Parenting Archives - Page 15 of 16

Pregnancy Update 8/13/2012

August 13, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 8 Comments

My second trimester will be coming to an end on Friday. It’s hard to believe that I am already two-thirds of the way through my first pregnancy.

My mid-section is steadily growing. At my last appointment 2 weeks ago, I had gained 19lbs total, which is normal according to my doctor’s office and right on track to gain or stay under the 35lb total goal for my pregnancy.

26 weeks

Everyday our little girls kicks are getting stronger. After watching the Olympics, I’m pretty sure she is going to be gymnast or swimmer because she’s just constantly moving all the time. I have woken up a few times during the night from her kicking so hard.

Andrew still has his moments where he jokes after me saying his baby girl and says, “you mean my son?” It’s cute though. He tries to hide it but he has little moments where he is just absolutely adorable, like kissing my belly and whispering to her. When I ask what he says, he always states, “That’s between me and my baby.”

I do still have to go to the bathroom A LOT, and typically get heartburn almost everyday, but honestly my only real complaint is that I have been having back trouble, which I am planning on going to see a chiropractor for soon. Other than that, I feel amazing. Andrew’s one complaint would probably be my mood swings 😉

Entering our third trimester “the home stretch”, we are coming to the critical time where a lot of decisions are having to be made. I guess I never really considered how many decisions/considerations would have to be made before she arrived, but between hospital tours, birthing classes, and making decisions about our birth plan, we have been super busy preparing for the arrival of our little miracle!!

Saving Money on Maternity Clothes

July 28, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 9 Comments

When I found out I was pregnant I was ecstatic. However, I quickly realized that my regular clothes were not going to fit for long. By just week 6 I couldn’t fit my thighs into a few pairs of my jeans or shorts. I was devastated. I didn’t think I could have gained weight that quickly and even more worried that if I was already outgrowing my clothes how much was I going to have to spend on a maternity budget.

Determined to not go broke, I had to come up with some smart solutions.

#1…Set a budget and stick to it. Before you buy it, ask yourself if you really need it (you should do this all the time, not just when shopping for maternity clothes).
Determine what in your closet you can continue to use. You would be surprised how many dresses or longer shirts can be paired with some leggings and continued to be used your entire pregnancy.
Buy a Be Band. I did a review on this product a few weeks ago and I’m happy to say, it’s probably the best investment I’ve made so far. I am still, at 24 weeks, able to use this product regularly. I never tried it, but you could always go an even cheaper route and do the rubberband trick.

Wearing my Be Band with a tank top and shorts that were already in my closet

Don’t limit yourself to just “maternity” clothes simply because you are pregnant. Since being pregnant, I have only bought the Be Band new. I have bought 6 other dresses from the regular clothing sections of stores. The price on maternity dresses seems to be raised just because they are “maternity”. I found a maternity dress I liked in Target for $40, but went over to the regular dresses and found an even nicer one for just $25. The great thing is that I will continue to be able to wear this post-baby and feel better that it’s just a “regular” dress and I’m not still wearing maternity clothes.

Just a regular dress I got at Target.

Ebay, craigslist, and facebook yardsale groups can be lifesavers. I got an entire box of maternity clothes for $40 off facebook, picked out a few pieces that I could use and turned around and resold the remaining pieces for almost what I paid for the entire box.
Shop clearance racks at stores that have maternity sections or look at discount stores like Burlington Coat Factory. I was able to find jeans there for just $9.99. I even found a nursing bra on clearance for $3 and most other nursing bras were just $9.99.

How did you save money on clothes while prego??

Cloth Diaper Stash…We love FLUFF :)

July 27, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 2 Comments

I just wanted to give a quick update on how cloth diapering is going so far.

We let everyone know a few weeks ago that we decided to cloth diaper. I’m pretty sure everyone thought we were joking. That seems to be the reaction we have gotten so far. Even at our baby shower over the weekend, the only comments we heard were “I can’t believe you’re doing this” or “That is so gross”. However, I was very happy that people actually bought what was on our registry and we only received one pack of disposable diapers. I have heard stories where people try to force disposables on parents and I’m glad that our family didn’t do this.

