Category: Feeding


Beaba Multi-portion freezer trays

We are in full weaning mode here at the minute, with Mr Mirth happily munching his way through a variety of fruit and vegetables. When shopping for some weaning bits and pieces, I came across the Beaba Mulit-Portion freezer trays and I’m a big fan.

These silicone freezer trays have been specially designed for refrigerating baby meals and I reckon they do a really great job. Each tray contains seven 60ml / 20z tubs which you can fill with whatever puree you have prepared for your baba, then you simply put on the lid and stick it into the freezer. Once the puree portions are frozen, you simply pop each one into a freezer bag and you have an easily accessible stash of baby food.

Freezer trays for baby food aren’t new but, for me, two things make this one so superior to the others that I have tried:

First, the frozen purees are so easy to get out of the tray – the silicone construction means each serving can be plunged out with very little effort and conveniently stored in a freezer bag.

Second, the portion sizes are much bigger than other trays I’ve tried. This means that at the start of weaning, you can make small portions but as your baba’s appetite grows, you can increase the size of the portions without having to use more and more trays.

At around €12-14 per tray, these are not cheap but I was lucky enough to find a 3 for 2 option so I can make enough purees for 21 days at a time. My freezer is currently chock full of freezer bags filled with various purees which saves me lots of time and makes my life so much easier, you can’t ask more than that from a piece of silicone !!

I am also confident that I will get use out out of these trays long after weaning, I can see myself using them to freeze things like left-over wine that can be used later for cooking, making individual desserts like panna cotta or even jelly or adding a few sticks and making some home-made  lollipops.


Water Wipes

I’m a bit old school when it comes to nappy changing and I’ve always used cotton wool and water on the baba’s little behinds resorting to wipes only when we are out and about. My reason for this is that its very hard to find wipes that aren’t fully of yucky lotions and perfumes. However, I am very pleased to say that I have found a fantastic new type of wipes that are almost as natural as my trusty cotton wool and water. They are called:

The wipes are made by an Irish company called Irish Breeze and according to the official website, Water Wipes are the world’s purest baby wipe. They contain no preservatives and are 99.9% water. I’ve used a couple of packets of them now and while they will never replace cotton wool for me entirely, I have taken to using them for things like cleaning the baba’s hands and face after meals when we are out and I keep a stash in the car for those inevitable spillages-in-motion. Lollipop has very sensitive skin and I am happy to report that she has had no reaction to them. One enormous bonus for me is that they don’t have a smell (which makes sense given the fact that they are almost all water) as I hate putting perfumed things on delicate baby skin.  I have to admit, I like them !

I’ve bought my wipes in Boots (where I’ve availed of their 3 for 2 offers) but you can also buy them online from a couple of places which are listed here. Give them a shot and see what you think!


Toddler Aprons

Whether you have a budding chef on your hands or your baba just loves finding a bag of flour and ‘making it snow’ in your kitchen, every toddler needs an apron. Sometimes these miniature clothing protectors can be hard to find but Not on the High Street have lots to chose from:

These lovely aprons are printed with your baba’s name on the front together with a large pocket which comes in your choice of a number of fabrics (see below). This apron comes in two sizes (18 months-4 years & 5-9 years) and costs £12Stg.

Or how about these aprons with some amusing quotations from Aristotle, Socrates or Plato. These are one size (age 2-5 years) and cost £10Stg:

Or something more traditional, like this fair trade Goose Apron (which comes in one size and is £12.50Stg) or this floral apron (which costs £19Stg, has adjustable neck ad waist and fits young ladies between 18months and 5 years):

I can smell those muffins baking already…..


Things for your Changing Bag – Part 2

There are a couple of things in our changing bag which have made it a lot easier to be out and about with Lollipop since she started eating solids. I’ve been meaning to post about them for a while now so here goes:

Lollipop eats her lunch and tea earlier than us. Obviously, when we are at home, that presents no problems. But when we are out and about, it would be a real pain to have to bring the troops home early to feed our little lady.  So, I had a look around at what was available to facilitate on the move feeding and I found the Chicco thermal flask.

