In the previous post we discussed a few strategies for dealing with toddlers and the wide array of ‘blessings’ they bring, using some innovative products to enhance those experiences by making our lives just a bit easier. In this post I continue that concept with discussions on sleep sacks, diaper pails, and truly unique product, with recommendations along the way. So without further ado, let’s dig in.
4. Sleep Sacks:
Again, establishing good nap times for your baby is not only crucial for them, but gives you the much needed rest you crave as a new parent. One of the best products we’ve found to help our children sleep are sleep sacks.
Among the litany of options available, we’ve found the SleepingBaby Zipadee-Zip Transition Swaddle to be the best of many worlds. We tried a few options before landing on the Zipadee-Zip, eventually discovering what really made the difference for our children.
The Zipadee-Zip is 100% cotton so you can rest assured that the materials are all-natural and won’t harm your child, allowing for breathability. Some of the other benefits include:
- Acts as a mobile blanket your baby can’t escape from
Little ones toss and turn all night, finding new sleeping positions to stay comfortable just like we do. However, infants can’t manage blankets like we do, and thus poses an asphyxiation risk. The sleep sack wraps your baby up in a blanket that follows them everywhere around the crib, providing the warmth and comfort they are familiar with.
- Prevents them from scratching themselves
Nothing is more disheartening when you finally get your baby asleep and they go to adjust their position, scratching their face in the process and jolting themselves awake, all because those little nails are hard to keep trimmed. A sleep sack keeps baby’s hands safely inside, wrapped in material that won’t agitate their skin, ensuring no accidental wakes.
- Allows movement
As stated previously, little ones eventually like to start moving around when sleeping and a sleep sack provides ample room inside for your baby to readjust their sleeping position without sacrificing comfort.
5. Diaper Pails:
OK, I have a bone to pick here. I will openly admit I am biased. I do not like the Diaper Genie brand of diaper pails. Not for any reason other than I think that they are garbage; all puns intended. We were gifted a Diaper Genie for our first kid and while they do perform the function they are intended to, they do it so poorly.
First issue we noticed was even with the ‘large’ version, the bag filled up far too quickly. We were replacing the bag every 3-4 days. Maybe our kid just went through diapers faster than the average, but regardless, the pail is still small and it felt like every time we turned around it was full again.
Second, and this one is true of almost all trash receptacles, no matter the primary function, it didn’t hold back the smell. Now I know what your going to say so I’ll simply reconcile this, I understand no diaper pail has a perfect seal, but the Diaper Genie has that awkward gated mechanism that only allows so much volume for a diaper to be placed in the pail before dispensing it into the main bag area when the foot pedal is released. I get what Diaper Genie was going for here, but the sad fact is that this complicated mechanism doesn’t do any better of a job than other, simple spring-back door designs found in other pails. It’s a lot of unnecessary complication.
Third, as stated in the previous paragraph, the mechanism only allows so much diaper to be deposited at once. We try to keep our home clear of toxic materials which eventually led to the use of Millie Moon diapers on our then 2-year old. Millie Moon diapers seem to be much more ‘poofy’ than their counterparts and we discovered it was difficult to deposit the diapers in the pail given the limited space available. As well, if you happen to get a back log of diapers (due to the incessantly small volume of the pail) from forgetting to change out the bag, you have to add them in one at a time, pressing the foot pedal each time.
Lastly, all three of the first complaints are compounded due to the fact that every so often, the pail would separate at the seam where the top portion mates to the bottom portion. When this happened it always became a chore to line up the parts of the foot pedal that actuated the mechanism at the mouth of the pail when reassembling the two halves. Sometimes I got it together in a couple minutes, other times it took too long I had to come back from the frustration of dealing with this plastic puzzle of ineptitude. I am an engineer by trade, and it perplexes me why Diaper Genie thought they needed this air-lock mechanism for a glorified trash can.
That being said, for our second child we opted for a different solution. This time in the form of the Dekor Plus Hands-Free Diaper Pail. Compared to the Diaper Genie this thing is a five-star product. It’s simple, has none of the drawbacks mentioned above, and holds almost three times the diapers. The bags are just as easy to change and it even came with small odor-absorbing potpourri sacks you could toss in the bottom of the bin to help eliminate smells.
The little door on the mouth of the pail swings down into the main body of the pail where the diapers are ultimately stored. This is the feature that makes it “hands-free” by allowing the weight of the diaper to drop through the door without any extra inputs from the user. The door springs back into place sealing off the odors, ready for the next deposit. The only real downside (and it’s a small one) is that when the pail gets closer to the “full” line, the previously deposited diapers block the door from opening, forcing you to push the new diapers through the door and into the pail. This drawback isn’t really a problem since you should be changing the bag out before this happens, but it feels like you should be able to keep adding diapers, and this arrangement gets in the way of that.
We were extremely impressed with the simplicity and effectiveness of the Dekor Plus diaper pail and most certainly recommend it to any new parents.
6. Baby Brezza:
So I am speaking from a place on inexperience here. When we had our first child, my wife and I purchased a Baby Brezza which I jokingly called a “formula cappuccino machine”, not knowing the true value it brought to the table.
If you don’t know what a Baby Brezza is, let me explain. The Baby Brezza is a simple device that takes water and the formula of your choice and mixes them in the proper proportions at the desired temperature into any bottle you want. They are incredibly easy to use and require no expertise whatsoever.
