A Tutorial on Sterilizing

I sterilize so many things now that it seems like common sense how to sterilize. I remember though, frantically Googling how to sterilize when I had to do it the first time. I had so many questions-Do I wash it first? Will the plastic melt? How long do I do it?

When you become a Mom you become a sterilizer! I sterilize probably once a week-new bottles, toys, pump parts, baby cubes-the list could go on an on.

This past weekend I bought more bottles for Lucy. I used to “only” have 3 sets for daycare but the washing of her bottles gave me major anxiety (it was yet one more thing I had to do in my already jammed packed night) so Shaun told me to go buy enough for her to have all week. I was trying to save money but Shaun reminded me that my sanity was worth more than a few bottles. So now we are the proud owners of 20 bottles-it sounds (and is) wasteful but I figure I’m saving water resources by not washing bottles every few days-nice way to rationalize it, huh?

Anyway, onto the tutorial!

Sterilizing is a good thing to do with any new plastic product unless the package says “DO NOT BOIL”. You never know what the product touched before it got to you and babies basically put everything and anything into their mouths.

First take the product out of the packaging and disassemble it (Lucy’s bottles disassemble into 5 pieces-no wonder I hate washing them):

Get a big pot of water on the stove and boiling.

Next wash with soapy water and rinse-make sure to get all the soap off:

When your pot has come to a boil, put the plastic pieces into the pot-my bottle sterilizing this weekend took 2 batches-it wouldn’t all fit into one pot:

Bring it back to a boil. Set the timer to 5 minutes and start it:

Boil, baby, boil! No your plastic will not melt!

After 5 minutes, take everything out (I use metal tongs) and put on a clean towel to dry:

Voila! Sterilized plastic goods!

We didn’t get the Eye-Fi set up last night because I was dead tired.  Shaun went mountain biking after work and didn’t get home until 7:50.  That meant that I did the whole bedtime routine by myself which isn’t a big deal it’s just more difficult.  By the time I got dinner done and we had eaten it was 8:45 and I was ready for bed.  We were in bed by 9 and lights were out by 9:15 (get your minds out of the gutter-we were reading).  My little superstar sleeper slept until 6:15 this morning so I got 9 hours of sleep last night.  WOO and HOO!  Of course I had crazy stress dreams all night long but oh well, at least I got to sleep for 9 hours.

Even though the Eye-Fi did not get set up, I still took my first daily picture of Lucy with my phone.  She was so smiley this morning-see?

She’s started giving kisses on command!!! Last night I asked her to give Mommy a kiss and I got a big wet slobbery one. We played a game where I would kiss her and say “Mommy gives Lucy a kiss. Will Lucy give Mommy a kiss?” And then she’d kiss me and I’d say “OH THANK YOU!” and she’d crack up. We did that for about 10 minutes last night. I was covered in Lucy slobber and it was so worth it!

I had the realization last night that since I’ve been back to work (4 months now) I haven’t done anything for myself without Lucy. Breastmilk is such a precious resource that I never leave her with Daddy and a bottle. Plus I miss her so much while I work that I don’t want to leave her alone when I have the chance. But, I think I need to get over this and leave her with Daddy for a few hours one weekend. I do need some “me” time and the train ride to work, work, grocery shopping, and cooking don’t really count. Maybe I’ll take a babystep and go for a run this weekend all.by.myself. I do have an issue in that I don’t know what I’d go do. Sad, huh?

Time to start brainstorming.

Lucy was much better this morning and has been doing great at daycare today. Yay for that!

My Eye-Fi card was at work when I got in today-YIPEE!!! Now it won’t be such a pain to upload pictures.  I’m hoping to take a picture of Lucy everyday before daycare.  Who knows if that will happen.  Some days I’m so short on time that I don’t thing it will but it’s a good goal.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be back on the blog in the morning, tutorial/informational post in the afternoon.  I have pictures that I need to upload about sterilizing bottles.  As I was taking the pictures I was thinking, “This is dumb-everyone knows how to do this” and then I remembered that I frantically googled how to do it when I had to do it the first time.  So, look for that soon!

Wow the last few days have been really difficult.  Lucy got the flu and it went from bad to worse.  Work is absolutely crazy right now and I couldn’t take a sick day so I spent yesterday at home with a coughing, congested, snotty, and PUKING Lucy while trying to get work done.  I did get it done but it was really difficult.  I felt like I was being a half good Mom and a half good Employee.  No good.  No good at all.