Chicco Stay Warm Thermal Food Container

This stainless steel flask allows you to keep your baba’s food warm when you are on the move. The flask comes with two 250 ml containers which are plenty big for storing complete meals and the flask stays hot for five hours. So you just heat up your baba’s meal before you go out, seal it in one of the pots, pop it into the flask and off you go! A yummy hot meal will be ready whenever that little tummy starts to rumble.  You don’t even need a bowl as you can feed your baba directly from the pot. The flask can also be used on its own to carry hot or cold drinks so it has a long life after baby lunches. This is a fab bit of kit and I use mine all the time. This flask isn’t easy to find but I got mine from an Italian site called Bimbo Market . The good news is the flask costs just €19.90, the bad news is that the standard delivery cost is pretty big  (a hefty €24.90!!) so I’d recommend  getting a few things at the same time to make it more economical (don’t worry….there’s lots of good stuff on this site).

The other thing that I find really useful is the Annabel Karmel Lindam Cutlery Case.

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This little red case is BPA Free and can store two spoons (or one spoon and something called a Foon…a find of fork/spoon hybrid….I’m not convinced!). Obviously you don’t need a cutlery case but I find it really convenient as it keeps the cutlery clean, in one place and easy to find in the bottomless pit that is my changing bag. A word of warning though, the case only fits the smaller of the Annabel Karmel cutlery which is pictured above (not the first stage weaning spoons) and may also be too small for many other cutlery ranges. Since the Annabel Karmel cutlery isn’t expensive I just bought a set when I bought the case.  The case costs £2.49 and the small cutlery set costs £2.29. Both are dishwasher and steriliser safe.

Throw in a bib, a couple of muslins  (check out these funky pink and blue sets from Ikea) or a pack of wipes and your baba is ready to dine anywhere !


The transition from Breast to Bottle – every baby is different

As I’ve mentioned recently, over the last six weeks I have been weaning Lollipop onto a bottle. While she is now very happily feeding from her bottle, the journey from breast to bottle was not always a smooth one.

When Mr Moo was born, I had read a little too much about breastfeeding and was so worried about ‘nipple confusion’ that I waited too long to give him a bottle. By the time I tried it, he was a very determined little man who was very clear about what he liked and he didn’t like bottles !!   We went through a very difficult period with me trying a variety of bottles and methods while Mr Moo glared at me tight-lipped and furious. Eventually, having spent a lot of time researching this issue on the web, I ordered some very unusual looking bottles called: the Adiri Natural Nurser.

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This bottle is designed to resemble a mother’s breast, so that the bottle feed is almost like nursing. Its so easy to use, is soft and is BPA free so I was thrilled when Mr Moo took to it straight away. I couldn’t  believe my luck. The Nurser comes in three different flow sizes and we used these bottles right up to the time when Mr Moo abandoned bottles altogether when he reached one. ( For more information about the Adiri Natural Nurser, click here.) I recommended the Nurser to lots of people with great success and thought that I would use it for all the children I might be lucky enough to have.

So there I was, MammyMcSmug, popping a Nurser into Lollipop’s mouth expecting everything to go swimmingly….well it didn’t. While she didn’t create the fuss her brother had done when a bottle was first given to him, it was obvious that she didn’t like it. The most she would take from the bottle was 1 to 2 ozs and even then she looked like she was only doing it because she was feeling sorry for me.

Having eventually succeeded with Mr Moo, I knew that the right bottle was out there, I just had to find it. My sister recommended the Haberman Special Feeder which is now called the Medela Special Feeder. She’d seen Tracy Hogg use it on an episode of The Baby Whisperer and had used it successfully with Little T.

Special Feeder

These bottles were designed for babies with special feeding needs (like a cleft pallet or Downs Syndrome) but are also recommended for breast fed babies (for some more info on the science behind them click here.)

