recycledbaby.co.uk

We have a Bumbo – it’s been purchased for less than £15 including postage and it arrived in its genuine Bumbo box. It’s not a Chinese fake, it’s real and it’s brilliant except for the faint smell of cigarettes. I HATE people who lie about their non-smoking home on their eBay sales. OK so it’s only happened this one time but I still hate it. I found out because I picked it up off the floor and sniffed the bottom. I don’t make a habit of sniffing things but my baby’s stuff is important and I picked it up and just had a sniff and there was the cigarette smell. I guess it will disappear in time in my non-smoking home but it does spoil the excitement a little.

Husband did all the things I either can’t be bothered to do or physically can’t do – like picking sales that end at midnight when I am asleep, to place bids on and searching for weird spellings of Bumbo (although that could yield some very strange items!)

I got my boy to model his new thing for you and he looks happy… although he may have been having a pee at the time. It can be hard to tell the difference some times.

Boy in his new chair!

The Bumbo buying has been taken out of my hands. After several abortive attempts to purchase Bumbos from eBay which resulted in me running around swearing like a trooper and taking it out on him indoors, husband has decided he is going to buy it for me (deliberate or cunning, you decide). Trouble is he says he’s not going to pay more than a certain amount for it. We could be waiting until the baby is walking.

I found this website today and if it takes off it could be the start of something really great for parents.

www.babysfirstplanet.com

At the moment we are all looking for recycled stuff on eBay and Freecycle but this site is trying to combine everything in one place along with help and advice.

It looks to be run by passionate people. Lets hope it takes off.

I’ve been surfing about recently due to an inability to move around much and come across some people who have the same idea as our family. Here are some links to useful sites.

The Recycle This Guide to recycling baby stuff

reduce reuse recycle

The ethical superstore for all your shopping needs!

Another green mom Living Slowly

monitors - good or evil?

We have been given a set of baby monitors by a colleague of him indoors and I have mixed feelings about them.  Even now, before the little one is born, I am scared of the possibility of cot death. We are getting a new mattress for the cot and I’ve got one for the moses basket. We will be following all the guidelines for the baby sleeping in our room for the first six months and to be honest I think co-sleeping might be a good thing, at least they are right there with you, but I guess that has to be balanced with the increased risk of rolling onto them. I think you would have to be pretty tired or dead drunk for that to happen. I mean, how tired can you get with a new baby? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I saw Billy Connolly doing stand up once where he talked about their baby monitor. He said they would put the baby to bed and you would hear them making all the usual baby noises and then suddenly it would go absolutely silent. It was as if the baby was holding it’s breath. He would then start to worry about the baby and as the silence continued the panic would rise and he’d get up and go towards the door to go upstairs but as soon as he got across the room they’d burble and the panic would be over. This would go on all evening but apparently the panic goes on for a lifetime! He tells it much better, if anyone knows of a link to the bit I’d love to know so I can add it here, it is very funny.

To cope with this parental paranoia the manufacturers have now come up with ubermonitors. They are mats that you put under the sleeping baby that can tell if your baby is breathing or not. This then fires a signal to a monitor which alerts the parents. Now I love the idea of this, but I also can see that it’s a noose around your neck. I can imagine parents getting web cams and setting them up as well as this monitor to make sure their baby is alive and breathing. They are clearly the same parents who hide webcams in teddies to spy on the nanny! It just feeds the paranoia but provides some peace of mind at the same time. The dilemma – if you did lose your baby to cot death and you didn’t have the monitor would you spend a lifetime regretting not buying it?

The information surrounding cot death is a bit of a nightmare for me. How many blankets? What if I use too many blankets? What if the room is the wrong temperature? Do I need a mattress made of natural materials? Will having a mattress covered with that material with silver in it to ward off germs be safer? What if I fall asleep with my baby on the sofa? (Highly likely it would seem.) No wonder parents to be look shellshocked half the time, all these questions and no real answers from the scientists. People dropping bombs of information into your brain and there is no way to evaluate it properly.

I think I’m going to stick with my traditional reused ears only baby monitor and keep everything crossed that I’m doing right.

More info on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome here.

We hit the motherload today thanks to people at my husband’s work. We got a great big bag of clothes for the little one with loads of stuff that goes up to a year old. It is really good quality and it’s in great condition. There are baby-grows in there, jeans, t-shirts and night things. They are all so cute! Now I have to make sure we buy a mega box of non-bio washing powder – although through various freebies I have got at least six months supply of free washing powder and fabric conditioner. I’ve got tablets, pouches, sachets and lots of vouchers. The packaging alone is enough to make you want to weep. Had a look at soapnuts online  … not sure about these, can’t imagine how some nut casings will make dirty nappies super-clean and how come you can reuse them over and over again. Still you can get a trial pack for 75p which has to be a good thing. Maybe I’ll try them after he’s born. I’m thinking for now I’ll just go the the cash and carry though and buy a huge box. I’m not going to put too much pressure on myself, I think it’s going to be hard enough once the little one arrives.

It’s been a week of tying up loose ends and getting bits and bobs. This week so far we have bought the sterilizer and the bottles and the rocking base for the moses basket. As a complete environmental bonus they all came from just around the corner from our house. We don’t have to wait for the postman to come we just go and get them. The sterilizer is from a lady who is having the post baby clearout. Her kids are now heading towards school and she is getting rid of everything. The moses basket base is from a lady who lives in a town north of here but her dad lives across the road. We bought the base from her and she dropped it off at her dads and we just wandered across the road and picked it up. Well I say we, I mean him indoors, because I can’t wander much at the minute. I have SPD and the baby bump is weighing heavy at the moment. Can’t wait for the little one to arrive, more because I want my body back, it really feels like I’m just a big jar at the moment. I’m sure it will all be worth it in the end.

Here's the moses basket complete with base.

I have bought my first pack of real nappies in an online auction. I actually punched the air and shouted yes when I finally managed it. I am now the proud owner of a pack of five Tots Bots size one nappies and a wrap. It has taken several weeks to get my hands on them and the kind of obsessive behaviour found in OCD clinics everywhere. Of course it’s only five nappies and according to most websites you need at least 12 to get through a day. That’s a LOT of poo and wee. Can a baby really get through 12 nappies in a day? Surely that’s an unusual day? I guess I’ll have to wait and see for myself. My mum is offering to buy me a starter pack of six Motherease nappies and frankly, after the couple of weeks I’ve had trying to buy the Tots Bots, I’m inclined to let her. Is that wrong?

Russell Crowe is making charity shops trendy by paying a visit to a Cancer Research shop in Berkshire. Well actually he didn’t buy anything, he just made a donation, but like I say, it’s a start. Read the full story here.

I just wish they would do something about the smell of old dog, it pervades every charity shop I’ve ever been in. Why must we suffer to recycle?

Reusable nappies are supposed to be the best thing for the environment so how come my local council is soooo not behind them. You would think with the landfill taxes they will be forced to pay they would be jumping on the reusable bandwagon as fast as they could, but no! Their website starts off well – telling us that three billion nappies are thrown away each year in the UK, that’s about 8 million nappies a day! But it goes downhill from here. Other councils seem to do much more than Leicester City Council. If you start looking for information about reusable nappies online it turns out lots of councils offer vouchers to help you buy them new. Not my council. Leicestershire County Council offers you £30 to buy your first real nappies. The boundary is about a mile and a half away from my house and if I could move my bricks and mortar right now I would. My council offers you the chance to try before you buy. That’s it…a bucket of nappies, if they are available, that you can try for two weeks. No cash help, no enthusiasm, no wonder people just carry on using disposables.