Babysitting trades have been one of the biggest discovery of my mothering career. My kids are thrilled to play with their friends, my husband and I dash off to the theater with a bag of homemade popcorn, and everyone enjoys a change in the routine! When we’re hosting the swap, we enjoy seeing the budding friendships between our children and their peers.

Before the days of babysitting trades, there were no parenting breaks for me except when my husband arrived home. By then, I was so desperate for company (or privacy) that I’d either talk his ear off or lock myself in the bedroom just to experience a tiny slice of silence. (I don’t own a Snuggie, but the glowing smile in the picture captures how I felt when I crept into my bedroom. “Tee-Hee…no one is currently climbing, spitting up on, or peeing on me! Glorious!” )

Eventually I started to schedule our weeks at home around play dates, which were a welcome diversion for an extravert like myself. But when things evolved into babysitting trade status, life truly eased up–and not just for me! The families I swap babysitting with are just as grateful for the chance to host a play date or to get a sliver of freedom every so often.

Babysitting cooperatives take swaps to a whole new level. In a co-op, parents take on a few more children, but also get more opportunities for free babysitting. The Smart Mom’s Baby-Sitting Co-op Handbook:How We Solved the Baby-Sitter Puzzle can help you create one yourself. It’s gotten rave reviews on Amazon and thoughtfully lays out plans in careful detail for how to put together a community that works for you. It’s so popular that even though it was published over a decade ago, it’s currently sold out! (But should be available again very soon.)

I know with infants cooperatives or exchanges may be more of a challenge, but if you have at least two parents on duty it’s pretty amazing what you can handle. Does anyone else enjoy babysitting swaps? Do any of you have family who volunteer to watch your tot on a regular basis? I plan on doing that once my children get a bit older!

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is a thorough guide to pregnancy that has been tremendously popular for over twenty years–and this week their website, What to Expect, is sponsoring a giveaway! We’re throwing in a few copies of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, to sweeten the winnings for two lucky readers. There are multiple ways to enter so get in on the action!

Prize #1
What to Expect Before You’re Expecting (+ a copy of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down to Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet)

For women who are planning conception and pregnancy, What to Expect Before You’re Expecting is a great resource. It provides tips on everything from nutrition to medical care for women (and men) in the months before you get pregnant. And it will help you make the good choices that will lead to a healthier newborn. For couples hoping to conceive quickly, Murkoff educates readers about how to pinpoint ovulation cycles to raise your odds of getting pregnant.

As for our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, we’ve spoken to many women who received it late in their pregnancies only to wish that they would have read it months earlier. Why not learn about cloth diapers and used baby gear before you’re dealing with morning sickness and exhaustion? We hope that having the book far in advance will allow you to gather up the new and used green gear you need while saving thousands of dollars.

Prize #2
What to Expect When You’re Expecting(+ a copy of our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide: Down to Earth Ways for Parents to Save Money and the Planet)

What to Expect When You’re Expecting is read by over 90% of pregnant women who read pregnancy books and has been on the New York Times bestseller list for decades. So what can you expect from the book? The book is organized into monthly chapters which provide information about how you may feel, common questions, a week-by-week guide to baby’s fetal development, and information about what your midwife or doctor is likely to say during that phase of pregnancy. The book also addresses childbirth plus the emotional and physical issues that couples face in the postpartum period. The question and answer format helped me pick out sections that were relevant to my pregnancy. I was too overwhelmed and exhausted by growing a fetus to actually read any book cover to cover so I appreciated being able to easily reference what I was looking for.

We wish every newly pregnant woman could get a free copy of The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, just to have access to humble, humorous, hands-on advice for gearing up green on a budget. Since we can’t just stand on the corner and hand these out to pregnant passers-by, we’ve decided to send one to accompany What to Expect When You’re Expecting in this giveaway. We hope you can win!

Whether you’re lucky enough to win one of the prizes or not, you should know that What to Expect online now offers heaps of free information for expectant women and new parents. You can pick up a copy of many What to Expect books on Amazon for less than nine bucks and The Eco-nomical Baby Guide is currently on sale for less than eight dollars. (And it will save you much, much more than what you pay for it!)

Enter the What to Expect When You’re Expecting (and the Eco-nomical Baby Guide) Giveaway!