So I ordered some of them and Lollipop gobbled up the first 3ozs that I gave her using it (why do my children only like the odd looking bottles?). We gradually built up the amounts and once she was happily taking over 6ozs we switched to a Nuk bottle which (hurrah) looks normal and was more easy to use (the Special Feeder has a very narrow neck which made it difficult to get the scoops of formula in without serious spillage).

So I guess every child is different and although trying to get your baby to take a bottle can be really very stressful, it always works out, you just have to find the right bottle for the right baba.


Things for your Changing Bag – Part I

Like many countries, we have recently been going through what the meteorologists have been calling ‘A Cold Snap’, roughly translated, it’s been really very cold with lots of ice and snow. Nice to look at yes, but yesterday our newly acquired winter wonderland almost pushed this mammy over the edge!!

At 4pm, Lollipop and I piled into the car (I thought it was too cold to walk…..what an error of judgement that proved to be!) to go collect Mr Moo from creche. We returned home at 8pm….yes 8pm!!! Creche is less than 2km from our house and on a normal day (horrendous city centre traffic notwithstanding) this would be a 40 minute round trip with around 15 minutes of that time spent in the creche itself.

Unfortunately, yesterday was anything but a normal day with unusually low temperatures (-7 °C in places), ground frost and widespread compacted ice. The road conditions were horrific and the result was utter chaos. While I somehow managed to reach creche in 25 minutes, due to numerous crashes, breakdowns and cars unable to traverse the ice ahead of us, the return journey took us over three hours.

Having not in my wildest dreams (or nightmares!) ever imagined that the journey would take so long, I was not prepared for this and had no food or drink in the car for my two babas. Fifty minutes at a standstill in one particular location with both babas screaming means that I will NEVER allow this situation to repeat itself.

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I finished weaning Lollipop last week so I was no longer able to feed her myself (how great it was to be able to feed her whenever and wherever she needed it) and two hours into the journey she was very cross at not having been fed. So, what’s the answer?….A few clever additions to my changing bag which I would recommend to all – you just never know when you will find yourself stranded with a hungry child:

  • Pre-sterisiled bottles are my new best friends. I used to look at these in the pharmacy and wonder what environment-hating mothers actually bought these…how wrong I was to judge. Having seen the purple-with-anger face of my darling girl screaming with hunger, I now know the value of these handy little miracles.  There are several types to chose from but these Tommy Tippee ones are good value at £5.49 for 10.
  • Cartons of pre-made formula. Combine these with the pre-sterilised bottles and you have a happy baba in even the remotest location. They last for ages so you can keep them in the changing bag for a long time.,
  • Packet of organic rice cakes – these have a number of advantages, they can be enjoyed by babies as young as 7 months buts are also loved by older kids, they are healthy (as far as snack foods go), they are relatively clean to eat (well, there’s no point in adding a mess to clean up to your emergency feeding session), like the pre-made formula, they have quite a long shelf life and will keep your baba going until you reach your destination. At one point in the journey we simply abandoned the car to walk to the nearest shop to buy a pack of these – the babas made short work of the pack and it was a complete godsend.
  • Small bottle of water – it sounds so obvious but also so easy to forget –  I had been meaning to replenish my usual stocks for ages and just never got round to it.

Ok, so this isn’t rocket science and many of you may already have these things tucked in your change bag but if this post saves even one mother from enduring the ear-drum perforating screams of their baba (by preventing one poor  baba from being upset in the first place ) then its worth putting it out there!

ps: you will be relieved to know that both Lollipop and Mr Moo survived their ordeal though they both tucked into their breakfast this morning with unusual vigour.


