Baby Articles

When my daughter was a toddler to about four years old she would have episodes of intense emotion. Which I guess is a euphemism for a "tantrum", but I feel like tantrum implies that it's an intentional behaviour. Whereas I absolutely believe these outbursts were beyond her control.

While it’s easy to say that mothers should be able to breastfeed anywhere, anytime, it can be a bit daunting breastfeeding in public spaces. Especially in the early days.

As a new parent conflicting advice can be a bit overwhelming. It can start from the hospital - ever shift change a different midwife comes in with a different opinion about how exactly you should be doing everything. Especially if the advice people are giving you goes against your own opinion and instincts.

Larissa Waters Breastfeeding In Parliament Shows the No Win Situation For Mothers   Larissa Waters does yet another breastfeeding first https://t.co/A5a18083VE pic.twitter.com/BXMh7vYH5M — Karen Barlow (@KJBar) June 22, 2017   First time I've had to move a Senate motion while breastfeeding! And my partner in crime moved her own motion just before mine, bless her — Larissa Waters (@larissawaters) June 22, 2017 Greens Senator, Larissa Waters, breastfed her 14 week old daughter yesterday while giving a speech in parliament. Unsurprisingly the internet had a lot of feelings about it. I want to start by saying the vast majority of the comments I’ve read on various news and social media outlets were positive. Most people think this is pretty awesome – myself included. She’s a woman who’s been supported by her workplace and her own network to be able to return to work with her baby. This is great news!  Especially…

“What?!” I hear you gasp, at the very thought of there being an “UP” side of having a bad sleeper. Well, yeah, there are some. At least for my little boy. Elliot is now coming up to four years old, and up until a couple of months ago, we had next to no routine. No matter how hard we tried to get this little guy to go to bed, and stay asleep, it was just not happening.

As promised - this is my new and improved “Butter Chicken” recipe. I’m putting “butter chicken” in quotation marks at this point because I feel like I’ve altered this so much that it doesn’t exactly resemble the traditional dish.

Most nights start off with our 8 year old son falling asleep with either me or his father. He doesn’t fall asleep by himself. Either one of us will lie with him in his bed or he'll crawl into our bed.

  A Queensland mother was allegedly told to leave a Kmart store on Saturday, by a store manager, for breastfeeding her 3 month old son. A group have organised a “Flash Mob” to raise awareness and show their support for breastfeeding mothers. What Really Happened There seems to be some mixed reports about what exactly happened, with many outlets reporting that she was asked to cover up, rather than told to leave the store. However within the description of the “Flash Mob” event on Facebook they’ve described what took place in the Kmart as: “On Saturday 11th March, a young mother was asked by management of Kmart Smithfield to leave the store if she wished to continue breastfeeding her child. The manager stated that it was against store policy for her to feed her child whilst there, despite being covered with a wrap…. We wish to make abundantly clear that…

Milk Bar Breast Pumps recently sent me a Haakaa Breast Pump to review! I was really excited about doing this review, because it’s a breast pump I have actually had my eye on for a while.

I’m not sure if it’s because I breastfed my kids for an exceptionally long time (Nearly 8 years in total!!!) so people had plenty of time to comment on it. Or if it’s because I have “Hey, please tell me how to parent” stamped on my forehead.

When my son was first born I didn’t really know much about breastfeeding. I knew I wanted to breastfeed, though I didn’t really think much about it. I didn’t do any breastfeeding classes, or even read much about breastfeeding. I’d figured that breastfeeding would be just like giving birth – it would just come naturally. It’s what our bodies do. Right? Breastfeeding Constantly I wasn’t prepared to feed constantly (which I now understand is perfectly normal). Then my milk came in after a few days he fed with such ferocity that my nipples started to seriously hurt. He was about a week old when I told my mum my nipples had cracked. I didn’t really know what to do about it! All I knew what it hurt and my baby was still feeding. Ow. She told me not to worry and popped straight up to the chemist. She came back with…

You could say I’m an expert on weaning. I should be, I’ve been doing it for the last 2 years. I’ve spent more time trying to wean my daughter than I've spent just breastfeeding her.

Here ends another World Breastfeeding Week for me. I cannot believe I’m still breastfeeding. I really thought last year was going to be the very last time I celebrated World Breastfeeding Week as a nursing mother.

I love babies. I’m ridiculously excited when my friend are pregnant and even more so when the baby arrive. I fuss, I knit them blankets that take me 40 hours, I love the smell of babies so much that even milky newborn baby spew smells good to me.

