Diet

The old and boring topic! But not to our body. 

First thing comes to mind about diet is not eating enogh or eating what you don't like. 

In my case diet is a beautiful start of a new lifestyle. 

There is a fact that we live one time, so we should enjoy our life! 

Well are you in the group of people that you enjoy food a lot more than anything else?... You should leave what ever is against eating...

But if you care how you look more than eating or you like a healthy long life go for your special diet. 

I get diet to stay slim, and healthy. My diet is always full of eating break!  

Thanks to Internet which let us to gain just in time knowledge about everything. With a simple search you can find out what nutrition and how much a body needs to stay healthy! 

Pick a notebook and start writing what ever you are eating in one day in it! At the end of day calculate the total calories you had! If you are not sure about the calories, or you cook some food mixed with many things, just google them, one by one and add them together. Depends on what is your favorite weight to be, you will have diffrent calories need a day. On average body needs 2000 calories a day. You can use the following website http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned to find out your personal needs.

Cut off your intake of what is on your list that you don't need and you can skip it easy! The next day try to cut them. If you think you want everything then you can use plan 2 which is burning it up. Again with googling you can find out how much calorie you can burn with different tasks and exercises! For example, breastfeeding is a way to have extra 500calories a day !!!

Good luck 

Sahar.H

Happy Mommies/ Stay young

Have you ever wondered if I put on my night cream, apply my face mask, go for a facial, dress up, put on my make up, and so on, will i be the same as those days everyone were saying you look amazing!!!  

Sure you'll look the same if you are taking care of yourself.

Once I read Chad Sugg's beautiful quote which I have enjoyed many many times : 

   "enjoy your youth, you'll never be younger than you are at this moment" 

I'm gonna write a list of what does matter for a mommy to stay beautiful:

#1. Diet, of course as our bodies built a storage of fat just in case of famine!!!

#2. Exercise, to get back on track again

#3.Day/Night skin care products

#4.Nutrition and vitamins 

#5.Dressing up

#6. Stay in touch with old friends

#7. Shopping, to encourage ourselves to look in the mirror more often

#8.Manicure &Pedicure 

#9. Face and body Massage

#10. Do not let anything stop you from being happy 

#11. Avoid stress 

#12. Drinking water

Please share with me if you know other ways to stay young !!! And I love to hear your opinion on them.

I'll go through some of them in a separate post soon. 

Sahar.H

First time I went out with my baby

Let's start over again, being a mother is a lot more than doing the chores at home, it also means you cannot go anywhere that is not baby friendly !

Let me see newborn friendly! I remember my baby's pediatrician said no outdoors or crowded places such as shopping malls as far as possible for the first month. Well as I mentioned before my hubby is not a doctor but he is as good as one in enforcing the quarantine.

For the first month I stayed home 24/7! Though I was overjoyed for having my baby, but that month, our satellite broke down, the home Internet was cut and the whole day was spent with just me, hungry baby and my smartphone (luckily still had Internet access).

I was counting the days to baby's first month celebration, I went out finally for an evening tea! 

<br>Alexis Bangsar 

Everything looked new, I mean it, everything!!! My feeling was like a person that left a cave after years. I was too excited, well it didn't take long before my baby cried for milk. Although I was wearing my nursing cloth at the restaurant, unfortunately a waiter pretended to work close by to peek at me, I felt totally uncomfortable!!! 

So I started making myself a small notebook to write down details of places where I have visited and their baby friendly ranking on a scale of 1 to 10, based on my reasons!

It has grown to be a big directory today!

Firstly the good thing about it is that I have a record of places with my own review based on my personal preferences. For me, this works better than online reviews ! 

For example, I have tried many of the baby rooms in shopping malls. I'll share with you about them soon. 

Ladies, if any of you open a baby friendly tea shop which allows breastfeeding, let me know I'll be your loyal customer. 

Sahar.H

Happy Mommies/ newly moms

Today's post is all about the early days of baby's arrival. 

I am going to share with you my personal experience. 

In my post "about me" I told you that I live far from my family, so all the time during pregnancy and giving birth, and baby's early months I was on my own!

