Andrea’s Weblog

It seems like there’s been a major recall several times a week for the last two months. Hazardous lead paint and magnets and now cribs suffocating babies. The latest crib recall was the result of 3 deaths and now a pack and now 425,000 play yards are being recalled due to an infant death.
Co-sleeping isn’t […]

Question: What do you get when you mobilize a national nurse-out in 44 states with over 2,000 participants in one week without the help of the national media?
Answer: One pissed-off newspaper publisher
The story:
Through the power of the internet, there was an amazing turn-out for the Applebee’s nurse-out last week. Emails, message boards, blogs and word […]

We officially outed ourselves as lactavists this week. I got an email about a national nurse-out at Applebees on Thursday and signed up to coordinate an Augusta location. I spent the last day sending press releases, calling the media, making posters, and calling the sheriff’s department to be sure we could protest. Heather, my […]

Lately, I’ve been glad that we’ve chosen not to buy a lot of toys for the girls. It seems like every week a new toy is recalled, sentencing more plastic toys to a premature death in a landfill. I’ve been thinking a lot about what we bring into our home.
I’m working on a toy […]

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those of you who know me, but the Flylady routine barely lasted a week. I’ll try again when the girls are older, but for now, I have a new motto:
Dusting and sweeping can wait till tomorrow, for babies grow old so much to our sorrow, quiet […]

A new study was released that shows the AIDS virus can be inactivated in breastmilk simply by flash-heating it. Yes, the simple act of boiling breastmilk using a jar, campstove and pot of water has been shown to make breastmilk safe for baby consumption. In a world where 8,000 people die every day from AIDS, […]

Elena is 15.5 pounds!
Well, that’s not the shocking part about our trip to the doctor. That came as I was checking out. I noticed a “Breastfeeding Support Kit” and eyed it skeptically when I noticed the Enfamil logo on the little cooler bag. This bag, a free handout to patients, contained Enfamil’s DHA/RHA supplement for […]

It’s a strange universe where one day you find a cat and a few weeks later you lose one. Our big fluffy calico darted out the door last Sunday. She usually hides in the front bushes or somewhere in our yard and comes inside a few hours later, but this time she never returned. I […]

I realized this week that Elizabeth is not the typical two-year-old. When we go out to eat “fast food” we usually end up at our local burrito chain, Barberitos. (Elizabeth used to demand “Wheatie-weed-ohs!”) Every couple months we’ll end up at Chick-Fil-A for the playground. If you ask her what she eats at Chick-fil-a she’ll […]

What do you get when you add:
a two year old + a new sibling + a nasty cold + steroids
You get grumpzilla. Grumpzilla has been living with us the last week or more and has been challenging her parents at any chance she gets. I’ve been furiously trying to read up on how to handle […]

Who doesn’t love a catchy pro-breastfeeding slogan like “the other white milk”? Well, apparently this slogan touched a nerve with the National Pork Board. Their lawyers have threatened the website that sells the T-shirts (to raise money for a milk bank) with a lawsuit if they continue to sell the shirt.
Despite the fact that […]

Coming soon to an airport near you! Well, at least I hope the new international symbol for breastfeeding gains worldwide use and recognition. Mothering magazine just announced a winner of their contest to find a symbol to designate nursing lounges and baby-friendly areas. Most of us are familiar with the bottle symbol, but that doesn’t […]

Elizabeth has become immersed in pretend play. As I type this, she is nursing a bottle of handsoap and covering herself with a hand towel. I had the honor of holding the bottle of soap, but apparently picked it up upside down and was immediately corrected, “No, this way.”‘
I read an article on pretend play […]

Elizabeth is slowly learning that some things that we do in the privacy of our home are not meant for the outside world. She’s repeated to me a few times “I put my clothes on outside so people don’t see me naked.” We still have some work to do though as I learned last week.
We […]

I’ve always struggled on how to explain attachment parenting to people who ask. When I tell people they usually look at me like “what’s so special about that?”
I just found a great definition that I am committing to memory:
Attachment parenting (AP), a phrase coined by Dr. William Sears, is a parenting philosophy that is also […]

I’m relieved that we’ve finally decided who is going to help deliver the baby. I had an appointment with the midwife group at the Medical College of Georgia which went pretty well. Our main goal is to have natural childbirth without unnecessary interventions. This would happen in a homebirth situation, but we’re not quite ready […]

Now that you’ve read our birth experience, I’ll share what we learned from it. After planning for a natural labor, what we got was not what we prepared for, nor what we outlined in our birth plan.  Through a series of uninformed decisions and not asserting ourselves, we went from being in total control of […]

I feel I need to backtrack in order for people to understand why we are considering a homebirth with our next baby. We learned a lot from Elizabeth’s delivery that opened our eyes to the how the medical community functions, particularly those involved with labor and delivery. Many of the decisions the L&D folks put […]

It amazes me that some people can be horrified by the site of a mom nursing a baby yet not blink an eye at all the cleavage and bootie shaking seen on TV these days. Babytalk magazine’s cover this month shows a profile of a boob with a baby attached. Apparently it has evoked quite […]

Before having Elizabeth, I hadn’t done much research on breastfeeding. I had no idea how long you were supposed to do it. I remember telling my OB that I hadn’t thought about how long I would nurse Elizabeth, but planned for  6 months. (This would have been a good opportunity for Dr. Christy to educate […]

A recent study published in Pediatrics identifies a link between maternal responsiveness and cognitive development. Babies through the age of 10 showed higher intellectual development the more attentive the mom is (picking the baby up when he cries, interacting with him as you wear him in a sling, etc.) and the more positive the parenting […]

We had our first McPherson camping expedition last weekend. Mistletoe State Park is less than a half hour away and seemed like a good place for our inaugural camping trip. Packing for the expedition was quite involved: tent, bike, food, swimming stuff, dog stuff, bug stuff, sun stuff . . . Much more than I’ve […]

This week I finally got around to ordering new nursing bras. Nursing bras are particularly hard to come by, and the ones that you can find in big box stores are definitely not for long-term wear. I love walking into Victoria’s Secret and asking them if they carry nursing bras–partly because I like the look […]

I always knew that I would breastfeed, but somehow I never thought
about what it entails. Elizabeth’s happiness and well-being seem
contingent on my ability to whip out a breast at a moments notice. I’m
permanently on-call. For at least the next 6 months, she’ll be at arms
reach (unless I use the breast pump). I’m happy to be […]

Week 40, 180 pounds
At what I hope was my last checkup on Monday the doctor said that the
baby’s head is “down there” and effacement is going well, but no
dilation. I was a bit discouraged about that before I read that you
don’t have to dilate before labor starts–that is the point of labor.
She had me schedule […]

For almost 9 months I’ve been on a countdown to July 21st. So much so, that I haven’t spent much time thinking beyond that date, but now that it’s only a week away there’s no avoiding it. The majority of the time I get excited thinking about meeting the baby and starting our family. Then […]

159 lbs, 24 weeks, 9.75 inch belly
It’s now official that the rest of the world can tell that I’m
pregnant. I’ve been asked by our UPS carrier if I’m “with child.” The
most popular question is “when are you due?” followed by “do you know
what you’re having?” I have to hold my tongue not to respond “a […]