Yesterday was a particularly long day. It started at 3 am where my little girl woke up and simply could not fall back to sleep. I’d only gone to sleep just after 11 pm myself. She’d already woken up briefly at 1am, so my 4 hours sleep had already been broken.

So apparently there’s some controversy behind the simple statement: Fed is Best. It’s a take on “breast is best” and in three little words it acknowledges all the different way we can feed our babies that might be best for our circumstances: breastfed, formula fed, tube fed, mix fed, cross fed, supplemented feeding system fed and so on…

I was doing a little bit of housework while babywearing with my baby girl in a carrier on my back. I turned on the upright vacuum cleaner and as I started to work on the living room floor two bullants dropped out of the vacuum onto the carpet.

I’ve been enthusiastically recommending Ergobaby carriers for the last 7 years as it's the most comfortable, easy to use, versatile and long-lasting carrier I've ever tried, and the Ergobaby Adapt is now the carrier I would recommend above all others.

My littlest turned 4 years old a couple of weeks ago, a birthday milestone that filled me with more dread than I could put into words. I was feeling very apprehensive about the fact that I have still not managed to wean her and so I would now be breastfeeding a 4 year old.

This blog post was brought to you by nearly 7 years of sleep deprivation and conflicting advice.

My youngest baby is 2 ½ and has been carried in a sling or carrier of some sort since she was a newborn. I wanted to baby wear with her for a number of reasons.

Referring to dads as “helpers”, “babysitters” and anything else that implies that they aren’t actually parenting their own children, that they’re just standing in for the mother for a few moments, is not a good thing.

(Firstly, to provide a little context for this letter, my kids right now are 3 and a half and nearly 7, so 3 years ago they were 6 months old and nearly 4) Hey Rach, how are you going?

I’m hesitant to write about this because I’m so afraid this will be misunderstood. I'm really not looking for judgement, or criticism. I'm feeling a little fragile, so I don't think I could take it right now.

Last night was a bit of a difficult bedtime for my little girl - who’s just turned 3. Which is unusual for her, she’s can be pretty strong willed and intense, but she thrives on routine and bedtime is all about routine, so she usually goes through it all without event and she’s pretty tired at the end of the day.

Children who have food sensitivities may be defensive towards the taste, texture, smell, colour or even shape of the food. It is important to be patient and have strategies in place to ensure meal time is fun and stress-free. Children with sensory processing challenges often are considered ‘fussy eaters’, as any oral input is sensory input. Here are some practical tips to help your fussy eater:

Deciding to formula feed your baby, can be an easy decision for some, but for others they may have that decision made for them, when for some untold reason they can not breastfeed their baby; and some feel real guilt over this.

Over the last few weeks since we moved into our new home our toddler (20 months) has developed (been encouraged into) a really sweet bedtime routine. Bed time is now my favorite time of day.

As a pre-baby mum I promised myself to always provide nutritional and healthy meals and snacks to my kids no matter what. But 3 years later I have miss 3 and miss 9 months and guess what??? Miss 3 can be as stubborn in regards to eating a variety of food.

The twins have me on my toes again. Just when I thought we were past the worst of the night-waking in our house, here I am, back in the land of sleep-deprivation. Make that accumulated sleep-deprivation. Because a one-off night of waking up to children can be recovered from with an extra coffee the next day and an early night. But when it's multiple nights of interrupted sleep, it starts to affect everything.

For those of you who haven't heard it's a term to describe pictures of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding Selfies. Brelfies.

Kidspot recently published an article titled “How to express when out and about" but what the piece was about was whether or not a person should express while out, not anything about how to. If I was going to write a “How to" about expressing in public it would read:

Tomorrow my daughter turns 3. Holy moly. I don’t even know how that happened. I swear she was only born 5 minutes ago. Her language development in the last month has been incredible, she’s catching up in leaps and bounds, talking constantly and proving herself to be a very clever.

Recently I went and placed a single white rose on the grave of my daughter Melissa, she would have been 32 years old if she had lived. Melissa was born at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, 4th October 1982. She was delivered by cesarean and weighed only 5lb 3 oz (2.353 kilos) due to placenta failure. She was also born with multiple heart abnormalities and only lived for 13 days.

Something has been on my mind for a while and it’s something that, as a woman, a mother and as a person who has a pair of breasts, is very important to me. Saying “I support formula feeding IF” is just as bad as saying “I support breastfeeding BUT”. I breastfeed my children because I CAN and because I CHOOSE to. I’ve breastfed my son for 3 years and I’m currently breastfeeding my 2 year old.

