Baby - Faith and Family Reviews

Tag Archive for Baby

Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on October 4, 2010
in Family Stuff, Monday Motivation

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Go for 2-3 walks. Hmm…nope, nada, none.

~ Get most of our summer clothes packed up and winter clothes put away. Hmm….sort of done.

~ Work on our office. My area to declutter since it has gotten even more out of control since baby boy arrived. Hmm….barely hit the surface.

That is all I am even going to attempt to do this week since I have quite a bit of work to do for clients, plus homeschooling and a number of phone calls.

This week’s Motivation:

~ We have a field trip planned this week to a farm.

~ A friend offered her photography skills to take our family pictures so we are going to have a second field trip to the Botanical Gardens.

~ Plus we have to do everything else we need to do for work and homeschooling. So I am really just trying to organize my time better, if that is even possible when I am nursing on-demand a six week old baby!? It seems most things are done along side nursing and holding Sir Eats Alot.

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Introducing Our New Baby – Sir Eats Alot

Posted by html404 on September 1, 2010
in Family Stuff

I know, I know, some of you are probably saying “Finally!” but here is our new baby….Sir Eats Alot 😀 We think he is a precious addition to our family. His soft, silky, thick hair is amazing! He has the most hair of all our babies. My husband thinks it is growing thicker with each passing day, but I don’t think it really is. I just love the smell of a new baby! We are very thankful to the Lord for our son’s safe arrival.

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Sir Eats Alot seems to be adjusting to life in the big bad world. I think he went through a growth spurt as soon as my milk came in because as his nickname says, he eats a lot. It has just been the last couple of days where it hasn’t been a nursing marathon of every hour or two 24/7. He has been having longer stretches of sleep and is more contented after eating. I am really hoping that he’s back up to his birth weight or beyond. I will find out tomorrow at our two week appointment.

Sir Eats Alot’s Birth

Sir Eats Alot’s birth wasn’t quite like my other home births. My water broke a few hours after the girls and I returned from mini golfing in the wee hours of August 18th. Contractions started soon after, but I waited a couple of hours before I called my midwife. We decided she should come because with my other two home births the babies came within an hour or two and she missed my last son’s birth by about five minutes!

Contractions continued to come, but did not get any stronger and as daylight broke through the sky, I knew I wouldn’t have the baby before all the children woke up. It was very challenging for me to labor with a house full of noise and people and I think it slowed my labor. I am a very private person and I would have preferred to labor quietly alone during the middle of the night. But, alas, that wasn’t to be this time.

So my labor slowed and wasn’t going anywhere so my husband took the children to the park, I tried to rest and then my midwife suggested taking some homeopathy remedies – two of them which are like black/blue cohosh – which can sometimes speed up a putsy labor. I had nothing to lose by trying. So I took that about 12 hours after my water broke, an hour or so later the contractions were getting stronger and by 3:00pm I was starting to feel pushy. 40 minutes later Sir Eats Alot was born into his Daddy’s hands. I haven’t pushed that long since my first child! I have pushed out a 9 pound 8 ounce baby in 1-2 pushes, so this was hard and tiring. All I wanted to do was lay down and rest with my new baby, which is exactly what I did!

Life with Our New Baby

It’s been two and a half years since we had a newborn in the house and oh! how soon we forget the demanding newborn days! So bear with me as I adjust my days, my work schedule, our homeschool schedule and life in general to accommodate this new baby of ours. Right now I am going on very little sleep and hoping life settles into a new normal (whatever that may be) very soon.

As you may have noticed, we abandoned our normal posting schedule this week, I forgot to post last week’s giveaway and we are still catching up on reviews from our Back to School Product Guide. It may take us another week or so to get back on track as we get all the reviews posted.

Until next time….

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Monday Motivation

Posted by html404 on August 23, 2010
in Family Stuff, Monday Motivation, Uncategorized

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Last week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Finish reviewing products we received for last week’s Back to School Guide. With the arrival of Sir “Little” Stuff we are still working on them.

~ Get ahead on posts…maybe. We kind of did, but got behind too since we were only a few days ahead.

~ We still haven’t made it mini golfing or to the beach and those are on my lists if the weather would just cooperate on the days that I plan to do them! We made it mini golfing! We wonder if that isn’t what helped get my labor off to a start.

~ The garden. We really need to plant a few fast growing plants that we started inside, just to see how they do compared to our direct planting in the spring. Things like lettuce….We are so very behind on the garden! Still picking produce, but the weeds are overtaking us, unfortunately.

~ Hopefully have this baby! I have been very tired and uncomfortable, so I am hoping and praying that I will be rested up for labor and delivery.And I did! 😉 Amazing, I got something I was hoping for, but at the same time wasn’t all that ready for.

