For those of you who have been following along with my IVF journey (thank you!) it will be a long 8 days or so before I will know if any of the embryos found a home for 9 months. So I’m happy to report that we will be back with our regularly scheduled programming (photography!) starting later today.

But, I did want to write briefly about the transfer itself..

Out of the laundry list of procedures I’ve had done, this one doesn’t rate as particularly eventful, other than that it has to be done on a “full bladder” which makes it easier for them to view the placement of the embryos via sonography.  The problem with full bladder is that it has to be full, but not TOO full that you can’t tolerate them pushing down pretty hard on your stomach with the sonography wand and then lying supine in the recovery room for 20 minutes. It’s always some little fun twist like this just to keep it interesting.

The transfer of the embryos themselves is done via a catheter inserted through the cervix right into the uterus which in theory is not painful (no anesthesia) but in practice I felt QUITE a pinch when the catheter passed through the cervix (OUCH!) which I’d never felt with my IUIs. Not sure if the catheter is larger for embryos or if the Dr. doing the transfer is just less gentle than my regular Dr. but anyway, it was over in a minute and I got to watch onscreen as SOMETHING happening in the petri dish.

It was all very scifi and surreal and I honestly didn’t even know what I was looking at half the time except when they first showed me our three embryos and then made me identify our names on the petri dish plate.

After it was over (a few minutes) one of the embryologists came out and gave me a photo of our little embryos.  I guess I’d better post it in case it’s the closest thing we ever have to baby #2!

I’m not 100% positive but I’m pretty sure that the one in the center is the “textbook excellent” 8 cell embryo and the one on the left is the “very good” 9 cell embyro. And then there’s the wonky dividing too quickly messy looking guy on the right..I think so anyway. I’m no expert!

After leaving the clinic I went home for a bit and picked up Jasper from preschool. On our way home he asked me what I did at work that day..

So I told him that I didn’t go to work because I went to the “baby doctor” to which he asked, as he always does, if he gave us a baby yet.

I don’t know WHY I decided to go into this much detail (blame it on the fake hormones) but I told him that today he put two eggs inside mommy, kind of like how dinosaurs come from eggs and if we are really lucky they will hatch into babies (OH MY GOD WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?)

Now Jasper thinks that maybe mommy is going to have baby dinosaurs.

Then he asked how the doctor got them in there.

Uhhhhhhh..

I tried to be vague, but “through mommy’s belly” didn’t cut it so I told him it went through my belly button. He seemed to accept that as a reasonable method of entry and stopped asking questions.

Yeah, this poor kid is going to be ALL sorts of confused.  And you thought the REGULAR birds and bees discussion was going to be hard – try adding IVF in the mix!

So, fingers crossed in a week or so we’ll get some good news that maybe one of those “eggs” decided to hatch and become a baby. Or a dinosaur.

Whatever, I’m not too picky at this point.

;)

Filed under: IVF, infertility by ariana
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Mommy's little sweetheart!

Just got a call from my Dr. – all three embryos are still alive! And two of them are “excellent quality!”

One of the two is 8 cell and the other is 9 cell. The third embryo is 15 cell and not compacting, so a lower grade. But it’s still viable so all three are going in at 1pm today!

Last night’s PIO shot went much better than the night before.. I think Jeff was too far in towards the spine the first night because that one still hurts more than last night’s more recent shot.

I was telling him as much this morning while he was getting dressed and Jasper and I were still cuddling in bed.   All the sudden Jasper got this really concerned look on his face and said:

“Mommy, are you OK?”

“Sure baby, why?”

“Because the shots hurted you!”

I reassured him that mommy was FINE and he started sulking and said he was sad because mommy’s shots hurt :(

I reassured him again but he looked over accusingly at Jeff and said “Daddy- you need to be more gentle!”

MELT.

Seriously, if we don’t screw him up too much my son may be the sweetest human being to walk this earth…I just hope we can give him a sibling to love too.

Filed under: IVF, infertility by ariana
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I got the call from the IVF nurse yesterday that 3 of our 4 mature eggs retrieved had fertilized with ICSI. I’m pretty happy with that percentage, it could have been a lot worse!  She also told me I’d get a call THURSDAY to let me know what time the transfer would be.

