After six long years of fertility issues, I am a very proud first time mom in Canada! For years now through my fertility issues, my pregnancy and expecting, and now through my first year of being a mom I keep having fruonly finding good information aimed for moms in the US, which not always but sometimes is irrelevant to Canada. So my goal here is to share learning, experiences and great products that have helped me, with all of you! Here I go…
Transitioning from Breastfeeding to Homogenized Milk
I thought I would write about how I weaned my daughter from breastfeeding.
Here is a little background… At around 11 months, I had to go back to work, and transition my little to daycare. I was also in a situation where I couldn’t really pump (I always got plugged ducts) so I couldn’t do that in the daytime. I also have the protein where my milk doesn’t freeze without the bitter taste (very annoying). I should mention that starting around 6-8weeks we did introduce a breastmilk bottle and whenever I needed hubby to put her to bed she would take the bottle, but it was occasional. So mostly breastfed up until then. We also used the Avent natural bottles.
I had done a bit of research and didn’t find much on weaning from breastfeeding to homogenized milk, only to formula or bottles in general so it was a bit of trial and error. I first thought I’d try to get her onto milk, and gave her a 75%breastmilk bottle with 25% homogenized. She wouldn’t have any of it. We tried a few times, hubby, me, no go. So then I said well lets get her to just like milk, and started to put it into the sippy cup (she had been having sippy cup with water since around 6 months). And I was a little nervous about this because I was told to introduce it at 12 months (this was almost 11), but when I spoke to a nutritionist, she said that until 9-12 months they can have a hard time breaking down the proteins, and that as long as she does ok that was it’s close enough and fine, definitely not worth trying to get her onto formula for a month. She didn’t take to the milk right away and I was worried. A sip here and there, but after a week a little more, and another week she was drinking it well, so basically, get them to like the milk first.
Once she was onto that I eventually tried a 100% milk bottle first (I figured well, its better than throwing out breastmilk!) and she slowly took to it. I eventually switched to milk bottles for naps in the day, and nursing at bedtime and overnight. This I could easily continue when she was at daycare, and wouldn’t have engorgement on Mondays!
Now… a little aside about warming vs. cold bottle of milk. When she was struggling with the milk bottle, I said well I might as well get her used to a cold bottle so I’m not into warming up bottles in the middle of the night. Good idea right? Well for about 2 weeks, when we started switching to a milk bottle for bedtime, I did the cold bottle, and she would drink a few sips/half an ounce to maybe 2 on a good night. And she might fuss a few times and need to be resettled before she went to sleep. And at this time she also got a bad cold and I attributed her fussiness to that. Well one day the lightbulb went on and I was like, let’s try a warm bottle – pow! She loves it, drank 2-3 ounces. SO much better. So sure, try a cold one and you might get lucky but if your babe likes hot milk, then a warm bottle before bed is totally worth it. She is now up to 4-5oz and sleeps through the night most nights, well if you count 5am through the night…
Around warm up time I also cut out the night nursing feed and fully weaned. I bought a Munchkin quick warmer (before bed we use a cup of hot water for about 20 minutes) and always had a bottle in the fridge ready to go. At the same time daycare started cutting out one of her naps. All this combined to she hasn’t woken up at night in 2 weeks! Some/all may be coincidence, as we all know there is no science in parenting… but maybe this will help give you some ideas to try!
Colds and Illness during pregnancy
One of the toughest things during pregnancy is, what am I allowed to ingest! And here you can go as crazy as you want. Be careful what you google! A great resource in Canada, or at least Ontario is motherrisk.org . The have a great helpline that doesn’t just give you the google schpeel you could have looked up yourself. I found they were quite reasonable and seemed to use decent data versus playing the safe side and saying everything is a no. When I was pregnant, I was probably a little excessive and tried to stay away from anything risky, and when that’s the case and you’re sick it can be pretty tough!
So, my go to is a honey lemon soother –
- 1-2 tbsp honey
- 1-2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 cup hot/boiling water
- 1tsp grated ginger (optional)
Pour honey and lemon juice in a mug then add hot water and stir. I found drinking it, especially before bed would coat my throat and relieve coughing to help me get some sleep! I even use it now over neocitron which I sometimes found made me jittery. A great add to this recipe is fresh grated ginger, perfect if feeling you’re sick as we know ginger has natural cold fighting properties, and if you like ginger – tastes great too!