Lucy was better today and Shaun and I decided that she was okay to go to daycare.  She hadn’t had a temp since Sunday and hadn’t puked since noon on Monday. But when I got her to daycare and saw her next to healthy kids I realized how sick she still was.  She was better but being better from really sick still isn’t good.  It took me forever to leave daycare and when I did I just burst into tears.  I called Shaun and asked if he could come home during a meeting that I absolutely had to go to with no Lucy on my lap.  He said he could so I got off the freeway and went back to daycare to pick up Lucy.  I felt like such a BAD MOM leaving her there and I’m glad I was able to pick her up.

She was better today and I considered taking her back to daycare around 11 (all she needed was a really good nap) but Shaun took a 2 hour lunch and let me get work done and have my meeting.  This afternoon Lucy was like a whole new person-YAY!

Most of the time I’m really happy to be a working Mom.  The last 2 days? Not.At.All. I wish I could have just been Lucy’s Mommy and that’s it 🙁

I’m working from home and taking care of her and it doesn’t leave much time for anything extra.  I’ll be back when I have a healthy kid!

Little Lucy is sick 🙁  She has a pretty bad cough and had a fever of 101.4 this morning.  I gave  her Motrin and it’s down to 100-which isn’t considered a fever for a baby (100.3 and higher is considered a fever) but she’s still feeling pretty ooky.

Shaun is out mountain biking with his mountain bike boot camp-he’s an instructor and couldn’t really miss, nor would I want him to.  When he gets home, I’m going to run the errands on my list.

I have my grocery list all ready to go.  For those of you iPhone users, I use Groceries, to make my list.  I LOVE IT! I no longer need a pen and paper when I go to the grocery store.  All I need is my phone and wallet.  You can keep multiple lists for multiple stores on it-I’m going to Whole Foods and Trader Joes today.  And it allows you to add things that aren’t in their database really easily.  My only complaint is that it assumes that you buy the same stuff every week and it’s kind of a pain to clear off the list and start over-well it takes 2 additional steps.

On the menu this week?

-Chicken Tacos

-Stuffed Peppers

-Pork Loin with Leeks and Potatoes

-Bul Kogi-Korean BBQ meat from Traders-one of Shaun’s favorites!

Lucy’s giving me wet sloppy kisses on the cheek right now-it’s the cutest thing ever!  She woke up so I gotta go.  She loved the butternut squash by the way!

I try to make all of Lucy’s baby food. It’s really very easy to do and it ensures that I know exactly what is going into her food.

I want Lucy to try butternut squash this weekend so I decided to make some tonight and I took pictures of what I did.  When I bought the butternut squash it was a work night and I didn’t have time to bake a squash for an hour so I decided to get organic frozen squash from Whole Foods.  That night ended up being a bear so I didn’t get to make it. I would have preferred a fresh squash but this was really nice quality.

I followed the instructions on the bag for cooking it on the stovetop. I prefer not to microwave her food because you never know what those microwaves do!

I said to boil on the stove for 5-6 minutes. This is what it looked like going in:

As it boiled I got her baby cubes ready.

These are great for daycare because it only gets one container dirty and the lid is connected so they (and I) can’t lose it. I prefer the 2 ounce cubes because Lucy has taken to solids and eats A LOT. The one ounce cubes just don’t do it for her. Plus the lids don’t stay closed as well as the 2 ounce containers.

Back to the squash. This is what the squash looked like when it was done.

And into the Cuisenart it went:

I processed it:

Until it looked like this:

I spooned it into the Baby Cubes:

Make sure not to go past the max fill line because the lids will pop open in the freezer when the food expands.

I mark the tops of the cubes with an erasable marker so I know what’s in them.

(It was fun to write “BS”)

Then put them in their freezer trays:

And into the freezer they go with the other food:

The food is good in the freezer for up to 3 months-it doesn’t last that long in this household!

My days of sleeping in are over.  Babies internal clocks don’t understand the concept of sleeping in on the weekends.  Good thing I was in bed asleep by 10:15 last night.  No partying here-unless you consider drinking 1 hard cider partying.

Lucy woke up at 5:45 and I went in and fed her hoping that I could get her to go back down.  No dice.  I even tried putting her on my chest in bed with us-still no dice.  I got up to change her and come out here and pump/blog.  Yes I still have to pump on the weekends.  My freezer stash is down to 5 ounces.  I had it up 100 ounces and then my supply took a big hit and I wasn’t producing enough during the workday to replace what she was eating.  Add to that my out of town work trip without her and my freezer stash was completely depleted.  Yesterday was actually the first  day in a long time that I pumped enough at work to replace what she ate at daycare.  I usually have to throw one more pumping in there-either in the morning or evening.  I feel like my life is consumed by pumping but I also feel like it’s worth it.

I remember when “pump” used to refer to a class at the gym-not anymore!

