goodnight.

Food For Older Babies

Question: What can I feed older babies who have outgrown baby food but can't really handle our spicy or tough to chew meals?

Answer:  older babies around 9 to 10 months can start having what you're having for meals... usually.  Be careful to make sure the food is soft and can be mashed up with their gums, and small enough that they can swallow it whole, which they'll probably do some of the time, without choking.  One thing I like to do for a quick and easy baby-friendly carb is to cook up a pot of brown rice (LOADED with pottasium, and better for you than white rice), and dump in a can of reduced sodium cream of mushroom/chicken soup.  Give it a good stir and divide it into freezer bags that you can thaw out when you need a little something for him or her.

When you've got it thawed out, add a vegetable of your choice.  I prefer canned vegetables for babies who are new to the whole table food thing because they are softer and easy for them to gum up.

Serve with some soft fruit cut into small pieces.  I like bananas (quartered down the length of the banana before removing it completely from the peel, then sliced up), tomatoes, canned pears or peaches (avoid heavy syrup, feel free to rinse any syrup off) mandarin oranges (beware, the poop will be awful), anything soft.

Another option is to use macaroni noodles with the soups. You can throw in some shredded cheese too.  Other ideas for older babies are crackers, regular cheerios, yogurt, cut up spaghetti noodles, diced toast, ground beef/turkey/chicken, soft foods with low sugar and low sodium.  Remember, honey is dangerous and can cause botulism.  You should not give them honey until they are at least one year old.  When it comes time to wean them off of formula or breastmilk, they should drink whole milk.  Our pediatricians tell us the extra (healthy) fat in whole milk is good for their brain development, and they should stick with it until they turn two, at which point they can switch to skim (or 1% or 2%). 

Check back tomorrow!