Maternity/Nursing Clothing and Bras
Maternity Clothing
Ok, yay you’re expecting! What should you expect to need for clothes? You don’t want to waste a bunch of money on something you’re only going to wear for a few months and never. Now whenever I googled nursing wear, I always found really nice stuff that was very expensive and usually only shipped to the US. I live in a small town and not near any nursing stores so I was looking online for alot of it.
Ill start by saying, I work in a manufacturing plant, and wear jeans and a nice but not too dressy shirt/sweater to work. So this may be different (sometimes better sometimes worse) if you are required to dress up more than that on a daily basis.
Overall it took a while but Old Navy and Gap Maternity were what I wore the most. Here is the breakdown by garment type:
Jeans – After a week of wearing an elastic band through the button hole once my jeans started to get too tight, and then trying a belly panel (don’t bother you might as well just go right to maternity pants) I needed some real maternity pants! Watchout here! I don’t understand why they make a low or demi panel, who wears these? I bought a pair early on thinking, wow, basically a stretch waistband. Well it is so tight to hold the pants up with that little strip that I couldn’t even stand it after a few hours. Waste of money. And I even thought, well postpartum maybe i’ll wear them? Nope, STILL too uncomfortable. What you want is a high full panel, now these babies you will never want to stop wearing, even after! I will say late in my pregnancy even this had specifics for comfort because after maybe 8 hours wearing them to work all I could think about as getting them off. Until into the third I wore a few different versions of these, mostly gap and I managed to find a pair of maternity silver jeans from Thyme maternity. These were AMAZING! But they seem to have stopped making them. Here are the gap ones: http://www.gapcanada.ca/browse/product.do?cid=1038172&pcid=1038114&vid=1&pid=112977003
I finally ordered a pair of Old Navy maternity jeans, with a full panel in a size bigger than my maternity size, aaahhhhh finally!
What I found was that the fabric for the panel was thinner on these and didn’t constrict my belly so much. In the end I’d recommend these! The price is right, especially for something you aren’t going to wear for long. You can orde online and easily ship back what didn’t fit for free. See photo above.
Tops: Again here I found gap had the best stuff and a reasonable price if you wait for a 
sale. What I wore the most was a maternity t-shirt or long sleeve shirt with any open front sweater or cardigan I already had. Unless it was really cold out I found I could layer enough to stay warm this way and I only had to have a few to switch between. I also had two sweaters for really cold days. Bonus – these, especially a v-neck are FANTASTIC for nursing (see below). I also bought a few ‘nicer’ tops at Thyme and a few other places where they were flowy enough to pass as maternity. Honestly though I found I may have worn them once, and could have gone without. In hindsignt it’s such a short time, don’t go crazy on fancy shirts. The tees are the best, comfiest and you can use them nursing!
Bras: Well I didn’t know what to expect and what to plan for as far as nursing. I was hoping to nurse if I could, but I had friends that struggled and knew it wasn’t always easy or possible. So I asked around and googled and bought all this stuff. I found lots of great stuff that made no sense to ship to Canada, or that just wasn’t available. Some of it I didn’t use, and some of it I paid way too much for…
So a year and a half later, here is my recommendation!
Maternity bra – I have always disliked a tight bra, and found it bothered my rib cage, and this was double by the time I was into my second trimester. And let’s face it, by then i was not looking for anything ‘attractive or overly flattering’, I wanted COMFORT!
I ended up buying a cheap set of nursing bras from my local Wal-Mart (thinking that I’d use them nursing) that were very big around, like 2-3 sizes bigger than normal. They were soft t-shirt material with a light padding (I always like a light padding). These were great! So comfy, nice and loose, and held me up ‘good enough’ for every day, work, weekends etc. On the weekend if I was dressing up I would suck it up and wear a nice bra with an extender (these are available at LaSenza or La Vie En Rose in a few sizes). My plan to use them nursing didn’t pan out as they were pretty much dead by the time I had the baby, but for the cost they did their job!
What I wish I had known about earlier is the amazing wonderful sleep bra by Kindred Bravely.
