While I do love gender-neutral baby gear, there’s something really sweet about these pretty slings (that my husband would not wear) from independent seamstress Brittan Hlista, owner and designer of upa-lala. I’m thinking when your base layer is a tshirt and dull-from-too-many-washings yoga pants, these vibrant patterns could really distract the eye!

(Note to sling-makers of the world: We need to see newborn mama models with bigger post-pregnancy tummies, please! Or maybe she’s an adoptive mom?)

Regardless, aren’t these lovely?

(Also, rest assured that these slings comply with baby carrier safety standards governed by the Baby Carrier Industry Alliance.)

Brittan also makes eco-friendly waterproof snack bags and drawstring backpacks in bright fabrics.

Find the giveaway after the jump.

Browse the upa-lala website to see the whole product assortment. Really cute stuff!

Use the LIKE button on the product detail page to give your favorites a thumbs up, and then let us know which pattern you Liked. Enter your comment below.

On Wednesday, February 1, 2012, I will select a winner at random, per our giveaway rules, to win a sling and a reusable bag. One entry per adult human please.

P.S. “Upa”, or even cuter, “Upalala” is what little kids say in Argentina when they raise their arms up to be carried.

Is it already time to flashback to Sawyer as a baby? Well, he is just over nineteen weeks now so we can at least review the first quarter of his babydom.

According to my own bossyness, we should have completed all thirteen of the rookie moms weekly challenges within his fourth trimester, right? So, let’s see how we did!

1. Pretend you’re in Europe — I totally did this. Before I could sit (let alone sit and enjoy coffee), Sawyer and I walked to our neighborhood cafe. Extra whipped cream on everything please. Supporting evidence in foursquare. It counts.
2. Grab a buddy to go on a recon mission. Check. Well, I’m counting some of my previous experience as a mom-friendly nutjob always on the hunt for new and secret places to nurse and change a diaper.
3. Join or start a new mom’s group. Kinda sorta. This warrants a whole ‘nother post on whether or not I even want new friends these days. I *do* want some people in a similar boat to kvetch about sleep and swaddles, boobs and bottles. Stay tuned.
4. Visit a fabric store with your sidekick. YES! And I have been there a few times. Lucky me, the fabric outlet that I had never even been to before is a short walk in a baby carrier away. I loaded up the carrier with Sawyer and hand sanitizer; shoved my wallet and phone in my pockets; and came back with a small bag of material for various projects (that I assigned to other people to do for me).
5. Go to the grocery store for just one thing. Sadly, yes. And I still felt insecure and like I needed the practice.
6. Paint your baby’s feet for posterity. OMG, so cute! Alec and I did this right before his paternity leave ended. {sorry this photo looks like crap, I think I just broke iPhoto so bear with me!}
7. Take a postnatal yoga class, with your baby. No. I will accept this as my first failing. But in my defense, Sawyer and I did take an ass-kicking bootcamp class for seven weeks starting when he was 12 weeks old. Booyah!
8. Get a pedicure. Of course.
9. Go to a mom and baby movie. So much. Sawyer has seen several (high- and low-) quality films in his young life: Harold and Kumar Christmas, Moneyball, Our Idiot Brother, 50/50, Footloose, Alvin and the Chipmunks Chipwrecked, and A Dolphin Tale (with me, Sawyer, and Milo sharing a seat when we were the only ones in the theater).
10. Plan a mom’s night out. Yes, because of my awesome husband who is unafraid of putting three kids to bed.
11. Visit a friend or spouse at work. Yes. Sawyer and I nervously visited Alec at work. All was well except for the screaming in the mega-van on the return home.
12. Enjoy modern art. Okay, we didn’t exactly go to an art museum, but I did bring the little guy to the Air and Space Museum in DC. And it kind of sucked. I’m counting it.
13. Make a Modern Family photo. I did take a funny picture-in-picture picture (see above) but I did not have the skills to make it fancy. Nor did I actually leave the house! Fail, with flourish.

