{I Recommend} 100% Natural Baby Nasal Spray

A few days ago we noticed that our baby girl’s nose was clogged and it made feeding and nap/sleeping time so difficult. Our doctor told us to irrigate her nose with Sterimar baby nasal spray.

Oh the thought of it didn’t excite me one bit. Nasal spray? Yuck! Poor baby….but…we trust Dr. Cricket Palanca-Chen, our pediatrician, who always recommends natural meds and always trusts the body to do what it’s supposed to.

I was pleasantly surprised to see what Sterimar is. Want to take a guess what it’s  made of?

Sterimar baby nasal spray is a seawater microdiffusion.  Yes, it’s seawater  plus purified water! It’s 100% natural! Yey!

I did a bit of research on Sterimar and according to http://mummymanda.com:

It cleanses and clears nasal passages, relieves blocked noses caused by colds, allergies or rhinitis. Sterimar Baby is anti-histamine-free, steroid-free and has no preservatives or additives. It is extremely gentle and has no known side effects. It works by naturally moisturises nasal passages and softens hardened mucus therefore improving breathing for better feeding and sleeping.

It’s so easy to use. All you’ve got to do is put the tip of the nozzle in baby’s nostril and press on the trigger. The spray is so gentle our baby rarely cries whenever we have to irrigate her nose. My husband and I tried it right after we sprayed our baby girl for the first time and it cleared up our noses for sure. It  felt really good too.

I’m guessing that right about now some of you may be wondering about the price of seawater in a can. Well, I think its a bit pricey at PhP665 (at Mercury Drugstore) BUT it’s so worth it. It’s helped our baby girl breathe better  specially during feeding time even if she still has a pretty bad cold.

I highly recommend Sterimar to all you mommies and daddies. Don’t worry, this isn’t a paid blog  :) I just really like the product and a discovery this good is always worth sharing!

Happy Birthday times three!

Planning a birthday party or any form of birthday celebration requires time, money, effort and love. If you don’t have much of the first 3, its okay as long as you’ve got LOADS of the last one — coz when you love someone you’d want to see them super happy and if you want to see them happy, you’ll find ways (within the budget) to make their day extra special.

It’s only February but so far my husband and my two kids have celebrated their birthdays. Banking on LOADS of love and not much time, money or effort, here’s what we did for their special days. If you’ve been thinking of ways to make someone special extra happy, maybe these ideas could help you, the same way some of these ideas were inspired by photos and blogs I’ve seen.

Birthday #1: Audrey

Okay. Audrey is the exception to the rule this year because her birthday required A LOT of:

TIME & EFFORT: This part deserves A FULL BLOG but just to give you an idea, I was in the hospital Wednesday night, did full on Lamaze Thursday and Friday and gave birth via emergency C-Section Saturday early morning.

MONEY: Lamaze in a birthing suite AND an emergency CS — need I say more?

AND LOTS OF LOVE

But it was ALL worth it coz we’ve got our gorgeous princess with us!

Birthday #2: Kristo

Kristo was expecting a Spongebob party to celebrate his 7th. By New Year’s eve I knew I was gonna give birth to Audrey soon so I already prepped him that the party isn’t gonna push thru this year.  Sure enough, two days before Kristo’s birthday our baby girl was born.  So we ended up celebrating his birthday at the hospital with ice cream cake. It was a first for all of us so it made the day extra special.

TIME & EFFORT: All Rommel had to do was go to the nearest DQ store, which was just a few flights down from the room we were staying in.

MONEY: PhP 749
(but if you’re on a super tight budget, there are yummy cakes for as low as PhP 300)

Kristo was really happy about his ice cream cake and he didn’t complain at all that his party didn’t push through.  So a few weeks after his birthday I wrote to Nickelodeon Asia to tell them about Kristo and his birthday and how much he loved Spongebob. I was hoping they’d send him a little something to make his 7th birthday even more special – and they did! Yey for Nickelodeon!

TIME & EFFORT: All I had to do was email Nick Asia.
MONEY: Zero

A promise is a promise so we found a way to give Kristo a small surprise party a month after his birthday. We called it the ‘back-to-January 9 surprise party’. All we needed were Kristo’s friends, food and a time machine.

TIME: It took me about a week to think about logistics, secretly give out the invites to Kristo’s friends and I bought the chips, candies and a few toys as prizes at noon (the surprise was at 4).

It took my bestfriend and her boyfriend the 2 days to build the awesome time machine.