Potty Training

This may be wishful thinking but we think Lucy may be easy to potty train. At almost every changing she either pees or poos or both with her diaper off.  It’s so prevelant that we have a washcloth on the changing table and as soon as her diaper comes off the wash cloth goes under her booty.  Today she decided to do both and her diaper was almost dry  from the night before.  Only time will tell!

To Do This Weekend

• Finish Cleaning
• Take Lucy to Swim Lessons
• Shop for the week
• Cook as much as I can for the week
• Make baby food
• Laundry
• Go to the Mall to pick up some replacement Bare Minerals
• Pump 2-3 more times 🙁
• Have some fun!

I know I had so many questions about sending Lucy to daycare with bottles when up until that point she had been exclusively breastfed (EBF). I talked to her daycare to see what they suggested and I went searching online and here’s what I did and now do.

For Lucy’s first day I sent 4 ounce bottles.  She was 4 months old and 4 ounces seemed like a good starting point.  I sent enough bottles for her to eat every 2 hours (like she did at home), with an extra bottle just in case.  My daycare has a rule that if a bottle has been out for an hour they can’t offer it again, so I always include that extra bottle.

By the end of the first week daycare requested that I send 5 ounce bottles.  Lucy was still trying to suck after the 4 ounce bottles were gone but was only eating once every 3 hours. They quickly asked for me to send 6 ounce bottles.

According to my Lactation Consultant (LC), there have been studies that show that a breastfed baby rarely drinks more than 5 ounces at a feeding and that anything more than that could be considered over feeding.  With that in mind I tried to back Lucy back down to 5.5 and then 5 but she was still sucking after 5.5 and was becoming a cranky baby.  I figured that since she ate every 3 hours at daycare vs. every 2 on the breast that 6 ounces was okay to send-especially since she’s such a tiny baby (she’s in the 10th percentile for weight).  She now takes 3 6 ounce bottles and 6 ounces of solids at daycare.  Before we started solids she was routinely eating 18 ounces of breastmilk a day.  I still send an extra bottle just in case we get stuck in traffic or something happens where we can’t get her when we originally planned.

The moral of the story is-follow your child’s cues and talk with your daycare provider.  They’ve done this many times before and should be very knowledgeable.

A good tip is to number the caps of the bottles and the labels. Tell daycare to feed them in order, that way you know that your child is getting the oldest milk first and you can keep track of how old milk is. If one of the bottles has to go back in the fridge after being offered for an hour and refused then that one would be labeled number 1 for the next day.  It’s useful to label the lids because those can easily be switched out.  If I need to dig into my freezer stash of milk, those bottles are labeled lower than fresh milk since it probably has a shorter “shelf life” than milk you pumped that day.

I tend to freeze my milk over the weekend since I had to dump 12 ounces one Monday morning when my milk went bad. I literally cried.  Milk can last up to 10 days refrigerated but I’ve found that mine starts smelling and tasting foul after the third or fourth day-everybody’s milk is different-and yes I’ve tasted it.  Since it’s literally liquid gold I play it safe and freeze it every Friday. I just stick any bottles she has left in the freezer and then my pumped milk goes in Medela Pump N’ Save bags. All the milk that gets pumped over the weekend goes into the fridge. On Sunday, I take the bottles and whatever amount I need from the  bags out of the freezer and put them in the refrigerator to defrost.  If I remember to take it out in the morning, I can prepare her bottles on Sunday night.  If I forget, I have to make her bottles Monday morning-and that’s a pain.

