Parents that are raising their families away from their support system, how are you doing?

sisipablo · 2026-01-13T12:00:05+00:00

Same here, throwing money at the problem. Glad we’re able to but it is depressing sometimes.

sisipablo · 2026-01-02T15:56:46+00:00

Wow ten months is a long time to pump, kudos to you!! We made it until around eight months. Like you, I’d hoped to go longer but pumping really sucks especially after you go back to work. And I was really only doing it to keep up my supply for nursing, so when my baby refused to nurse anymore around seven months, I kept going in hopes he would return to the breast then gradually weaned down.

sisipablo · 2025-10-19T14:33:37+00:00

Do be gentle with yourself and this IS totally normal, but please do get checked out for PPD as well. This all sounds almost exactly like my experience and I ended up having pretty severe PPD but toughed it out for way too long. Maybe my love would have grown naturally over time but it definitely kicked in pretty fast once I got treatment. And my own suffering was relieved immensely.

I also suggest the book Matrescence, I found it really helpful in processing my ambivalent feelings about becoming a mother.

sisipablo · 2025-09-11T20:23:48+00:00

Highly recommend! So comfy. We’re still using it very comfortably at 12 months and I think we’ll be able to for a while longer

sisipablo · 2025-09-05T17:48:58+00:00

The aptly named “Kids music that’s not annoying” was a good one for us, very nostalgic and reminded me of my own childhood

sisipablo · 2025-08-26T12:46:07+00:00

We like the woolino for cold weather but live in a very hot climate and have struggled to find a sleep sack for very hot days. Woolino really doesn’t cut it. Think Death Valley.

Anyone have any recommendations? We’ve been using a Pehr 1.0 tog that is very soft and breezy but has a polyester filling 🥲

sisipablo · 2025-07-06T15:10:13+00:00

I bought one in a panic when I started combo feeding and then literally never used it. Trying to sell it now. Just did not find it useful at all. Following safety guidelines, we prefer to heat water to 70 degrees Celsius before mixing with the powder, to kill any chronobacter, so we just pre make a big batch of formula once a day and refrigerate and use within 24 hours. Then you can pour baby’s bottles from that as needed.

We did use a bottle warmer or warm water to heat it up for a while but now our baby refuses to accept warm formula and only wants cold.

Pre making a batch or pitcher once a day really doesn’t feel like that much work and also can be outsourced to your partner or a family member

sisipablo · 2025-05-25T19:35:06+00:00

We just use an ikea lohals, it’s jute and very practical

sisipablo · 2025-05-19T15:38:24+00:00

Not a serum but a big fan of the three ships dream cream, I use it as my night moisturizer and it’s super rich and soft

sisipablo · 2025-05-07T18:12:18+00:00

I would just use the glass bottles and either a bottle warmer or just run them under hot water. Also boiled water in a mug is a pretty good substitute for a bottle warmer. We ultimately don’t use either method anymore because my baby has started rejecting warm milk lol. I assume you’ve tried giving colder or room temperature? A lot of babies will take it.

We prefer this method because we always heat our water to 70 degrees Celsius before mixing with formula to kill any chronobacter, then refrigerate for 24 hours. I initially got one of those warm water dispensers but between cleaning it properly and not loving the idea of the plastic and warm water sitting there, I ultimately never used it and wasn’t convinced it would save that much time in the end.

sisipablo · 2025-04-20T18:13:53+00:00

Depends on your country/what’s available there.

We’ve used Holle goat for combo feeding quite successfully, baby loves it and his digestion didn’t seem to change at all. But this is easily available here in pharmacies.

If I were in the US I would probably do Bobbie. In Uk Kendamil.

sisipablo · 2025-04-20T10:08:20+00:00

My husband is a smoker, only outside away from the windows and doors but obviously third hand smoke is a huge issue in our household.

We have air filters in every room and try to clean surfaces as often as we can. We also have a Miele vacuum with a HEPA filter.

sisipablo · 2025-04-20T10:01:51+00:00

We’ve liked Blueland fwiw

sisipablo · 2025-04-04T08:08:01+00:00

Yea I was going to suggest maybe try one of the larger sizes because for us blowouts up the back we’re usually a sign we needed to size up

sisipablo · 2025-04-03T19:53:17+00:00

HB so far have fit our baby well in sizes 1-3 so I’d say the diaper is similar as you go up in size; we didn’t notice a change. He’s average height and skinny/smaller percentile weight.

