Fast-forward to NOW

15 Tuesday Jan 2013

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I know I’ve neglected this blog completely. Being a MOM to a toddler took its toll and rendered me unable to post entries as much as I wanted.

One thing I’ve found out about toddler-motherhood…the baby/toddler products/services you use regularly eventually dwindles down, and you are left with just your tried and true essentials.

The good thing about my current situation is…I am a would-be NewMamma for the second time!!

That’s right folks.

We are expecting a new baby come May, and I could not be more excited about this new addition to the family, not to mention all the new products and services that have cropped up out there since baby no. 1 that we can use/avail of with respect to this new adventure we have ahead of us.

Of course, there are those essentials again–the baby products and services that have proven to withstand the test of time for us, and hope you can also benefit from.

So watch out for new posts!!

Sincerely,

NewMamma Kaye

Ebates

30 Friday Mar 2012

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If you’re a busy mom like me, then online shopping is not only essential…it’s a MUST!

There’s a freedom that comes with shopping online from the comfort of your own home. I love it because I get to:

  1. save gas.
  2. shop without having to tote around my little one.
  3. save gas.

Amazon.com is one of my absolute favorite online shopping sites. With most items qualifying for free shipping, it sure beats having to go out to buy diapers, wipes, etc.

Ebates.com is another one of my favorites. Ebates is an online web portal that takes you to online retail stores that you probably already shop (Babies R Us, BuyBuy Baby, The Children’s Place come to mind, but Ebates stores are not only limited to baby/children’s stores).

There’s currently 1,500+ stores that you can reach through Ebates…all of which offer some kind of rebate (hence, the name Ebates) or cash back just by clicking through the store web site link from within Ebates and then shopping your store’s site as usual. On occasion, Ebates also offers coupons and promo codes to your favorite stores, allowing you to save even more.

There’s no fee to join Ebates. Just sign up to be a member and shop your favorite online stores through Ebates. When you click through an online shopping site through Ebates, it is recorded via an online tracking ticket. When you make a purchase, Ebates automatically tracks it and shows you the total cash back that you get (the amount usually shows up in your account within 2-3 days of shopping, though not immediately).

You get a cash back once you reach an amount totaling at least $10. You get this amount back by form of check made out directly to you, or through PayPal (you make this choice through your Ebates account settings).

I have been an Ebates member since 2007, and have only used the cash back by check method. I’ve never encountered a problem with any checks…it’s money in your pockets just by shopping online (which I already do anyway!) You can’t beat that!!

Online stores within Ebates are categorized by type.

Here’s a (VERY SMALL) sampling of some of the stores on Ebates–there’s a LOT more listed in the Ebates.com web site. Note that I’ve actually shopped most of these:

  • The Retail Giants – Target, Wal-Mart, even Kohl’s
  • Department Stores like Macy’s, Dillard’s and Nordstrom
  • Maternity Stores like A Pea in the Pod and Motherhood Maternity
  • Book Stores like Barnes and Noble
  • Clothing Stores like Express, Gap and Old Navy
  • Electronic Stores like The Apple Store
  • Kids’ Clothing Stores like The Children’s Place, Baby Gap, even Zulily (!!)
  • Flowers and Gifts Stores like ProFlowers and Red Envelope
  • Food & Wine Stores like Restaurant.com (!!)
  • Toy Stores like The Disney Store and Build-A-Bear Workshop
  • Health & Beauty Stores like The Body Shop and Sephora
  • Coupon Stores like Groupon (imagine getting cash back for getting a Groupon!! It’s like getting a double deal!!)
  • Booking/Travel Web Sites like BookIt.com, Travelocity + all the major hotel chains and some airlines, too!
  • Photo Printing Sites like Snapfish and Shutterfly.

These stores and more (again, Ebates has partnered with over 1,500 stores) are offering cash back from 0.5% all the way to 15% just for shopping them through Ebates. In short, what are you waiting for? Sign up now, you have nothing to lose…just cash back to gain!

I know Ebates seems too good to be true. I tend to be skeptical about online deals, siding more on being careful than being scammed. But I’ve used Ebates before (still do, actually)…and I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t a service that has proven useful/helpful/beneficial to me.

Please note: Free Shipping is NOT guaranteed on Ebates. In fact, most online retail stores do NOT offer free shipping. Shipping policies depend and vary by store and are not controlled by Ebates. List of stores and cash back percentages, coupons and promo codes are subject to change without notice. For more information about Ebates, go to http://www.ebates.com.

