Baby feet

This is just a very quick post to say that I absolutely adore baby feet. They are utterly amazing wonderful tiny little things.

Read More..

Newborn baby carriers Part 1 of 4

Trying to pick a carrier for your new little squish can be a little daunting. But never fear Tracey is here.

First and most importantly is baby wearing safety. In any carrier you use please follow the TICKS guidelines:

When choosing a carrier look for comfort for both you and bub. Look for ease of use, look for practicality, and most importantly look for something safe and ideally provides the M sitting position (you can find more information on the M position here and for specific newborn m positioning here) . Little Miss A was a wonderful help as she helped mummy model these carriers for you. Here is a sample of baby carriers suitable for carrying your newborn. She ranges in age from 1-4 weeks in these photos. Miss A was 4.2kg at birth and 55cm long.

The photo represents the range of carriers available on the market.

 

Pst click on the image to enlarge it...

There are some carriers that are specialised for newborn carrying either through design or special inserts. In the photo these are the Manduca, ring sling, Infant Kinderpack, Close Caboo, Tula, Wrap, Sretcg wrap, Ergo, Mysol and Pikkolo.

Other carriers can be adapted:

• The baby hawk I used a ribbon to cinch the body panel smaller so that the fabric stretched from knee to knee exactly.
• In the Angelpack and Action Baby Carrier I used a rolled flat nappy to provide a more m shaped sitting position for bub. It allowed a proper C curve of her spine and kept her weight off her little feet.

What did I find most comfortable?
Overall the wraps are the comfiest, the least comfortable was the Britax carrier that I could not get off fast enough I was in agony after wearing it for the 5mins for the photo.

SSC (Soft structured carriers)

Pictured:

• Manduca - (3.5-20kg)
• Kinderpack infant size  
• Tula - (3.5-20kg)
• Angelpack - (4.5-18kg)
• Ergo Orginal - (3.2-20kg)
• Action Baby Carrier (3.5-16kg)
• Pikkolo -

Other brands not pictured:

• Babyhawk
• Beco
• Boba
• Emeibaby
• Hoppediz
• Jumpsac Orbit
• Nuzzleme
• Olives and Applesauce
• Patapum
• Pognae
• Rose and Rebellion  
• Storchenweige
• Wompat
• Yamo

Front Pack Carriers

• Britax (3.5-15kg)

Mei Tais

Pictured:

• Baby Hawk
• Girasol Mysol

Others:

• Angel Pack - (4.5-18kg)
• BB-Slen 
• Didymos
• Ellaroo
• Kozy
• Wearababy

Stretch wraps

• Stretch wraps: Moby, Hugabub, JPMBB, Wrapsody Stretch, Boba Wrap, Tricot-Slen, Natibaby.
• Close Caboo Carrier

Ring Slings

• BB-Slen
• Didymos
• Ellaroo
• Girasol
• Maya Wrap
• Sakura Bloom
• Storchenweige
• Colimacon and Cie
• Diva Milano
• Hoppediz
• Neobulle

Woven Wraps: 

Didymos, Girasol, Lenny Lamb, Natibaby, Didymos, BB-Slen, Hoppediz, Easycare, Dolcino, Colimacon and Cie, Diva Milano, Vatanai, Wrapsody Gauze, Ellaroo, Storchenweige, Uppymama,, Neobulle, Kokadi, Oscha...

I am sure I am missing many options. I am happy to add them if you let me know. All carriers are available from retailers in Australia. If you go hunting please tick the google box to search for Australia only and support the mums who are bringing these carriers to Australia.

 

 Stay tuned for the next installment babywearing a 3 month old....... 

 

PS there is an excellent PDF here that explains each type of carrier well worth a look, thanks Baby carriers downunder .... http://baby-carriers-downunder.com/resources/bcd-choosing-and-using/

Read More..

3 Month Old Baby Carriers part 2 of 4

Well my little miss is 3 months old now, and once again she was the perfect model. She fell asleep by around carrier 3 and then I learnt some trips to swap carriers without putting her down so she didnt wake. This made me realise the only carrier you cannot put an already sleeping baby into is the Britax, I had to wait till she woke to take photos in that one.

Please remember to always follow TICKS guidelines and some common sense.

If you would like to catch up part 1 is here.

There are no stretchy wraps included this round as she is already to heavy for them. She is though heavier than an average 3 month old, so you may get longer use of stretchy/knit carriers than we have.

Read More..

Chicks

We have our first little baby chickens. Such a cute little things. We didnt have great success with our first attempts at an incubator. Only 6 chicks hatched a handful others were very close, I am sure I even heard some of them piping but the temperature changes were just too great for the poor little things. But we still have 6 little cuties to play with.

