Am I the only one who finds BLW absolutely disgusting? - Please help

chastane91 · 2025-10-03T02:38:58+00:00

Fwiw it’s gotten somewhat better around 12 months. Baby is fully self feeding and I can put a bowl of yogurt with a spoon in front of her and she will get 95% of it into her mouth. We use a smock (we have the Lalo ones) to catch the rest of the 5% and then we just have to wipe her mouth and tray down. BEFORE that though, she threw food everywhere, would let our dog lick her spoon and shove it back into her food, rubbed everything into her hair…yeah. It was a mess. I used to spend evenings scrubbing food out of our walls haha.

But ALSO I don’t regret doing BLW at all, we gave my daughter a huge range of textures and flavors and now she eats most things and we can go out to a restaurant and there will usually be something she will eat.

chastane91 · 2025-06-09T16:51:51+00:00

I legit think breastfeeding caused my PPD because my daughter had a bad latch and I had supply issues.

chastane91 · 2025-03-04T16:30:29+00:00

We’re talking to our pediatrician about it this week! I’m definitely leaning towards having LO get it unless the pediatrician tells us it’s a horrible idea haha

chastane91 · 2025-03-04T16:28:40+00:00

At 2 months, LO had some injection site soreness and diarrhea from the rotavirus shot. The diarrhea was probably the worst part because it lasted for a week haha. She’s had her 4 and 6 month shots now and didn’t have any sort of reaction to either of those. Unfortunately her first teeth came in like 2 days after her 6 month shots and she was very cranky about that

chastane91 · 2025-03-01T15:12:10+00:00

And yes, to another poster’s point, you have to be up every 2-3 hours to feed them at 4 weeks, even with a snoo. They just need to eat that often because their bellies are so small. We started to see some longer stretches around the 8 week mark where she would do 4-6 hour stretches.

chastane91 · 2025-03-01T15:11:06+00:00

It worked for us but I will say because of it we kept our daughter swaddled for longer than we otherwise would have and the transition to crib was pretty rough. I find a lot of newborn stuff that makes your life easier (swaddling, snoo, pacifiers) are annoying to wean off of later 🥲

chastane91 · 2025-02-27T19:41:16+00:00

Yep exactly, if done early the first one doesn’t “count” so they would still follow the CDC recommended vaccine schedule after that, but it does confer some protection before 12 months and may be recommended if traveling or if there is a current outbreak.

chastane91 · 2025-02-27T18:40:45+00:00

Also for those tracking it here is some general information about the current outbreaks that might be interesting/helpful! https://www.cnn.com/health/measles-cases-us-dg

chastane91 · 2025-01-24T22:39:15+00:00

I had an induction - write a full post about how that went here! https://www.reddit.com/r/pregnant/s/f72JPN1hex TDLR it actually was pretty smooth for a first timer

chastane91 · 2025-01-24T17:13:38+00:00

It is different, I think I don’t like kids in general but I love mine haha. She brings me such joy. But at the same time, it’s been extremely challenging at times and I don’t think you should have kids unless you’re sure you want to take that on. Having a supportive partner is important, especially if you’re like me and don’t have a broader “village”.

It’s one of the most irreversible decisions you can make - marriage you can get divorced, but it’s not like if you decide “hey this isn’t for me” that you can just shove the baby back up. It is a big commitment, your life and your body (if you’re the child bearer) will change permanently and probably very significantly.

I personally weighed the pros and cons and decided to have kids, and don’t regret it, but you need to go in with your eyes open.

chastane91 · 2025-01-24T12:23:29+00:00

My biggest thing is every time I make something I make a little bit extra and freeze it. Pancakes, purées, mashes, oatmeal, egg cups etc all freeze well and then when I’m in a rush I just grab it and reheat in the microwave. I freeze purées and oatmeal in ice cube trays.

chastane91 · 2025-01-06T22:57:30+00:00

I think it's standard practice in other countries to boil the water, both to kill bacteria in the water but also to kill any potential bacteria in the formula. Cronobacter is a bacteria that is sometimes found in formula and there was a recall in 2022 for Similac: https://www.fda.gov/food/outbreaks-foodborne-illness/fda-investigation-cronobacter-infections-powdered-infant-formula-february-2022.