This Week’s Motivation:

~ Not much on the agenda this week. Resting, nursing and a little bit of work here and there. That’s about it.

My husband’s boss surprised us by giving him a week’s paid vacation, so we are very thankful for that blessing. Due to the change of ownership etc. that occurred last year we were not counting on any paid vacation time, so it was an unexpected blessing.

Sir “Little” Stuff is stirring, so I must go attend his needs before he dost loudly protest that I am not by his side…I am still only a couple feet away but you all know how newborns are, right?

Until next time…

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It’s A………

Posted by Bobbie Gould on August 19, 2010
in Family Stuff

BOY! He was born on August 18th, 2010 at 3:39 pm weighing 9 lbs. 10 oz. and 20″long. 5 days before his due date August, 23rd 2010!

His seven older siblings are delighted with his arrival and his parents praise the Lord for His watchful care over another successful homebirth with midwife attending. His daddy caught him. He is a adorable chubby little man. Both mommy and baby are doing great.

We may be slower in posting for the next few days.

RJ for Theresa

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Monday Motivation with Faith and Family Reviews

Posted by html404 on July 19, 2010
in Monday Motivation

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I cannot believe it is time for another Monday Motivation here at Faith and Family Reviews! Time is flying by!

This week there is a lot that I want to accomplish, especially since time is winding down for this baby’s gestation. 5 more weeks – give or take days or weeks. So my list may overwhelm even me!

Last week was fun with Do Good Day, and I want you all to tell me if you happened to do any in your own communities. Please leave a comment letting me know what it was and I will enter you into a drawing for a $20 gift card. I haven’t decided whether or not to do a gas card, a Visa card or what, but it will be a $20 gift card. Don’t forget to leave me a link to your post about your Do Good Day activity, ok?

Last week’s progress report:

~ To make it through the week! Seriously, I have been feeling awful, baby has been pressing up on my diaphram and it is very uncomfortable to move these days. I made it thru! Thanks to some special help of probiotics, barley greens and enzymes! A couple of friends recommended these three things to settle my tummy and it appears to have worked. I not only made it thru the week, but also am eating more.
~ Work on client projects. Starting with a new client this week and have a training session tomorrow afternoon. Training went well and I am ready to start assignments.
~ Work in our garden as weather permits. I am sure we have summer squash in need of picking since I forgot to remind Robert and the boys to pick when they went out to the field! We weeded a little bit and harvested and watered a lot in the 90 degree weather.
~ Come up with name for baby! Ongoing until we agree on a name.
~ Work on getting my iron up more. This will be ongoing until even after the baby is born.

Still working on the last two. How are you doing?

This week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Work – there is always something to do for clients and this week is a my first week with a full load for my newest client, so that will be something new.
~ Help out friends who just had a preemie baby a week ago at 26 weeks gestation. Baby Huck weighed only 1 lb. 8 oz. He was born via c-section so his mama is still recovering from surgery. This is their first child. They are organic farmers and we plan to help them on their farm a couple of days, plus deliver a couple of meals too.
~ Deliver a meal to friends who just had their seventh child – they have seven children 9 and under! Their baby was born a week ago Friday.
~ Name our baby
~ Harvesting, weeding and hopefully starting some fall planting at our garden. Plus other business that needs to be done for our own farm start up.

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Lullabelly

Posted by html404 on May 30, 2010
in Pregnancy and Birth

This review is done in cooperation with The Healthy Moms Review Team that I am a part of. I did receive free products, but that in no way affects my review.

Lullabelly is a wonderful concept. It is “belt” that wraps around an expectant mom’s tummy, but it isn’t just any maternity belt, it contains a little “pouch” or pocket with a built-in, but removable speaker as well as a pair of earphones so that both mama and baby can listen to music together. The belt itself is made of a very soft fabric that comes in pink, blue, green, chocolate brown, or sunshine yellow. Mine is princess pink. It encircles mom with Velcro closures and is machine washable, just remember to remove the speaker, earphones etc. from the pouch before you wash it.

I really love the idea of the Lullabelly, as I have been known to chit-chat with my babies in utero and I love music. However, I did not like the feel of the Lullabelly around my protruding belly and found it hard to wrap around me, even with an extension. 🙁 It didn’t leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling shall we say. I don’t expect that to be every mother’s response, but to be honest it made me huge having to order an extension and to wrap it around myself just didn’t make me feel very good. Once it was on I was usually ok with it.