Obviously our little girl is not here yet so we have yet to be able to try any of our diapers out yet, but how can you know look at this pic and not smile. Cloth diapering is far from the plastic pants that my mom used to put on me.

My fluff stash!! 🙂

So this is our cloth diaper stash so far. We have decided on a mix of pocket diapers and prefolds with covers. I would like to add a few All-in-Ones (AIOs) to our stash at some point, but we will probably only be ordering some more prefolds and see how this goes in the beginning.

So far we have 6 Sunbaby diapers. 5 BumGenius. 5 Just Simply Baby. and 3 Flip Covers with 10 prefolds. I will spend about another $15 on some more prefolds and still be at just over $200 total for all of these diapers. Essentially, if everything works out, I would never have to buy another diaper, just about $20 on bigger sized prefolds. However…..

The number one thing I have learned so far is that the most difficult part is NOT ordering more. No, I don’t need anymore, but they make the most adorable prints that it’s so hard not to buy more!! Still, the average family spends over $2000 to diaper in disposables from birth to 2 and even if I spent another $500 on cloth, I wouldn’t come close to this amount!

Moms that already cloth—what are you favorite brands of diapers??

Moms that don’t cloth—would you be willing to try if you have another baby?? Why or Why not?

Going to POP…Deciding on a Baby Shower Theme

July 26, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 2 Comments

My sister and I decided to have a joint baby shower for two reasons
1. It would save our parents a ton of money and
2. with both of us living so far from “home” and only 4 weeks apart in pregnancy, it didn’t make sense to have two separate ones.

That was the easy part.

The most difficult part was choosing a theme and then coordinating everything to go along. We eventually narrowed it down to “Mommy to BEE” (a bumblebee theme) and “Ready to POP”, both of which we found a ton of stuff on Pinterest. We ended up going with the POP theme because my sister is already a mom, so it worked better for us. We changed the wording to “Going to POP” because I would only be 23 weeks and she would be 27 weeks at the shower (we aren’t quite “ready” yet).

Unfortunately, running around, I didn’t get to take pictures of everything, but I will try my best over the next few weeks to get some more pictures and also recipes for all of the wonderful dishes we had.

We had customized stickers made from Vistaprint that went on our LolliPOP tree, as well as tied around our favors. We used Bubbles as our favor (one of the thing I don’t have a picture of).

We tried to think of as many things with the word POP in it for found, but essentially around round you can convert into something “POPable”. Our main food consisted of: Ham & Cheese POPable sandwiches, POPcorn chicken, POPable meatballs, and Pizza POPS. Additionally, we had some amazing desserts… One of my favorites was a watermelon cradle that we found on Pinterest and Andrew actually carved out. He added blueberries for hair as his own personal touch (I loved it). We said this was POPable fruit.

We also made homemade POPtarts. These were simply amazing. We filled them with cherry or apple filling and they were just so cute.

We also made a LolliPOP tree using tootsie pops and blow pops.

We also had Oreo Dipped Chocolate POPs that I wasn’t able to get a picture of yet.Lastly, we had a small popcorn bar. I blogged about making these adorable scrapbook popcorn cones a few weeks ago and it was a success with the kids!

We did our entire shower for about $300 and it was a huge success!! Be on the look out for upcoming recipes and money saving baby shower tips soon!

It’s a GIRL!!!!!!!!!!….Gender Reveal

July 25, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 2 Comments

When my sister and I first decided to have a joint baby shower together back home, one of the things we really wanted to do was a gender reveal. We both thought it was such a such cute idea. What we didn’t realize it that not only were people going to want to KILL us, but keeping the secret would be so hard! For the most part, we kept it a secret…I slipped and told my mom about a week after I found out, even though I continued to deny I ever slipped until the reveal and my sister very noticeably slipped the day before the baby shower, also to our mom.