As I had scheduled an elective C-section, I watched many videos, and read a lot about the delivery. As my hubby is not a big fan of public classes, we skipped the classes that the hospital provided, Just the thing I can say about those days is that I was so scared !!! I was thinking I am very lonely except for my hubby who has to be at work, and read that I will be confined to bed, unable to move about for weeks!!! 

Well everyone's  experience is diffrent. In my case, I was walking by the second day. All those scary videos and articles became for me just Internet stories. During my hospital stay, my whole experience centered on having and holding a very lovely baby!!!  

I was totally in love.

Luckily the hospital I gave birth in promoted breastfeeding, and I had a lactation consultant almost everyday. My hubby is a great medical dictionary even though he didn't pursue a medical degree. However I believe he has studied even more about healthcare out of his interest than those at medschool. For numerous reasons, he totally disagreed with using infant formula! And that's why he supported me for breastfeeding.

The best thing for new moms if they don't want to go through the hormonal changes suddenly which in some cases could lead to postnatal depression is breastfeeding!

All the new moms have concerns over their ability, their milk supply and so many   unnecessary things. 

For the first 2 months, everyday I was worried my milk supply is not enough, and my baby is still hungry! Well I wasn't imagining his hunger as newborns breastfeed almost all the time. Every day for a month, in the late evening around 6 to 7pm, my baby started crying to be breastfed. And this activity can last like 4 to 5 hours non-stop,till he fell sleep. Still I am not sure if he was hungry or was it colic?! 

From 5 weeks old, he never got colic again as I learnt about the causes of colic and had fine tuned my diet till he reached  13 weeks old.

During the crying month I was too lonely, worried and desperate. My hubby had some important work to do during those days, that's why I was totally alone.

Well now when I look back to those days,  I feel like I'm too happy it's over but ladies, it's over very fast !!! And the good news is he gained weight perfectly. 

I will write about the recommended diet to increase breast milk supply which works on me in another post. 

As a new mom with early experience, I tell you my baby needs to cry then suckle, and we are doing great! 

Everyday I am more in love with my baby, doing all his chores by myself let me know him better, and our relationship becomes beautiful.

Now that he is 3 and half months he doesn't cry anymore even if he is hungry, instead he is trying to talk to me, he makes gurgling sounds whereby the volume and pronunciation are different, it is like a conversation to me! He is too happy and that makes me feel like I am a good mom! 

"Being successful in what we do is a reason to be happy."

During my journey with my baby I am gaining new insights - one of them is to forget about the well meaning advice of others about babies ... Just go with your heart ... your love and your instinct works the best. 

Sahar.H

Happy Mommies/ Magic cure

Once upon a time on a happy day I became a mother! Days and nights were passing faster than the blinking of my eyes. There was not enough time for anything except for daily routine works. I started thinking about all my childhood stories, and I wished for the "Magic Lamp of Aladdin"!!! 

Well I didn't find the magic lamp But I realized that it's true that we are in charge of our life! 

I started creating a cure for my problems, and it happen to work as a magic cure for me.

#1 Magic cure

I started to write my wish list. 

The way I was passing my days, I would need that list sooner than I realize.

So creating a to do and wish list was the first step. 

I made a weekly plan out of my list, and that diary turned out to be my magic cure! 

I'll share with in every post of mine one of them.

Diapers, Drypers

The first supermarket shopping I had for a baby was when I was around 8 months pregnant. I had a long list of stuff to buy. One of them was diapers, as it is my first baby and I had no experience, I decided to buy more than one brand. First diaper brand I chose was Drypers. 

I chose it because I saw some parents are buying it, and it's economical.

Well I tried Drypers WeeweeDry and Drypers Soft on my newborn.

I didn't like WeeWeeDry. As I liked the feel of cotton cloth for a diaper, the diaper didn't feel like cotton. In the Drypers website they didn't talk about the cloth material except they just wrote it is breathable, however I felt otherwise. Another reason for me not liking it is the diaper's absorbency power! The company describes it as "new Soft Absorb Layer made up of a soft wavy perforated layer that helps to draw and secure poo away from newborn baby’s sensitive skin to keep skin clean and healthy" or in other words the absorbent powder that they use. My experience showed that baby's urine will stick like gelatine balls on baby's butt !!! I personally prefer Drypers Soft which has less absorbent powder residues.

Drypers advantage as mentioned earlier is it's price. 

Sahar.H