Breast Milk and Pump

When Ojas was born, Dixa started breastfeeding him. We could never get him in a good position to get a good latch on. Ojas got frustrated because milk would not come and he tried to suck harder making Dixa all sore and chapped. We were so overwhelmed with the baby that we didn't try too hard and took an easy route of breast pump.

The good nurses at Hoag hospital provided a Medela Symphony Breast Pump. This hospital grade pump costs approximately $1400. This pump has an intelligent mechanism that simulates the baby suction. The pump starts slow and then increases the speed smoothly without hurting.

Dixa and baby, both loved this method. Dixa could pump the milk in the bottles and sleep on her schedule. I could feed the baby at night without waking Dixa up. Baby found it easier to drink from the bottle and would drink more without working too hard.

When our hospital stay was over, we decided to rent the same pump. The Hoag Hospital had the pump rental facility that was renting the pump for $80 per month. I asked at Babies R Us Rental Program, and they had the same price.


Then I found an online service that lists the Breastfeeding specialist licensed by the Breastfeeding National Network (BNN). This service allows you to enter the zip code and finds all the specialists near you. I started calling them one by one about the breast pump rental. Most of them had a rental program. I found the one close to my home which cost me $60 per month. We got the pump & have been using it for 8 months now. No complaints.

When Ojas was 30 days old we decided to go to Las Vegas. As we were driving, Dixa couldn't use the pump for long stretches of time and baby had to partly feed on an infant formula. Thankfully Ojas didn't mind the taste of the formula. But it was bad for Dixa's health to not to take the milk out.

We started searching for a battery operated pump that could be used while traveling. We looked at many of them and finally zeroed in on the miPump from Learning Curve. This portable pump had an option of using batteries and cost only $59. This pump doesn’t make too much noise and we even used it on a plane without much trouble.

Academic success of a child

Today I read an interesting article in NY Times. This article tries to explain the reason behind academic success of Asian Americans, Jews and West-Indian blacks in United States.

"Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College."

"...Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole."

"West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher."

The reason behind their success?

1. Encourage basic practices as talking to children. (Continuously talk to children)
2. Hard work.
3. Parents taking active interest in the education of a child.

Sounds like common-sense to me. I remember reading another article that gives exact number of hours of hard word required to become genius. I will try to find that article and post it on this blog.

How to teach a child to argue (Link)

I came across this beautiful article about teaching kids to argue using ancient Greek rhetoric.

http://www.figarospeech.com/teach-a-kid-to-argue/

Buying a stroller

During 9th month of pregnancy we decided to buy a stroller. Our friends recommended a travel system or 3-in-one system. From wikipedia:
"Travel systems typically is a set consisting of a chassis with a detachable baby seat and/or carrycot. Thus a travel system can be switched between a pushchair and a pram. Another benefit of a travel system is that the detached chassis (generally an umbrella closing chassis) when folded will usually be smaller than other types, to transport it in car trunk...."

The travel systems were invented to move sleeping baby from a car seat to the stroller without waking the baby. We liked this idea and we started looking for one. Now I really wanted to buy a real fancy Bugaboo stroller.
But the price tag of $700+ was little too much for us. Our second preference was to get a decent Chicco or Graco brand of stroller.
A salesperson in Babies-R-Us suggested to buy a heavy and stable stroller.

After some internet research we zeroed in on 'Graco Morocco Travel System'. With the price tag of under $250, and some great internet reviews made the decision easy for us.


We have been using it for 6 months now and we are mostly happy with our purchase. The stroller looks cool, is very sturdy and is shockproof.
The only problem is it's weight. The stroller weighs 23.5 lbs. It is kind of heavy for Dixa to move it up and down the stairs from our first floor apartment.

Then we decided to get another very lightweight stroller as a quick carrier of a car seat. We got a 'Baby Trend Snap-N-Go Stroller'. Weighing only 12 pounds this stroller is awesome for quick tasks.

For jogs in the park and long walks we still use Morocco.

Baby Food

Dr. Downes recommended solid foods for Ojas last month. We started with Gerber rice food.

We got him on his infant sitter chair and tried the food.

After initial tries we found that the best way is to hold his hands and encourage him to open his mouth by talking to him. By the time we finished, most of the food was on Ojas's cloths, under the skin folds of his chin, Dixa's hands and everywhere on the bed.

Thankfully he seemed to like whatever little we could get inside his mouth.

Things are little better now. Dixa makes some yummy yellow food receipes for the baby. She has tried Carrots, Bananas, Sweet Potato so far. In a good mood, Ojas finishes most of it.

Our baby seems to share our love of 'hotel food'. He absolutely loves the Gerber ready-made carrots. We gave it to him when we were traveling in east coast.