I guess I completely misunderstood what they count as day one, I thought it was retrieval day = day 1 because that’s how they count everything else in infertility. The day you get your period= Cycle day 1, not the day after.  So yet another waiting game begins – this time the waiting is to hear if our little embryos survive until Thursday and if so, what grade/quality they are.

Last night I had the dubious pleasure of experiencing my first Progesterone in Oil (PIO in infertility lingo) shot.  I have to say that having to take 2-3 shots a day during the stimming part of the cycle is a lot easier than it sounds because the needles are really tiny and just go in the skin around your stomach.  But the PIO shot is intramuscular and is administered , well in the ass. Which in and of itself isn’t SO bad, but for whatever reason they have to “suspend” the progesterone in Oil, sesame oil to be exact, and it’s so thick that the needle itself has to be wide for the oil to be able to pass through.  And it HURTS. Not only going in, but also afterwards… it throbs and felt burnt around the injection site, though I may be allergic to the sesame oil which could be making it worse  ( I had a red mark that looked like a bite around the site all last night!)

The whole thing is just so barbaric, I just seriously can’t believe they can’t find a better option than giant needle in the ass. I swear, if men needed to take the progesterone shots to have babies you can bet your (sore) ass that someone would have figured out a way to suspend progesterone in beer or something a hell of a lot more pleasant and less painful.

I’m aware that there are other options (like suppositories) but crinone sounds disgusting and I know from first hand experience how unpleasant endometrin just for the mess of it. However, I’m seriously considering asking to take endometrin instead – I guess I’ll wait to see how I tolerate the PIO moving forward. (My Dr. said if the redness happens again tonight we will switch oils or to suppositories.)

The worst part of all this is if you actually get pregnant, you have to take these shots for 6-10 weeks!! Maybe they do that so that if you find out you are NOT pregnant, at least you have the consolation prize of being able to stop those damn shots. Geeez.

The funniest part of all this is that due to Jeff’s schedule we could only do the shot while Jasper was awake, and so he was with us for the whole thing including while we were watching a youtube video of where to do the shot.  This morning I come upstairs to find Jasper in the office by the computer asking to watch “the video where the lady gives herself a shot” and having a temper tantrum when I told him that wasn’t really a movie for kids!

Thank you all so much for you well wishes throughout all this, if I can ask for your continued positive thoughts that our little embryos make it until transfer tomorrow that would be fabulous.  It’s so weird to think that the closest thing may ever have to another child is sitting in a petrie dish somewhere in Manhattan. Grow embies grow!

Filed under: IVF, infertility by ariana
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The Egg Retrieval (ER) yesterday was a huge disappointment. Even though I had shown at least 8-9 follicles (which is not terrible at my age) only 5 of them were able to be removed and only 4 were mature.  I was so disappointed when I woke up from anesthesia to that depressing news.

Even my Dr. was surprised and he called me yesterday afternoon to tell me so.  It means there were “empty” follicles as he put it. Which I realized after some research is actually a bit of a misnomer as no follicle can actually be empty, but what can happen is that the egg has not released itself from the follicle and is not ready or is too damaged at the time of retrieval to be flushed out and taken.

I read there are a few reasons this can happen, really crappy egg quality and that the HCG trigger that is supposed to make the eggs ready for retrieval just doesn’t work for some reason.  Although I certainly have reason to doubt my egg quality, I am now beginning to suspect that for some reason my body doesn’t respond to the HCG trigger like it should.  The reason I suspect this is that when we conceived Jasper via IUI 4+ years ago I was charting (taking my basal temperature religiously) and distinctly remember that my temperature did not rise (signaling ovulation) until AFTER the IUI which would also suggest a trigger delay.  I questioned my RE about that and he told me that there are very few certainties in reproductive medicine, but the fact that someone will ovulate 36 hours after an HCG trigger is one of them.