The most difficult part was deciding how to do the gender reveal. There are tons of ideas on Pinterest, but we decided to go two different ways (and thank God we did).

First, we had decided to do a reveal cake. Essentially you do a layered cake (we did 9 inch round cakes) and between the 2 layers you put either pink or blue icing. We went we a buttercream icing and used food coloring for dye.

We cut into our cakes with everyone around….

And revealed that both of us are having girls!!!!!

(sorry it’s hard to see the pink in the pic).

A few days before the shower we decided that since there would be a lot of kids at the party (this was very much a family affair) we could have the kids to the reveal. We took black balloons (you can use any dark color that you won’t be able to see through) and put pink confetti in them. The idea was that we would go outside and have the kids play a game to see who could POP the balloon first and reveal the gender by having to Pop them by only using their butts. (**sorry I don’t have pics of the balloons since we weren’t able to do this).

Luckily, we continued to go with the gender reveal cakes as it decided to rain the day of the shower and we weren’t able to go outside. While we could have done it inside, I don’t believe the clean up would have been as fun!!

Everyone swore I was having a boy, except for like 2 people, so they were so surprised that it was a girl 🙂

This is just the first in a series of posts about both finding out about the gender and about the baby shower so continue to check back for more posts 🙂

Did you do a gender reveal?? How did you do it?

Long week…Pregnancy Update

July 17, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 2 Comments

I have seriously been neglecting my blog and I’m sorry to those that look forward to all my posts. These past few days have been a little hectic and a *little* painful, but I guess I should give a pregnancy update.

The baby is really starting to kick alot…well, I should say that I am started to feel much stronger kicks than before. Ever since I had my first ultrasound and every one since then, plus when I get to hear the heartbeat at the doctor’s office, everyone has always commented on how much this baby moves around. When we went for our “anatomy scan” every time the tech would scroll over to see the legs, it literally looked like the baby was doing scissor kick exercises the entire time. My baby is going to come out with some serious abs!!

I’m not sure what has been going on though with my back the last few days, unless I’m moving around or have Icy Hot on my back, it seems to hurt, especially if I’m standing in place or sitting down (I’m trying to lay down and type right now!). Hopefully it goes away, but if not, I will mention it to my doc at next week’s appointment. I also has a rough afternoon yesterday and was pretty nauseous which was super weird since I haven’t been nauseous my entire 2nd trimester. Thankfully, I feel better today.

To top everything off, my sister and I’s baby shower is this Saturday so we have both been busy talking back and forth to everyone back home and finishing up some last minute arrangements. I even had to promise Andrew that I wouldn’t look at my registry on-line until after the baby shower, b/c I hate surprises and was stalking my registry to see what everyone had bought so far. **This has been so hard**

I’m super excited to see all of my family and close friends Saturday and even more excited to see the great presents that Baby B is getting from everyone. I’m anxiously awaiting our gender reveal first thing at the shower too that way I stop having to keep it a secret. I really think some people are ready to choke us for doing a gender reveal. But they better still love us 🙂

22 weeks

Here’s a pic from the photos Andrew took of me this weekend, its part of a series of maternity pictures that I’m praying come out amazing 🙂 Enjoy.

We’re pregnant!?!? The story

July 13, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 2 Comments

My actual test

We’re pregnant!?!?

That question was one that kept playing over and over and over again in my head for about a week. Andrew didn’t really believe it until I brought home a picture of the second ultrasound I had (the first one in which I got a picture)……………

I remember in February my sister Skyped me and told me that her and my brother-in-law were expecting their 3rd baby. I was so happy for her. Then she asked the most hilarious question….”Don’t you want to try so we can be pregnant at the same time?” I literally laughed out loud. “No, I said. I don’t.”

Little did I know…God had other plans. By this point, I was already pregnant.

I found out Tuesday, March 13th that I was expecting. My sister and I both had plans to go home to West Virginia for Easter, so I decided to keep it a secret until then. (It was excruciating trying not to say anything).

