More Baby Stuff

My old college roommate is going to have her first baby in August (yeah!!). I'm so excited for her because I know she's going to be a great mom. She's been asking me questions here and there along her pregnancy so I've been thinking about baby stuff lately. I'm also watching my cousin's son a few days a week so I have a baby in my house as well.

There is no question in my mind that I've gotten greener in my child rearing as I've had more kids. My poor oldest! At least I ate a balanced diet when I was pregnant with him. That's about the best I did. Of course I nursed all my kids, again, longer with each additional child. My oldest got 8 months which is still fantastic, but compared to the other two, I feel he was cheated. My second child I nursed until she was 13 months and made all of her baby food, which was totally organic until she was almost 9 months old. My youngest was my greenest baby. In fact, when I was pregnant with him, I found a book called, Raising Baby Green by Dr Greene. It fueled my quest to be greener in my life and so I became a vegetarian while I was pregnant with my third to protect him from the toxins in meat. I ate a balanced diet, so much so that I had a checklist that I tallied every day to make sure I was eating enough servings of each food group (I followed the Pregnancy Diet in What to Expect When You're Expecting...about the only valuable thing in that book, in my opinion!) I found all natural lotions, soaps, shampoos, house cleaners, anything I could think of to keep toxins out of my home and my body so that they were not passed to my little guy during the most important time of his development. He, of course, is STILL nursing (we're working on weaning...he's not a fan), wears exclusively cloth diapers, had home-made organic baby food, does not eat meat (except for the occasional dog and cat food!), and was delivered without pain medication and was my old baby that I feel comfortable saying I "wore". I used a front carrier with my first, a wrap with my second, but my third got the sling. I LOVE the sling! It is the one baby item that I would say I couldn't have done without (I used to say it was the diaper genie...don't need that anymore!), I could take him anywhere (and I did) and do everything (including load 40 lb bags of dog food and softner salt into the grocery cart) while keeping him close to me. I had people comment on my sling all the time. How they wished they had something like that when their kids were little, where did I get it, I wish I had one of those...I used it with my cousin's son too and STILL love it for not my my kind-of-baby, but also my little toddler, who can now ASK to go in the sling. He loves being up near everyone and being part of the action. I love that he's bound to me and can't run away and get into things, but I still have my hands free! SO, I HIGHLY recommend the sling for not only newborns, but toddlers as well. Actually, I had my daughter, who was 3 last summer, in it at our family reunion. It was a little much for my back, but she thought it was the coolest thing ever! If you know someone that's interested in a sling, or you're looking for a baby gift, I have two slings, the one I used with the newborns (mine and my cousin's) is a Sling EZ. The one I bought when my youngest was 15 months old was a HotSling. I got a new one because it was on sale, I needed another Christmas gift for him, and it didn't require any adjustment, which was good for him at 15 mos, not so good for using with my cousin's little guy when I started watching him when he was 4 weeks old. I much prefer the SlingEZ for the little ones because it can be adjusted to keep them more secure. I still can use it with my toddler and he still likes it, its just a matter of which one I grab first.