Well we’re 24 weeks in and if you’re worried, don’t worry, I’m not going to go fully mummy blogger on you. But it’s funny how what started with food has naturally branched out into every area of my life. My care and passion for food isn’t just for the sake of food but because I care about living a long, healthy, vibrant life and giving the same to my family. When I started I thought it was just food, but slowly those same values have caused so many shifts in my life, from household products to cosmetics, and then the was we grow and raise children!
Over the last few years I’ve down countless hours of research into the silliest feeling things (how many hours can you really research fairtrade organic baby socks… trust me, a LOT) but my goal is to pass on some quicker answers to you and save you those hours!
So I’m constantly adding to a post that I would use to start a baby shower registry for the healthy home, that’s where I’d start if you’re looking for ideas and solutions:
It has all my baby essentials, go to clothing brands, cloth diapering picks, and gadgets – for keeping things as non toxic and eco friendly as possible.
And to backtrack to the beginning of pregnancy, I said on instagram that we’d used an at home DNA test to determine gender. For some people it’s covered on insurance but it wasn’t for us and patience is not a gift I have in abundance. It was a LOT cheaper than paying at the hospital and is available on Amazon (here) so we went for it and $79 later we got a sweet little email telling us we were expecting a girl. (Yes, we both cried a little!) It’s not complicated to use and took about 20 minutes to do, then about a 4 day wait for results. There’s also a one day turnaround option for the extra impatient people who are happy to pay double!
I had intentions of reading a ton of books…. fail. I read two books twice, and they changed our parenting and I’m pretty sure changed the way the first months went, hugely for the better. I also read one a bit later that I would highly recommend reading during or even pre pregnancy.
Book 1: On Becoming Babywise
Some of it is a bit old fashioned feeling, but if you can get past that, the concepts for developing good sleep patterns are incredible. I parented it with the blog Chronicles of a Babywise Mom which kind of filled in the gaps (mostly read on my phone at 2am) but by 11 weeks we had a baby sleeping 12 hours a night. It took WORK but was so worth it!
Book 2:
It’s really a memoir of an American mother in Paris and she discussed the differences between American parenting and the French style and the things she learned along the way. The pieces I pulled most from this were (along with just a helpful understanding for myself bridging the European and American cultures) the pieces that pertained to sleep. Coupled with Babywise – I know this was why we found a good rhythm and sleep routine!
Book 3: The Vaccine Friendly Plan
I’m not actually going to tell you what we did vaccine wise, and I’m not going to tell you what to do but if you want wisdom this is the best book I found. It’s not really pro or against, and it’s definitely not fear based which I really appreciated. But it gives some really really great information in an easy to ready format that is great for everyone. ASIDE from the info on vaccines it also has some of the most comprehensive, holistic advice for healthy pregnancy and child raising in the early days and months which is why I put this on the list for pregnancy reading. This get s highly recommend from me.
I chose to exclusively breast feed until 6 months and we kept breastfeeding until 14 months. I chose to put Clayton on a schedule relatively early because it was what I needed for my sanity. I’ve detailed out the routines we used HERE. When it came time to start solids we went for a baby led weaning approach using whole real food ingredients. I wrote blog about why and how we started that HERE. Then some useful pieces of info we discovered along the way are HERE along with 10 things we learning about choking and a list of every meal we fed for the first two months HERE. And then if you’re pregnant it’s a little way off but the recipe for our first birthday smash cake made with no refined sugar or grains, is HERE.
I wanted to create a master list of all the things we use in our home so I can direct people to them in DMs! This isn’t a ‘perfect’ list…
I wanted to do a round up of all the pregnancy post partum and child related posts so that they all pop up in the same place for easy access….
This is really just an update on my process rather than a recipe or a good how to because I’m a total novice! But if you want my elderberry process…
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