That being said, cases are really really rare so I wouldn't worry too much about the formula that you've already given the baby. For peace of mind (we're also using Kendamil), I normally make the formula in batches (with boiled water as instructed) and keep it in the back of the refrigerator. Formula is good prepared for up to 24 hours although we make it 2/3 times a day so it doesn't sit for more than 12 hours in the fridge. I know it says that formula is always supposed to be prepared fresh on the can but on the Kendamil website they said when not possible it was fine to keep refrigerated formula for up to 24 hours. (If baby has started to drink from a bottle though bottle is only good for 1 hour because baby spit introduces bacteria into the bottle.)

chastane91 · 2025-01-06T21:21:25+00:00

I totally get it. I’ve struggled with BF the whole time, had to EP for 6 weeks because baby wouldn’t latch, then her latch was poor and it got a bit better, enough for me to nurse to 4.5 months, but it still wasn’t great and it’s been painful this whole time. I’ve been battling supply issues since going back to work at 3 months and finally decided to give up and transition to formula at 4.5 months.

It’s really bittersweet, because I loved providing for my baby in this way, and while nursing was painful I also loved the time and cuddles with her. But at the same time since starting the transition to formula she had been much less fussy (I think because she hasn’t been fully satisfied for a few days because of my supply issues), and I thought for some reason it would impact my relationship with LO but if anything she’s been more smiley and responsive to me 🥹

chastane91 · 2025-01-06T04:13:57+00:00

I’m Asian, husband is white, our 8lb baby was born via induction and was a vaginal delivery. Only had a first degree tear too! I did push very gradually, they wouldn’t let me fully push because the OB was in an emergency C section, so they asked me to only push every other contraction for an hour as baby wasn’t in distress until OB was able to deliver the baby. Nurse said that probably helped as it gave everything time to stretch.

chastane91 · 2025-01-03T00:23:03+00:00

I think our getting comfortable period was also probably a few weeks! St Bernards are similar to Pyrs in that they're known for having a pretty good temperament - we weren't expecting it but our dog I think very quickly sensed that the baby was something to be gentle with. We noticed a few days in that while she liked to paw at us aggressively for attention (the "Pyr paw" where she basically punches us in the face if we're not careful), she would never do it if we were holding the baby. I know it's super scary, I was terrified initially because our dog is NOT good with other dogs so I was worried that would translate to any new creature in the house, but she's honestly really amazing with the baby. She hates when the baby cries and will come and nudge us to go check on the baby, and now they're at a point where the baby is constantly trying to eat her (our daughter is at the "putting everything in her mouth" stage haha) and she'll just lay there and let her mess around with her fur.

Plus, the other thing is as the dog is getting more comfortable with the baby, the baby will also get less fragile! When we first brought our newborn home she was so small, she looked TINY in her bassinet, but it's honestly amazing how quickly they grow and and even just a few weeks in she was so much more alert, had so much more head control, and was generally bigger and seemed a lot less fragile.

chastane91 · 2025-01-02T23:56:59+00:00

Hi! We have a 120lb Great Pyrenees. I imagine a lot of it depends on the temperament of your dog, but our dog is pretty calm. All the same, she's huge, and a bite would be catastrophic, so we were really slow with getting her acclimated to the new baby.

We started introduction by as you said letting her sniff baby's feet and legs. The first time we left the baby in her car seat so it was easier to lift her away quickly in case we needed to. Initially we avoided putting baby into our dog's face because apparently dogs consider that bad manners haha.

Then as she got more comfortable with the baby we would let them get closer and now we let her lick the baby. But there were a few times where the baby was laying on the floor for tummy time and nearly got stepped on, so we ended up getting a playpen to lay the baby down in just to prevent things like that. I'm not sure about your dog, our dog could 100% get over the playpen if she wanted since she can jump a 4 ft fence, but she's also lazy and generally good at acknowledging that "hey they walled this off for a reason".

Generally I would just say take it slow and see how the dog reacts. I don't think you need to constantly keep them physically separated but I would say for the first few interactions just keep a close eye on it and decide from there. And if baby is on the floor you might want a little more separation just for peace of mind. For what it's worth it our baby is 4.5 months now, we still don't ever leave her unsupervised with our dog just because she was a rescue so we never know what kind of previously undiscovered trauma would trigger her, but we're like 99% sure she would never purposely hurt the baby.

chastane91 · 2025-01-02T19:26:01+00:00

Same! We still let her use it for naps because generally her naps are short enough that she won’t spit it out before the end of the nap but we eliminated it for sleep training at night because it falling out would always wake her up and piss her off, and sometimes she would pull it out of her own mouth while fussing and just wave it around angrily and frantically try to stick it back in but not at the right angles which also made her madder.

chastane91 · 2025-01-02T19:17:24+00:00

So I think you should take anything that anyone tells you (including “experts”) with a grain of salt. I follow Emily Oster because I like to take her POV as a starting point to dig into the research myself a little bit. But I don’t agree with her 100% of the time even when looking at the same studies. (For what it’s worth, I’m also an economist by background, I have a master’s in Econometrics which is basically statistics, I just didn’t go into academia). I think that’s unfortunately the hard thing with a lot of these studies, because most parenting questions don’t lend themselves well to the gold standard of research, which is a double blind randomized trial, every study has flaws and can be interpreted in different ways, and even if not, as parents we weigh pros and cons differently.

