Me and Mittens

Taking a break from the baby for a moment...

An interesting turn of events. I mentioned that last Wednesday I started changing my diet in order to lose weight and get healthier.  It's been difficult to determine an appropriate calorie load for the day because I'm breastfeeding, which requires a lot of energy.  In the past I've been able to lose weight while eating 1600 calories a day.  I figured I'd round that up to 2000 to compensate for the expenditure associated with nursing (about 500 calories a day).  Well, I've lost a couple pounds but it seems that my milk supply is suffering as a result.  I've had to supplement with formula for the last few days, which I hadn't had to do since I started taking Fenugreek.  So, dieting is going to have to wait.  Instead I'll focus on making healthier food choices - like adding vegetables and whole grains - and not attempt to restrict anything. 

I'm still walking every day...14 days in a row - about 30 minutes a session now.  So my change for this week will be to also do an exercise video of some kind every day.  Netflix is great for this - they have thousands of exercise videos to try out, and a lot of them you can stream on the computer whenever you want. 

Ok, back to the baby.

Got a great question in the comments the other day..."Has being a new mother made you think of any devices or products that could be useful in rearing newborn, but which do not yet exist on the market?"  There is only one thing I've identified so far as being a need on the market, and for all I know it actually exists somewhere.  I just haven't seen it.  So here's the situation:

When a baby is born they often have scratches on their face or body caused by their own fingernails when in utero.  The face scratching continues after the baby is born also, so some baby clothes (like these gowns) are made with built-in mittens that you can pull over baby's hands.  These gowns were wonderful when she was really little and I was overwhelmed, and the last thing I wanted to learn how to do was trim or file those very very small fingernails.  In fact, even though we had lots of baby clothes given to us, we went out and bought more of these gowns just for the built-in mittens.

Well that's all great, but 90% of newborn clothing does not have the built-in mittens.  So if you're like me, you have a lot of great (and very cute) clothes that the baby is busy outgrowing that you don't want to put her in because of the fingernail situation.  I realize I'm a little avoidant, and a better mommy would have just filed the nails sooner.  But even after I finally filed them (about week 4 or 5) they were still sharp and she could still scratch herself.   I had never filed anyone else's nails and didn't know how hard I could do it without shaving off her itty bitty fingerprints.  Anyway, you can see why I was grateful for the gowns.

They do make these useless little mitts that you can put on your baby for this purpose.  They look cute but they fall off within a few minutes of putting them on.  Even now, every so often I find a lone mitt between the couch cushions or in a desk drawer, from the 3-or-so days we actually tried to use these things.  We asked the nurse at the hospital during Baby Rae's 3-day follow-up appointment what we could use instead.  She suggested we put socks on her hands - they're longer than the mitts and have more elastic in them to hold them on her hands.  Well, Baby Rae looked like a friggen lobster in those things.  I felt like a bad mom (again) for making her look so ridiculous.  So back to the gowns with the built-in mitts.

So here's what the market needs.  Longer mitts with a good-sized strip of velcro (the prickly side of the velcro) around the wrist, which could be used to stick the mitts to baby's other clothing.  With this kind of mitt, the baby could wear any long-sleeved onesie or sleeper and the mitts wouldn't fall off within the first minute.   There would still be the fingernail problem with the short-sleeved onesie, but at least babies born in the winter (like mine) could be comfortable in their long-sleeved clothing and have their faces protected from their hands.

Perhaps I shall go forth and invent it!  Too late for me, but I'm sure future moms everywhere would rejoice.