I’m going to grade myself pretty highly for tackling the first quarter of rookie mom challenges with my little sidekick. We were certainly living up to the spirit of the list — even if I regularly complain that my baby isn’t very portable and want Whitney to come to my house so I’m always near that beloved baby swing.

Is anyone else doing our weekly challenges? How’s it going for you?

When my second son was born, I flirted with sewing to create this Moby-style baby wrap (AKA the “fauxby”) to keep little Milo super close. It is the snugliest baby carrier that I’ve ever had.

My mom helped me to hem the edges. Once I saw how legitimately simple it was, I made another two on my own.

Ingredients:

• Muslin fabric, 5 yards (one long piece will usually yield two wraps. Protip: get the lady in the store to cut it for you!)
• A patch made from another material.
• Thread in your sewing machine.

Steps:

1. Cut the fabric in half lengthwise so it is 20 inches wide and 5 yards long
2. Iron, pin, then hem the edges.
3. Adhere your patch to the middle of the wrap so you can easily find it by feel.

Too lazy to sew the edges? Buy a knit fabric that has some stretch. The ends will look raw, but they will not unravel. This is sort of a flashdance-style wrap. Look for 5% spandex or lycra and 95% cotton. You’ll need 5 yards, and the width will be 42 inches. Fold it in half and cut along the fold.

Whitney laid it out for me in her kitchen this morning and took this picture.

Wondering how to wear it? I experimented a bit before I asked the woman at our local baby gear shop to fit me properly. It was a relief to have a pro install Milo for me. Maybe this video will help you.

Wanna just buy one? Voila, le moby wrap on amazon.

Related links:
Rookie Mom Challenge: Go to the fabric store
Wrap your baby and stay warm

Our guest blogger today, Johanna, caught our eye when she wrote this kind post on her blog crushed corn. Her baby boy is one week older than Sawyer so I find her experience familiar and encouraging.

Car seat installed and ready for its first occupant? Check. Nursery set for a crying baby, poopy diapers, and armfuls of pee-soaked onesies? Roger that. A strong enough sense of self to withstand the needs of a newborn, a cluttered house, a needy dog, and a husband going to work and school full-time? I don’t remember that being on my pregnancy checklist.

So much of the preparation involved in welcoming a newborn into your home is focused on the stuff – it’s almost too easy to lose sight of yourself in the process.

After seven weeks my baby and I have stopped exchanging suspicious glances in exchange for googly eyes, and breastfeeding doesn’t reduce me to the whimpering mess it once did. But ask me what I want for dinner or watch as I stare blankly into my dresser drawers and you’ll notice that something is off – I’ve forgotten how to make decisions for myself. In less than two months my brain has been staunchly rewired; all circuits once devoted to making decisions for myself have now been plugged into a big, blazing marquee blinking “Baby! Baby! Baby!” around the clock.

With so many rerouted circuits I have become a new me, a new mom, and a stranger to myself. The first time I got behind the wheel after giving birth sans baby it felt like I had never driven before. I even wondered at the prudence of being on the road for the two miles it took to get to McDonald’s. Many of the things that once defined my existence – going to work, hitting the gym, having a few consequence-free drinks – were no longer part of it. I began to realize that the sooner I accepted that fact, the sooner I could get to know my new self without so heavily mourning the loss of my previous life.

• By month one: Get a new haircut (I have failed and continue to fail the completion of that task)
• By month three: Have a back-to-work wardrobe I feel good in
• By month five: Get a babysitter and go out with my husband for some guilt-free drinks
• By month seven: Buy something completely indulgent for myself and not feel bad about it (finances are going to be a little tight with daycare, so I’m giving this goal some time)
• By month ten: Be able to call myself a mother without thinking twice about it
• Within a year: Run a marathon (or at least a half-marathon.  If Amber Miller can do it while pregnant, I can do it after giving birth!)