There are so many babywearing benefits for both the parent and the baby. Here are a few things that we love about babywearing! Babywearing turns working from A to B into a bonding opportunity. I got my very first carrier when my son was 3 weeks old and part of the reason for buying it was we only had a forward facing stroller at the time and as we walked along people would stop and chat with him, or even just smile in at him, and I felt like I was missing out.

There are more than a billion monthly active users of Facebook, 500 million tweets are sent every day and overall nearly 40% of humans are able to access the internet. Until this year women sharing images of their children breastfeeding were at risk of having their photographs reported for obscenity and Facebook blocked some breastfeeding support organisations’ accounts entirely. The recent change to Facebook policy which removed the ban on women’s nipples being shown in breastfeeding images is a healthy step forward, but a great deal of discomfort and inequality that exists in regard to the female nipple in public and on social media remains.

Online society in particular has this thing where you have to be pro or con on the breastfeeding stance (this is how it comes across, I am not at all saying breast feeding mothers are exclusively bottle feeding haters and anti formula Nazis) I have felt more shame feeding my son a bottle of formula than I ever did while breastfeeding him and honestly, I breast fed anywhere, walking around the shops, while waiting in ques. At 5 weeks old we had a photo shoot at a pop up “Tickled Pink” stand and he got upset so I fed him, discretely, then and there. I had people stop to chat to me while feeding him, who patted his head and commented on how cute he was and they didn’t even know I was feeding him at the time, and told me so when they realized (as I redid my bra).…

I’m raising dependent children. No, that’s not a typo. I know that independent children is supposed to be the thing that parents want to achieve, but it’s really the last thing I want to do. Like, literally the last thing I do as a parent will be when my child becomes independent. That’s when they move out, get a job, rent their own place, start doing their own laundry and when that day comes this Mumma is going to celebrate with a bottle of champers! But really, that’s at least a decade and a half away! Right now, with a 2 and 5 year old, independence isn’t the lesson of the day.

My daughter is 2 and for me that signifies the end of “demand feeding”. I did the same with my son, after 2 years old of breastfeeding him on he was gently restricted to only feeding at home, at night, in bed. This sounds so easily done, 2 years of unlimited feeding is a pretty darn good run – you’d think they’d be a little more appreciative and cut me some slack! But for my toddlers reducing feeds has been what I imagine it would be like trying to take away a toddler’s dummy, special comforter, sleep routine and favourite snack all at once; lots of resistance.

Breastfeeding is not a piece of cake, but there are similarities. The year my daughter turned two it took me three days to construct her birthday cake. It was a beautiful white chocolate mud cake with a fondant farm yard, inspired by something I saw by Martha Stewart. It didn’t occur to me that Martha has battalions of experts behind her, and I failed home economics. Modelling those little animals in the small hours of the night was a mission though to everybody else it might have seemed a little obsessive. Ok, perhaps more than a little. Baking and decorating my children’s birthday cakes is an act of love, and the planning and process of baking a gift in itself.

The last couple of weeks have been wrought with illness and injury. Not looking for sympathy here, just setting the scene. We started out with my dodgy hip acting up where I could barely walk, let alone pick up my 9.3kg 8 month old who currently loves climbing all over Mummy. I ended up at the doctor and need an x-ray to see whats going on. Elliot also picked up a cough at mothers group so wasn't sleeping much, very clingy, coughing himself awake all night and going off his food.

When i was born my parents had one choice; to use terry cloth nappies. And mum would soak, wash, dry then fold them ready to use. Now it seems more convenient to use disposables. Simply purchase from the supermarket and use then throw. Now when i fell pregnant with my daughter i was expecting to do the same. In fact i found a direct to public wholesaler whose nappies were made right there in my local area. Bonus.

Breastfeeding is like a favourite snack, a cuddle with Mumma and the comfort of sucking all rolled into one, so it’s no wonder that my toddler wants to feed often, but yesterday walking home from dropping her big brother off at school she lifted up her arm to show me the scratch on her elbow from the previous day, she held onto her scratch and told me “ow, ow, ow” emphasised with a little pout and sadness in her eyes – then she tapped my chest and brightly asked “boo boo?”

Nursing Aversion: The toe-curling, blood-boiling, rip-your-hair-out, bite-the-back-of-your-hand and want-to-go-running-down-the-street-screaming feeling that you may get when your toddler asks for the boobies

Two months ago, I welcomed into my life my beautiful baby boy Elliot. He is my everything and it feels like he's been with us for so much longer than just eight weeks. And while yes, he has, my pregnancy was a fairly full on thirty eight and a bit weeks, now it's really real. I'm not just pregnant, I'm Mummy.

