Some Advice for a Listener (Erin)

Hi moms this is Carrie from Natural Moms Talk Radio. I have a couple things that I wanted to say to Erin, who last week had a few issues that she was putting out there. She was looking for product reviews and breast feeding help and just new mom advice from other moms.

A couple things that I wanted to say to Erin, first of all congratulations. You are probably about eight months pregnant now by the time you hear this. As far as breast feeding is concerned I would suggest that you go to a laleche meeting before you have your baby and start developing a relationship with the local leaders in your area. You can go to http://lalecheleague.org to find a local group.

You know Erin when I had my first child eight years ago and I had read all the books about breast feeding and things went pretty smoothly. I had a high need baby and that was kind of a blessing in disguise, I was tested by fire you should say. Every other baby after that seemed needy. This is the kind of baby that could not be put down for anything and I bought a baby sling which was wonderful and I have used it for all my children and loved it.

I couldn’t get the hang of using it, I just don’t know, I just couldn’t get it to work so I looked up my local laleche group and went to my first meeting and I had these preconceived notions in my head. I thought you know these women are a bunch of hairy legged hippies that are going to be sitting around nursing their eight year olds – that’s what I had in the back of my mind and I couldn’t of been more wrong. I guess there was one mom there with the hairy legs and no offense to any hippies or hairy legs but the stereotype wasn’t true at all.

There were all sorts of moms there from all different walks of life and it was just so refreshing to see other moms who were there willing to sit with me and share their stories and their been there done that’s and all. I started talking about how my baby, we were having some mild challenges and one of the moms just jumped out of her chair and came over and started demonstrating how to use that sling and by the time I left they made sure that I knew how to use that thing and it was such a life saver for me so I would definitely recommend that.

Another thing, you talk about wanting product reviews, there are a couple websites that you can visit. I know one of them is http://www.epinions.com and you can see what other parents have said about baby gadgets and you just might want to think about do you really need all that stuff? Just because a product exists doesn’t necessarily mean that you truly will need it. You can save a lot of money just by scaling back and thinking well if I use a baby sling I may not need the play yard and the excer-saucer and the Johnny jump up and all that. You can put that money in the baby’s college fund or take a vacation with your husband or something like that.

A cookbook that every new mom must have, and I wished that I had this eight years ago with my first child, is The One Armed Cook. I love it. You can literally get dinner on the table when you’ve got a new baby and the house is chaotic. The One Armed Cook, you gotta have it.

So anyways that’s my tips and words of wisdom for you Erin and congratulations. I hope your labor is short and easy and wonderful and you are just going to be in bliss. Take care and bye bye.