The breed is Plymouth rock. They are a large breed. Good layers and good for meat too.

Read More..

Reliable Aquaponics Siphon

Hello everyone. It has been for so long that my problem in aquaponics is the "siphon reliability". Since most of my previous aquaponics system powered by small aquarium pump, therefore the siphon effect most of the time failed.

Recently, I have wondering, how to make the siphon more reliable even if the flow rate of the pump is really small. This is what I manage to come out so far.

Feel free to comment. I really have no idea whether this thing could work.

Read More..

Raising Baby Tilapia Aquaponicly

Tilapia Fry

The Blackwell System recently had babies (fry)! There have been a few mothers holding eggs, but we never stripped them in time. This time was different, we were ready! 

We were trying an experiment with two mothers at the same time. Alex bought a small terrarium with a screen lid which was submersed into the large aquarium to make a small holding tank. With the two mothers holding eggs, we corralled one of the mothers into the holding tank. Our reasoning; the mother would spit the babies out and then we would release the mother back into the tank and keep the babies in the holding tank. The second mother fish would act as a control, to see how the babies survive (or dont) being spit into the tank directly. 

Things did not go as planned. On the third day, we went to check on the mother in the holding tank first thing in the morning. The mother was in there (where else would she go?), but she was definitely was not holding eggs any more and there was none in the tank. She ate them.

The control mother was still holding her eggs though. We had watched a movie on YouTube about stripping mother tilapia of their eggs the day before, and have decided to try and strip the control mother as we were tired of loosing babies. 

So we set up a bucket we could strip the mother in (that sound dirty!) and caught her in the net. While we where trying to get a good grip on her, she started spitting the eggs out! So we quickly got her in place and got all the eggs out. There were close to forty eggs and newly hatched eggs swimming and sitting in the bowl! It worked! 

We got a turkey baster and transported the eggs and newborns into a plastic vial. We strapped a fiberglass window screen on top so they cannot swim out and placed that under the grow bed drain. And there it hangs!

Water returning from the grow beds flows into the tube and replaces the water.
There are about 30 tilapia fry in the tube.

The fry are growing every day. After the eggs yolk sacks were gone, we have fed them crushed fish food. A good way to tell if fish are healthy is the food test. Fish that eat and have no physical symptoms are usually doing alright.

After they start to crowd this tube, which should not take long, the plan is to move them to the holding tank originally designed to house the holding mothers. The holding tank used to be resting on the bottom of the aquarium but too much fish poop was falling in it. It is now hanging kinda like the hatching tube but is semi-submersed.

Holding tank originally used to house tilapia mothers holding eggs.
When the fry are big enough they will be transferred to this tank.

Being able to strip the mother and raise our own babies has allowed us to close the loop in our system that can now be perpetual and not reliant on buying new tilapia after these ones... Well after these current fish make a tasty meal!

Read More..

Face paint

Turns out my precious boys are allergic to face paint. Awesome :(.

They are sensitive to many/most/all artificial chemicals so I really should not be surprised. I really in hindsight should not have let them do it. But I thought the sensory experience would be wonderful for Igloo, and just plain all round fun for all of us. Facepainting is super fun right?

Well it is not for us. It turns them into feral little ferals. Unable to control their emotions, unable to control their fists. No they were not exposed to any other unsual food or chemicals. It was the facepaint. I gave them headaches, it messed with the connections in their brain causing malfunction. Like a computer with a virus nothing works right until the foreign being is gone.

I am feeling so incredibly upset for them. Just one more thing to the list of activities and foods they cannot participate in. I know they have a great life and there are alternatives for most things. A life without facepaint really is nothing massive in the scheme of life, but for now it feels massive and tragic.

Read More..

Corn update

This has been an extremely long summer.  We have had week after week of temperatures in the 40s and no rain.  Many of my types of corn have not survived, or has had a lot of trouble and will not produce much seed.  All of the corn has purslane (Portulaca oleracea) growing as a living mulch to keep the soil cooler etc.  In some beds this living mulch is well over a foot deep, but it is still not enough when the temperature is so high day and night.  I thought I would write about the progress of a few of the more interesting varieties of corn.

