8 weeks and baby gear

Happy birthday to Piper! She's 8 weeks old today, and as I told my husband last night, I feel like I have loved her forever. She is such a joy and we are beyond lucky. This is an old pic, but it's still one of my favorites. I love it when she makes this face - of course it's usually right after she just went to the bathroom, but whatever, it's still cute :-)

I wanted to do a post about my favorite baby gear, but I think I'm going to limit it to my two favorites for now because there are two that jump WAY out to the front of my favorites line. I will say, there is SO much baby gear out there that for first time moms it can be pretty overwhelming. I remember the first time I went into Babies R Us, I thought I was going to have a panic attack. Baby stuff EVERYWHERE and I didn't know what half of it did. Reid and I were both on the same page and wanted to be pretty streamlined in terms of the gear that we had. I'm still surprised by how much stuff is now in our house, but we have what are the necessities for us. Obviously every family is different, but what we have works for us. And I'll give huge props to Baby Bargains - a must have book if you're feeling overwhelmed and don't want to go overboard.

Probably my two favorite items are the Boppy Pillow for nursing and then the Baby Bjorn (the Active style). With how much time I spend nursing, I can't imagine trying to hold Piper up to my chest the entire time. I have a hard enough time getting comfortable while nursing - my back and I have definitely had to learn how to nurse so that I don't end up in pain! And then the Baby Bjorn is a life saver. Piper loves to be in it and it's extraordinarily comfortable. I wear it while she's gassy (it helps for her to be vertical), while I'm doing housework, on walks around the neighborhood, shopping ... the list goes on and on. And it's so easy to adjust so it can go between Reid and I with no issue. I've heard that the regular one can be a bit tough on the back after a while, but the active is fantastic. I recommend it to everyone!

Following up on my Fat Post, the sports bras that a friend recommended to me arrived today from Title Nine . Apparently they really prevent bouncing in big breasted women ... I hope so! I ordered the Frog Bra and the Last Resort bra. The Last Resort was definitely pricey ($60), while the Frog Bra was pretty reasonable ($33). I'm hoping the Frog Bra is great and that I don't need the Last Resort, but either way, I'm hoping that heavy duty sports bras will soon be on my list of favorite gear as well. I will say that I wore pre-pregnancy jeans this weekend and it was nice to get them on. The footnote here is that they were tight and I had to wear my Bella Band so that I didn't have to button them, but with fall on the way, I'm happy to not have to buy new jeans!