Monthly Archives: June 2009

Using a baby wrap carrier

parenting

I’m in love!  I can’t believe that it’s taken me until my ninth baby to use a wrap style carrier, but it’s amazing!  I’m so thrilled to have found something so easy to use, comfortable for the baby and easy on the back. 

I first saw someone using a baby wrap when I was pregnant with my fifth child, and though I thought it looked  like a good idea, it didn’t occur to me to pursue getting one for myself.  I had a sling, and that worked well enough for me.  The wrap also looked kind of funky, in my opinion, and seemed complicated.  The sling hasn’t been something I’ve used much for the past few kids, though it was invaluable with my third baby (who is now almost 13).  But for my last two babies, we had so many hands wanting to hold them that I didn’t really feel the need for a baby carrier, so it didn’t matter much that I didn’t have an effective one to use. 

Now that I have this new wrap, I really feel that I missed out on having one with my last babies, because it makes it so much easier to take care of a baby.  I received this wrap (called a Sleepy Wrap) as a gift from an online friend – it’s amazing how we can connect to others through the internet without ever meeting them.  She finished using it for her baby boy and thought I might enjoy it.  She was SO right.  I’ve really wanted to buy a wrap for the past few months, but kept thinking I could make one myself for a lot less than $40.  But I wasn’t feeling very motivated to make one, and I didn’t. 

When she emailed to ask if I was interested in the wrap, I couldn’t believe it!  There really was nothing I could think of that I wanted for this baby except for a wrap, and this was just so perfect!  As I sit here at the computer, the baby has been snugly against my chest the whole time, sleeping in the wrap.  Especially with two toddlers, I really appreciate being able to keep the baby close while having the use of both hands. This morning, he woke up at 5 and though I went to bed early, I lost track of time when I got caught up in a new book I’m reading (Atlas Shrugged – fascinating and thought provoking – I read 500 pages since yesterday afternoon, and am almost halfway through it) – it was 2 pm when I realized how late it was and turned the lights out.  Facing the day with three hours of sleep would usually make me feel like crying, but I just got up, stuck the baby in the wrap, read my book while standing for a short while, and he was asleep before long.  Then I sat down in the recliner, leaned back, and with him still in the wrap fell back asleep myself!  Everytime he began to stir, I’d just slightly rock the recliner; I got another couple of hours of sleep like this.

Not only am I enjoying the wrap, but my kids are, too!  We’ve only had it for five days, but so far five kids have tried it – dd8, ds10, dd12, dd14, and ds15.  Ds15 didn’t enjoy it because the baby happened to be hungry when he used it and was crying.  I told him to try it another time after he’s been fed.  The other three all loved it – it was so cute to see dd8 sitting on the couch after our yom tov meal, reading her book with the baby cuddled up to her in the wrap.  Dd12 took the toddlers for a yom tov walk while carrying the baby in the wrap (dd14 told her she was embarrassed to be seen with her and wouldn’t go along with them if she wore the wrap – “only mothers are supposed to wear wraps in public”), and also wore him a bunch in the house. 

Tonight dh and I went to a curriculum fair, and we took only the baby along.  I had him in the wrap the entire time, and it made it so easy to keep him content (he slept soundly the entire time) while shopping and shmoozing with the homeschool moms selling stuff.  (And yes, I got loads of good deals – my dh asked me if he should look for anything in particular.  He was glancing through some brand new curriculum at brand new prices, and I told him, I don’t buy stuff at those prices.  My target price is free or almost free!  We spent $15 and got five boxes filled with books, a bunch of videos made by the Feature Films for Family company (I very much like those because they are clean and have good values – I have a very hard time finding videos that meet my standards but those I’ve so far aquired from the thrift store have been good), and also got some nice odds and ends, like a low power microscope, tupperware picnic container, chemistry set, game of Candyland, and a few homeschooling cassettes.  The kids will have fun unloading everything in the morning, since they were asleep when we got home.)

Something I like about this particular wrap is the stretchiness of the material, which holds the baby close and doesn’t work it’s way loose.  I’m far from an expert on other wraps – this is the only one I’ve ever used, but it works for me and I’m very appreciative to have it!   

Avivah

Baby nicknames

parenting

It’s funny to see how quickly a tiny baby aquires nicknames!  Until we name our kids, I usually call them something like ‘cutie tootie baby’ – not so original, but so what?  As soon as this baby was born, the kids already started calling him ‘chamoodi’.  This was due to something that happened when our last baby was born.  My ds was then 8, and because that baby had so much dark hair (he’s very fair now, with blue eyes – people can’t believe it when we say he was darker than any of the kids at birth), said he looked like a gorilla.  He asked my dh how to say ‘gorilla’ in Hebrew, and my dh, knowing what our son’s intent was in asking, told him ‘chamoodi’ (cutie).  So ds went around calling the baby chamoodi, thinking he was putting one over on all of us by calling the baby a gorilla.  I think he did wonder a little why we didn’t stop him.  The look on his face when he discovered a few days later that he had been calling the baby a cutie and everyone but him realized that was priceless! 