Let me take a minute to talk about Kindred Bravely In General.
What a fantastic company, as you’ll see on a few of these sections they have comfort and maternity/postpartum figured out! And in a flattering way! They have great customer service and return policy, and the best part, some of their most popular items are available on amazon.ca so you’re not waiting forever or paying a lot for shipping or duty! Here is the link to their website, soon to support canadian shipping. I will say that they offer a larger selection of items there, and if you’re ordering enough for free shipping from them you might like that option better, but definitely if you’re just looking for a set of sleep bras amazon.ca!
So onto their sleep bra. This thing was a lifesaver. Like I said I only discovered it postpartum when I just couldn’t stand to wear a bra to bed anymore, but I so would have worn this as much as possible during maternity, and will plan to for the next baby! Their size chart worked really well for me, I was nervous as I didn’t want to get into returning etc. but it turned out perfectly! I have them in two sizes, I probably would have been a small before pregnancy, with a tight sport bra type fit. I ended up with a medium (I didn’t want too tight on my ribcage) that I wore in the day/in public, and large that I wore overnight. During early post partum, it didn’t feel like it was too big or too lose. Now (1 year postpartum) it’s pretty loose although I still wear it at night sometimes.
When you are nursing at all hours of the day/night early on, and if you’re like me and you leak all the time, especially if you’re not wearing a bra you’ll be pretty much wearing it 24/7. I pretty much only took it off to shower. So keep this in mind for quantity, I recommend buying the 2 pack, and if you like the sizing, you may want 2 more! They don’t only get dirty from the regular wear, they also often got leaked on, spit up on and more, trust me!
Underwear:
Maternity – I just bought my favorite aerie underwear (the boyfit with a lace waistband) 
in a size up. They are so low rise that they sat right under my belly.
Update – postpartum, these are pretty great but they tended to sit right into my csection scar. I’m sorry to say, that post c-section (and still to this day) granny panties are unfortunately your new best friend…
I did notice that my favorite Kindred Bravely
also has some under the bump undies that I can imagine are just fantastic and would LOVE to try. It says they are also good for c-section (YAY) , and I’m willing to bet they stay put over your bum cheeks like their other ones.
Postpartum – My current favorites are the kindred bravely high waist undies. They are just amazing. Not only are they discreet dark colors, but the strategically edged them in a skin tone lace which kind of hides the high waist part makes them feel/look less granny panty and more attractive for sure! The lace band is also much 
stretchier and comfortable on the stomach vs regular old Hanes. Now if they would only make these out of 100% cotton I would wear them 100% of the time! They are fantastic!
Robe: Here is an area I splurged and I’m glad I did. I bought a georgeous floral 
maternity/delivery robe from Pink Blush.
Was it cheap? No. Did it come from the US? Yes. However, after wearing a robe that didn’t cover my belly, for a while it was delightful, but even better I brought it to the hospital! After baby you don’t really feel/look human for a while, and everyone wants to visit you. This magic nursing robe made me look glamorous and a bit put together when I totally wasn’t, and I got so many compliments. Throw it over the hospital issue disposable underwear, nursing bra and hideous men’s sweat pants and voila – new woman! lol.
I still wear it post partum and will have it forever. I only wish it had a pocket, so if you find one with this feature, it can only make it better 🙂
Nursing Clothing: This is harder than you think. I really didn’t find many nice nursing tops. I searched everywhere, bought many things I didn’t really like until I had an epiphany. For most of the time (especially when you’re at home or in privacy) you want pull down nursing gear. Frankly, the tops with the secret boob access slots made my nipple too hard to maneuver out and get to for my baby, especially when she was younger and not an experienced nurser (I’m taking first 3-5 months!) Add in the nursing bra clip to get in and rehook later and you have a frustrated mama and baby! Just get a top and bra you can pull down and you both have easy full access. SO much easier! Here is what I recommend, at least for the bulk of the time the first few months.
At Home:
- 3-4 stretchy soft v-neck or scoop neck t-shirts (I used my maternity tops from the gap)
- 3-4 sleep bras
In Public:
- 1 lower cost or old cheap bra you can pull down easily and don’t mind eventually stretching out/wrecking the breast padding in.
