Coffee Shop Can’t Spare a Cup of Hot Water

The day started as usual with my son and I heading out the door to run some errands.

Diaper bag: check.
Bottles: check.
Car bottle warmer: check.

About 20 minutes before bottle time I plugged in the car warmer and dropped in the bottle only to discover that my crappy $35 warmer has gone on strike and is not going to heat up my bottle. Thankfully it’s about that time when mommy needs a coffee, so to the drive through we go for our large café mocha and bagel with cream cheese.

“Please drive up to the window and I will give you your total there.”

I pay for my things and ask the man at the window if I could have a cup with hot water because my bottle warmer isn’t working. He says he has to get his manager and asks me to wait. The manager comes to the window and after rudely telling me that this isn’t a baby store tells me it will be $1.75 for a cup of water. I tell him I am willing to pay 25 cents but not a penny more for a cup of hot water.

Again he affirms there was a tap in the washroom for me to use otherwise I would have to pay $1.75. I tell him thanks but no thanks. I drive around the building park my car, take my son and the bottle out, and wait at the tap for 10 minutes for the milk to heat up.

You would think that the coffee industry could afford a cup of hot water, especially if they were reimbursed a quarter for being out a cup, but I guess they don’t get rich by being nice to a mother that needed a little help.

Infant Massage Helped My Son Poop

I did it: after 72 hours of labor I give birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy. I was determined to breastfeed and at four days old it seemed to be going well, but then everything came apart. I didn’t feel right but the hospital discharged me anyway all the while telling me that since I was a first time mom I just wasn’t familiar with how I should feel after giving birth; despite my objections I was told I was feeling fine – that should have given me my first clue. I went to my pediatrician for a blood test, and 24 hours later he sent me back to the hospital for a blood transfusion because I turned out I was hemorrhaging.

After shocking news was delivered to me, my breast milk suddenly backed up and wouldn’t come down. After trying to breastfeed every 15 minutes for a day and a half I wanted to scream to someone: “get this child a damn bottle!” The first few days of formula were great but it wasn’t long until the sudden change in diet caused my son to become constipated. He cried and I could see he was having trouble going to the washroom. When I went to see the nurse at our playgroup that week I asked her what I could do she told me to give my son some “tummy time”. Even though 3 weeks is young to be starting tummy time, I figured it couldn’t do a lot more harm than the pain he was already experiencing.

 After a few more days I went to see my doctor who advised me to give my son 1-2 ounces of apple juice. The juice worked, but only if I gave it to him everyday – young children especially at his age should not be consuming juice every day. As a cure for constipation, the juice was a temporary fix but not something I could ever get behind as a routine cure.

One day he got so constipated that we ended up at CHEO. They looked at me like I was crazy (“You’re here because of what?”) but once they examined him they realized he really did need help and gave him a suppository, which again I was only to give when constipated. The baby kept getting constipated and I kept giving him enemas until I realized he hadn’t even tried to poop on his own. Back to the drawing board: what can I do to help my son poop? He didn’t want anything out of the ordinary; he just wanted to crap in peace.

Finally I discovered infant massage which has saved both of us a lot of pain and frustration. I was lucky enough to get this class free but if I have another child and they don’t offer free classes I would pay. They show you how to relieve gas pains and to get your child’s bowels moving so that they can poop, all while both of you bond. It’s like a 2 for 1 special: you get to help you child by relieving potential pain and at the same time spend quiet time together.

I would recommend this class to every parent and I think they should teach it in the prenatal classes. We learn how to bath and feed, swaddle and sooth, why not massage? After massaging him 10 minutes later the farting began and then the biggest poop I ever saw. I mean in his socks, up his back; the “man I’m glad I got this out” kind of poop. So if you’re having trouble with gas pains try this; I’m telling you it works. If you are a self-leaner you can even get a manual online or in bookstores to show you how to perform the routine.

Scream Your Way to Exhaustion or Soothe Yourself to Sleep

After the baby had slept in his bassinet beside his mommy’s bed for the first four months of his life, my husband and I decided that it was time the baby moved into his own crib. At this point he was too long for the bassinet and had no room to move; I was having scary “what if” thoughts of him pushing his face against the side of the bassinet smothering himself. You could say the move was for baby’s comfort as much as for mom’s sanity.