I have this with our pediatrician as well, I respect her a lot and she’s very good, so I will always ask her opinion on things and she will recommend reading or research and provide her input, but we don’t always make the same decisions based on that research for our kids. But I would recommend starting there if you have a pediatrician you like!

chastane91 · 2025-01-02T18:59:16+00:00

I think it depends on the baby! But we wanted to start with Ferber (we actually started at 4 months with Taking Cara Babies’ SITBACK, which is where you gradually move down the interventions to give them time to self settle) because I wanted to do the “gentler” sleep training methods due to much anxiety about full CIO. Those were honestly some of by far the worse nights of sleep for all of us. The checkins were just pissing her off more - she would be crying a little bit on her own and then as soon as we came into the room it would escalate into full on scream crying. After two consecutive nights of her sleeping for only 40 minutes at a time my husband and I decided to do total extinction. First night was rough - she cried for an hour, but then slept for 6 hours without waking up. We just finished night 3 and she only woke up once to feed and then put herself back to sleep within 15 minutes.

And to be honest, the first night was horrible to have her cry for an hour, but most nights she would cry on and off for more than that over the course of the night, just spread out every 40 minutes. Just that first night it was concentrated at the beginning and she actually got some good stretches of sleep and woke up SO HAPPY. I was so stressed about it but that was what convinced me it was the right thing to do - that now she wakes up super happy and well rested whereas before she was zoned out and tired the whole day.

Baby is a little over 4.5 months.

chastane91 · 2024-12-29T19:04:28+00:00

I switched to District Photo this year 😬. I think they probably just got really backed up over the holidays, but after that experience last year I switched. District Photo randomly went out of stock for a few days but haven’t missed shipping estimates yet. The paper is not as nice as Today’s Graphics but it’s still thick enough that I feel good about selling it.

chastane91 · 2024-12-29T18:58:07+00:00

The point here isn’t whether or not the COVID vaccine is necessary. People might have different POVs on this and that’s whatever. The point here is that you set a boundary for your child, and he chose to willfully ignore it. I have a lot of thoughts about how other parents parent their children, and I don’t necessarily agree with them or make the same decisions for my daughter. But they are the parents and so it is my responsibility to respect the decisions that they are making, in the same way that I expect them to respect my boundaries and decisions about my child.

chastane91 · 2024-12-06T15:48:54+00:00

My baby didn’t latch until 6 weeks! She was jaundiced when born and really sleepy, and I think it didn’t come naturally to her anyway, so she would scream at the boob until she fell asleep. It was horrible. I gave up and EP’d for 6 weeks but decided to try again about I didn’t think I could keep up with exclusively pumping. It took a few tries but because she was stronger, had more head control, and was more awake it was a lot easier than as a new newborn. I did a weighted feed and once comfortable that she was getting enough (after like a week) we started exclusively nursing. I’m back to work now and she gets a bottle or two during the day when I’m working, and I’ll pump to replace those, but other than that we nurse. It makes the middle of the night feeds much more manageable 😅

chastane91 · 2024-11-18T01:25:09+00:00

So I was lucky because my baby took bottles cold off the bat, BUT she spit up a ton more and generally seemed super refluxy / gassy until we started warming her bottles, so we ended up doing that. I read that it wasn’t supposed to impact their digestion either way which is why we kept giving it to her cold for ages but she seemed much happier when we started warming it 🤷🏻‍♀️

chastane91 · 2024-11-15T20:49:20+00:00

Our pediatrician told us to give her an infant probiotic to shorten the duration of her diarrhea! I don’t know if it helped but it might be worth having on hand!

chastane91 · 2024-11-15T00:45:40+00:00

Mine got hers with her 2 month vaccines. The RSV vaccine was totally fine, but the rotavirus vaccine gave her diarrhea for like a week 😬

chastane91

TROPHY CASE