Mother Nurture Products for Pregnant & Breastfeeding Moms

mother nurture enhanced water

One thing I cannot live without is chocolate. Chocolate makes the world a better place, especially during that time of the month, right ladies!? And since I am still breastfeeding, I try to eat as good as possible in order to get the most nutrients to my daughter through my breast milk. But sometimes I want to indulge in the good stuff, ya know, like these delicious, good for you chocolate truffle treats from #MotherNurture.

 

Mother Nurture Chocolate Truffles

  • These are a deliciously rich, creamy chocolate truffles to treat moms during pregnancy
  • Come in 2 different varieties: Milk Chocolate and Dark Chocolate with Raspberry
  • They provide essential nutrients like Folic Acid, DHA, Calcium and Vitamin D to support mom and baby’s health during pregnancy and breastfeeding

Non-GMO, Gluten-free, Kosher, and BPA-free packagingmother nurture chocolate truffleI loved the milk chocolate variety but that’s because I’m not particularly fond of the bitter taste of dark chocolate. Both were delicious though and I love the fact that they contain healthy, all natural ingredients for me and my little one.

They also have an enhanced water for those of you who don’t like the taste of plain ol’ boring water and need a little hint of flavor.

Mother Nurture Enhanced Water

  • Is a light, refreshing, all natural flavored water to treat Mom while hydrating
  • Mother Nurture Enhanced Waters offer delicious hydration in three light, refreshing flavors: pink grapefruit, mixed berry and tropical splash
  • Provides essential nutrients like Folic Aid, Calcium, Vitamin B12, and Choline to support Mom and Baby’s health during pregnancy and breastfeeding
  • Under 90 calories in each 16.9 ounce bottle
  • Non-GMO, Gluten-free, Kosher, and BPA-free packaging

mother nurture enhanced water

I tried the Tropical Splash Enhanced Water and it tasted great, although a little sweet tasting for me. But I appreciate flavor enhanced water because sometimes it’s hard to get all of the water I need with plain water. Drinking plenty of water helps produce more breast milk so it’s pretty important to stay properly hydrated and these Mother Nurture Enhanced waters help with that.

I also like the fact that these work in harmony with your regular prenatal vitamins.  But please don’t substitute.

If you’re a pregnant or breastfeeding mom and would like more information on these mom treats, then head on over to Mother Nurture.

If you can’t feed yourself, don’t have kids

I posted that the other day on Facebook because it seems like those that I know who are on govt assistance just keep producing and producing without preventing. It makes my blood boil knowing people carelessly bring children into the world who don’t give a damn about their well being or their future. How can you bring kids into the world knowing you can’t afford them? Which then led to a comment from a friend that usually these types of people don’t know that planned parenthood gives free contraception, basically free condoms.

 

So it got me thinking that maybe we need to maybe make it aware that there are preventable options out there. You just have to be willing to use it!

Now I’m not going off on people that have recently come on hard times and have to get public assistance (cash, food stamps) for the time being; I’m referring to the people who’ve been on it forever and have no plans to get off of it.

You may call me judgy, but I think of myself as smart.

I’ve worn condoms for 9 years with my husband because we were not ready to have kids. I don’t like pills, patches or shots because it messes with your womanly parts. I eventually wanted kids and I didn’t want any of those issues preventing me.

Guess what, we had no kids, no issues with condoms for those entire 9 years.

You may be thinking yeah lucky you, my condom broke or fell off and I instantly became pregnant. I don’t buy those stories 100% of the time. For most couples trying to conceive, the odds that a woman will become pregnant in any particular month is about 15% to 25%. So you’re going to tell me the first and only time your condom mishap happened resulted in pregnancy? It took me 5 months to get pregnant without a condom.

I know everyone’s different but I still have a hard time believing those stories, especially when it’s someone you know who used to never prevent.

So the point of this post is to use birth control and don’t act surprised or dumb-founded when you realize you’re knocked up from your recklessness.

Planned Parenthood gives free condoms, go get some.

They’ll also give you other forms which are based on your income.

Be smart.

No child deserves to be brought into the world where their parents can’t afford to take care of them when they can’t even take care of themselves.

And Here I Thought Breastfeeding Was Going to Be Easy

And Here I Thought Breastfeeding Was Going to Be Easy

What’s funny is that my husband kind of warned me about breastfeeding. Told me he needed to get my nipples prepared for what’s about to come, only because he dealt with it for a little while with his ex-wife but she gave up right away.

I didn’t even fathom the amount of pain, emotions, and frustration I would be going through once my little one arrived. I knew I wanted to breastfeed but didn’t think it would be this hard.

From the time she came out, she was ready to suckle on the breast. It’s kind of amazing how they know exactly what to do upon birth. The nurses were helping me with correct latching, but I never really got it down on my own while I was there in the hospital for 2 days. I needed a lactation specialist to come chat and show me what to do, which still wasn’t going well the first 4 days at home.

My milk had come in on the 3rd day in the evening which left my breasts hard and sore, my nipples were cracking, blistering and it made getting my little one to latch correctly difficult. She basically could only take the nipple even with me squeezing the end into a c shape like the doctor told me, so I finally said screw it and just let her have the nipple which only made things worse for me and I assume worse for her too.