Eddie Bauer Classic Wood High Chair + Ikea High Chair Support Cushion + Safety 1st Sit! Booster

20 Tuesday Mar 2012

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The high chair is an absolute must-have baby item. If you get your little one used to the high chair early on–like we did–you’ll see it used every day for well over two years, maybe more.

Sadly, it’s time for us to retire ours…an Eddie Bauer Classic Wood High Chair model that appealed to me not just because of the standard high chair features that come with most models out there (removable, cleanable tray, washable seat pad, sturdy frame, three-point harness seat belt), but because it looked like furniture.

This high chair also featured a decent-size storage compartment in the back underneath the seat (perhaps this should be enclosed with a secure little door in future models to keep tiny hands from taking out stuff from it).

Our Eddie Bauer Classic Wood High Chair blended well with other furniture in the home.

I remember the first time we used our high chair for my son. He was only a little over three months old and just learned to sit up. It was Thanksgiving morning, and my husband could not wait to assemble this thing to have it ready by dinner time so our little one can “sit” with us at the table (assembly took a couple of hours). Looking back, the chair proved mighty big for him at that age still (and of course, he still could not eat…we had another month before we could introduce him to solids). But we used it. We propped our son in the seat and used one of these high chair support cushions to keep him in place until he was big enough and didn’t need it anymore.

We got our high chair seat cushion from Ikea (this specific style is no longer available, but can be purchased from eBay...or perhaps you can DIY?)

Fast forward to today. My son is now 2 1/2 years old. He technically can still fit in the Eddie Bauer Classic Wood High Chair (it has a weight limit of 50 lbs.), but he no longer wants to sit in it much. These days he prefers sitting in the grown-up dining room chairs. Of course, he’s still too short to properly eat at the table while sitting in a grown-up chair, which lead to our search for a booster seat.

There are high chair models out there that combine a million-and-one features (high chair with detachable booster seat converting to a youth chair then an adult chair)…but they do come at a steep up-front price tag, so do your research and find one that fits your lifestyle and budget.

For a downright, basic, no-bells-and-whistles, fits-the-purpose booster seat, we went for the Safety 1st Sit! Booster. It’s a sturdy plastic, very wipe-able, cleanable seat with chair straps to secure on to your existing dining room chair and a three-point harness to keep the little one in place. We have ours set up on a fabric-upholstered chair–it doesn’t slip at all. The recommended age range on the booster seat is 18 months to four years, and the weight limit is also 50 lbs. (same as the Eddie Bauer high chair). The booster seat is also advertised as dishwasher-safe (though I can’t imagine having to place ours in the dishwasher with straps and all) and portable (take it to grandma’s or when dining out with your little one).

The Safety 1st Sit! Booster

The best part…this little seat cost us $10 and some change (picked it up from our local Wal-Mart). We hope to get two+ years worth of use from this as well–who knows, maybe even keep it like the Eddie Bauer high chair for future little ones to use.

Safety harness or not, please NEVER leave children unattended when in high chairs/booster seats.

Milkin’ Cookies + Medela Freestyle® Breastpump

21 Tuesday Feb 2012

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New mom and marketing-advertising professional Michelle Laxina Adan attributes her breastfeeding success to two products: Milkin’ Cookies and the Medela Freestyle® Breastpump.

Cookies and milk, anyone? (Photos courtesy of Milkin' Cookies and Medela.us)

Like many moms out there, Michelle’s quest for productive breastfeeding started out with a big challenge: her milk simply would not come in soon enough. Determined to breastfeed her daughter exclusively, Michelle constantly sought the help of her lactation consultant while she and her daughter were still at the hospital. During their last couple of days, the lactation consultant gave her a couple of Milkin’ Cookies to take home as a gift for being persistent in her efforts to breastfeed.

According to the lactation consultant, “I’ve had great feedback with them. It’s worth a shot, and they’re nice treats.”

Michelle soon saw an improvement in her milk supply. She, however, faced another challenge after she developed some plugged ducts/mastitis due to irregular feeding and pumping. Her milk supply dropped again, and that’s when she decided to order her first batch of Milkin’ Cookies to help bring her milk production back.

Michelle said she ate at least one cookie everyday for the first couple of months after she gave birth. She admits that “there were a couple of weeks I ate two (cookies) a day, only because I craved them and they were so good.”

Michelle’s daughter is now six months old. Michelle has since stopped eating the cookies because she is now over-producing milk.

“I’m trying to get control of my milk supply,” Michelle said. At one point, she produced 18-20 oz. of milk per pumping session, which was every four hours. Now she pumps about three times a day, yielding 15-16 oz. per session.