- For tops I tried to wear something loose I could lift up, and wear a spaghetti tank under that again I could just pull down for easy access nursing. This covered my belly and other breast while providing easy access. You can also wear one of the t’s above with a cardigan or something. the best are those loose ones that are cut to point down (hard to explain) as they are flowy and can be used as a bit of a cover if needed.
Yup, I don’t really recommend a ‘nursing bra’ at all.
I will also note that I did buy a nursing tank, I wore it in the hospital when i was trying to look somewhat decent but I didn’t really like it, in the end just wear the comfy T and sleep bra!
Coming Soon – Pajamas!
Anything else you were wondering about?
C-Sections
I think for those who have not had a C-section, there are alot of common misconceptions, out there. I saw an excellent facebook post shortly after mine which really made me feel alot better about the whole experience, and knowing I was not alone!
Now luckily, mine wasn’t emergency. Due to the cord and baby’s position (breech) natural delivery would be too dangerous, so it was able to be scheduled, but it still wasn’t my choice and it was not what i had envisaioned. I was so upset and frustrated not to be able to have a natural birth.
My biggest worries were the usual – ability to breastfeed, and to do skin to skin after birth. What I wanted to say is that it all turned out fine! (I know it was helpful to hear this over and over as many times as possible when I had the looming c-section) Thankfully, making my concerns known to my doctor, she was able to address one – skin to skin by placing my daughter across my chest within a minute of delivering her (as long as checked out and was stable as well as me) while my husband held her on. A few minutes later, when I was wheeled out into recovery (with her still on my chest) she was offered the breast. With that, thankfully the breastfeeding was (for the most part) not a problem as here I am a year later trying to wean her!
I wanted to follow this up with some information on c-section long term recovery. There’s lots of information out there about the short term (first 6 weeks) – keeping the site clean, no heavy lifting, lots of rest and basically not doing anything our body isn’t ready for. However 7 months later, I still found my stomach very uncomfortable and bruised. I really dreaded wearing anything other than maternity leggings or a dress. So here’s a few things I have learned/would recommend if you have the same.
- This is the biggest one- Massage the scar section and put in some elbow grease! Of course don’t do this right away, your doctor will give you the go ahead for when this is allowed. I was so timing and scared to touch it, and I think I babied it too long. Finally 10 months later, I started using a massage bar (you can use any moisturizer) on it and getting some relief and scar tissue break down. I think what was helpful about the bar, is the amount of pressure you need to use to ‘melt’ it along with the added moisturizers were what I was missing to break down the tissues. I do this every night before bed. Here is a link for some great bars from Lush. I used therapy (also when pregnant) and tender is the night because it is one of my absolute favorite smelling products!) https://www.lushusa.com/body/massage-bars/
- Don’t think you’re being a wimp and that you should suck it up and not say anything. My doctor thinks that possibly the uterus and abdominal scars have healed together which is what’s causing all of my discomfort. This can be remedies with a small surgery, but as I’m hoping to have a second child soon i am planning to just have this fixed with the delivery of the next one. I was hoping to do VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section) but if I need to be opened up again and i’m not sure Ill be able to do VBAC anyway, might as well do it all at once.
- You can also investigate physiotherapy an massage therapy.
All in all whatever is best to get baby out safely and healthy is the right thing to do, and it’s all 100% worth it, but I struggled for many months with pain, and maybe this will help you!
A Holiday Sewing Extravaganza!
Well, I finally had some time over the holidays to play with my spoonflower fabrics! Playing with some patterns for shirt dresses, comfy sweaters (with essentially a built in drool bib! My little is a big time drooler lately, like 5 drool bibs a day) and some variations of pants that will last through a few inches of growing!
I’ m loving them and want to use all of my spare time to make more!! I really am toying with starting a business selling these but it’s a big commitment, and Im not sure on the interest level. #nouveau_bohemian
Diaper bag packing lesson learned!
Well, after carrying around a spare change of clothes for the past year and only needing them once early on, I got a little lazy… Let’s just say I ended up having a poop explosion, thankfully in a baby store but unfortunately spending way too much on an outfit I don’t really care for 😦 The lesson is, always have a spare outfit with you on outings!
maplegardenmama 