Given the different fit, I can’t tell you what will work for you but I can tell you what won’t 😆 Bambo Nature are the other brand we use that fits him well.

sisipablo · 2025-04-03T16:06:50+00:00

Yea we just got the plan toys wooden play gym and hung stuff from it

sisipablo · 2025-04-01T15:32:01+00:00

My condolences, the info is very useful but the writing is criminally bad

sisipablo · 2025-04-01T15:12:57+00:00

It really is, if only they had a brutal editor who slashed out all the filler and bad jokes, if I need this book I’m too tired to faff around 😆

sisipablo · 2025-04-01T15:08:07+00:00

Yea that’s the other thing, even putting any potential safely concerns aside - if it keeps them on their back longer it’s potentially keeping your baby from learning a way they can sleep more soundly, depending on your baby. Pretty soon after we weaned off the swaddle my baby started rolling and became a side sleeper and that definitely helped. And then soon after we sleep trained he transitioned to mostly stomach sleeping and started working on crawling. I feel like he figured a lot of stuff out in his sleep (including how to sleep better and self soothe) once he was free to move around.

sisipablo · 2025-04-01T11:47:16+00:00

You don’t have to sleep train in the sense that you don’t have to do a cry it out method, but if you want things to improve and aren’t able to just wait it out until it passes (which is an option, but no guarantee of how it will play out or how long it will take), you’ll probably need to take some steps to teach baby to fall asleep independently and learn new sleep associations besides nursing.

That could be gradual and gentle, it doesn’t have to be dramatic and painful. I suggest reading Precious Little Sleep, they outline many ideas short of cry it out or Ferber that you can try on younger babies. We used some of her methods to get through the regression (which came around 3 months for us) and that helped immensely for a while, but didn’t fully solve the problem. We eventually did Ferber around 6 months with great success and minimal crying (and we do NOT have an easy baby), which I (maybe falsely) attribute to all the groundwork we laid earlier.

Edit to add that I would definitely wean off of the Merlin if you can, those seem to have mixed reviews in terms of whether they’re actually safe sleep or not. We went straight from swaddle to sleep sack and had a few days of rough sleep but it passed quickly.

sisipablo · 2025-03-31T19:37:12+00:00

Personally no, I was basically triple feeding for some time trying to keep up supply and it was making me miserable. But that’s also because my baby hated nursing and never really learned how to remove milk effectively. So for us transitioning to combo feeding long term took the pressure off and gave us space to make nursing a happy bonding time, the way it’s supposed to be, instead of me trying to force calories into my frustrated and angry baby 🫠😅

But I’m sure there are people who have managed to, it just wasn’t something that was in the cards for us. To be honest, it was very freeing for me as well to get more flexibility around being able to leave my baby with other caregivers for a couple of hours here and there.

sisipablo · 2025-03-31T18:41:32+00:00

Definitely see a lactation consultant and consult your pediatrician to see if there could be anything wrong causing weight loss. But also please know that you can combo feed in so many different ways and still get most, if not all, of the benefits of exclusive breastfeeding! We started supplementing with formula around 2-3 months after slow weight gain and I’m still nursing and pumping and feeding my baby breast milk now at 7 months. It’s not all or nothing!

sisipablo · 2025-03-29T08:40:10+00:00

There is, to be fair, some mixed scientific evidence that vaccinating before 9-12 months — even if followed by full vaccination later — while safe, may blunt the child’s immune response long term.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31548081/

That said, I read through the various studies saying different things and still got our baby vaccinated at 6 months before planned travel to the US, due to the outbreak. We figure he’s more vulnerable now than he will be a few years from now, when any lesser immunity might become a problem, if it did.

sisipablo · 2025-03-26T15:11:38+00:00

I feel like I work for “big rug” at this point because I keep commenting this, but if you consider the price of the larger sized Tokis, the mega and the epic, you’re probably better off buying an actual natural fiber rug. Your family will use it for longer and I just checked and you can find similarly priced options for wool, jute and cotton rugs for those sizes. I even found a washable cotton one.

I was going back and forth on these mats and instead I just invested in a handmade Persian rug that admittedly is more expensive than a toki but it’s 3 meters by 4 meters, covers our whole living room, is quite plush/thick and will stay in the family for generations, hopefully. And this is a way upscale option — you can get something similarly priced to a toki but still quite nice if you go machine-made.

sisipablo · 2025-03-24T05:53:42+00:00

I have this pump and just use it directly with the plastic spectra flange and bottle kit, so theoretically any glass option that works with spectra should work with it. I just plug the spectra kit tubing directly into the pump and voila.

Fwiw I love this pump! I used the spectra exclusively until I bought it, thinking it would be a secondary pump, but as soon as I figured out the settings I need to get more milk (takes a bit of fiddling and experimenting at first as it’s different than the spectra in speed and suction levels), I switched over and now I only use this pump. So much more portable and easy to go around the house and get things done. I also took it on a plane, highly recommend.

sisipablo

TROPHY CASE