Review: Nap Nanny

Our lifesaver with L. I remember looking at parenting magazines before the twins were born and seeing this thing called the Nap Nanny. I thought it was neat and I checked out the website. I liked it but thought it was a little expensive. Flash forward a couple months and I had two premature boys that both liked to reflux and spit up. J only did it a little bit but L was a puker. He spent a lot of time on a hospital reflux wedge and still puked. I was sitting there one day in the NICU doing skin-to-skin with L and flipping through a magazine and saw another add for the Nap Nanny. I wanted it! I put it on our (and the boys) Christmas list and luckily some of my hubby's family pitched in and got us one. Once L came home he spent many hours on the reflux wedge until he outgrew it and then we started putting him on the Nap Nanny. He stayed in it until he was almost 2. The only reason he stopped sleeping in it was he was too active and he kept crawling out of it. The night he crawled out and pulled his feeding tube out of his belly was his last night! He still uses it when he is sick to lay in the living room and watch TV. J even likes to lay in it when he is sick too. This product was well worth every penny we didn't pay for it and would recommend it to anybody that has a baby! It is great for the severe refluxers like L but also for babies with colds or just a little reflux. We all hear stories about the babies that can only sleep in their car seat or baby swing...this is the perfect option for a comfortable and safe inclined sleeper.

 L watching tv while getting a tube feed. We had a system of layering blankets over the Nap Nanny since we had many episodes of throwing up a day and an occasional diaper blow out. When a blanket would get dirty we would just peel it off and there was a clean one under it. This helped us from having to wash our Nap Nanny every day several times! You can also buy extra covers for them which is what we should have done but our sleep deprived minds didn't even think about that!

 We would take the Nap Nanny to the hospital with us because it make L feel more secure and rest easier. It was something familiar from home. This picture was from a 10 day pneumonia stay and he was on the mend-note toy in mouth!

 The cover has a zipper on the bottom to take it off and on the foam piece. There are also D-rings that help secure the cover to the foam. This is from the first generation when the lap belt was just attached to the cover. The newer generation of Nap Nanny's lap belts are more secure and actually attach to the foam.

Another great thing that helped us was they made a travel cover for it so it helped us keep it clean and prevented any damage!

 One thing to note is the Nap Nanny is to only be used on the floor-Never in a crib or elevated surface. L didn't sleep in his crib until he was almost 2! This is one of the reasons....escape artists! They can climb out and then get stuck and then be in a dangerous situation. As L got older he became pretty good at escaping the Nap Nanny.

So bottom line: BUY IT! We would have paid for 20 of them if needed......

How We Chose Diapers For The Boys

I know there are very many options when it comes to diapers. Since J and L were premature twins with reflux and other needs (home oxygen, pulse-ox monitor, L had to spend most of his time being held or laying on a wedge to stay elevated) we did not even consider cloth diapers. I've heard they save money and some have used delivery services that make it convenient. If cloth diapers have worked for you, please leave a comment and let me know. For us, our first year was consumed with round-the-clock feeding, changing, and medicating (J had a couple and L had 7 daily medications) while trying to get a little sleep, monthly appointments with multiple doctors and hospital clinics, therapies, surgeries, and much much more.

Before the boys were born, I heard one of our friends talk about ordering diapers online, and that is where we began. I'll write a detailed post about the sites we used, how we liked it, costs and convenience, and what we've found to be the best. For now, I'll just say that the boys began their lives using Pampers Swaddlers Sensitive in the hospital. J was there for 6 weeks and it was 4 months before L was able to come home - those diapers worked well for them, so we saw no reason to change.

Yes, brand-name diapers are more expensive and after a few months at home we tried other brands to try saving money. Every baby is different and you may have had great experiences with store-brand diapers, but they just did not work for us. The Target brand did not fit as well, were much thinner, and we had to change the boys at least twice as often (plus deal with many more blowouts than normal). The Wal-Mart brand fit better, but again were thinner, less absorbent, and L's skin had a bad reaction to them. We buy store-brand food and most other things almost exclusively, but when it came to diapers, Pampers were the softest, held the most, and required less changing. For us, the premium price was definitely worth it.

L and his feeding tube

L has a Mic-key GJ Tube (a tube that bypasses his stomach) that provides all his nutrition because he will not/cannot eat enough to keep himself alive. L didn't get his tube until he was 16 months old and we had tried everything we could and followed every advice we could to try to get him to eat and gain weight. Getting his feeding tube was something we knew had to be done but we waited until we had exhausted every other idea before we consented. He started with a Gastric Tube (GT) that put formula into his stomach. He couldn't keep the formula down and was tiny because he couldn't gain weight so we switched to the tube that bypassed his stomach. He started gaining weight and became a happier healthier boy! This is the short side of the story.

We struggled with his eating, weight gain, reflux, vomiting, and many other things until he was almost 2 years old. He will have had his GJ Tube a year in August and even though life is easier, we still have our struggles. L still won't eat and only drinks about 1-2 ounces of fluid (usually water) on a good day. He is in therapy at his daycare and S L O W L Y takes little steps toward our goal of getting rid of his feeding tube. We are about to do one of the last tests to check him for something that may be causing his swallowing problems. After that we are going to really push eating and drinking and maybe do an intensive feeding program. I will say that one thing hubby and I both agree on is that if L has to be tube fed his whole life, we are okay with that. He is a miracle little boy who has an amazing story of God's healing in his life. With all that "could have been" we are so thankful that this is his only major lingering issue. There is so much more that I could write about but it would take months to get it all down!

There are many things that hubby and I want to use this blog for: sharing our thoughts, saving you money, sharing yummy recipes, and technical stuff I have no clue about! I also want to talk about what we go through with a son with a feeding tube. There are very few resources/information for children with feeding tubes and we want to share what we find. The more people that talk about it, the more attention it will receive, and more resources will become available! Even if you don't have a child with a feeding tube, chances are you will run into someone who does or a friend of a friend will surface that could use information. I hope that we can become a place where people can turn to for information!

I LOVE MY TUBIE AND HIS TWIN!

-R