Well, turns out this is not entirely true according to my research.. some people require a different type of HCG or double the dose. It’s rare, but completely possible. It would be something to consider if we were going to be able to do this again – but, having exhausted our IF insurance coverage I don’t think it’s in the cards to do another cycle.

So, today I get the call to see if any of those 4 eggs actually fertilized.. and if any do, we get to wait on pins and needles hoping they live until tomorrow and are decent quality to transfer. I’m waiting until tonight to have Jeff do the dreaded progesterone shot because if none fertilize at least my butt won’t be sore!

On the plus side, the ER was pretty painless. A few mild tinges and cramps but nothing serious. The anesthesia caused no ill effects, not even the shakes like I got the last time I went under.

So, that’s all the news – hopefully we’ll have at least on survivor out of those 4 sad lonely eggs…thanks for all your well wishes, we will take every little bit of positive energy we can get!

Filed under: IVF, infertility by ariana
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Yesterday I went into the Westchester office of my fertility clinic fully expecting to be ready to trigger (take the injection that makes your eggs ready to release in 36 hours) and have the Egg Retrieval (ER) on Sunday morning. But, that would have all worked out MUCH to perfectly.. what actually happened was that Dr. K felt my follicles needed one more day to mature, which meant I had to scramble around to get an extra dose of the Gonal F I’d run out of (and $252 to boot).  But that wasn’t the worst part, the worst part came when I was leaving his office and said OK, so I’ll trigger tomorrow night then?”

“Well no, we really need you to come back in for monitoring tomorrow to be sure..”

Tomorrow being today (Saturday) and his office is closed on the weekends so that means having to go into NYC instead.. which, while not super convenient, is not a huge deal on the weekends because at least there is no rush hour traffic to contend with. However, they were forcasting about 1-3 inches of snow in the city, due to fall RIGHT as I would need to be driving.

I really had no idea though until I got on the road this morning at 7:30am just HOW much snow and how bad the roads would be. The palisades parkway was COMPLETELY unplowed..I saw several cars that had skidded off the road into the woods that abut the highway and I was slipping around like mad. I honestly felt  like it was a big risk for what seemed like a “cover our bases” visit.

After all, he’d almost declared me ready to trigger yesterday, so how could I NOT be ready today after an additional day and dose of meds? Besides which I HAD no more meds left, now being out of both Gonal-F and menopur.

After a particularly bad skid, Ipulled off at the rest area and called in to ask do I REALLY need to come? Of course they couldn’t reach my doctor, so I kept driving and by the time they got back to me that my Dr. had said I should stay home I was already in the city and just went in.

Guess what? It was time to trigger (no, really?)

At least they are letting me skip the other visit tomorrow where they would just check to see if the HCG trigger had absorbed into my system (I can just do a home pregnancy test to assess the same thing.)

We also got our time for the retrieval on Monday morning. 8:30 am. Yikes! That’s awfully early to get into the city on a commuting day… not to mention inconvenient given that daycare doesn’t open until 8:00am which is cutting it too close. So, arrangements will need to be made.

But you know what is freaking me out even more about Monday? They said I can’t wear makeup because of anesthesia (they need to know if I’m getting too pale I guess?)  But what they DON’T realize is that my natural skintone is whiter than paper and most likely when confronted with my natural skintone with NO MAKEUP they will think I’m in organ failure or something.

You think I’m joking, but it happened in the hospital after having Jasper. The nurses kept asking me or Jeff if I was OK because I looked so pale! Finally after I got up the energy to put on some makeup they stopped pestering me.

Anyway, I have no idea when I’ll feel up to blogging again after the ER, so any fertile thoughts you can send my way Monday would be appreciated!

The snow today wasn’t all bad though.. here’s my little snowmonster after having a snowball fight with Daddy:

Coming home to a big hug from him telling me that he missed me makes everything always feel better!

Filed under: IVF, Trigger, infertility by ariana
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Right after my insanely busy fall season I wanted nothing more than to take at least a month-long break from photography. But, I had two newborns due in early December that I had booked months earlier. As fate would have it, they were both born just days apart so I needed to squeeze them into the same week of shooting. Then I got a call from a family whose photographer had canceled on them due to a family emergency and they begged me to fit them in.

