As well as water and milk, Rooibos tea has become a staple drink for my fourteen-month-old daughter. She has it with breakfast, lunch and dinner and thinks it’s DElicious. Rooibos, more commonly known as ‘Redbush’ in the UK – a direct translation from the Afrikaans “Rooibos” (pronounced Roy-Boss) – is a flowering shrub that grows in the Cedarberg mountain region in South Africa’s Western Cape, about 250 km north of Cape Town, and is thus popular in the region of southern Africa. Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote a post a couple of months ago I wrote an article entitled 
My baby started with a patch of 
Colic is commonly perceived as an incurable, illusive illness that plagues small babies and sends parents into a deep, dark pit of desperation. The aforementioned view is both true and false; colic is not an illness and although it often can be extremely stressful for parents and uncomfortable for babies, there are ways to manage the condition. 
The verdict on my Tommeee Tippee breast pump is in: it’s awesome. Why? Because it makes expressing milk as non-weird, convenient, quick and painless as possible. I decided as soon as I fell pregnant that I was going to breast feed and that my lifestyle would demand that I express milk – a thought that completely grossed me out. I am not keen on the whole idea of milking myself like. I am no bovine. I knew that expressing by hand was a big no-no and even expressing manually with some sort of device was out of the question for me. So it had to be an electric breast pump that would allow me to maintain some semblance of a social life with my newborn. I purchased a Tommee Tippee breast pump because it was the one on special when I went pump hunting. And the decision paid off. Expressing takes little concentration and effort and I usually do it in the company of BBC iPlayer to alleviate boredom. So thanks Tommee Tippee for a great device that has helped me maintain some independence as a new mom.
It’s quick. It’s easy. It’s healthy. And it’s yum yum yummy. As the new parents of a wriggling, guzzling, wailing newborn, 
I remember a friend telling me of a vision she had as she was bringing her new born son home from the hospital: masses and masses of mounds of nappies … nappies that are not biodegradable but just hang around for years and years. She told me that the guilt she felt was insurmountable before she had even committed the unforgivable act of using disposable nappies in place of the ‘towlies’ that all of our parents used. 
My non-pregnant best friend keeps nagging me to show her my breast pump. Lurking beneath the inquisitive nature of the request is the undoubted desire to mock. The whole notion of a breast pump is rather bovine – the use of a contraption to extract milk … it’s bizarre. Info everywhere says that breastfeeding is the best. I am keen to try it and it’s a cheaper alternative to formula. This being my choice, I have acquired a breast pump so that I can retain a semblance of a life after my baby girl is born. So while I spend the money that I would have spent on formula on financing gigs and babysitters – my baby will feed away happily on mom’s milk from her bottle; I’m happy and baby is healthy (assuming, of course, that breastfeeding and breast pumping are skills that I am able to master). 