Luckily, I could get a some relief by telling Andrew’s family. We usually go over there on Sundays so we could tell them then. Little did I know, they too were keeping a secret. Andrew had been planning to propose to me for awhile and a few weeks before all of this, he and his parents went and bought my engagement ring. He proposed on the 17th….obviously I said yes. It was such an amazing week.

I knew he was hesitant about telling his family so quickly after we found out. I tried to think of a neat way to tell them, but that’s not “his style”, so I decided to just go with the flow and if he wanted to tell them he would…if not, we would wait.

We walked in the house and everyone (mom, dad, and his younger sister) was in the kitchen. His mom was doing his sister’s hair. We were just talking about random stuff going on, when someone brought up something about a baby. For the life of me I can’t even remember what was said because it happened so fast. The next thing I knew…Andrew burst out…”Wellllllllll….speaking of babies…..” Then his sister, “OMG, You’re pregnant.” Everyone was so excited. It was great 🙂 This is their first grandchild, so I know the baby will be unimaginably spoiled.

A few days before Easter, my sister told me that they wouldn’t be coming anymore because of various reasons. I was so upset. I really wanted to tell her in person. I waited another day before I just couldn’t hold it any longer and I blurted out that I was expecting. After numerous “no ways” and “are you serious(es)” she realized I wasn’t joking.

Little did I know she was playing a trick on me. One that I played way too often. I often tell my family I left way later or can’t come until the next day and then show up and surprise them earlier. This time, my sister got me. I turned the corner to my moms house, just in time, to see my nieces running around outside. They played my own trick on me. (I’m still mad at her for this by the way because I wanted to tell her in person)

My iPad app said that at 8 weeks the baby would be the size of a jelly bean. Perfect I thought for a way to tell everyone since it was Easter weekend. I handed my mom her “present” and a card. She opened the present and saw a bag of jelly beans. She looked at me funny b/c she doesn’t even really like jelly beans that much. She then opened the card which read, “Congratulations, these jelly beans represent the current size of your 4th grandchild”. She immediately looked at my sister (who she already knew was expecting) and said “OMG YOU’RE HAVING TWINS”. We all burst out laughing. My sister said, nope guess again! She looked at me and said OMG, You’re pregnant! She couldn’t believe.

Later we all went over to my dad’s house and while we were hoping for somewhat of the same reaction, as soon as we walked in someone asked my oldest niece about her new sibling and she blurted out that her TiTi (me) was also pregnant. Spoiler alert. HAHA.

On the day of Easter, we went over to my aunts house. My mom thought she would pull the same trick on the family that I pulled on her. So she’s eating jelly beans and asks everyone what else could be the size of jelly beans. My aunts and cousins all takes guesses. Beans, peas, etc. She said what about my 4th grandchild. Again…everyone turned to my sister and said TWINS!!! Nope guess again. They all got this very confused look on their face before almost simultaneously saying, “LARISHA!!!” There was so much screaming and excitement I don’t know if anyone actually spoke any words, but needless to say there were all excited.

So no, unfortunately, my sister will NOT be having twins, but we however ARE EXPECTING ONE 🙂

Pregnancy Glow has NOTHING on me! The Non Glamorous Factor(s)

July 10, 2012 by Larisha Campbell 6 Comments

**Disclaimer: This post is in no way trying to discourage creating tiny miracles, just my friendly PSA

Ok so I admit…I was ECSTATIC when I found out I was prego. Much more excited than Andrew. I had grown up around kids my entire life. And someone I was close to was ALWAYS pregnant. I wanted that pregnancy glow.

My cousin’s wife had 4 beautiful girls in less than 8 years and my sister was working on her third baby in less than 7. I mean seriously as many people that I knew that were having kids, pregnancy had to be incredible RIGHT?

Wrong…way wrong.

Please don’t get me wrong. I LOVE LOVE LOVE being pregnant and feeling this baby move all around. But seriously!? Someone couldn’t have told me about these symptoms? Thanks.