I have a terrible time saying no, so I shot three newborns in one week. To give you an idea, I usually do one maybe two per month, so this was quite unusual for me and a little bit terrifying.

I have a confession – I don’t really LOVE  newborn photography. There, I said it! Partly though I think it’s because I’m just not that GOOD at it.  I mean I’m good at lighting and shooting them, but the posing and handling part I just don’t feel 100% confident in.  In fact, after EVERY newborn session I swear that I’m not going too book another one until I take a newborn workshop! But then, some time passes and I get a little amnesia and get excited about the challenge again and I cave.

So, there I was with three newborn sessions, each more difficult than the one before. But then I realized I was using the same techniques to try to salvage what I could from the shoots and that those techniques might be useful/helpful to anyone else who is photographing a less than perfect sleeper!

First, what follows is assuming you are employing all the BASIC techniques of newborn photography including keeping the room as close to 90 degrees as possible, using some sort of white noise app, making sure blankets and surfaces are warm before placing baby on them etc.  What I’m talking about here is when you are doing everything “by the book” and it’s STILL not going well -what can you do to make sure you get enough variety for a gallery?

1) Swaddle. Duh, you knew this already right?  But, there’s a twist.. I find that the types of fabrics that I was using to swaddle sleeping newborns to be completely inadequate for swaddling awake babies that are moving their arms and legs and tend to break free much too easily from any fabric with slip.. so I went out recently to BRU and bought some semi-attractive looking regular type of receiving blankets for this purpose.  Before my next session, I’m going to order these stretchy knit scarves from Van Klee instead.

2) Move to the parent shots. I find that even fussy babies are usually OK with doing parent shots for at least as long as it takes to fire off a few frames!

And, if not, see #1! During the session above, I only BRIEFLY shot this image before baby lost it. So we fed him, tried to come back later but he still wasn’t having any of it, so as a last resort we swaddled him for the family shot:

3) Staying on the topic of parent shots for a second, there is one pose in particular that I find can usually be achieved even when baby is not sleeping or even that calm, partly because you can’t see baby’s face that well, but also because the frog-like leg position and hand around baby’s head like this keeps the baby well contained even when awake. Plus, often the interest of looking into their parents’ faces will hold their attention long enough to get them to calm down a bit:

This baby was also pretty fussy when this shot was taken:

4)  Enlist one of the parents to help you hold the blanket up vs. having it clipped to a stand.  This is something I recently started doing and it has made a world of difference in how free I am to rotate the beanbag’s angle towards the window to get my lighting just how I want it.  But as it pertains to a difficult session, this will also allow you more freedom to shoot the same pose from different angles.  For example, after this shot:

I tried pulling him up over the “bump” I had created in the blankets expecting him to keep his head angled the same way, but then he turned it.  Instead of trying to make his head turn the way it had been (and risking him waking up in protest!)  I rotated my whole beanbag so that his body was no longer at a 45 degree angle but instead at a 90 degree angle from the window.

I can’t tell you how much this freedom from “blanket clipping” has helped me with getting more optimal light and angles throughout my newborn shoots!

5)  Shoot the details. When you REALLY are struggling to get the requisite number of shots, details shots will add some much needed variety:

It’s not just a gimmick either, parents LOVE these shots! The mom told me that this smooshy lip thing he’s doing is his signature move, so you can BET that’s something the parents want to remember!

6) Accessorize Accessorize Accessorize.  Often, I end up getting 90% of the shots from a session during one 15 minute stretch of REALLY deep sleep.  When that happens, I will literally switch out hats and bows like a mad woman trying to get some variety before I risk a bigger move like changing blankets.  This little guy REALLY gave us a run for our money until literally the LAST 10 minutes of the shoot when he finally feel into a super deep sleep.. so once we got him in the bucket I just changed up the hats and kept shooting!