The best guests I had were with my son, some friends came to stay for a couple of days, and we sat on the couch eating junk food, watching dvds, them telling me how beautiful my new baby was, and they were people who I felt comfortable talking to, felt comfortable being silent, felt comfortable learning how to breastfeed in front of them – they who took care of themselves, it was nice just having friends there, without feeling like I had to do anything for them.

Undoubtedly sleep deprivation is one of the more difficult aspects of parenthood - particularly early parenthood. Sleep deprivation can cause a range of problems for parents, including poor concentration, clumsiness, forgetfulness, irritably, anxiety and depression. If you feel like you aren't coping speak to your doctor or children's health nurse.

Co-Sleeping with Two This isn’t something we do every night, Our 4.5 year old usually sleeps through the night in his own bed, even if he needs help getting to sleep and then wakes up in the morning and crawls into our bed for cuddles. However….. This night was a rare night when Jasper slipped into our bed before daddy did and daddy (wisely) predicted it might be the kind of night where at least one parent should get some decent, uninterrupted sleep. So he got to go and sleep in Jasper’s bed. Although, I wish I could say that it’s unusual for our 16 month old Katelyn to feed this often, but this  is a pretty standard nightfor her. It was the kind of night that reminded me of this Crappy Pictures post, so I decided to make my own photo story board to describe it. 10:00 pm I…

Sleep “Nightmare” Routine For some kids, it’s have a bath, get dressed and brush your teeth, and in to bed. Other kids need a story, maybe a song, a drink, a kiss and a cuddle or maybe even a soft toy. Bedtime in my house is long….. very long. We do all of the above. And then some more. My eldest requires certain things to be done to his room in order to be comfortable to go to sleep. Trying to curb the problem, can equal to more insecurities. Taking away things, he usually knows it’s not there and wont sleep until it’s returned. Everything above is done hassle free, but getting him to lay in his bed longer then 10 seconds is hard work. First things first, Peppa and George need to be driven home from the airport. He will spend his time getting them home, which seems to be the…

In Venezuela, law-makers will be discussing legislation which would deny parents access to formula, with exceptions including mothers with limited milk supply or in the case of the death of the mother.

For many new parents this isn’t something that takes thought or action, for many parents bonding is instant and as natural as breathing in and out and the bonding begins during pregnancy and continues effortlessly after their baby is born. For others feeling a deep bond and connection to your baby may not be as instant.

There are several different types of cloth nappies, and countless brands. The benefits of using cloth are substantial if you consider the cost of using disposables to both your pocket and to the environment as well as being more convenient – yes you read correctly – if you running low on disposable nappies you.....

Imagine you’re a mum who has a baby, who is kept warm with a blanket, and you take baby and her blanket out in public all the time. How would this affect you? Or impact your choices about whether or not you use a blanket? Or if your a mother who confidently uses a blanket – anywhere, any time you baby is cold........Read More Click the Article

There are a lot of different ideas about what Attachment Parenting is. It can be interpreted in many different ways, both by people who identify with Attachment Parenting in their own family, and by people who judge it from the sidelines.

How to Calm a Crying Baby Below are some tips to try if your baby is crying. These might apply to a newborn, older baby, toddler or child.

If you’re having trouble settling your baby to sleep or looking to find alternative ways to settle baby if you want to change a sleep pattern, here are some ideas that might help:

Naming a child should be a joy. I don't mind people trying to have unique names for their children. But think of them when you are doing it. They have to live with this name for the rest of their lives. SO please, THINK OF THE CHILDREN! Don't give them a dumb name.

Sharing My Breastfeeding Story When he was handed to me, and after a few minutes I asked if I was “allowed” to feed him, as though I needed permission,

Today while trying to contain my sugar cravings, browsing the confectionery isle at my local supermarket, a lady with two small children approached me and asked me “Is that amber around your daughters neck,

Stay Positive. This cannot be emphasised enough – toileting, or “toilet training” – should not be a source of shame, punishment, anger, or disgust from the parent. If you are getting frustrated and fed up take a breath (or maybe hold your breath) and think about the long term impacts.....

Well what can be said, we are beginning to trend more in traditional type names. Such as Hannah, Sarah and Charlotte in our girls names. Charlotte jumped from spot 6 (2011) to no.1 for 2012, knocking Ruby down from 1st spot. Jack and William yet again switch spots as no.1 and 2. For what I believe to be the 7th year running.

