I love that there is tea for therapeutic purposes! My tea of choice these days is the Organic Mother’s Milk® tea. It supposedly promotes healthy lactation and breastmilk production, although there is nothing to substantiate it per se. Either way though, it has a great sweet and spicy taste. It is a perfect excuse to take a few minutes each day to sip some great tea when the baby is asleep. Throw in a scone and it is ultimate mommy bliss!!

I love homemade gifts.  There is nothing like the attention to detail and the very thought that the gift giver gave to the gift.  This year, my favorite packaging was a diaper cake that a friend gave to me.  Her mother made it and I thought it the cutest and most beautiful gift of my year.  I know a lot of people create diaper cakes, but since this one was given to me, it was my best package received.

However, I do think the cutest package is from a crafter on the website Etsy (thepinkcamellia). Her craft is Wash Cloth Cupcakes.  For $60 you get 12 washcloth cupcakes; perfect for a baby shower.  They are so adorable.  The perfect little gift wrapped in the best package of originality and sweetness-with a cherry on top!

(Photo from thepinkcamellia at Etsy.com)

I never took a class or read a book.  Never read a post or followed a group.  Never thought I would have a blog entry on the subject. Yet I decided to give BFing a try and here I am, two months later.

(By the way, if you don’t know what BF stands for, this is probably not the post for you…just sayin’…)

Needless to say, I have been taking it one step at a time, but when I got to the stage where I was going through several shirts a day (had to read about that one as I had no clue), I ran off to the store to, ahem, address the situation.

I had NO idea how many choices with which I would be faced.  (Really should have read a book.)  So I grabbed three (time was of the essence here): washable pads by Avent (3 sets of 2 pads $6.99) and two disposables boxes (60 count $9.99) from Medela and Lansinoh.  Names I had heard synonomous with BFing.

I first tried the disposables from Lansinoh solely because it was the first box to come out of the bag.  I thought they worked great.  Stayed in place even after moving my shirt around all day and really absorbed well.  And I mean really absorbed and really well.  The material was not scratchy and I did not notice it under my nursing top.  But I was going through 2 pairs a day and quickly realized that my leaking issue was not abating. It was going to cost me at least $10 a month if I had to keeping buying these.  So three weeks in, I decided to try the Avent washable pads.  They felt really soft and I had high hopes until my husband asked what I spilled on myself.  So I guess these are washable because you will need to reinsert a new pair every hour on the hour.

So back to the disposables.

I now had run out of the Lansinoh, but had the box of Medela.  Slightly different design; more curvy, which was fine by me until I got them near my skin.  They were stiff.  (Think cheap toilet paper texture.)  But still, they were doing the trick.  However, after nursing my son, I went to readjust my Medela pad and smelled something odd.  I sniffed the pad and it had a petroleum-like smell to it.  At first I thought it was me, but nope, it was the pad.  I went to look at the packaging to see how it was made and did not see any details on the box.  But I kept using them and kept smelling that odor.  Drove me nuts.  Love all the other Medela nursing products, but not this one.

So for me, after one month, I was sold on the Lansinoh.  I was not going to even try another kind at this point.  So off to the store to get another box of Lansinoh disposable pads.  Guess what?  They were sold out.

(Photo modified from tinypic.com)