7) Prioritize. I always set expectations with the parents that we may not get through all the shots they want, so I ask them what is MOST important to them and shoot that first. I had one client that REALLY wanted a swaddled shot. Normally I swaddle when baby isn’t cooperating as a plan B, but it was so important to her that we actually swaddled this little girl even though she was deeply sleeping:

If left to me, I always assume that baby on blanket and baby with parents are most important, but sometimes the parents have other ideas (they might want that prop shot more!) so it’s ALWAYS a good idea to ask!

8) Don’t be too hard on yourself, you probably have more than enough.  The second to last newborn I did was my hardest one EVER. I seriously could not move her fingers without her waking up screaming. By the end of the session we were all a little stressed out and I was just really down about it.  But then I realized that the shots we did get were great.  In fact, this is one of my favorite newborn images I’ve ever taken:

And in the end, even though we didn’t have enough variety for say a huge album, we had covered all our bases.  We had some beautiful wide awake swaddled shots, a few full body shots as above, a shot of the whole family and a shot of mom with baby and dad with baby.  Honestly, that’s plenty to choose from when it comes to the parents ordering products.. often times parents order  multiple copies of their favorite one or two shots anyway, and all it takes is ONE great shot printed on a large canvas to make an impressive statement:

Or just the three parent/family shots to make a fantastic grouping:

And two are all you really need for a beautiful birth announcement!

So while you may be beating yourself up about the lack of variety,  you are probably the only one. The parents were there -they KNOW how difficult the session was and they are most likely just incredibly grateful that you were able to get ANY wonderful shots and will be pleasantly surprised!  That’s how this family was – in the end we laughed about it, they got what they needed and everyone was happy.

Hopefully all your newborns are good sleepers and you won’t ever need any of the tips above. If so, you are luckier and probably better at handling babies than I am :)

Filed under: Uncategorized by ariana
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CD3, first day of meds for IVF cycle

At my parents’ new year’s eve party Jasper told my friend Janaki  “Mommy hasn’t gotten me a baby sister yet. It’s very hard to do.”

Yes baby, it is.

Filed under: IVF, infertility by ariana
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Adobe announced the release of a Lightroom 4 public beta today, it’s free to download from Adobe Labs.

I was lucky enough to get to take a peak at it pre-release and here are my top five highlights that I took away from that quick look:

1 ) Major changes to the develop module including a complete rethink of the local adjustments in the way highlights and shadows are handled. The adjustments are much easier to make independently of one another and there is no more confusion as to what is the difference between increasing exposure vs brightness etc.

There is also the ability now to do LOCAL noise reduction!

2) Support for light video editing and playback! This includes jpg capturing, trimming (thank god), exposure, WB controls and more! Here is a little list of what develop adjustments you can make to video clips:

Unfortunately, much to my disappointment the ability to add video to the slideshow module is NOT included in this release.

3) A LOT of geotagging functionality so that organizing your photos by place taken is a snap. Tagging can be done after the fact via an easy to use drag and drop interface in the new “MAP” module.

4) A NEW “ALBUM” MODULE! Yep, a whole module devoted to creating albums with text, images, tons of different layouts and the ability to save them by project! Yipee!  There is also an automatic send to blurb functionality for those of you who are blurb fans.

5) Soft proofing. WE will actually be able to see what our images look like in sRGB BEFORE opening them up in Photoshop – no more nasty blown red channel surprises :) There are other uses for softproofing, that was just the one that jumped out at me as most useful for pro photogs.

But don’t just take my word for it, go get yourself a free copy: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom4/

I’ll be back too in the coming days with more thoughts once I’ve had a chance to download and play for a bit!

Filed under: lightroom by ariana
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I hate when Jeff travels. Unfortunately, he does so a lot, usually from 10-14 days at a time and it sucks. I seriously do not know how single moms, military wives, widows or any one else having to care for a child alone gets through the day let alone 18 years.

During the work week, it’s not THAT bad, particularly now that we’ve stopped letting daycare put him down for a nap – he’s asleep by 8:30pm which is a HUGE improvement over the 10:30 bedtimes we were dealing with. But the weekends are a bit rough, particularly because I haven’t been feeling that well since Jeff gave me whatever mysterious illness he was harboring before he hopped on the plane (thanks babe!)