After going to our weekly playgroup and talking to the moms there, the consensus I generally found was to put him in his crib and let him cry until he falls asleep; after a few days he will get into a routine and stop crying. The first night I took their advice and he cried and cried and cried until he was so exhausted that he did eventually pass out, but the next night I couldn’t do it. I was stressed, we were both miserable, and we were both crying. After doing a lot of research on the internet (I’ve never researched so much since getting pregnant) a lot of sites and books warn people not to let your child cry because he or she will stand a higher chance of SIDS. Rather than just exhausting themselves and giving up, some children have been found to actually stop breathing when constantly left on their own to “cry it out”.

I tried to think the way my child would. I put myself in his place and wondered what would comfort and relax me. We all know that when we go to the spa the one thing that relaxes us is the peaceful music. I tried listening to his Winnie the Pooh mobile but realized its song would actually get him more excited and ready to play rather than soothe and put him to sleep.

Finally I remembered the Ocean Wonders aquarium toy I had bought from my cousin when I was pregnant. What a life saver! It has a soothing light so the child isn’t in complete darkness and alone and it plays a variety of songs and nature sounds. If the song ends and your child is still awake you have a remote that can start the music again or he can push a button and make it go himself.  Well, that did it and that night he slept peacefully without exhausting himself and without me standing in the hallway crying along with him. He just played with the aquarium and ever so gently went to sleep.

Jarred Baby Food vs. Homemade

I was shopping at Wal-Mart with my sister-in-law the other day and stopped in the jarred baby food section. She looked at the price of the jar and asked what the point was in making your own food if you can conveniently purchase it at such a low price. While the cost is certainly appealing, I worry about my child’s health if I were to feed him such preservative-rich offerings.

Depending on the brand, for $0.47-$0.67 you can buy jars of chemically processed food with a shelf life of 5 to 10 years. Alternatively, you can spend 20 minutes a week making healthy chemical-free baby food. To me it is worth taking the brief time each week to make healthy food for my child food that can be frozen. In a small fridge-top freezer, fresh-made food can last for 3-4 months; in a deep freeze: up to six months.

Society has gotten lazy about their food and eating habits and there have been repercussions: children aren’t tolerating foods as much, allergies are on the rise, and babies are becoming fussier eaters. If you’ve ever tasted baby food you have my sympathies I wanted to try it before my son was due to start eating to explore the taste textures etc. As a trained chef my opinion is jarred baby food in general is totally unpalatable; the colors are off and you can’t even differentiate what the taste is. For fun I had my cousin close her eyes and sample some of the food she was going to feed her son and tell me what it was. She didn’t know what she was eating – how scary is that?

The Good News
For parents who really think they don’t have the time to cook for their child, there is now a great company (Sweet pea baby food) offering pre-measured food that is flash frozen and good for 3-6 months in your freezer. The food is made from organic vegetables and if you tell them the age of your child they can tell you which product they have for that age group. I tried their product at the baby boom show this spring and I can actually differentiate the flavors; it was like a party in my mouth. It was bland compared to what a grown up pallet is used to but to a baby exploring a flavor for the first time it would have been superb.

Bottled Doesn’t Mean Better

In today’s society, everyone is used to getting everything from the store. For example when we want a refreshing glass of cold water we no longer go to the tap and wait for the water get cold. Instead, we open the refrigerator and open a plastic bottle as if it were always there. Heaven forbid company should come over and you offer them tap water. I use to think drinking bottled water was better that drinking the tap water; that is, until I had my son.

On one of our adventurous trips to my in-laws we forgot to pack our jug of water to make the babies bottles. We knew he had some trouble tolerating water from other places so out came the bottle water which we thought would be the perfect solution. At the time we were using powdered formula so in the mornings we would boil water and keep it hot in a thermos. When it came to feeding time all we had to do was add the powder and hot water to the bottle, shake it, and let it cool. This takes much less time than heating a bottle up. After boiling the bottled water and leaving it in the thermos for his feeding we opened it and found a grainy deposit on the bottom. Whatever this stuff was, it was going into our child’s stomach. After a little bit of research and reading the label on the water bottles we realized that there was a huge amount of sodium and other minerals which was creating the deposits.

So is the bottle water better than our good old fashion tap water? If regularly tested and maintained I think not. Let’s stop using those plastic bottles and just open the tap for crying out loud.