Each comment counts as an entry. You can enter up to four times. Here’s how:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like the Green Baby Guide on Facebook (then tell us you did it in a separate comment)

3. Visit the What to Expect website and comment on what you learned.

4. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on Thursday, August 11th, and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Great luck!

Great luck!

This year will be a banner year for reading in my household. Right after my daughter’s fifth birthday, I made an amazing discovery: Audrey finally has the attention span to listen to me read chapter books out loud!

The first book we tried was The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. She surprised me with her ability to follow this 111-year-old tale of Dorothy and her little dog Toto’s extraordinary adventure. There are some scary parts (the flying monkeys creeped her out), but she stuck with it until the end.

I had fond memories of the Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner, so we tried that next. Success!

After that we began working our way through the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. Ramona’s antics have provided us both with hours of amusement. So far we’ve finished Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother, and Ramona Quimby, Age 8.

Another Beverly Cleary classic we read and enjoyed was The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

We’re almost finished with Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This one has required more interruptions than most of the others, while I stop to explain, as  best  as I can, why the Ingalls family must churn their own butter and make their own bullets.

I’m thinking of giving the Roald Dahl books a try this summer. James and the Giant Peach was one of my favorites in elementary school.

Do you read chapter books out loud to your kids? Please give me your recommendations–we need a healthy reading list to get through the summer before kindergarten!

From the Hygeia EnJoye Breastpump, to a copy of Fifteen Minutes Outside, to a Smartklean Laundry Ball, we’ve been hosting fabulous giveaways in the last few weeks.  And now it’s time for a drum roll:

Juley A. from Anchorage, Alaska will soon be getting her copy of 15 Minutes Outside on her doorstep.  Enjoy!  Now that the weather is getting a bit warmer, it will be even easier to gain inspiration to be outdoors with baby.

In just a matter of days, Andrea B. from Chandler, Arizona will be able to toss a the Smartklean Laundry Ball into her washer without using any laundry detergent–for an entire year!

And, our biggest winner so far of the Hygeia EnJoye Breastpump is….Ashley B from Los Angeles, California.

Thank you so much for your comments and interest.  We have some more exciting giveaways coming up so keep coming back to see if you’ll be our next lucky winner!

Books sit on my nightstand for weeks before they are ever cracked open, but I was aching to read 15 Minutes Outside: 365 Ways to Get Outside and Connect With Your Kids.

Why did this little gem get preferential treatment? The title alone tells me what I wish we were doing on a daily basis around here. It’s fine to skip the paper towels and embrace cloth diapers, but what do all those things mean to my kids if they don’t have an intimate relationship with the world outside their door?

The rain has been  relentless lately and we don’t seem to take the time to slip on our boots and brave the weather. We could save a stranded earthworm or find a budding pussy willow or perhaps slosh through a dozen puddles.

This book is simply a list of 365 wonderful ideas, organized by month, to push your reticent crew out the door. When I tell my children we’re going to go outside, my son always replies (rather loudly), “but I’m cozy mama!”. He’s four and loves building blanket forts while clad only in underpants.

But if I told him that we were going to hunt for bugs or plant pansies, maybe I’d have a better chance of moving him beyond these four walls.

If you’d like the chance to win a copy of 15 Minutes Outside, this is your lucky week!

Three Ways to Enter the Fifteen Minutes Outside Book Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

This contest ends on April 25th and is only open to U.S. Residents.

Great luck!

During all nine months of my first pregnancy, our home was littered with books instructing me on how to gracefully cruise into motherhood.  Many of them simply freaked me out while others seemed utterly unrealistic.

None urged me to trust myself, buy less stuff, use cloth diapers and opt for used gear–all of which we emphasize in our book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide.  In fact, back in 2006 I could not find a single book on green pregnancy or parenting!  That was part of the reason Rebecca and I were so inspired to write The Eco-nomical Baby Guide.  During the months that we wrote and re-wrote the text, green baby books started to pop onto the market, but none of them had the frugal emphasis that was essential to our eco-friendly message.  We were also surprised to see that none of the green baby guides had an in-depth section about cloth diaper usage and we were careful to dedicate two detailed chapters to cloth diapering, although we could have filled an entire book with our cloth diaper wisdom.  (If you don’t already know, we are rather ardent cloth diaper fans who strike up conversations with total strangers about Fuzzibunz and flushable diaper liners.)