Once I tried playing a mellow song and then an upbeat one just to see if I could purposely illicit a response and I think baby responded to the upbeat song just a little better. I cannot say whether or not I noticed if my baby responded every time I wore the Lullabelly though. It was hard to take mental notes when I was usually trying to work, use the Lullabelly and take notes. The times I tried hard to pay attention, I did notice that baby was responding to the music. I will say that baby has definitely responded to my other children playing the piano! There was movement from baby once that piano was being played right across the room from where I was seated; whereas prior to the piano being played baby had been quiet.

Thank you to Lullabelly and to Happy and Healthy Mom for the opportunity!

Resources:

http://www.lullabelly.com/benefits.html

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The Guys and Spring

Posted by html404 on April 9, 2010
in Family Stuff

Just wanted to update you on our Wordless Wednesday. This was one of the days we made it to the park last week. The guys were enthralled with the pee wee baseball practice going on behind the playground. They should have just turned around in their swings and they could have been swinging while watching the other boys and their dads/coaches practice!

A cute thing happened this week when our two-year-old came up the stairs with a milk crate of clean cloth diapers, without being told! We wouldn’t ask such a little tike to do a job like that anyways. His big brother helped with the last step but other than that we had no idea he was dragging up the crate. He barely made a sound while doing it. Then once he had it in our room, he proceeded to start folding diapers! How’s that for training? Just by watching others do it he figured he could too! Truly a precious boy.

This week has been cold, wet and rainy. We had to cancel our appt. to see the farmland and will reschedule on a nice day next week.

Yesterday, I had my first midwife appointment. I am 20 weeks and 2-4 days. Baby wouldn’t stay put for very long when the doppler was used, but at least we did get to hear his or her heartbeat. My blood pressure was good, but my iron is down a bit. That was odd for me, mine is usually higher, so I am going to try and up my iron intake. Technically at 28-32weeks it is suppose to have a healthy, expected drop, but we don’t want mine to drop we want it to remain the same.

Tomorrow Milwaukee Zoo is having a free day if anyone is near that city and interested!

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Spring is Here!

Posted by html404 on April 6, 2010
in Free Stuff

I have several reviews to get posted, but am finding it hard to get them written up amidst everything else we are currently involved in! We have been having gorgeous weather – 70-80 degrees most of last week. This week we were expecting some of the same this week, but it’s been raining with thunderstorms most of the time.

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We had an “episode” last week, our two year old son gave us a scare with DeCon. My husband had brought home his mom’s shop vac, which she keeps in her garage where she puts down DeCon to control the mice population. There happened to be some on the shop vac and my husband found the DeCon on our floor beside Noah after bringing the shop vac into the house. It was a scary few days, but we are thankful to report that he is just fine. Whew. My poor husband was kicking himself, but it is one of those things that happened…and put our hearts in our throats and our emotions on our sleeves just thinking about losing Noah.

Then we were fortunate to come across a free upright freezer, which my husband and his brother picked up and got set up in record time in our garage. Now we have two upright freezers to help store food for our growing family.

We also came across some farm property for rent. Just land for rent, no house as it is already rented out, but if we were to rent a couple of acres we’d be able to put up a huge family vegetable garden to help feed this crew of ours. We are going to see the property tomorrow, which is fairly close to our house. So I am in “farm mode” again as I try to finish up our online farminars with PracticalFarmers.org, set up our mentorship through our Farm Beginnings facilitator (for those of you unaware, this past winter we won a full scholarship to Stateline Farm Beginnings for beginning farmers and those interested in farming). April 2009 023

So, if I you are wondering why I haven’t posted, you now know why, as this is all in addition to what I do at home for our homeschool and for our clients! Plus, we began our deep cleaning of our garage which desperately needs finishing so we can make room for this new little person growing inside my womb – he or she has begun to make more movements that are more noticeable to me! It is such a wonderful feeling! The weather and my husband’s health has not been very cooperative this week to get the garage done. 🙁

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Morning Sickness

Posted by html404 on February 12, 2010
in Pregnancy and Birth

This pregnancy has been different. I know, each pregnancy is different anyway and I should know that more than the average woman, having been pregnant 13 times now. But the thing is, why does it catch you off guard? Why does it throw a wrench in my daily routine?

I had an extremely busy weekend last weekend and paid for it this week. I was thankful that I felt relatively good all weekend with the errands, shopping, birthday meal preparations, church and visiting my mother-in-law. This week though, I have felt pretty rotten, nauseated, tired and suffering from back pain – I think we need a new mattress, at least I am hoping that’s what is causing this discomfort and not something amiss with baby!

That’s not to complain, but to share that I haven’t been able to do everything that I want to do. I’ve just felt like zoning, so I have been watching movies, sleeping and doing the bare necessities. I miss my older girls a lot while they help my mother-in-law, but this is helping my younger crew learn more responsibility without having to rely on their big sisters and mom so much. I just hope they don’t hate me when they grow up! The worries of a mother, eh?

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