One last tip-I have 12 bottles for daycare and 12 bottles for pumping.  That way I only have to wash bottles twice a week.  It’s a huge time and energy saver.  Plus-I HATE WASHING BOTTLES-it’s the bane of my existence.

~~~

I bought my Eye-Fi and it should be here on Monday.  Know what that means? More pictures for you (and me)!

I am feeling so much better today.  My day of rest really did help. Just in time for the weekend too-you can’t ask for much more than that!

Stop Counting

One of my goals has been to STOP COUNTING.  I’m not counting calories anymore.  I’m just trying to eat sanely and stop when I’m full.  I’ve been doing that for about a week now and I’m feeling like a normal person and not like a food obsessed crazed person.  Part of STOP COUNTING is that I’m trying not to weigh myself.  I used to be a daily weigher and now I’m trying to just gauge on how my clothes look and feel.  I need to put the scale away though because it’s right there in my bathroom calling my name every time I’m in there.  This morning the temptation was too much and I stepped on it.  Holy sneikies!  Since the last time I weighed (~2 weeks ago) I’ve lost 5 pounds.  Yes 5 pounds!!!  I’m 2 pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight.  Part of me says “keep weighing, you can control your obsession-this is great!” but the sane part of me says “put the scale away-if that thing says you gained a pound tomorrow you’re going to use it as an excuse to overeat.” I’m putting the scale at the back of the front closet tonight-I would throw it away but we use it to weigh suitcases and I’m the master 49.5 pound packer and the scale is essential for this!  This crazy weigh in did convince me to try on some pre-pregnancy clothing and what do you know?  They fit.  That’s cool.  My body has definitely changed since giving birth but old clothes are fitting and my wardrobe possibilities are about to explode!  My co-workers will be so happy.  I’m sure they’re sick and tired of seeing the same 2 pairs of pants and 5 shirts.  Who am I kidding?  No one cares but me.  So-I thank me-I’m tired of wearing the same 2 pairs of pants and 5 shirts!

Format of the Being Chelsea

I’ve been thinking about what I want this space to be and how to best achieve that.  First and foremost I want it to be a place where I document what is happening in my every day life.  Especially with Lucy.  I want to cherish all the moments I can and write them down so I don’t forget.  The other thing I want to do is write down everything I’m learning.  I’m the first of most of my friends to go through having a baby and I don’t want to forget all these tips.  I love to research baby stuff and I feel like it’s hard to find information out there, even though there is a lot of it.  I’m going to start compiling the things that I’ve learned in a (hopefully) daily post.  So I’ll be writing in the mornings before work (on the train) about what’s going on and then I’ll be posting later in the day at one of my 3 pump sessions about useful tips and tricks.  Stay tuned for sending breastmilk to daycare later today!

I can’t leave this subject without talking about Shaun.  He has spent the last 2 nights creating Being Chelsea and making it look the way it does.  None of the templates that WordPress offers had exactly what I wanted but I’m lucky enough to have an amazing husband who knows how to program.  He was talking last night about things that he wants to do to update his blog but that he hasn’t had the time.  Yet he’s been sitting down with me to make Being Chelsea look just the way I want it (awwww). We’re still refining but so far I’m pretty happy with the look.  He doesn’t like that it’s floating with no containers (how is that for geeky speak?) but I love my “floating” blog.  All that really means is that there are very few lines and boxes on the blog which I think makes it look very clean.

Speaking of Clean

Everyone tells you when you have a kid that your house will never be clean again.  Shaun and I are very clean people and we just kind of nodded our heads and laughed on the inside.  And, our house has stayed clean-up until the past few weeks.  The first issue was that I had to travel for work and was gone for a night, then my Mom came to visit the next weekend, then the next weekend we went camping, and then this past weekend we went to the beach, oh and then I got sick.  With all this upheaval, my house is a DISASTER.  Look at my kitchen: Well nevermind, the picture didn’t upload before I came into work, so that will have to wait!

This weekend will be spent cleaning the mess.  Actually tonight and tomorrow morning will be spent cleaning the mess because our cleaning lady (who does the kitchen, dusts, and the bathrooms-all the stuff I just don’t have time for) comes tomorrow and she needs to be able to actually clean.  I can’t wait for my weekend so that I can catch up on all the stuff we’ve been putting off while out having fun.

Lucy

I just did a huge photo dump of Lucy on her website.  So many of the pictures you see here are duplicated there.  I think in the future it will be the reverse.  You’ll see pictures here first and then they’ll go over there for “family consumption”.  Some pictures won’t ever go over there and some won’t ever come here.  Her blog is really just to talk about her and keep the relatives and friends up to date.  I’m buying an Eye-Fi photo card later today so this place will start having many more pictures.  Shaun and I have been talking about getting one for months and we’re finally ready to take the plunge. I know Kath has had some issues with her but I think that overall we’ll really like it.

As for what’s really going on with Lucy. She’s started making consonant “B” sounds last week.  She concentrated really hard made the form with her lips and then a “buh” would escape.  “Buh”‘s are getting easier and easier for her and now she’s moved on to “mah” and “puh”.  Interestingly no “Duh” yet.  Usually kids say “Da Da” before “Ma Ma” but so far she’s on her way to “Ma Ma” (YAY!).  Watch, now that I’ve said that she’ll start saying “Da Da” tonight-which is fine by me.  I just love experiencing it!

She’s developed a new way to wake Mommy up in the morning.  She normally wakes up smiling and making all sorts of noises.  I let her do that while I catch some additional ZZZZ’s-she’s happy and more sleep makes for a happy Mommy.  Now,she gets her legs up on the crib (kind of like legs up the wall for those who know yoga) and bangs them really hard.  I go running because I know one of these days she’s going to haul herself up and out of the crib-scary! That little girl is too smart-she knows how to get her Mommy running!

I’ll leave you today with one of my favorite pictures of us.  Our friend Jen took it and commented that Lucy is “glowing”.  She really is!