Argent - white super sweet corn
I planted all 11 of the precious Argent super sweet white corn seeds that I had.  Out of them only 4 grew.  As far as seed saving goes that is rather precarious and any small mishap could cause me to lose them all.  This has prevented me from eating any argent corn this year as I want as much diversity in the seeds as I can get from such a small number of plants.  These plants suffered a lot of damage from the heat but are still growing strong.  The plants grew to about 1.5m tall and all are producing several (from 2 to 4) cobs.  Unfortunately as I had so few plants these cobs seem to be poorly filled.  The timing of the flowering was such that they were shedding pollen when the temperature was over 40C, as a result much of the pollen was denatured by the heat, resulting in few seeds being formed.  Extreme heat combined with a low number of plants is not good for corn cob formation.  Hopefully things go well and I end up with enough seeds between them so that I can do a large growout of this variety next year.  With work I should be able to keep this strain going without too much inbreeding depression.  If I ever find anyone growing this strain I will try to swap some seeds with them so that I can broaden the gene pool a little.

Inca giant white corn
I planted a small number of these seeds (only about 25), and most grew.  I have been told that this variety is highly daylight sensitive and it may not produce cobs in my location.  Being a landrace corn there is a lot of genetic diversity.  This has grown very tall and thick, some up to 3 metres tall with stalks that are about as thick as my wrist, some are far thicker.  Some plants are short and spindly.  They seem to be growing roots up the stalk, sometimes 3 or 4 nodes up.  Normally this would not seem odd, but when stalks are this tall it means that roots are growing a foot or two above the soil.  It has only just started to produce tassels and shed pollen.  Unfortunately it has shown no sign of growing any silk and I do not know if it will even attempt to produce any cobs.  Even if it does begin to produce cobs I do not know if it will have time to ripen before the first frosts kill the plants.  These have also suffered a lot from the relentless heat with many of the higher leaves damaged.  This small population has displayed a lot of genetic diversity in terms of growth, hopefully this is enough for it to survive and produce cobs in my climate.

Giant Inca White Corn - very thick stalks.  Purslane just starting to grow as a living mulch

Giant Incan white corn - another older picture showing the diversity in this population

Glass bead corn
These guys pretty much know what they are doing here.  While they experienced a little damage from the heat they seem to do a lot better than the other corn varieties.  Hopefully it will not be long until this is a good multicoloured pop corn.

Mini blue popcorn
These suffered badly from the heat but are still growing.  They are small plants, maybe some of the taller plants have grown up to a meter, most are shorter than a meter.  They have also only just started to grow tassels and have not yet shown any signs of silk or cobs.  Many plants have multiple stems so if they do produce cobs there should be a good number of them.  Hopefully they have time to produce a crop before the first frost kills them as the kids are keen to pop some blue corn.

Blue sweet corn
I grew a decent number of these in the hope of eating most of the cobs as well as saving seed from a good number of plants.  They grew from about 1.5 meters with a few up to 2 meters tall.  Unfortunately the heat has also damaged these badly.  They too have been shedding pollen in 40+ heat and mostly have poorly filled out cobs.  It has been a long and hard summer, I am happy that they have even survived as it shows how resilient they are.  Some plants produced multiple cobs, but most only produced one.  Some of the plants grew multiple stems but this trait does not seem to be too common in this variety.  As far as sweet corn goes, this one seems to be a winner.  Even though my preference is for white super sweet corn I plan to grow this variety again if I save enough seed.  The naturally high level of antioxidants as seen by the blue colouration is a bonus.  There are not many varieties of coloured sweet corn in Australia so it kind of makes it more important to continue growing it.

When they are ready, if I have enough I will try to sell some of these corn varieties through my For Sale page.

Read More..

My Latest Aquaponics System

It has been so long since my last post.  Anyway, this is my latest aquaponic system, built on last June- July 2012. These pictures was sent by my brother in Sabah.

I am still experimenting the best possible and simplest system. One thing for in my opinion, every aquaponic system should have some filtration system, regardless of the techniques used (media bed, deep water culture, nutrient rich technique and whatever), filtration system is really crucial.

In this system, the water level is constant, and I think, some adjustment should be done. The media is quite alkaline, around ph 7.5 to 8. However my mom said the fishes are great and healthy.

Read More..

The journey of Amiah Grace conception to 40 weeks

Part 1 - The Pregnancy

 

 

 

It is November 2012, I get my first cycle since July 2010 after conceiving and birthing my beautiful Immali. It is a day we have been waiting for finally it might be time to add to our wonderful family. By mid December I knew, I just knew there was new life growing inside me. But I waited and on Christmas morning I rushed to the loo so I could pee on the stick with enough time to wrap it up and give it to hubby as his Christmas present. Can I tell you this is no easy task with 3 kids rushing from their bedrooms eager to open presents. I was so relieved and excited to find those double lines. A perfect Christmas gift from God. And it was I had to wait almost 2 weeks to see those beautiful double lines again.