Let me just be the one to put it out there….NO ONE in life ever prepares you for the not so glamorous parts of pregnancy. Everyone talks about how incredible it is to be pregnant (up until labor that is) and having that “natural glow”.

Are they nuts!?

So for all you, “I can’t wait to be pregnant, needs to happen right now” women out there…

let me indulge you in a “few” commonly known but never shared for some stupid crazy reason secrets….

For starters, I was the phone with my mom a little bit ago. She said something super funny. I laughed pretty hard. Then it came…we’ll call it “light bladder leakage”. The common feeling that I now know every pregnant woman faces. Increased vaginal discharge. Every time you laugh, sneeze, or cough you run the risk of it coming out….or maybe I just peed myself…Damn, I can’t tell anymore. Time to change your underwear.

And speaking of changing your underwear. You Sweat. Uncontrollably. We just went through the some of the hottest days consecutively ever on record and it was miserable to go out. Every time I would go outside and come back in I would have a ridiculous amount of sweat built up in my shorts.

Insert time to change underwear again.

I just went to the bathroom. I literally walked out of the bathroom, sat back down to finish writing this…and I have to pee again already. And it’s not like a steady stream of pee either.

It’s 5 drops….. every time.

However, those 5 drops make me feel like I have to go so bad I am about to have a gallon of pee come out.

Every time.

Because of this make sure that you just go to Costco and buy 20 packs of their jumbo sized toilet paper. Because it’s inevitable with peeing this much that you go through more toilet paper in 9 months than you have in the past 15 years.

Acne…I have only ever gotten acne when I eat too much fried foods or too many sweets. Now I can’t even get rid of it on my face no matter what I try. Then one day after the shower, I was drying off my back. What was that I felt? Oh great….now I have back acne. Wonderful.

You and your significant other argue about something. You cry. Or maybe you are explaining something that makes you really happy. You cry again. You watch TV and see anything remotely sappy. You cry again. You read a story online. Again, cry. You get the point. Repeat everyday.

Time to talk hair. I feel like I’m competing for the fuzzy bear award. Seriously…where does all this hair come from? I used to shave my legs every couple of days. Now, I’m lucky if it lasts a day. Then I look down at my expanding mid section. What is this I see? Oh …that’s hair growing around my belly button. Great. To top it off, now I can’t even reach my lady area very well. I’m debating on letting Andrew use his barber’s shaver (the only way he said he would consider helping me).

You will never be comfortable sleeping again in any position. Enough said about that.

Passing gas— whether through your mouth or booty, it will no longer be a private affair. Even if you try your hardest it will come out…unexpectedly at some point in time. Including standing in an aisle in a busy store with multiple people around…hopefully you have your significant other around to blame it on.

My boobs itch constantly. Then their sore. I look in the mirror and feel I no longer need to worry about the boob job I occasionally considered, because mine are now naturally the size of any girl I’ve ever seen with one (minus Pam Anderson types) which makes me smile,,, sometimes. Then I touch them to see if they are indeed real and remember that they are sore again.

Then I think to myself…you aren’t even in your 3rd trimester….what is bound to happen next? It terrifies me to think about because I can’t get one image out of my head.

What image you ask?

The one where my legs are spread eagle in front of a dozen people I’ve never met in my life, my fiance by my side when I suddenly poop ….

Well at least I’ll have an adorable baby to look at afterwards…right?

For all of you already mommies out there…please share your “glamour” stories below 🙂

Am I an Eco-Mom?? My decision to cloth…

July 7, 2012 by Larisha Campbell Leave a Comment

I’ve never been extremely eco-friendly. While I do recycle and recently started my own garden…it really ends there.

Then I became pregnant.

Almost immediately I started considering cloth diapering. Where these ideas came from… I have no idea. But halfway through this pregnancy, I am diving head first into learning everything cloth diaper.