“I am pretty sure a combination of the (regular) pumping and eating the (lactation) cookies brought my overabundant milk supply to where it is now,” Michelle said.

Got breastmilk? This mama's two freezers will be well-stocked for a while! (Photos courtesy of Michelle Laxina Adan)

Michelle also highly recommends using the Medela Freestyle® Breastpump to any nursing mother, especially to moms who plan to breastfeed exclusively.

According to Michelle, “I have pumped in the strangest possible places one could think of, and I don’t think I could’ve ever done it without the (Medela) Freestyle.”

Michelle said the breastpump’s battery lasts longer than a cellphone (even when she was pumping up to eight times a day!).

“It is on the expensive side, but it is worth every penny.”

Michelle’s determination to breastfeed exclusively allowed her to seek help, and to invest in quality products to help her achieve that goal. She also attributes her breastfeeding success to having a supportive partner.

“Even when it comes down to cleaning the parts to the pump after every session, or packing the pump bag and Milkin’ Cookies before leaving the house for the day, he is a constant source of love and support,” Michelle said.

As for me…I wish I knew about Milkin’ Cookies and invested in the Freestyle pump while I was breastfeeding my son. I did not have the same success as Michelle, but I will definitely keep these products in mind for when we are ready for baby no. 2.

Please click on this link for more information about Milkin’ Cookies.

To find out more about Medela and their available products for breastfeeding–including the Freestyle pump–go to www.medelabreastfeedingus.com.

Gube

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

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Look! It's YouTube for kids!

Parents who give their kids free reign watching YouTube on their mobile devices can now rest easy with Gube–Kid Safe YouTube.

Gube is an app that gives parents a whole list of pre-screened, kid-appropriate YouTube videos for their little ones. The videos showcased within the app are handpicked by actual parents, and are deemed “safe, fun, and educational.”

The videos come in alphabetical order, and the app can be set to feature shows for any one or all of the following age groups:

- Infants

- Toddlers

- Preschool

- Grade School

I was a little hesitant about purchasing this app myself (it costs $3.99 from the App Store), but after further consideration I decided to go ahead and purchase it for my own peace of mind.

Both my boys–the husband and the toddler–are YouTube fanatics, and my husband has many a time shown our little one how to get in and out of YouTube himself to the point that he can browse for his own shows and pick his favorites just by scrolling through similar titles (he’s TWO!). Because of the multitude of kinds of videos on YouTube, it’s pretty common–even with parental supervision–to stumble upon what might look like a kid-appropriate show, only to see (or in our case, hear) that the video is not appropriate for kids at all (ever seen a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episode dubbed in Spanish with some Spanish curse words interlaced in the plot? Yup, it’s on YouTube.)

I like the fact that Gube comes with a list of ready-to-watch videos from A-Z. This feature opens up a whole lot of video possibilities for your kid to watch (as opposed to watching the same episodes of his or her favorite “found just by search” cartoon video over and over again). I also like that you or your little one can mark your favorite videos for easy playback.

For more information about Gube–or to see what other parents and caregivers have said about it–check it out on the App Store.

Honest Products / The Honest Co.

25 Wednesday Jan 2012

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Celebrity mom founder Jessica Alba, and fellow parent and friend Christopher Gavigan, dreamed up and recently launched The Honest Co.–a whole line of eco-friendly baby care and home cleaning products.

Their brand of products, ranging from diapers and wipes to shampoo/body wash and laundry detergent, is every eco-mom’s dream. They pride themselves with being able to offer everyday “mothering” items that are truly safe, sustainable, and stylish to boot!

The Honest Co. offers their products currently only via a MONTHLY subscription service:

- For $79.95 (plus shipping & handling), you can get the Diapers Bundle, which is a monthly supply of Honest diapers. For a limited time, they are also including a monthly supply of their Honest wipes with this bundle.

- For $35.95 (plus shipping & handling), you can get the Family Essentials Bundle, which is a selection of the most essential bath/skin and household products for your family.

You can sign up for a free Discovery Kit at honest.com to try out their products for free (just pay $4.95 for shipping & handling). They will ask you to create a “virtual nursery” with your kid’s information (boy/girl, age, weight) and use this to customize your first month’s supply of Honest products (you can then customize future monthly deliveries based on your needs). They give you seven days to try out the items in their Discovery Kit (containing a sample diapers kit–7 pieces, size 5 for mine, 10-count sample wipes, and trial sizes of their Essentials Kit–Shampoo & Body Wash, Face & Body Lotion, Hand Soap, Healing Balm, and Laundry Detergent).