We got through Christmas and new year. It was exciting. I dont think I waited to tell anyone this time. Then we started planning the birth. I contacted the closest midwife to us. I had met her when pregnant with Immali. I thought she would be perfect, she was just lovely last time I met her. But I thought it has been two years lets meet again. We chatted for a couple hours, talked about birth, talked about what I wanted, talked about what she wanted, talked about her fears. A knot grew in my stomach as the meeting progressed. When she left I just fell into a mess of tears. She didnt seem right for us personally. She was still lovely and wonderful, but I had changed. What was I going to do, there are no other options. There is no one else. I cried for days and days.

And so I am left pregnant and without a midwife. Life goes on as I decide what to do. I am sure that I am pregnant with twins. I feel connected to two little lives. My little Ukpik and Tuktu, yet I feel more strongly connected to one than the other. I announce that bubs name is Ukpik with no mention of Tuktu. I start planning for a holiday birth. My beautiful friend and midwife, will care for me through my pregnancy via Skype and be with me while I birth in someone elses house, someone elses space, in the unknown with 3 kids and no Damo. I was terrified and excited at the same time. I cannot express how excited I was to have Lisa with me while I birthed, it made me smile every time I thought about it. But I was scared, I was scared how I was going to cope, where I was going to stay, how I was going to get home with 4 kids on a 5 hour drive. The most precious friend in the world offered to leave her family for 2 weeks and come to be with me and help me while I was away. She truly is a gorgeous person. She has become my sister. With her there it seemed much more possible.

I decided to have an ultrasound. If there were two precious babies I needed to have the car kitted out before the birth and have everything I needed for two packed. Have a plan in place for all possiblilites.

About 2 days before the ultrasound, something was different. I no longer felt the need to say babies, I no longer felt Tuktu was there. My little boy had left me. I struggle to type this out now, but it needs to be spoken. People may not believe me, what proof have I got. But mothers intuition has got to count for something. And so I go off for the ulstrasound hoping I am wrong. getting them to accept my midwife referral was a task, but eventually we go in. There is one precious little bundle with one perfect heart beat. My little Ukpik is strong and healthy. We dont find out the sex but I am sure a little girl is waiting to meet me.

The fear and scare of birthing away from home continues to eat at me. I decide to research unnassited or freebirthing as an option. Could I really do this? What would I do if I bled, what would I do if.... there were so many ifs that went through my mind. I need a doula. I will have my friend but a doula if I can get a doula I can do this. Yes I can this will be perfect, it will be amazing.

Doula 1, a number of life changes means she can no longer support me. I am totally crushed, just shattered. If I cant have Lisa I need her I cannot do it without her. I cry for days. Then I am thankful for her honesty and love. She cared for me enough not to give it a go knowing full well she might fail. She gave me time to make the plans and prepare to birth without her. I will always be thankful for her honesty.

Doula 2, lets just say she scared me. She had never attended a homebirth and I was honestly scared she would not cope at an unnassisted birth.

Doula 3, mid July I am due 1st September, she seemed wonderful, perfect this was it problem solved. Plus she can encapsulate my placenta. However she decided that I didnt need enough support from her. She is not a babysitter, she felt my needs too menial.

34 weeks, no doula, no midwife to be with me. Do I go ahead with this plan. am I a crazy lunatic. No this is what I am suppose to do. I want to birth in my space, in my home, with my things, my shower, my toilet, my bed. I just cry and cry. Kierra was an amazing shoulder if she lived any closer she would need a raincoat.

I find peace I can do this. God whispers to me, I will be with you, I will hold your hand, I will guide your baby, trust me and everything will be just fine. Then he gives me this song:





I told very few people of my plans. I dont want to hear their fears. I dont want to take the risk of those becoming mine. I need a clear head and positive thoughts. I know what I am doing carries risks. But I have planned for them everything will be fine. The people I told were all very supportive, thank you to those who stood by me and put up with me. Lisa was my rock, through it all. She supported whatever decision I made, no matter how many times I changed my mind, she supported me and did everything she could from a distance. I seriously must have been driving her mental. Im sure she wished she could reach through the phone and shake some sense into me. She has the patience of a saint to put up with me.

I become more and more pregnant as you do. Things are going well. I am seeing the hospitals antenatal clinic. Ukpik is strong and healthy, I am strong and healthy everything is going wonderfully. Braxton kicks start kicking in, it all starts getting very exciting. I talk to Ukpik each day. I tell her I cannot wait to meet her. I tell her I miss her brother and wish I could meet him. I tell her to stay put please stay put till my sister friend gets here. One day short of 40 weeks my beautiful sister Tammie turns up. She is here yay woohoo, once she has cleaned my house let this show get started. No honestly I didnt think that, I wanted things to kick in that night, I hadnt asked her to come wanting her to clean.

The night comes and goes no baby. I am 40 weeks.

Part 2 is here

Read More..