This seems like a bit of a cop out though. You may be asking, “Why do I need a machine to make a bottle for me when it takes 30-seconds to heat up water in the microwave?” Well, if you really consider what happens when you make a bottle you’ll understand my reason for owning one.
First, you have to nuke the water which depending on your microwave will take 30-seconds or so. Secondly, formula must be measured out in the proper amount for the number of ounces you want to prepare. Scooping the formula with those little provided scoops is a pain and inevitably you always end up with product on the ground because the bottle neck is too small and the formula is finer than talcum powder (I exaggerate, but you get the point). At this point you’ve likely spent about 2-minutes making a bottle and you now have formula powder to clean up after feeding the baby. Once the formula is added you then have to agitate it so it gets thoroughly mixed; another 30 to 60 seconds. After which you can finally feed your baby.
All those tasks take time and that time adds up. Even then, you may have a situation where you are adding more elements to the bottle that I haven’t mentioned, like sleep aids, colic medicines, probiotics, etc. Each of which takes more time before you get the finished product. Making a bottle manually can take up to 3-5 minutes, and if you’re really old school you’ll be heating it on the stove in a pot of water which can another 5-10 minutes.
Of course you can certainly cut down of some of this time by pre-measuring and pre-mixing (when appropriate) the formula and mix-ins into a segmented container for future use. That can certainly shave off some minutes, but what if you premixed enough formula for 4 oz and you need 6? What if you measured out enough for 8 oz and all you need is another 2? It’s not the end of the world, but the last thing you want to be doing is wasting formula just because baby isn’t cooperating, especially these days when pennies are pinched.
Enter the Baby Brezza. With the touch of a button you can get anything from 2 to 10 ounces in 1 ounce increments. And you get it in under 10 seconds!
Now I understand the previous few paragraphs might garner some push-back. “So what if it takes me 5-minutes to make a bottle? My child isn’t going to starve from 5 minutes.” I completely understand and agree with you. Unfortunately we tend to underestimate the intensity of a situation until we’ve actually been there. Making a bottle is not hard, but doing so when your infant is crying like their belly button is rubbing a hole in their spine, and you’re completely stressed out from other issues, your baby’s crying isn’t helping, and the rest of the world is crumbling around you, makes that extra 5 minutes seem like an eternity. All the while you’re feeling horrible because you can’t give your child the thing they so desperately need. I can’t tell you the relief I’ve experienced when everything is wrong and all I want is to give my daughter a bottle so she’ll at least be sated. It’s worth it, every time.
Of course, everything comes with downsides and I don’t want to sugarcoat the whole experience. While it definitely has its benefits, the major detriment is the frequency at which the Brezza needs to be cleaned. The unit will prevent you from making more than 4 bottles consecutively without first removing the dispensing funnel for cleaning. The Brezza isn’t measuring anything as complicated as formula build-up on the dispensing funnel. It is just looking for a removal of the funnel and subsequent replacement. So you could just pull it out and put it right back to get the unit working again. I would however advise against doing so, since the funnel does accumulate a good amount of caked on formula, and does need to be cleaned in those intervals to continue working properly. Neglecting this basic cleaning will inevitably produce formula that is not well-mixed, nor in the proper proportions.
Cleaning the funnel is easy and takes only a few seconds, and doesn’t necessarily need to be spotless. What it really boils down to is getting the gunk out of the way so the proper ratio of formula to water can be maintained when dispensing. I typically wet a paper towel and wipe around the mouth of the Brezza where the gunk accumulates. It only takes a couple of good swipes and its ready to go. I usually wash the nozzle under the sink with some water and that seems to get that part of it well enough. Reinstallation is easy and it will normally take me about 30-seconds to clean the funnel and main unit.
While cleaning every 4 bottles is a bit frequent in my opinion, it really isn’t too bad considering the benefits of formula on demand. And for both of my children, 4 bottles a day was pretty standard after the early infant stages. So we’d clean it every night after the last bottle when there was plenty of time to do so. Every 6 months or so we find that we need to perform the deep clean on the unit, which mainly involves emptying the formula reservoir and washing it with soap and water, then, with the formula reservoir empty, running a solution of vinegar and water through the unit until the inside plumbing is all cleaned out. This procedure takes about 4-hours and brings the Brezza back to factory condition, mixing perfect bottles every time.
OK, I’ve droned on enough. But seriously, once you get one of these you’ll never go back. We even haul the thing on vacations because it’s just too convenient.
Conclusion
Living with toddlers is a roller coaster of a time. There are extreme highs, the laughs and games you’ll cherish forever, and extreme lows, the immediate temper tantrums that spring forth from the ether. And those highs and lows come at you fast and in quick succession, much like a…roller coaster. I wrote this article to do two things, to give you some real-life solutions that my spouse and I have implemented with great success, and to encourage you. I know we hear platitudes from social media all the time about enjoying time with your kiddos and soaking up every moment, but I wanted to reiterate one here for your benefit.
These years pass by all too quickly. It gets me every time I hear someone talk about the empty rooms and clean walls, wishing they’d just bent down to pick up their child one more time before the last chance came and went, only to realize it all too late. I don’t want any of you reading this to miss out on any moment God has given you. I hope the content of this article will help you solve some of those problems so you can focus on the real things in life. Your children want to spend time with you, and I pray these solutions provide that extra time for those special moments.