When this baby was a day old, my ds6 told me that he looked like Yoda (from Star Wars).  He didn’t say it in a joking way, or to make fun of the baby, so I asked him what he meant.  He told me that ‘the baby has old eyes’, which was perceptive of him, since newborn do have a look of ancient wisdom in their eyes.  He’s a very different personality from his older ‘gorilla’ naming brother, so it didn’t occur to him to call the baby Yoda. 🙂

But don’t worry, we still have plenty of nicknames already in use!  As soon as the baby was named (Shimshon), that very day we had three different nicknames for him.  Shim, Shimmy, Shimshy – and my ds3 said he wanted to call him ‘Shimmy the youngest’, because of a book we have by that name. I do think that when giving a child a name, you should give them a name that both you and they will be happy to use.  But I’ve nicknamed all of my kids, and as long as the nicknames are nice, then I’m the last to complain!

Avivah

Making a poison ivy remedy

frugal strategies, home remedies

My ds10 showed me on Shavuos that he has a very bad rash between his fingers, which was super itchy.  (My kids have a way of only telling me about things like this on Shabbos or yom tov, when I can’t do much about it.)  He said he was sure it was poison ivy.  I asked why he thought so, and he told me he pulled out poison ivy with his bare hands when he saw it growing in the yard.  When I asked what made him do that, he said he planned to wash his hands after he pulled it out but forgot.  I mentioned that we have plenty of garden gloves that would be useful for something like this, but he said it was too much work to go into the garage to get them.  When I said we had pairs right on the back porch, too, he said that would have been too much work, too!

So not surprisingly, he now has a very unpleasant case of poison ivy.  I have a recipe in my notebook for a poison ivy remedy that I’ve never made, and decided that it would be instructive for him to prepare it himself.  The recipe called for just three ingredients: burdock root, plantain, and comfrey.  I have comfrey in my small collection of herbs, and burdock and plantain growing wild in the yard.

His best friend came over early in the day, and I sent them both out to harvest the herbs.  Plantain is easy to pick, but the burdock roots are long and skinny so it’s a bit of a job to dig them.  He discovered that using a full sized shovel made the job a lot faster than using a trowel.  Once they came in with enough of the herbs (I had to send them back out a couple more times), I had ds peel the burdock roots and chop them up, then wash the plantain leaves and chop them up. 

He put a cup of burdock and a cup of plantain into a pot with 1/3 cup of dried comfrey.  (The recipe called for equal amounts of each herb in the dried form, so I figured we should use about triple the amount of fresh herbs so it would be the right balance.)  He put enough coconut oil into the pot to cover the herbs, and then let it simmer on low for a couple of hours.  (You can also use Vaseline, or a combination of virgin olive oil and beeswax instead of the coconut oil, but for simplicity, health, and it’s powerful antifungal/antibacterial properties, I prefer coconut oil.)  After it cooked for a while and the herbs were starting to get crispy, dd14 strained it out (he had to leave for his baseball game, or he would have done this, too) and put it in a small glass jar to cool.  We made about 9 oz of salve.   

When he got home from his game, the mixture had solidified, and he put some on his hands.  Very soon he told me that the itching was much less and the irritated red skin was noticeably less inflamed.  After a couple of hours, I suggested he apply some more, and within an hour he told me it was much, much better.   I’ll have him continue to apply it until the rash is entirely gone; I’m hopeful with the help of the salve that it will be pretty quick.

When I placed my last bulk herb order a number of months ago, I ordered a 4 oz can of herbal salve that was good for general antibiotic use, stings, etc, and paid $16.95 for it.  This was a bit of a splurge for me but it seemed like a valuable item to have around.  And it has been very useful for diaper rashes, chapped skin, cuts – it’s been helpful for a number of things, and I also bought a small 1 oz container to keep in my purse.  Four ounces lasts a lot longer than you might expect – we still have almost half of the container left, even after using it frequently. 

We checked the ingredients in the salve that I bought, and saw that it contained both comfrey and plantain, along with three other ingredients.  We realized that the salve we made can easily substitute for the one we purchased in terms of practical usage (reducing skin inflammation, itchiness, healing cuts, diaper rash).  But this cost us a LOT less – the herbs we picked were obviously free, the amount of comfrey we used was probably less than 50 cents, and I bought the expeller pressed coconut oil in a 5 gallon bucket for about $80 a while back (price has gone up since).  Since there are 80 cups in 5 gallons, and I used a cup for this recipe, the cost of the oil was $1.   I’m not going to figure out how much gas we used for two hours on the lowest setting when cooking it, but let’s say that it cost another $1.  That means for less than $2.50 I was able to make a comparable salve to what would have cost me $34 if purchased retail.  We also realized how easy it would be to slightly change the recipe to make a salve that has the same ingredients as the one we purchased; while it would be slightly more expensive, since we’d need to use other herbs that we purchased in bulk instead of harvested ourselves, it would still be only an additional $2 for the entire batch. 

If you want to make a healing wash instead of a salve, use water instead of oil and follow the same directions.  Use the herbal wash to rinse the affected area periodically. 

It was fun and educational for him to make this and see how easy it is to take care of your own health.  And this batch should last us for quite a long time!

Avivah