Bri baby knows her name!

Yesterday was a marathon shopping day. I was looking for the oh-so-elusive bathtub seat for babies. Bri has outgrown her infant tub lengthwise, but still can’t sit up well enough for a big girl bath.
She really enjoyed playing in her new seat. She likes to splash and kick her feet.

While I was washing her hair tonight she was focused intently on the water beside her seat. I needed her to look up so that I could rinse the shampoo out. I tried holding the ducky up and making funny sounds. Finally I just said her name. And she looked right up at me! It was so special! So far she’s continued to respond every time we say her name too! Pretty cool!

Day 3: Hairbrush Singer

“Here’s to you long shots, dark horse runners, hair-brush singers, dashboard drummers. Here’s to you wild magnolias just waiting to bloom …” ~Carrie Underwood~

I love to sing. In the car, in the shower, and in front of the mirror with a hairbrush. I just think it’s fun.

Bri loves to listen to my singing. It’s a surefire way to calm her down when she’s crying. However, I am not delusional enough to think that I’m a good singer. Hubster teases me that I “can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

My friend Kels, on the other hand, has an amazing voice. She has oodles and oodles of singing talent. When we were kids we used to play dress up and sing into hairbrushes. Now over a decade later, I still act like a kid!

BPA – What’s a mom to do?

As a college senior, in Ecology class, I had to read Taking Back Our Stolen Future. It’s a Green Peace book dealing with the exposure of animals to the chemicals found in PVC plastics. These everyday plastics were commonly found polluting lake ecosystems in the Northern USA. The animals exposed to them had all sorts of strange birth defects. The documented evidence was chilling. They found that these hormone mimicking chemicals were released in even higher quantities when plastic products are microwaved.

Since then, I’ve learned about another component of plastics, Bisphenol A (BPA), that mimics the estrogen hormone. BPA is a common ingredient in baby bottles. Microwaving the bottles increases the amount of BPA that leaches into the formula. According to Wikipedia’s article on BPA, an “NIH-sponsored panel in the U.S. determined that there was ‘some concern’ about BPA’s effect on fetal and infant brain and behavior.^[18]”

The article also quotes Dr. Maida Galvez, a pediatrician studying BPA, who recommends parents stay away from bottles containing the chemical and says, “We know the animal studies raise concerns, but there aren’t human studies showing effects yet … so, when we don’t have the evidence, what we recommend is that parents try to err on the side of caution.”^[21]

Here’s another terrifying quote from the Wikipedia article.

Infants fed with liquid infant formula have among the highest exposures of anyone eating canned foods. Infants fed canned formula with polycarbonate bottles can consume quantities of bisphenol A up to 13 µg/kg/day,^[23] while the most sensitive animal studies show effects at much lower concentrations. Debate continues on what is the safe limit of this compound.

It is my understanding that powdered infant formula has not been tested for BPA and that the safest bottles to use are glass bottles. The next best thing would be Medela’s products or the Playtex drop-in bottles.

According to an Environmental Working Group article published in Dec 2007, “BPA levels in powdered formula sold in the United States haven’t been tested, but this formula is diluted with water before being fed to babies, and thus poses less risk to babies.”

According to Playtex “The [Nurser] system uses disposable liners made of polyethylene (a type of plastic that does not contain BPA)– in both Drop Ins liners and rolled liners. So, the only contact between baby and the food is through the nipple and the liners, which are both BPA- free.”

Without question, breastfeeding is the safest way to feed your baby. When that is not an option, the EWG has made a list of recommendations to help moms.

For a list of bottles containing BPA click here.
For more information about how to protect your family from BPA click here.