I’m excited about who the new me is and who she can become. Having a baby is a perfect reason for reinvention, and I fully intend to take advantage of this maternal clean slate. I may have been a pushover, timid, and introverted in my past life, but I will happily become more aggressive and extroverted in this for the sake of my baby. New mamas we will persevere, and I’m willing to bet that we will be stronger, wiser, and more mommier than before that beautiful baby came along. At least that’s what I’m hoping for myself.

Johanna lives in Madison, WI with her husband, brand new baby boy, and his big brother – a yellow lab named Blue.  She is a full-time office monkey by day and an aspiring writer by night.  You can follow her trials and tribulations as a new mom here, or view more of her work here.

Whitney passed along this mama tip to me and now I’m telling you; if your baby is starting to skip that 10pm feeding and you want to stretch those sleeping hours to ones that are more convenient, try the dream feed. She says it didn’t work for them, but we used the dream feed technique for several months (on two different babies) and are ready to try it again.

Pssst, the Baby Whisperer also recommends it if her word is worth more to you.

Now, it takes a very steady hand and I never tried it myself because I had the lucky job of pumping during feeding time (consequently, Alec is the pro in our house) but here’s the deal:

1. Warm the bottle
2. Feed the baby while he sleeps — you don’t even have to rouse him from the crib
3. Now, you go to bed and enjoy the extra ZZZZ’s

Basically, the sucking reflex is so strong that Holden could down a 4 oz bottle (and later almost 6 oz!) while still sleeping. I think Alec played video games on his phone with his free hand.

I hear that some people are able to do a full-on nursing session without waking the baby this way.

Please help our anonymous guest poster with your compassion and suggestions!

Nursing mom picture via flickr christyscherrer

I can only talk about this if I’m wearing two breast pads on each side. My three-week old baby has nursed for more than a cumulative seventy-five hours so far and still has NOT regained his way back to his birth weight. WTF?! He is still about nine ounces down. C’mon kid.

My pediatrician recommended that we introduce two bottles of formula per day to help him beef up a bit. She suggested that I take a break while this bottle is going down (you know, sleeping, jet-skiing, shopping, whatever we worried moms like to do). I greatly appreciate her advice, but I want to know how to maintain and increase my breastmilk supply if I’m already dropping feedings. Help!

I have quite a bit of breastfeeding experience under my belt nursing bra already: I have nursed other floppy newborns; eleven-month olds who can also eat and drink other stuff; six-month olds with no attention span. I have done dream feeds with formula and breast milk combinations as well as pumped in dingy supply closets and on airplanes.

Even with all this experience, I’m feeling lost. Perhaps it’s the post-partum hormones or the sleep-deprivation, but I cannot figure out the rhythm of inserting these bottle feeds without experiencing massive engorgement. And if I spend the bottle feeding session, currently conducted by my superdad husband, with the pump, how do I achieve that “break” I’m supposed to be taking?

Who wants to make me this sling and teach me how to use it? Based on these simple instructions, I’m pretty sure that I could sew a simple baby sling.

Baby is sleeping in the My Karma Sling (pattern)

According to the directions, all you need to make a “peanut shell” style sling is two yards of fabric and stuff that’s already in my little-used sewing box (like scissors, thread, needles, sewing machine, and an iron). Another simple set of sling instructions is on Instructables.com with photos.

As long as I had a helper like Whitney or my husband, I know I could handle the sewing. But who will teach me and Sawyer how to wear it?

Put away the maternity pants and take yourself out to Old Navy to get some interim jeans to make you feel normal. Go with a girlfriend you trust. Don’t look at the size, just find something flattering and comfortable.

DO NOT THINK ABOUT OR TALK ABOUT THE WEIGHT YOU ARE GOING TO LOSE IN THE FUTURE. Buy jeans to wear this week. When the day comes, you can put these in storage for the next time around, give them to a friend who is a few months behind you, or wear them when you paint that mural you’ve been talking about.

Related rant: Is that #3 in there?!

This is our 35th-ish (I’ve lost count!) weekly challenge for rookie moms. Not relevant to you right now? Choose a different challenge.

photo: Bethan on flickr.