The books I did enjoy were Baby Bargains (which provides a wide range product information and does encourage buying secondhand gear) and Momma Zen, a book which kindly allows you to forgive your imperfection in those first challenging months of new parenting.  I haven’t read Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, but it has gotten rave reviews from friends.

What are the books you would recommend to pregnant women?

What is Indiebound, you ask?  It’s a great way to support local bookshops without having to haul yourself away from your keyboard.  Simply search for any book through Indiebound, and it will be shipped to you directly from your closest independent bookstore.

What is The Eco-nomical Baby Guide?  It’s our entertaining and educational treatise on eco-friendly, budget friendly living with a baby in tow.  In fact, our frugal, green lifestyles helped each of us save over five thousand dollars on each of our babies’ first year, while staying true to our environmental ideals.  There’s hilarious humor, there are tips from the cloth diapering trenches, and there are hundreds of ways to keep the waves of plastic blinky toys at bay.  In fact, it’s pure, practical genius!  (Of course, we may be biased…)

We’re honored that The Eco-nomical Baby Guide is currently available on the shelves of hundreds of independent bookstores across the country.  If it hasn’t hit store shelves at your favorite book shop or local library, please feel free to request it.

As a new mom or a pregnant woman, I didn’t always feel particularly romantic on February 14th.  But I did appreciate any efforts to make me feel loved and appreciated.

My husband, who is a fantastically thoughtful fellow, took me out for Valentine’s Day sushi while I was pregnant with my son.  I had been experiencing deep and vivid sushi cravings and enjoyed the food so much that I actually asked him to stop talking so I could chew in silence with my eyes shut.  It was so rude–but the sushi was divine!  That kind of patience and grace is really the stuff of true love.

So what would a pregnant mother or new mother want this Valentine’s Day?  I can’t speak for everyone, but I know that for many women, their longings aren’t limited to flowers and chocolates.  Here are some suggestions based on my hazy memories from those time periods.

Sleep. Taking the baby overnight so that a new mother can get a solid six to eight hours of consolidated slumber is utterly glorious.  I know I would have even been thrilled to get a break for a few hours for a nap and a shower.

Food. Growing another human being in your body is bound to make you hungry.  When that little person arrives and you’re breastfeeding ten times in twenty-four hours, it can seem impossible to get enough to eat.  What a gift to provide dinner or offer to grocery shop for someone! My mother filled my fridge with nutritious foods and served them to me at regular intervals when each of my children arrived.  It wasn’t Valentine’s Day, but I felt nourished with love!

Housecleaning. What would it feel like if someone arrived at your door and spent a few hours washing dishes, doing laundry, and straightening up?  I suppose some people would feel uncomfortable, but I am not one of them.  What a gift to save time and be able to enjoy a more orderly home.

A date. It took my husband and I a long time before we could secure a babysitter, make plans, and haul ourselves out for an evening with a new baby.  But what a wonderful reminder that we aren’t just parents, we’re partners!  If you can provide babysitting to friends or family to allow a couple to go on a short date, it would probably be greatly appreciated.

Time alone. As mothers, we become accustomed to being with our children every waking moment.  I was just laughing with a friend about how we sometimes have to hold our babies on our laps while we use the toilet.  What happened to privacy?   Imagine having two hours to clean out your closet, journal, or run errands.  Bliss….

The Eco-nomical Baby Guide. This is pretty much a shameless marketing ploy, but we do heartily believe that our book is a good investment at a cost of twenty bucks.  Even though we’re frugalistas, sometimes you have to spend a bit to save heaps.  And maybe they’re just being polite, but we keep getting enthusiastic thanks from readers who are glad to have found an eco-friendly, budget-friendly baby guide like ours.   We also get regular praise from women who read our book after they’ve had a few children, and wish they would have had it years ago.  It’s packed with the sort of realizations you have in the years following your first child, such as “We don’t really need a lot of gear!” And, “We could save heaps by buying secondhand clothing and using cloth diapers.”  And, “Hey, why don’t we just puree up the baby food ourselves?”  Plus it has a full guide to the best values in new green gear.  Who could resist?