Brilliant Bibs

We are in the middle of introducing Lollipop to solid foods at the minute and so the whole family (and everything else) is covered in pureed food and baby rice!  Weaning is such a lovely and exciting time but it can mean a dramatic increase in your washing as your baba immerses themselves (quite literally) in their new menu. A good bib is therefore crucial and, contrary to my initial understanding, not all bibs are the same . I really don’t understand those small cotton bibs (you know the ones I mean, they have no waterproof backing and usually have some sickly sweet slogan on them like “50% mum, 50% dad, 100% perfect’ ), they might look ‘cute’ but one meal later and they are a soggy mess which provides no protection to the clothes underneath.

Its lovely not to have to worry about your tot’s clothes when they are eating so you can relax and just enjoy the whole mealtime experience. I have found that the best bibs are the ones which have  a long front and sleeves. Here are the bibs which we have consistently used and would recommend:

BluebibettaHawaianbibettaFloralbibettaPurplebibetta

The Bibetta Ultrabib with sleeves has a neoprene body (so it feels like a wetsuit), elasticated splash proof arms and an adjustable Velcro strap at the back. Its easy to get on and off and comes in a couple of different colours/patterns. They are £6.99 each so a little more expensive than many bibs but they are designed to fit a baba between 9 months and 3 1/2 years so you get value for money.

navysilybillyzsilly-billyz-regular-long-sleeved-bibs-aqua-949-p[ekm]280x280[ekm]silly-billyz-regular-long-sleeved-bibs-cerise-1061-p[ekm]280x280[ekm]

The Silly Billyz long sleeve bib is another great bib. They have all the same benefits of the Bibetta above but the front is made from a really soft stain resistant fleece which is really cosy next to your baba’s skin. They have two sets of poppers at the back to ensure they close snugly at the neck.They come in two sizes, 6 months to 2 years (small) and 2 to 4 years (large), so again, you can use and use them. They are around £11.99 for a set of two small bibs or £ 12.99 for two of the large ones  and are worth every penny.

Both of these bibs wash really well and as an added bonus are also really useful for doing other messy things like painting or cooking….. now all you need to worry about is getting the pureed pear out of your hair!


Its all in the name……My Breast Friend

My Breast Friend

There are some bits of baby equipment that, as an over cautious first time mum, you think you will need, you buy , you use a couple of times and then you pack up for the attic. These are the things which do not make it down from the attic when baby number two comes along.

The My Breast Friend feeding cushion is not one of those things.

I had read about this cushion before Mr Moo was born and when he arrived three weeks early, Mr Mcspendy was dispatched on an emergency mission to buy one for me. I used it constantly when feeding Mr Moo and when Lollipop arrived, it was the first thing taken down from the attic. It really is a fantastic cushion for supporting the baby, easing the pressure on your back, helping your posture and for allowing you to feed ‘hands-free’ (so you can eat, read or surf).  It is also very good if you have had a C-section because it keeps the pressure off your stiches. It has a removeable cover which can be machine washed and has a handy pocket which I have used for everything from muslins and lanolin cream to snacks and my Nintendo DS (which kept me sane and awake during those night feeds).

The only negative thing that I can think to say about this product is how odd I look when I’m wearing it (‘wearing’ probably isn’t the correct word to use but it describes it best!). It looks like a strange kind of rigid tutu but looking like a frumpy ballerina is worth it, trust me. But don’t just take my word for it, this cushion was voted Best Breastfeeding Product in the 2007 Mother & Baby Awards.

If you are expecting twins, there is a new cushion which has been specially designed for feeding both babies at once!!!


Is it a changing bag? Is it a booster seat?

Hoppopfront

Clever things that make life easier are always welcome in our house and consequently the red carpet was rolled out for this bag.

At first glance its just a changing bag but there’s a lot more to this bag than meets the eye. Its also a booster seat, how clever is that?

I bought a Hoppop changing bag/booster seat when Mr Moo was almost nine months old and just starting creche. I had previously used the changing bag which was attached to our pram but for creche I needed something to transport the various changes of clothes, drinks, snacks and toys that Mr Moo needed for creche and the commute.  The Hoppop was an immediate hit, was used constantly and is still proving useful today (almost two years later).