Babies are not like a cake, there’s no set list of ingredients with instructions that will get you the results you are looking for – so keep in mind that this newborn shopping guide is just that - a guide.

This is my gorgeous CC. 4 days old, so sleepy and yellow. When I was pregnant I daydreamed about the beautiful bond I would create with my perfect little person through breastfeeding. Of course everyone says it’s hard, it’s challenging, it’s not easy for everyone… But surely for me… I was an exception to the rule… Or so I thought. Being a first time mum I went out on my merry little way, I had everything I needed, breast pads, a pump, bras, creams, knick knacks and gadgets for the doodad thing. I was prepared, and I was SO sure I was going to give breastfeeding a red hot go. When my beautiful CC entered the world, I unfortunately was not prepared for the real challenges, I was not prepared for the nurse to enter my room late one night, tell me I needed to hand express some colostrum for…

There’s all this silly controversy in the baby world of debaters and ‘experts’. The attachment parents (AP) say, ‘nurse your baby to sleep‘. The anti-AP (Is there a term for these people?)

You know you’re tired when…. When you wake up on the couch in the middle of the night with a child on you because you fell asleep watching TV and nobody woke you up. When you think baby needs a nappy change, worry because their nappy is completely dry, take it off anyway and then go to put it in the bin and right on top of the rubbish is a nappy – then remember you literally changed their nappy 5 minutes prior. When while cosleeping with baby and preschooler have to consciously check head size and hair length before breastfeeding, in case its the wrong child. When you walk into a room and have no idea what you were there for – a dozen times a day. When you think you’ve been to the toilet, but you’r not sure, and you can’t remember and it takes more time and…

Okay, I admit… When I was pregnant, I assumed that “baby wearing” was for hippies. You know the kind, the ones who refuse to spend the time with a razor more then once every 12 months

Stop Trying To Fix My Kids Sleep Ugh, I apologise if this is a bit ranty and not terribly well written – I’ll explain why. Last night my 1 year old and 4 year old “tag teamed” me all night. ALL night. Baby has a blocked nose, it was pissing her off, she couldn’t feed, couldn’t lay on her back, flip flopping around all night, occasionally crying and arching in frustration of not being able to feed. At one point she flopped off the bed. Oh dear. Not a good night for little princess. Her brother woke 3 times, once just to be resettled in his bed, once because he’d walked into furniture in the dark, once to go to the toilet. He slept in our bed the rest of the night because I just couldn’t get up again. (remember, baby is screaming and arching  between her brother waking) long…

Human Breast Milk Donations A few years ago, I read in the news about an ice cream shop in the UK that was selling ice cream made from human breastmilk for something like $25 a pop.  At the time, Margo had just been born and I had already been breastfeeding already for several months.  So, the idea of a human consuming another human’s breastmilk didn’t seem too much of a crazy notion to me… although, I could understand some people that would think otherwise! Well, I haven’t had a breastfeeding break since then and the old girls have been working double time lately.  A few weeks ago, a cry went out on a parenting facebook page that I belong to, ‘Local mum in hospital, needs donated milk‘.  Donating breastmilk had been something on my mind for a while.  I had read an amazing story, from a local mum, about the…

Co-Sleeping Conundrums It’s all fun and games until someone gets head-butted in the eye…  Don’t get me wrong, I love love love co-sleeping with my babies… actually, it’s not that I love it, it’s just that I can’t imagine it any other way.  Okay, but occasionally, sleeping with a baby and a toddler in the same room/bed does have its funny challenges and dilemmas.  What would the cave people have done… well, they wouldn’t have thought twice about it, they all sleep together and on the same safe sleeping surface… but we all live in houses and have things like mattresses and blankets, etc.  So, we do need to consider a few things in order to make co-sleeping work. We have been co-sleeping with Margo since day #1.  We don’t have a cot (crib) and she has never slept in another room away from us.  At first, Margo was in our…

I’m a firm believer in only starting a baby on solids only when they reach certain developmental milestones: sitting, able to put things (food) in their mouth, etc.

I know this whole “Breastfeeding in public” thing has just kept bubbling away on social media and I do apologise to those who are a bit over hearing about it because I’m going to bring it up again.

Baby is Starting Child Care I feel totally out of my depth again after 4 years of parenting. And you’d think of all things that I should be totally okay and under control with is a baby starting child care today.