After your trial period, they will ship your first month’s supply unless you cancel.

I’ve yet to try out the Discovery Kit completely, but so far, I am LOVING the whole branding and packaging of their products (savvy and stylish indeed!). I am liking the skull & bones diaper design for boys, as well as the soft scent of the Honest Hand Soap (in organic lemongrass).

Honest Products Discovery Kit...will you give it a try?

For more information on The Honest Co. products and service, please visit their web site here.

Do leave us your thoughts on this line of eco-friendly products and their monthly subscription service. I am curious to see if moms would switch out of their existing diapers and wipes (and subscription service, if applicable) to give this brand of sustainable baby and family products a try.

Related articles

Amazon Mom

21 Saturday Jan 2012

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Family and friends know I’m a big fan of Amazon.com, and since finding out about it, an even bigger fan of Amazon Mom. Unfortunately, I did not find out about Amazon Mom until my son was almost two, which meant I was not able to really reap the benefits of this awesome program.

For those of you who don’t know, Amazon Mom is a free membership program provided by Amazon.com. It’s a service geared toward new and expecting parents (and even non-parents who are caretakers of small children). The whole idea behind Amazon Mom is that, once signed up, you can take advantage of the benefits the program provides, namely:

- “three months of FREE Two-Day Shipping with Amazon Prime (with the potential to earn up to one year total of free Amazon Prime shipping benefits)”…this without having to pay the Amazon Prime annual membership fee of $79

- discounted diapers and wipes, which are selected by you (in type, quantities, and frequency) and then auto-delivered to your home with “Subscribe & Save”

The biggest draw of this program for me was the SUPER discounts I get for my son’s diapers. The wipes discount, I’ve found, was sometimes comparable to the price of a bulk box of wipes at our local Wal-Mart store (sometimes the price of the wipes at Wal-Mart was cheaper).

The second biggest draw of this program for me was Amazon Mom’s auto-delivered “Subscribe & Save” service. This meant–once I’ve figured out how much diapers and wipes are needed each month–that I have pre-set my monthly orders and never have to worry about them. Diapers and wipes get delivered to my door and I don’t ever have to worry about running out, that is until now.

As with all deals too good to be true, this too must come to an end. My free year of Amazon Mom membership ends in a couple of months, after which, I will have the choice of going for Amazon Prime (which I’ve been considering for a few months now anyway, not just for the free 2-day shipping benefits, but also for the other benefits Amazon Prime entails–really NOT a bad deal for $79 a year, or roughly $7 a month).

I went to the Amazon Mom website for this post, and unfortunately, this is what it says:

Amazon.com

Currently, Amazon.com (as of the date of this post) is NOT accepting new Amazon Mom memberships (but you can be added to a waitlist), which is unfortunate. Many, many new moms and caregivers to young children can really benefit from this service. I can only hope they will re-open membership soon.

Meanwhile, I know moms all over will look for similar other “auto-deliver” and “subscribe and save” services for their diaper, wipes, and other essential needs.

Do you know of any such service?

Disclaimer:

Please click on Amazon Mom and Amazon Prime for more information on these services.

The NewMamma Company is a purely informational site for new moms. We do not sell any products or get compensation for any of the products and services that we review or promote.

Our Inaugural Post: The Meaning of Essential

18 Wednesday Jan 2012

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1es·sen·tial

adj \i-ˈsen(t)-shəl\

Merriam-Webster.com defines “essential” as: of the utmost importance : BASIC, INDISPENSABLE, NECESSARY.

As moms, we can instinctively select what we may deem as important in our day-to-day dealings with our children, our family, our home. Prospective new moms, for example, go about building up their baby registries based on what they think they’ll need, starting with the basics: diapers, wipes, nursing products, baby bottles, etc.

But how do you go about weeding out the average from the best? How do you pick the RIGHT one? I know I was faced with this question when my husband and I were registering for our first baby. Which brand of diapers to pick. What type of wipes. Which baby bottle. Of course we wanted only the best.

Many parents discover the best (product, service, method) through many sessions of trial and error, sometimes requiring back-and-forth trips to the store to find that ONE product that will work for them.

Our goal here at The NewMamma Company is to help you. We’ll make EXCELLENT suggestions (based on expert user reviews and fellow mom recommendations) to help you find the BEST products and services, and weed out the average from the rest.

So you have more satisfaction at your chosen essentials.

And, hopefully, less return trips to the store.

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