As a changing bag, the Hoppop works like any normal bag. It has one large compartment and two smaller side compartments for bottles etc. The main section has a number of internal pockets and fits everything you need for feeding and changing. It is also reinforced by a plastic insert which supports your child when the bag is used as a seat and which can be removed in order to wash the bag. This insert also protects the contents of the bag so there are no more squished sandwiches or bruised bananas.

Lastly, there is a pocket at the back of the back which contains a changing mat.  So really, as a bag, this one has everything you need. Its not the largest changing bag that you can buy but I’ve always found that with changing bags, like handbags, the larger they are, the more difficult it is to find anything.

greenhoppopinterrior

Put the bag onto a stable chair and it tuns into a booster seat with two simple movements. First, the shoulder strap unhooks,  passes under the seat of the chair and rehooks to the bag. Then a section on the back of the bag unhooks and attaches to the back of the chair by way of an adjustable strap. This action reveals the seat area for your child and their safety harness.  And voila, your bag is a chair!

Hoppop6

The real beauty of this product is how useful it is. Whether you are in a restaurant that doesn’t have high chairs, a friend’s house for lunch or in your own house with a little guest, this booster seat comes to the rescue.

Like any child’s seat, this one will get dirty and when it does, no problem. Simply remove the plastic insert and put the bag into the washing machine – fantastic !!

Its so convenient to have a seat for your baby slung over your shoulder and even better that this seat also contains all your feeding and changing things. Its so easy to use and has fitted every chair that I’ve tried it on, its made life so much easier for us. The added bonus is that Mr Moo loves sitting at the ‘big’ table with us on a chair that is the same as ours, so everyone is a winner !

The Hoppop bag is available in a number of different colours/designs and comes in at around £55/€61.50. While its not cheap, we have got a tremendous amount of use out of it and have no regrets!

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Its not the largest changing bag that you can buy but I’ve always found that with changing bags, like handbags, the larger they are, the more difficult it is to find anything.

Heavenly High Chair

Bloom Fresco

We live in a very small terraced house and space is not a luxury which we have much of.  So when it came to picking a high chair for Mr Moo one of the important criteria which any chair needed to meet was that it had to look good. The simple fact is that we have no space to fold up the chair and store it away. Once it arrived the chair would be taking pride of place in our living/dining room and would be continuously on show. It was therefore hardly surprising that the Bloom Fresco high chair took my fancy. It is a real design piece and I love how it looks.

But what surprised me about this chair is that it isn’t just a good looker, it is so practical too. First, it can be used as a chair for your baby once they reach 3 months. Since turning three months, Lollipop has spent many a happy time reclining in this chair. When I’m working in the kitchen, she loves to sit in it and watch what I’m doing, the chair is the perfect height to allow her to keep me under full surveillance!

Once a baby starts solid foods, the chair can be raised to an upright position and a table attached. The alterations are straightforward to make and, once in position, the table is very sturdy and easy to keep clean.

Finally, when your bundle of joy is ready, the table attachment can be removed and the chair can be used, in its upright position, as a booster chair to allow your child to eat with the rest of the family at the table.

Why it’s three chairs in one !

Bloom Fresco2

It comes with a choice of  vibrantly coloured seat pads which compliment the modern design. We originally bought the blue one and it has been in the washing machine more times than I can remember over the last two years and it still looks like new, in fact the whole chair looks as though we just bought it yesterday. You can also buy new seat pads for it so you can transform it for each child, we’ve rather predictably (but very stylishly) gone from Bermuda Blue to Rosy Pink.

FrescoBloomColours copy

At approximately £240/€267, the cost is a little steep when compared with the price of other high chairs but I have no regrets because I have to look at it sitting in the middle of our living space every day. Mr Moo really loved it and it looks as though Lollipop is also going to be a fan.

This chair is  so durable, easy to use and comfortable, its a winner !