Keep in mind too that everything I’m about to complain about is compounded by the fact that Jasper does not listen to a word I say so that EVERY task, no matter how small and mundane becomes a battle of epic proportions. Sometimes just getting him to GET IN HIS CARSEAT can send me over the edge. In fact, I’m quite sure that our neighbors will be calling CPS to investigate us at any moment based on the fact that I am constantly yelling at him to GET IN THE CAR NOW as he stops to turn on a map light, pick up whatever random toy he threw on the car floor the day before, pretend “fall” and yet a million other stall tactics designed to drive me insane during this task that we have to repeat at least 5 times a day.

I think this pictures pretty much sums up the stage he’s in at the moment:

Also add to the backdrop of it all the fact that he asks me “Mommy can you play with me?” every second of every day. Literally, I could be getting dressed, shirt over my head, in the bathroom brushing my teeth, in the kitchen cooking breakfast- any one of a multitude of tasks which quite obviously make it impossible for me to in fact stop what I am doing and play.  And yes I know that it’s SO sweet that he’s at an age where he actually desperately wants to spend time with me – but damn it would be nice if he could entertain himself for more than .5 seconds! And then there’s the guilt too that comes with saying no, I can NOT play with you right now all the time.

So the stage has been set, here is just a little recap of the actual events of the weekend:

Yesterday I had a sales session in the morning that my parents thankfully babysat for, but  didn’t really have much planned for the rest of the day (we had a playdate that got canceled) so I took him to Target to shop for the three birthday parties we have coming up this week.  I know you are shaking your head wondering what I was thinking bringing the 3 year old with me to buy toys for OTHER children, but remember I didn’t really have the option of leaving him home (see the husband is away bit!)

I ALMOST managed to put the toys in the cart without him quite realizing what was going on, but, because he insisted on sitting in the basket part of the cart I had the toys sort of leaning on the handle bars so of course he spotted the Play doh ice cream set and his eyes got HUGE and he said “Mommy is that for ME???!” in a voice so genuinely excited and full of anticipation that I could not NOT get him one of his own. Sigh.

Oh well, at least a new toy would provide some much needed distraction.  I also picked up a robe for him because that’s his other new thing – even though our old drafty house is FREEZING to all other normal humanoids, somehow Jasper finds the constant need to take his sweaters and socks off.

Channeling Hugh and demonstrating his new and oft used sulky face:

Playing with his new guilt-gift play doh set:

After play-doh he wanted to watch a movie but he needed a bath, cue the “I don’t want to get into the bath / I won’t get OUT of the bath” routine:

At some point that night I developed a migraine-like nausea inducing headache, and then this morning I woke up with a stomach ache that lasted all day.  Had Jeff been here I would have definitely sent him with the kid and the present to the birthday party we had scheduled at 10:30, but instead I dragged my ass into the shower, fed the child (no, I don’t WANT scrambled eggs!) wrapped the gift (melt down because I didn’t let him do the actual wrapping) and headed off to Wee Play.

But not before I grabbed Jasper and quietly and purposefully held his hand, looked him in the eye and told him that mommy really wasn’t feeling well and that I needed him to PLEASE help me by listening, getting his coat on without a fight and into the carseat without giving me a hard time.   This approach used to work, but aparantly not anymore because literally seconds after our little “conversation” he was playing a game he made up that consisted of him refusing to put his arms into his jacket (wow, FUN!)

Finally we make it to wee-play and it’s a much needed time-killer. He has a blast on the big kid giant climber and made it to the truck at the tippy top with no fear:

But apparently the giant corkscrew tube slide was too dark and scary because I had to climb up it three times to rescue him.

I’ve only ever been to Wee play when it was PACKED, teaming with kids, but I guess I’d never been there before at naptime because by 1pm it was a ghost town.. apparently I’m the only one lucky enough to have a child who is impervious to the need for sleep.  We stuck around until about 3 before we headed home because I was feeling so bad I thought I was going to die. I counted the minutes until my parents got home from their errands and we could go over there for dinner. I had hoped that dinner was going to be more than just us literally eating (we can do that at home, it’s really a break that I need!) but they didn’t get home until after 6pm and I really want him in bed reading books by 8pm on nights when he doesn’t nap. It was a quick visit but Jasper did manage to get in a little bit of playtime with Pop-pop before we left:

So we finally get home, I throw a load of laundry in, get his milk and water ready for bedtime and am about to come upstairs when Jasper tells me that Sammy (our 17 year old deaf, blind and incontinent dog) is falling down the stairs.