And before my milk came in, I was an emotional wreck. She was acting lethargic, turning yellow which means jaundiced (she didn’t have it at the hospital) and I couldn’t get her to eat without falling asleep. She wasn’t getting hardly anything from me on day 1, 2 and 3. I finally told my husband that I couldn’t do this and sit there and watch her pretty much starve, so we supplemented with formula and she started acting normal again. I know most people say that this is not good when you want to breastfeed but it was what was best for us. In order to get jaundice out while my milk started to come in, we needed to supplement to get her to poop. She hadn’t pooped but once when we got home the first day and barely peed which means she was dehydrated. It was painful to watch that so please don’t judge.

It’s been 2 weeks now for breastfeeding and although I am getting the latch down somewhat, it’s still painful, only I don’t have the blisters or the cracking anymore because I’ve been religiously putting medela lanolin on them. On really sore days, I try to pump more to give them a break from intense suckling. I’ve read enough on breastfeeding to know that the pump is not going to get anywhere near the amount of milk I can produce out, but again, it’s what is working for me at this time. I just hope it begins to get better.

I honestly believe this is far worse than labor and birth.

Today I got about 2 ounces from both breasts which is the most I have gotten so far in these 2 weeks. She’s eating 2-3oz per feeding, so I hope I can continue to produce what she can eat. She’s been a miss piggy lately, but apparently, this is normal.

Wish me luck…

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Birth Story: My Little One Has Arrived

Birth Story: My Little One Has Arrived

The night before I went into labor, I wrote my previous post about how she wasn’t here yet and scheduled it to post the day she decided to come. Guess she was ready to make her appearance after all.

My Birth Story

At about 5:30 am I woke up to menstrual cramps that kept happening every 5 minutes. I knew this was probably going to be the day because this is the first time I’ve experienced the stopping and the starting of the cramps. I got up cause I couldn’t sleep through them, went and showered since people say that it helps, but it didn’t really.

I then started getting last minute things ready in my hospital bag and got on the computer to talk to my sister to ask her what I should do. At about 7:00, the contractions started to become more painful but weren’t exactly coming and going at the same intervals. If this wasn’t labor, I don’t know what is…

At about 9 am, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I woke my husband up and told him that we need to get ready to go and arrived at the hospital about 9:45 and checked into a birthing room at about 10 because the exam rooms were all filled. That was fine though since they checked me and I was at 5-6 cm, so I would have been staying anyways.

The nurse who was on that shift told me I should probably walk around some to speed things up, so we ended up doing that for about an hour; having to stop every couple of minutes through each contraction.

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Baby Girl Doesn’t Want to Come Out & See the World Yet

Still, no baby and I am 40 weeks 3 days now, so I guess she’s going to be fashionably late.

A couple days ago, I woke up at 5:30 with abdominal cramps or what I like to call diarrhea cramps so I went twice, yes TMI I know. And both times it was excruciating to get out of bed. Lifting your legs, moving your pelvis in any direction was extremely painful to me. Once I got out of bed, my back started hurting and I could barely move my legs forward to walk to get to the bathroom. At this point I am wondering what is going on and if this is the start of labor. I literally felt like I was 100 years old with how much I was hobbling everywhere. At 3 pm that day, I decided to I call the OB advice nurse and they told me to go to the hospital and get checked out just to be safe.

I arrived, got examined and the nurse said I was at 5cm and in labor according to the contraction machine. Thing is, all I feel is mild cramping in my lower abdomen above my pubic bone. I am not sure if those are labor pains as this is my first, but it certainly seems like it. I have not really experienced any of these Braxton hicks tightening and painful contractions that start up and go down that people talk about, so hopefully I am one of the lucky ones? At least, I hope so.

So they decided to admit me and put me in my room. The delivery doctor came an hour later, which happened to not be my original OB (go figure) and decided to check me again. He said I was more of a 4 and didn’t feel like I was in active labor because of how calm I was. Told me to go walk for a little bit and they would check me again and if I haven’t progressed, they would send me home. I walked for maybe 45 min cause I was waiting for my husband to get back from picking stuff up at home. Once I did that, the new nurse checked me who BTW was the most gentle with my lady bits. (my god some of those doctors are rough) and said I was still at a 4 and 85% effaced. I asked about the contraction machine and how far apart they were and she said 4-5 minutes.

I was like, so how am I to know when I am supposed to come back if these are mild and they’re coming that often and I’m at a 4? She’s like oh you’ll know. Yes I know labor is painful, but not everyone experiences that same amount of pain according to these labor stories I have read.

As I said before, I want an epidural if I can’t handle the pain of full-blown labor.  I honestly feel like I won’t make it there in time if I’m not even feeling too achy at 4cm dilated. Obviously I’ll feel them more and they’ll be a lot worse once my waters have broken but still, I don’t like pain and my anxiety of labor makes my little one’s heart rate jump through the roof. She was at 170-180 from her usual 140s half the time I was there at the hospital. I feel like it would calm me down and make me less stressed which in turn will not stress her out too much either.

Then yesterday I woke up feeling kind of moist, so I went to the bathroom and noticed I may have just had my bloody show. Either that or it’s from the 3 vaginal checks the previous day, 2 of which were rough. I don’t have a clue honestly since either or can cause similar things. I didn’t really have any contractions or pains to go along with it so I’m assuming it was just the latter cause both of my sisters said once they had theirs, they went into labor that day. /shrug

Here’s hoping today may be the day, so I can get this little girl into the world and out of my belly. This whole labor thing is giving me way too much anxiety with not knowing what’s going on with my body!