EFFORT: It took a few emails to get the cake ordered, a few text messages to coordinate where Kristo could stay while we were setting up the venue, less than 15 minutes to get the cabana by the pool booked, a few hours to get the things we needed and a couple of phone calls to order the food. It required A LOT of effort to get all Kristo’s friends gathered in one place that afternoon so they could be there to surprise him.

MONEY: 
Under PhP 2,000 for the cake. It was something I was willing to spend on `coz Kristo specifically asked for a Krusty Krab cake when we were still planning his original party.

A little over a thousand for the soda, juice in packs, chips, candies (for the loot bags) and a few simple toys as prizes for the games.

Under 3,000 for food and drinks. We just ordered pizza and pasta (but instead they delivered palabok).

And ZERO pesos for the best selling entertainment (well, next to the time machine) — a pinata made out of a red ribbon cake box filled with candies and a pack of chips! It was such a hit coz no one could smash it open AND the kids got to release A LOT of pent up whatever!

It was such a fun, free-flowing party and Kristo said he was super happy — and that’s what matters Mission accomplished!

Birthday #3: Rommel

This year Rommel just wanted to rest, relax, stay home and do nothing. Knowing that, I tried looking for really good deals online for an overnight stay at a hotel. It would be the best set-up to celebrate Rommel’s birthday – he’d be able to rest and relax with the kids and I. It would be like going out of town without really going out of town.

Time and Effort: After looking thru 3 or 4 different sites, we got a really good deal at Hotel H20. All I had to do was make a bank deposit and send a few emails to confirm everything and voila, we had a room ready for us!

Money: The package was originally in the 14-15K range but we got the discounted rate which was REALLY good. It was just in the 6-7K range for this gorgeous room. It was so worth it `coz there was a huge aquarium wall and it had all of us just mesmerized most of the time we were in the room. It was a really good break and Rommel soooo deserved it.

So there you go,  banking on LOADS of love and not much time, money or effort, we did it! We celebrated 3 special birthdays the best way we could. If you’ve been thinking of doing something different this year for your family, I hope this blog inspires you to cook up something extra special too!

From yellow poo to green poo, naku poo!!! :(

You may or may not agree but our baby’s poo is one of our best friends. It’s a huge indicator of what’s happening to their tiny (or not so tiny) bodies. It also says a lot about what’s going on in our milk factory!

Remember baby’s first stool? It was greenish-black, right? That’s called Meconium. It’s their poo from when they were inside our bellies. Then after a few days it transitions to a seedy mustardy-yellow  stool which tells you that baby is eating well and getting enough hindmilk (the high calorie milk we produce around 10 minutes or so into the feeding. Hindmilk is best for the baby’s weight gain, brain development.)

I don’t know about you, but I love seeing how yellow and seedy my daughter’s poo is all the time. This is gonna be a weird analogy, but for me, it’s sort of like a pat on the back. I’ve enjoyed this kind of bliss up until yesterday when I noticed my baby’s poo transition to watery-green. I also noticed that she’s hungry sooner (usually she feeds every 3-3 1/2 hours. Now she’s back to every 2-2 1/2 hours). She’s also been choking frequently, she’s been having gas pains more often and this morning she’s been unusually fussy. I knew something was up and her poo was my ‘strongest evidence.’

Thank God we’re raising kids in this day and age, where information is just a click away! Turns out I’m overproducing milk (which is kinda what I noticed too) and/or there’s a foremilk/hindmilk imbalance.

Since my baby was born, I’ve been feeding her 15-20 minutes per breast (as per doctor’s instructions and its also based on the book babywise). So when its feeding time, I usually set my alarm to 15 minutes then I transfer my baby to the other side to make sure that both breasts are stimulated (to maintain good milk production, according to my lactation consultant). Well, it seems like baby isn’t getting enough hindmilk, because for the past couple of days she lets go of the first breast after about 10 minutes then when she’s ready to feed again after a few minutes, I latch her on to the other side. Wrong move

After doing a bit of reserach, the remedy to this situation is block feeding, which means to nurse only on one breast per feeding, allowing the baby to pull away when she feels she’s gotten enough milk, hopefully equal amounts of foremilk (first 10minutes of feeding) and hindmilk. This also signals the mom’s body to take it easy on the milk production.

I’m gonna try that for a few days and hopefully baby’s poo goes back to mustardy-yellow and I’ll be back to producing just the right amount of milk my baby needs.

If you guys want to read more about this, here are the two sites I got info from:

Green Stools and Gassiness in Baby by Debbi Donovan, a Board Certified Lactation Consultant, as well as a retired La Leche League Leader.
http://www.ivillage.com/green-stools-and-gassiness-baby/6-n-136741

and

An article by La Leche League International
http://www.llli.org/faq/oversupply.html