I put everything I’m carrying down and pick her up to put her outside and she literally PEES ALL OVER ME as well as a good deal of the stairs, carpet and wood floor that I put her down on once I realized what was happening.

At this point, something just snapped inside my brain and I let out a strangled sounding scream of frustration, which apparently really freaked Jasper out because he started bawling. So now, I’m covered in pee, the floor is covered in pee, my child is wailing, I’m feeling like the world’s worst mom and it’s now almost 8:30 and we haven’t even STARTED the whole bedtime process.

The scary thing is that the REAL fun hasn’t even begun yet: I go off the pill tonight to start our IVF cycle, so at some point this week I get to start the whole trying to get to the fertility clinic in time for monitoring routine.  And if it works? I’ll have these wonderful business trips of Jeff’s to look forward to with TWO babies and an incontinent geriatric dog to care for on my own.. yippee!!!

Filed under: Rant, parenting by ariana
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A while back Jasper had some uh, “issues” whereby he wouldn’t poop for DAYS and then when he finally did it was so big and hard that on several occasions (and I apologize for the bad visual but) it WOULD NOT FLUSH. I’m not even kidding.

It got so bad at one point that we had to do the glycerin suppository thing, at which juncture I realized that we HAD to figure out a way to get this kid to eat more vegetables.

He’s not ENTIRELY opposed to vegetables, like he will take a bite or two of broccoli or cauliflower, loves cucumbers red peppers and cherry tomatoes, but that’s where it ends and it clearly wasn’t enough.

That’s when I started hearing about Plum Baby Organic “Mashups” from a few different sources.

My friend Ami had been giving them to her three-year old daughter and suggested them to me, but I didn’t see them in the health food store I frequent and never followed up. Then, coincidentally, my mom who has been working doing demos of different products in health-food-stores ended up demoing the same products and I finally got one for Jasper to try, the Plum Baby Spinach, Pear & Peas Mashup.

It was love at first bite (or suck, or squirt?) and since I knew no one would actually believe me that he goes NUTS over these things, here is the video proof:

He usually requests seconds or thirds!

The only downside (as my friend Ami warned me) is that at your local store these can run you $2+ each..which is fine for an ocassional snack, but Jasper eats A LOT of them. So I was thrilled to discover that you can get them on Amazon’s subscription service and then they only come to just over a dollar each AND delivered to your doorstep. Love it!

Obviously, you might want to try ONE first before ordering a case of 24 to see if your kid likes them. If so, they are in the baby food aisle of your local health food store, not the freezer section where I had been looking for them (my only prior experience with premade baby food was the frozen kind!).

In fact, you will find several different flavors by several different manufacturers. Let me warn you though that they are NOT all created equal..

After the enthusiastic reception from Jasper for the Spinach flavor I bough some of the Happy Baby brand Mashups when my health-food store was out of the spinach. He HATED them. I tasted them too and I have to agree with him, they just did not taste good. Whereas the spinach one tastes vaguely like a not-so-sweet applesauce, the Happy Baby one I tried was just bitter.  I feel bad posting that because I like Happy Baby as a company and Jasper loved their infant food (the frozen kind) but I have to be honest and tell you that the mashups were NOT yummy.

Let me also state that I am aware that it is FAR preferable that your kids eat their daily servings of fruits and vegetables from FRESH sources – if for no other reason than training their palate (yadda yadda yadda) and if your toddler’s favorite food is fresh kale or dandelion greens then god bless you!

But for the rest of us, I’m so happy that there is a way to get a few servings of something other than yet another variation of  wheat or  cheese into our children’s daily diets!

Filed under: product reviews, solids, toddlers by ariana
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