What We Love: First Three Months Home Edition

It's time for another "What We Love" post! This one is for our first three months at home. The babies came home right at their due date, so these could technically be considered our "newborn" must-haves, since the babies were basically developmentally "new born", even though they were 3-6 months old. (This preemie stuff can be SO confusing, yall)

-Arms Reach Co-Sleeper
We use this as our bassinet and I LOVE it. The Original is actually marketed to be big enough for twins, which is what drew me to this to begin with. I really wanted to have my babies co-bedded when they came home, and this is the perfect size for them to sleep next to each other. I really like how it backs right up to my bed too - makes those middle-of-the-night nursing sessions a little bit easier.

-Boppies
MUST. HAVE. We have one for each baby - A actually has that cute cupcake cover, and G's has cars on it. And man, we use these suckers for EVERYTHING. I actually brought one to the hospital when we were learning to breastfeed, and it is worth it's weight on gold for helping you position a tiny, squirmy baby. Now that they're home, we use them for tummy time, to sit the babies up under their play gym, to prop them when I have to double-fist bottles, lounging around... literally, EVERYTHING. If you don't get anything else, GET A BOPPY.

-Fisher Price My Little Lamb swing
This thing is a sanity saver. Audrey is a nap fighter extraordinaire and this thing can knock her out in no time. I know, I know, it's not the best show of parenting, and I don't use it for every nap, but desperate times call for desperate measures my friends. We have the matching vibrating chair and the two combined have won me many a shower during the day. The only thing I don't like is that it runs on batteries and we are CONSTANTLY buying them. FP makes another swing that you can plug in, and if we had to do it again I would probably go that route. But I am a little neurotic really like things to match and the plug-in swing didn't have a chair that went with it. But I digress.

-"Burp Diapers"
Technically, these are pre-fold cloth diapers. We use them for, uh, just about everything BUT diapering. We call them "burp diapers" because we mostly use them to catch projectile vomit (yay reflux) as burp cloths. They are super super absorbent and they're also pretty cheap (psst, the Babies R Us brand ones are the best) so I don't mind getting them nasty. We go through stacks and stacks of these a day.

-The First Years Gumdrop Pacis
The only pacis my babies got in the hospital were the preemie-sized Soothies ones, but once they got home I really didn't like them because they got in the way of their cannulas. Only problem? THEY WOULDN'T TAKE ANY OTHER PACI. Until I found these. The nipple part is shaped the same as the Soothies but there are notches cut out for their noses. We have them in every color!

-Summer Infant velcro swaddlers
SO MUCH EASIER than any receiving blanket. Plus, Audrey is a certified baby Houdini and can beak out of just about anything. These are genius. We have worn ours out!

What about YOU, new mamas? What did you love for your little loves?

What We Love: NICU Edition

As a new(ish) mom, I'm forever looking for product recommendations and things that other moms swear by. The baby-product market is one that is absolutely saturated and can be tough to navigate sometimes, so items that have the stamp of approval from moms I trust are usually the ones I will go for.

So I figured that since I love to know what other moms are using, certainly there are moms (a mom? Anyone? Beuller?) that would want to know what I'm using! So stay tuned, this is just the first in a line of posts about What We Love :)

When I was in the midst of our NICU journey especially, I would stay up all hours of the night, scouring the internet for tips and tricks from "been there, done that" moms to make our stay as easy as possible. In a journey that is about as easy as catching a pig slathered in Vaseline, any little bit helps!

Here are the things that I found useful throughout our 3 and a half month NICU stay:


-The Medela Pump In Style Advanced breastpump
There is a reason I put this first. I called this thing my third child. I slept next to it, I carried with me at home from room to room, I never left the house without it. I was attached to this thing 24/7 while my babies were in the hospital. The indisputable fact is that premature babies need breastmilk. Breast is best for any baby but preemie babies, with their extremely fragile immune systems, NEED the antibodies found only in breastmilk. I could write a whole post on the importance of pumping for your preemie and my whole story, but I'll save that for another day. What I will say now is that when you are pumping full-time, only the best will do. The PISA is pricey, but it is SO worth it (and was the only one recommended by my IBCLC Lactation Consultant).


-Gallon-sized Ziplock bags
This might seem like a weird addition to the list, but we used these for EVERYTHING. I would put my clean pump parts in one to tote to the NICU, and throw another in my pump bag to keep the dirty parts separate. The hospital gave me "lovey squares," which were just little knit squares that I would sleep with so the babies would have my scent with them, and I would wash them, take them straight from the dryer and stick them in my bra, and then straight from my bra to a Ziplock, so that it wasn't exposed to any more germs than it needed to be. Same with their outfits when they were able to wear clothes: straight from the dryer and into a Ziplock. The NICU made me into a huge germaphobe, yall.


-A good water bottle
If you are pumping/breastfeeding, you need to be drinking a LOT of water. I spent hours at a time in the NICU, so it was nice to have a bottle I could throw in my pump bag, not worry about it leaking, and could refill. The one I have (that's pictured here) is a Tupperware Intak, which was a gift from a friend and I really like it.


-Good hand cream
My nails split. My skin peeled. I had to scrub every time I went into the NICU (4-5 times a day) plus every time I went from one baby to the other. It KILLED my hands. Our second week there I bought this Burt's Bees hand cream in the hospitalgift shop and I've loved it since the first time I used it. I don't think my hands will ever recover, but this stuff really made a difference.


-Preemie-friendly clothes
There are lots of clothes that come in preemie sizes (Carters and the Babies R Us were brands that fit us well), but in the NICU you also have to accommodate for medical equipment. The babies had cannulas on their faces that made over-the-head things (like onesies) hard to get on and off, and wire leads on their chests, bellies and feet that made zip-up outfits unsafe because the wires ended up coming out near their necks. What we found to be our best bet were one-piece snap-front sleepers. The long sleeves and pants kept them warm in the chilly hospital, we could put them on without going over their heads, and the gaps between the snaps let the wires hang out below their bellies and not up near their necks. We actually got that cute monkey outfit as a gift from another friend - in blue AND pink!
*And a word to the wise - check with your NICU about their clothing policies. It varies from hospital to hospital, but we weren't allowed to put clothes on the babies until they were out of isolattes AND warmer beds, and into open-air cribs. For us, that was about 2 months in when they weighed about 4 pounds.


-Hospital photos
Our NICU had a contract with the Bella Baby company, and a photographer came once a week to take professional pictures of the babies while they were in the hospital. . You might think at first that you don't want to remember these times because they're hard and scary, but I cannot put into words how much I cherish these pictures. They are totally a testament to how far we've come, and I might be the only one but I think even the tiny, sad ones are beautiful. If your hospital has a contract with a company, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. If not, go to http://www.picturesofhopefoundation.org/ to find a photographer in your area that will provide the same service. I promise, you will not regret it!


So that's it, those are the things that helped us through our NICU stay. Fellow NICU mommies, is there anything you'd like to add? I'd love to hear it in the comments!