One of the more brilliant decisions I made was to buy a little fridge to have up in our bedroom when I was nursing. I experienced a few hiccups in the breastfeeding experience, so I was pumping all my breast milk and feeding it to my daughter in a bottle. I used the Avent Isis Breastpump, which I LOVED! It was extremely easy to use, and since we travel quite a bit it was extremely convenient to take along with me wherever we went. I tried one of the electric ones, the Medela Pump In Style, but I was already so used to the Isis that it just never did the trick for me. Plus it is pretty bulky to lug around with you on a plane in your regular carry-on (laptop) in addition to all the other new accoutrements you have to take with you for baby. I was able to pump just as much milk, if not more, in the same amount of time with the Isis as I could with the Pump In Style and I didn't feel like a milking cow while doing it. It is a very discreet tool in comparison to hooking up both teats and turning on a machine. Of course, I know a ton of people who loved the Pump In Style...and likewise hated the Isis. To each his own.
Regardless of what you use, the next part of the task is figuring out how to store and deliver it. At the time, Avent had a disposable bottle system with little baggies. While I loved them, they definitely had their faults - primarily that they were hard to prop them up so they wouldn't fall over because the clips definitely weren't leak proof. However, now Avent has a new disposable system that would have been a dream, the VIA Breastmilk Storage System. I had to pump into a bottle and then pour the milk into the baggie (while walking barefoot, in the snow, uphill..). With the VIA containers, you can hook the Isis pump directly to the bottles, slap on a cover, put it in the fridge or freezer...and then when it is time to feed baby - just pull one out, warm it up and twist on a nipple. And while the box says "disposable" you can still wash the containers and re-use them.
Now back to the animal fridge. I set up a Mini Fridge in my room along with the Avent Express Bottle Warmer. For those middle-of-the-night feedings I would simply take one of the bottles of breast milk out of the fridge and warm it in the bottle warmer without having to go all the way downstairs. Quite a time-saver.
Then the other day I saw this cute little number on one of my favorite new blogs, Shiny Shiny. Yes, it is a refrigerator that looks like a polar bear. You can also get one that looks like a dog.
Of all the blogs that have been posting this little treasure, I finally found one linking to the Fujitronic site where you can actually buy it. The price is a lot stiffer than I thought it would be ($399), but is also bigger and has a lot more features than I expected, too.
It is actually about 3 feet tall. The one I had was only big enough to hold a six-pack, but it served its purpose. However I haven't gotten any use out of it since the breastfeeding stage. The shelves can be arranged any way you wish, and there is even a freezer drawer. There is also an LCD panel that displays the date and time, which would have been a convenient thing to have to time the warming of the bottle.
And this fridge can grow with your child. There is something they refer to as a "rotary fruit compote" which can makes your child's favorite fruit available for snacks. And the LCD is also a "virtual pet". (Chalk that up as one of the "things that make you go 'hmmmmm'". I am stumped as to how a product development team came with the idea of a dual-purpose fridge/toy...but even more stumped to find that someone thought it was a good enough idea to actually produce it. Only in Japan...)
P.S. FYI - A couple other breastfeeding necessities are breast pads - I recommend going with washable ones
rather than the disposable kind. Once the disposable kind get wet they
kind of bunch up and get uncomfortable really quick. The washable ones
are very comfortable, and come with a little laundry bag to throw in
the wash so you won't lose them amongst the socks. Also, Medela's
PureLan 100 is an amazing salve for sore nipples.
that talks about how kids learn, and that by pushing them too hard
you end up hampering their natural tendencies to experiment and
explore. basically the authors liken a child's mind to a highway and if
you cram it too full of information at one time you end up with a
traffic jam. they also explain the different stages of learning and how
a child's mind works at different ages and give a lot of good
experiments to do with them to monitor their development. I rarely
recommend reading baby books because i find them to be alarmist and
one-sided, and promised myself that I would essentially publish only "cliff notes" on this blog to save all my readers the time that they don't have to read...but this is one i highly recommend every parent read.
= Durability 
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