And let me tell you…it’s hard…these aren’t my moms cloth diapers with just some folding and pins. There’s prefolds, all-in-ones, all-in-twos, one size, fitteds, covers, pockets…overwhelmed yet…I sure was am.

So why do I want to? (The four main reasons)

It saves a ton. The average cost of disposable diapering until age 2 is $2000. The average cost of cloth the entire time a child is in diapers is approximately $800. Plus if you have more than one child, you can continue to reuse the cloth diapers, yielding an even bigger savings.
It’s healthier for baby. Many people don’t realize that there are harsh chemicals in disposable diapers that cloth simply don’t have, including dioxin and polypropylene, amongst others.
Convenience. Ever run out of diapers and are stuck leaving a dirty diaper on your child until you can gather find everything your keys you need get to the store? Never again. You can never run out of cloth diapers…though you may need to do a wash.
Prevent waste. In addition to just making yourself feel better about protecting the baby, you will help the environment by eliminating up to one ton of waste that is estimated to come from every child’s disposable diapers by age 2. Plus a diaper taskes approximately 500 years to decompose.

The first reason, is really all I needed. I’m very frugal spending aware, especially as we are trying to save for our downpayment for our first house. Which is essentially how I convinced my fiance to do it with me. His initial thought was literally, “Hell No! I’m not touching poop”. After explaining the modern convinces to cloth diapering plus the savings, he was all in. Thank God!

While the average cloth diaper costs anywhere between $5-$25, the initial shock was overwhelming. However, the more I read, it’s recommended for 2-3 dozen diapers for newborns-6 months and as little as 6-8 once older, depending on your washing preferences.

There’s also no more “dunking” associated with cloth diapers like many people initially assume and the adorable bright colors and prints are to die for!

Do you cloth? What are your favorite brands? This is just my initial post on how I came to my decision to cloth. I will be posting a lot more once I start to build my stash and obviously once the baby is here, so I can update everyone on how it’s going!!

Updated: Read more on Cloth Diapering

5 Cloth Diaper Accessories You Need

A look into our Fluff Stash

Our Eco-Friendly parenting Journey Updated (2015)

Be Band Maternity Review

July 5, 2012 by Larisha Campbell Leave a Comment

*Disclosure: Affiliate links contained in this post. You purchase like you would normally, but we receive a small commission.

I freaked out when, at only 6 weeks, my pants were already tight. By 8 weeks even my “big girl” jeans weren’t fitting. I wanted to break down and cry…okay for a few minutes I actually did. Whether it was because of the jeans or the hormones, I’ll never know…but I’m blaming the hormones.

What in the world was I going to do…I was still in shock that I was pregnant. Hadn’t even told any of my family yet and I was going home for Easter to break the news to everyone and I couldn’t even find anything to pack.

I had heard that Target had an awesome maternity section, but was dreading going there to look for maternity pants. Not only did I not want to buy them yet, I heard so many stories about them not fitting until you were readily showing (which I wasn’t at the time).

Once I got there, I found, on the end aisle, a “BeBand Maternity” (similar to this one). I was intrigued to say the least. The thought of being able to use this for multiple months would save me a ton. They had them in white, black, and a nude color. I took it out of the package in the store and tried it on right there in the middle of the aisle…I was desperate to find something. I was hooked!

Be Maternity BeBand as shown on Target website

So what are my initial thoughts … 13 weeks after buying this….

Pros:
It doesn’t feel constricting whatsoever
Whether I unbutton or completely unzip my pants it holds them up
Multiple neutral colors, give you the option to just look like you are wearing another tank top
Still just as tight after multiple washes

Cons:
Because it is a fairly thin material, depending on the shirt you decide to wear, you can see that the buttons are undone on your pants

17 weeks wearing with jeans from Forever 21

20 weeks wearing with shorts from Forever 21

For less than half the price as a new pair of maternity jeans, you really can’t beat it. I have recommended it to all of my friends that are currently expecting and will continue to recommend it to anyone that I find out who is!!