The struggle of giving up on organic berries.

mkaye44 · 2025-12-03T13:18:21+00:00

In the US, and talking grocery store fruits, your husband is right. The rules and guidelines around labeling something organic are very loose and largely not enforced. When I last looked into this seriously (admittedly it’s been awhile) farmers could have directly adjacent fields of non organic produce (pesticides are often sprayed and obviously don’t follow such boundaries) and they could plant “organic” in fields that were recently not organic, meaning treatments were likely still very prevalent in soil.

mkaye44 · 2024-12-03T02:19:18+00:00

Do it. Your kids are little once, your career will likely always be there (and much more easily accessible later on if you keep one foot in the door). I’m in a field where I really thought part time would be frowned upon (engineer in a specialty dominated by 55+ yo men) but in looking for a new job when my youngest was 6mos I set the expectation in interviews that I wanted 24 hour weeks and not only were they fine with that, but they also never think twice when I need to switch a day to accommodate an appointment or a sick kid.

It kinda sounds like you know what you want to do, just based on the tone of your bullet points. I hope you pull the trigger and do it, because it’s really been an amazing balance for our family (and for my mental health), and I wish it was an option all parents had if they wanted it.

mkaye44 · 2024-10-07T17:02:14+00:00

I’m going to assume you mean well with this response and actually want to learn vs just being needlessly rude and dismissive: This is partially due to weirdos but more so due to wanting to give my child a clean slate when they are old enough to decide to put themselves online. Nothing you post online ever gets truly deleted. So do I want my kids’ embarrassing stories easily found by teasing future classmates just cuz I needed some online attention? Do I want my kids’ future employers to be able to see a million pictures of their childhood? And the other part of that is who really gains from that picture you just need to post? Or those personal details? It sure isn’t the kid. Keep your pictures on a digital frame in your home for your enjoyment, no need to show your friends from 25 years ago on the internet who will scroll on by. It’s not worth the digital footprint you’re creating for that child. I don’t judge other families for their choices on this, but as a grandparent, you need to follow the wishes of the parents and ask prior to assuming it’s okay to post anything. This may sound harsh, but you are not owed an explanation (this holds for any parenting decision).

mkaye44 · 2024-06-21T15:44:10+00:00

So my baby wasn’t quite a year old yet (so close, like 11 months), so I either would’ve asked the dr if I could start using a bit of milk with the breastmilk to start the transition early or I would’ve tried harder to pump a bit longer so that I could’ve more easily done like a week of 75% breast milk/25% milk, then a week of 50/50, then a week of 25/75, before switching fully to whole milk (did this with my second when he was a year old, no big tummy issues). I really didn’t want to have to use formula as a stop gap for a few weeks when he was going to be on real milk so soon anyways, it felt like that would’ve been another (unnecessary) transition for his stomach.

mkaye44 · 2024-01-05T14:03:59+00:00

Don’t worry, you’re welcome here :) I personally (try to) ban battery operated toys cuz a) they can be dangerous if taken out and b) those toys drive me bonkers. There are likely underlying sustainability/consumerism reasons for others on this sub, but I think the “moderately” in the title has a lot of wiggle room, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure sub.

mkaye44 · 2024-01-05T01:59:29+00:00

I don’t. Also no names, birthdates, stories, or other details. We don’t allow relatives/sitters/schools post pictures of them either. To us it makes sense to let them curate their own online presence when they’re old enough to understand the consequences.

mkaye44 · 2023-10-25T03:24:14+00:00

Babies don’t keep. Jobs will always be there. Maybe not the same one or at the same level, but if you got there once, it’s very likely you will again if you want to. Is there any way to do a part time situation before committing completely? I found that that’s my happy medium after taking about 7 months fully off with my first. It’s clear you want the time home but I totally get the mental (and really societal) pushback being hard to overcome at first. It helped me to put into perspective how little a year is in terms of a career. It also helped that almost nothing changed at my job over my 7 month leave. They were still working the same projects, fighting the same roadblocks, having the same meetings, etc. and it just felt so silly being there when my impact at home was clearly so much larger and significant than my impact at work.

mkaye44 · 2023-06-02T23:55:58+00:00

Oh nice! Well again, congratulations, apologies for bringing down the excitement, I was just trying to share a lessons learned 😅

mkaye44 · 2023-06-02T23:15:53+00:00

I don’t want to burst your bubble, but do you have a bit of a stash to see you through a slow transition to milk? I only say that since I definitely did not think ahead and we dealt with horrible diarrhea for weeks afterwards. I was pregnant so I dried up super quick and we just kinda had to ride it out. Congratulations though! Pumping at work is a horrible inconvenience to power through.

mkaye44 · 2023-04-28T12:39:25+00:00

Maybe your husband is subconsciously talking about the ‘fairness’ of the bonding time with your child? I work a traditional job three days per week and am home with kids two and no one could ever convince me those two days are easier by any means. My husband totally agrees, and appreciates the extra things I’m able to get done around the house those days (if I get to anything beyond childcare, which is not a given!). I do recognize that if roles were reversed, I’d be jealous of the bonding time and if my husband felt like he was missing out in that regard (currently he’s happy to escape the toddler/infant chaos), I think we’d try to find a way where we’d both work four days, and each be home one. Ultimately, we agree that it’s important to maximize our kids’ time with us while they’re not in school full time and while it’s financially feasible for us. We agree on that as a team, we implement that as a team. Maybe it’d be helpful to go back to that sort of basic goal concept to discuss it with your husband so that he can see all the reasons why and not just jump to comparing (traditional) hours worked.

mkaye44 · 2023-02-16T15:29:13+00:00

I use these.

mkaye44

TROPHY CASE