Whatever you get for Valentine’s Day this year, I hope that it makes you feel cherished.   Many of us will receive roughly scribbled pictures on red construction paper, bordered with glitter.  Really, what could be better than that?

Homemade baby food became somewhat of a hobby for me. I don’t think my daughter had more than three or four jars of store-bought food, and I smiled smugly when she rejected it in favor of my delectable concoctions of ground oats, flax seeds, and kale. (That smugness has since faded: See the Any Brilliant Ideas for Picky Eaters? post!)

As obsessed as I was with making my own homemade baby food, I could have used this incredible book: Great Expectations: Best Food for Your Baby & Toddler by Jeannette L. Bessinger and Tracee Yablon-Brenner of Real Food Moms. Their guide goes way beyond my boring purees, with more than 150 recipes and snack ideas for babies and kids under three. Many of the recipes sound delicious for adults, too—zucchini cupcakes with mascarpone frosting, veggie pancakes, pasta with pesto and garbanzo beans, creamy choco-banana smoothie. And don’t worry—there are still plenty of recipes for “traditional” baby fare such as teething biscuits, grain cereals, and apple sauce.

The book also includes tips for establishing good eating routines, information on organic foods and vegetarian diets, and a comprehensive list of whole foods companies and products.

Would you like a copy of Great Expectations: Best Food for Your Baby and Toddler? I have one to giveaway to a lucky winner!

You can enter up to three times! Just post a comment for each entry by Monday, November 1st.

Three Ways to Enter the Giveaway:

1. Simply post a comment

2. Like us on Facebook (then tell us you did it in the comments)

3. Spread the news about the giveaway! Email someone, post it on Facebook, tweet it, blog it, or send someone a message about it via carrier pigeon. (And again, don’t forget to tell us all about it in the comments!)

Good luck!

Congratulations to Mary, winner of the BornFree straw cup giveaway!

Are you tired of keeping up with the never-ending hunger of pregnancy or breastfeeding?  Are blood sugar spikes exhausting you beyond the usual pregnancy fatigue or sleeplessness of early motherhood? Having just a few substantial foods on hand will help you fight that exhaustion while healthily nourishing your body and your baby.

1. Nuts and nut butters are packed with protein, flavor, and healthy monounsaturated fats.  Along with the impressive list of nutrients nuts provide, you’ll get fiber as well.  Of course, if you can swing the higher prices eating organic nuts and nut butters is preferable.  There is some nut consumption controversy for pregnant and nursing women, but we happily munched on handfuls of these little healthy gems during our pregnancies with no negative outcomes for our kids.
2. Oils can be drizzled on salads or steamed vegetables and will keep you fuller longer, while supplying valuable calories that you need to build a baby or produce breastmilk.  Again, remember that monounsaturated fats are your friends!
3. Dark chocolate is packed with antioxidants and gorgeous flavor and yet is low in saturated fats.  It’ll make you feel sinful and indulgent while being actually rather healthful.  My favorite is a handful of dark chocolate chips mixed with chopped almonds or shelled pistachios.  Bliss!  For a more exotic experience, try Green and Black’s Organic Maya Gold Dark Chocolate with Orange and Spices. Nursing mothers may have heard that chocolate contributes to colic, but dark chocolate is better than milk or white chocolate which contain far more milk products.
4. Rich, buttery avocados are an indulgence that aren’t always planet friendly, but are packed in healthy fat.  Unless you live in California, these little gems have to be shipped in from miles around, but I have to confess that I regularly purchase them for their gooey green scrumptiousness.  (I try to make up for it by eating less meat and buying organic and local when possible)
5. Cheeses, especially those that are a bit lower in saturated fats, are a simple handheld snack that satiates without having to be prepared.

So where did most of the items on this list come from? The Flat Belly Diet.  (Read about my Flat Belly Diet success, which has continued for two months now!)  I would NEVER suggest that you should try to lose weight during pregnancy or breastfeeding, but I’ve found that incorporating monounsaturated fats into our diet has been tremendously helpful for our family. What were your favorite snacks during pregnancy and breastfeeding?  Do you remember that insatiable hunger?