Taking the baby in the pool is both scary and funny.

A kid’s gotta stick his toe into the water at some point, right?

Baby Anneliese is having a blast with Erin

Buy a package of disposable swim diapers or a reusable one, and plan your outing. This is our 27th rookie mom challenge.

If you are alone, think carefully through the logistics of how you are going to change your clothes, change baby, get in the pool, get out of the pool, get on dry stuff and get back in the car. You are not as smart as you used to be and you will probably mess up part of this process and end up walking out to your car in just a bra and towel holding your baby in one arm and a diaper between your teeth. Let me just help you out: Take your stroller with you into the dressing room. That way you have someplace to put the baby, towels, wet bathing suits and diaper bag while you get dry yourself.

This is also a fun activity with a very pregnant friend.

Do you plan to take your baby into the pool this summer? Have you done it already?

When we have new babies in our lives, it’s easy to go into a self-imposed exile or quarantine, reading only sleep habits books and looking only at the baby. Of course, Whitney and I think that mama needs to leave the house and thus this site was born.

I read the story of how Vicky took her 6 week old daughter, Caitlin, to a bachelorette party at a casino and nodded with recognition (I flew from SFO to Chicago to attend one of my bff’s weddings when Holden was 3 weeks old, so I’m a little crazy). Her amazingly supportive husband, Dave, hung out with the bambino in one of the party rooms so that Vicky could go back and forth between the party and the breastfeeding.

Oh yeah, I would have done that. Maybe it’s awesome, or maybe it’s terrible, but if you don’t even try to go to your best friend’s party, won’t you always wish you did?

Read the logistics and details at SecretMomThoughts post “adventures.” Next time, Vicky, take a picture of you being all wild and not just baby and daddy hanging out.

What are some of the crazy places y’all have taken your infants? Any pregnant mamas with grandiose plans?

Related post: Play poker with your baby

Your 26th weekly challenge is to invest in a pedometer and aim for 10,000 steps each day. You’ll be surprised how many steps a mom can take just running around the house, but if you’re going to reach 10,000, you’ll need to take a walk outside for sure. This is good motivation to get some fresh air.

Both Whitney and I enjoy tracking things and counting steps has been an on and off obsession over the past years. One day, I called her and said something ridiculous like, “I hope you don’t want to do anything with me before Baby Brigade because I walked 17,000 steps today so I’ll be on the couch.” Being in the middle of my maternity leave, I thought this was a totally normal thing to say.

Whit recommends the Omron pedometer (pictured above, only about $17) because it has a memory function that lets you look at the past 7 days worth of data. Additionally, it tracks both your total daily steps and your aerobic steps, or those that were part of a 10 minute or more walk. I’ve also amped up the geekery with the Nintendo DS pedometer nugget. No DS? No problem. Advanced geekery and insight into your daily activity level with the fancy fitbit (for about $99, it tracks calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep quality). More fun with data!

Do you, would you, could you count your steps?! Let us know we’re not alone!

If you are like I was, by the time my baby was 10 weeks old, I had not exercised for about 6 months. Baby Bootcamp was my re-introduction to sweating and I loved it. I am not a gym-goer in my normal life, and Baby Bootcamp was perfect for me. Here’s why:

1. Exercising in the company of other sleep-deprived, temporarily overweight, leaky-breasted women is more fun.
2. It was no problem that I walked the course rather than ran it much of the time. I had many excuses lined up for not running (all of which are somewhat valid and mostly shared by other participants).
3. Stopping to deal with my fussy baby was par for the course.
4. It got me out of the house to do something good for me and enjoy the outdoors.

This is our 23rd Rookie Mom challenge. Not ready for it? Go back and pick an easier one.

Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can invite your partner and show him or her how awesome and athletic you are. The other parent and grandparents can tag along for free.

Check babybootcamp.com and a similar organization strollerstrides.com for locations and schedules.

Did you complete this challenge? Share your story.

• Comment below and spill the details.
• Share a picture with us on Facebook.

[photo: strollerstrides.com]