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Baby and Pregnancy Info

BabyCenter.com - Lots of useful resources for pregnancy and babies. Offers a weekly email newsletter which describes your baby's current development, a baby naming tool, and more.

Pregnancy

Due Date Calculator

Great Books on Pregnancy

Taking Charge of Your Fertility
An excellent book on Fertility Awareness -- planning pregnancy, natural birth control, infertility, and charting menstral cycles for health. Highly recommended to every woman for learning a vast amount of information about her reproductive health and cycles whether you plan to have children or not.
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

What to Expect When You're Expecting
The classic pregnancy book. Thorough, informative and very well-written.
Hardback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com
Paperback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy
A very funny, frank and informative book about pregnancy. The author draws on her experience from her own four pregnancies, plus the experiences of her many friends. While the book does not take a medical approach, it is full of great practical information, not to mention the humorously entertaining approach.
Hardback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com
Paperback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

A Child is Born
An amazing book full of photographs of babies before they are born, at various stages of development.
Hardback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com
Paperback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother's Soul
A wonderful collection of humorous and touching stories for expectant mothers and fathers, including adoptive parents.
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Baby Bargains
Tips on maternity wear and preparing for baby's arrival. See review below.



Baby Tips

Breastfeeding

There is no disputing that breastfeeding is best for your baby for the first six months when possible. It can be very challenging at first, but after you and your baby get the hang of it, it is wonderful and so much more convenient than bottle feeding. Ideally, you should start learning about breastfeeding before your baby is born.

The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding by La Leche League
A thorough discussion of breastfeeding; also covers other areas of child care, including sleeping arrangements, and going back to work or not.
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

The Nursing Mother's Companion by Kathleen Huggins
Concise coverage of breastfeeding and easy to read; includes a listing of drugs and whether they will affect your baby during breastfeeding. (An excerpted booklet of this is included with the green Peter Rabbit Enfamil diaper bag that you may receive in the hospital.)
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Additional breastfeeding tips -

Remember on which side to start the next feeding using a ring, a safety pin on your bra, by moving your watch, or a rubber band on your wrist.

Create a nursing area Near a recliner or chair with foot stool, keep a phone, reading material, water, snack, pens and paper.

Nursing the baby in your bed is great for nighttime and taking naps, especially at the beginning when they want to nurse very often. I was sure I'd never have my baby sleep in my bed with me before she was born, but it was recommended by the lactation consultant and I actually feel very comfortable with it. You can nurse in a side lying position and fall asleep while the baby eats. This will really help you to avoid sleep deprivation. If you're concerned about rolling onto the baby in your sleep, sleep with a doll in the bed first to reassure yourself.

A nursing pillow makes nursing more comfortable. The Boppy can be used for nursing, bottle feeding and as a support for a baby learning to sit up.
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Breast pumps - A breast pump is not a necessity unless you're going back to work. If you do want one for periodic use though, Medela makes excellent pumps. The Medela Double Ease Pump is a great pump which includes a lot of accessories and features for the price. As best as I can tell, the only significant differences between this and the Pump In Style is that this one has a non-leather carrying case and it does can not use a cigarette lighter adapter.
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Labeling bottles of pumped breast milk with the date can be done easily with a grease pencil from an office supply store.

Cloth Diapers

Disposable diapers are very convenient, but so many are used by one baby each day, that they generate quite a bit of garbage. This garbage fills landfills and the waste from the diapers contaminates waterways when rains cause run off from the land fills. In addition, some are concerned that we don't know the longterm effects of the gels used in disposables on babies' developing genitals. Finally, disposable diapers are much more expensive than the one time or investment in cloth diapers. I use cloth diapers during the day, at home and find that this is a reasonable compromise between convenience and conservation.

If you do decide to use cloth diapers, you'll need diapers, wraps, and a diaper pail. I've listed the items I use below.

Prefolded cloth diapers - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Diaper wraps -
Diaper wraps eliminate the need for pins and help reduce the chance of leaking diapers. I use waterproof, breathable wraps from The Natural Baby catalog. These wraps are breatheable so that they are less likely to cause diaper wraps than the waterproof kind with a plastic layer. I find that these diapers leak no more often than disposables.
Natural Baby Catalog - Diaper wraps

Cloth wipes -
I use Gerber Wiapers which I bought at Babies 'R Us with the cloth diapering supplies at 6 for about $3. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find them in the Babies 'R Us on-line catalog.) The Natural Baby Catalog also has cloth wipes, but they are more expensive than the Gerber ones.

To store the cloth wipes moistened, I bought a box of disposable wipes which came in a box with a flip top. (This is as opposed to the boxes which cause the next wipe to "pop-up" automatically.) I found a box of this type by Luvs, in a light green plastic box. Then I just wet the wipes with water, ring them out and lay them in the wipes box folded.

Diaper pail -
This diaper pail holds about 25 cloth diapers, plus cloth wipes. I use it for just cloth diapers and without bags.
Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

BabyCenter.com has directions for using cloth diapers.

Baby Games and Activities

BabyCenter.com baby games.

Gymboree offers one free preview class to new parents. Even if you only go to the one class, you will learn some games to play with your baby to help their development. You also get a chance to meet other new parents in your area through the classes.

Baby Play by Gymboree
Creative Publishing International, 2001, 192pp. softcover
Games to play with babies ages birth to 9 months and up. Each activity has a color photograph to illustrate, in addition to instructions and background information. This book includes lyrics to popular childrens songs to use in play. Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Wee Sing for Baby
This is a great set of songs and games to play with a baby. It comes with a CD or audio cassette, and a song book with lyrics and descriptions of what actions to put with the songs.
CD - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com
Cassette - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Additional Baby Tips

Great Books on Childcare and Parenting

Baby Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields
An excellent book, full of product reviews, pros and cons of different product features, shopping tips, and baby care advice. Highly recommended for every new parent before even registering for baby gifts.
Additional information and updates are posted on their web site at www.babybargainsbook.com.
Paperback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

25 Things Every New Mother Should Know by Martha Sears R.N., with William Sears M.D.
A guide to becoming a mother which gently instructs the new mother with reminders to care for herself in order to best care for her baby. Topics include breastfeeding, sleep sharing, baby wearing, mother's intuition, involving baby's father, at-home and working moms.
Hardback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com
Paperback - Order or get more information from Amazon.Com

Helpful Links

More baby books at Amazon.com

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Stacy Ichniowski
Email: stacy@tealdragon.net
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