Dakasi: New Milk Tea Place + Giveaway!

Since I am trying to limit my caffeine intake, I am happy that there are now alternatives with the growing number of tea places in the Metro.  I first heard about Dakasi from Jen who discovered this milk tea during one of her trips to China.  I chanced upon their booth in Trinoma and tried their bubble milk tea.  As with other milk tea joints, you have the option to adjust the sweetness (I like my milk teas to be less sweet).  But what made the Dakasi Bubble Tea different was the size of their pearls.  The Dakasi pearls are smaller than average, allowing me to enjoy slurping them without risk of choking. 

More on the Legal Rights of Breastfeeding and Working Women

I've previously written a post about the legal rights of breastfeeding mothers and prepared a slideshow.  I continue to receive emails about how working and breastfeeding mothers are not allowed to express milk at work or that their performance evaluation ratings are affected by lactation breaks.  Protecting the rights of breastfeeding and working women merits another post.  This time, I have included more resources, including those for night workers and a link to the guidelines for setting up a lactation room/policy from the DOLE.

In the Food and Nutrition Research Institute’s Nutritional Status of Filipino Children and other Population Groups: 2011 Survey, one of the top reasons why mothers stop breastfeeding is because they work outside the home. Often, most moms are misinformed or don’t know that there is a law which will help them to continue to breastfeed their babies, even if they go back to work.

Under Republic Act No. 10028 or the Expanded Breastfeeding Promotion Act of 2009, working and breastfeeding moms are entitled to paid lactation periods. Lactation periods are break intervals (on top of the regular time off for meals) to allow the employees to breastfeed or express milk.

It's time for Expo Mom 2013

It's that time of the year again!  As a mompreneur with a full-time job, this blog and 2 kids, I am very picky with the bazaars I join.  Ever since I started Mama.Baby.Love, one bazaar that I have joined year after year is Expo Mom.  What I love about it is that it is very target-specific - and the audience is my market.

Expomom 2012, sharing about baby wearing

Last May 2012, Expo Mom's theme was the Best of Modern Motherhood and it was during this time that the Filipino Association of Babywearers was launched!  This year's Expo Mom has another interesting theme: #MOMTUITION.

Do have that niggling feeling when it comes to your kids, especially when something is not right?  Don't ignore it!  As fellow SoMom Kris de Guzman shares, "I think every mom has a connection with her child, perhaps we were bonded together, in utero for 9 months, and now there is that invisible bond."

A Day at Tuwâ

One early Sunday morning, a group of friends headed 2 hours north of Manila to Cabiao, Nueva Ecija. We were out to visit Tuwâ the Laughing Fish - a green bed & breakfast inn.  I first heard of this inn from Judy and Sherrie who stayed overnight with their families.

Diwa: our home during our stay

Tuwâ the Laughing Fish is created by John Vermeulen and Penelope Reyes.  They met during a seminar in Thailand for building ecovillages.  The land was originally a rice field [Nueva Ecija is the rice bowl of the Philippines] and they built everything from scratch.

MCNP Blog Carnival: What's in our diaper bag?

This post is written for the MCNP EB/Expo Blog Carnival with the theme "The Modern Cloth Nappy: The Practical Choice for Moms Today"  We aim to share and spread the knowledge and encourage moms to switch to cloth diapers.  Please scroll below to read the other carnival posts about switching to cloth, cloth diaper styles or preferred diaper for specific times. 

With my N, cloth diapering was a part-time endeavour.  We switched to cloth when she was about 6-7 months and only during the day time and at home.  Back in 2008, there were few moms who were into cloth diapers and there was no support or information group like the MCNP yet.  I remember using Next9's first generation diapers - the velcro and sized Tushy Wushy diapers.   At that time, we were afraid of leaks and chose to go disposables at night and whenever we had to go out.

Feature + Giveaway: Lotus Bloom Handcrafted Soap

Fellow Dabawenya Joanne and I when she had her little boy, Diwa.  Joanne became active in breastfeeding activities and participated reconnected when LATCH was looking for moms to participate in the 2010 campaign of LATCH entitled Mommy, Mama, Inay and Me.

Joanne & Diwa.
Exhibit photo taken by Stan.
Mom/Baby photo take by Paolo. 

Before having a baby, Joanne is a trained yoga teacher and set up a yoga studio - Diwa Yoga Shala and an online store - Yoga Baby Bliss.

Working and Breastfeeding: UNTV Rise and Shine

Yesterday, LATCH was invited to be a guest at UNTV's show Rise and Shine with Louella de Cordova and Hilary Ann Isaac.  The topic was very close to my heart - working and breastfeeding.  I truly believe that you can continue to breastfeed your baby even if you go back to a full-time work out of home job.  I was fortunate to have the opportunity to share my thoughts about this.  Please watch the video below and hope you can pick up a thing or two!

Milk Code Violation: Feeding Bottles and Teats

I posted this photo on my Facebook page, identifying this as a Milk Code Violation.  

Shortly thereafter, I received inquiries about how this could be considered a violation?  What was the violation? Was it the mere selling of the feeding bottles and teats? The marketing?

The Modern Cloth Nappy: The Practical Choice for Moms Today

I'm happy to be part of this wonderful community of mothers who are addicted to cloth diapers - Modern Cloth Nappying Pinays.  This group is a local online community aimed to promote the use of reusable cloth diapers in the Philippines.  A little over 1 year old, the group now has more than 2,500 members.  Unlike the cloth diapers used by our parents, the modern cloth nappies are anything but primitive or plain.  There are now a lot of choices and for some moms, this can be overwhelming!

The community aims to share the knowledge culled by the members from use, application, trial and error.  The community has grown and now has a spin-off group called MCNP GB (Group Buys) composed of more than one thousand members which exists solely to organize coop / group buys of various mommy and baby products.

Breastmilk for Sale

This was shared to me by fellow LATCHer Mec on FB.  Mec was tagged by her friend Jah who shared that she saw the ad on the Sulit website.  I went to sulit and saw 2 ads offering breast milk for sale.  I also saw an ad in Multiply.  Both of them also offered to swap the milk for diapers:

Breast Milk for Sale or Swap

karenyang1234.sulit.com.ph - Wednesday, February 20, 2013

2013 © Sulit.com.ph

FROZEN BREASTMILK FOR SALE OR SWAP(DIAPERS)

Naturalorigins.sulit.com.ph - Friday, January 4, 2013

2013 © Sulit.com.ph

Triple Treat

We were very happy to have the chance to celebrate Erik's birthday with several groups of relatives and friends.  Erik was born close to Christmas and for the holidays, we usually spend it in Cebu and Davao.  Christmas babies are shortchanged in a sense because with all the festivities going around, people tend to lump their celebrations (and gifts) with Christmas.  So for E's first birthday, I more than made up for his future missed birthdays by having three celebrations!

Earthbaby - pockets and AI2s plus a giveaway!

I am a cloth diaper addict. If you look at our cloth diaper closet, you will notice that we don't have more than 5 pieces of 1 brand/kind.  This is because I really enjoy trying out new diapers and diaper systems.  This makes cloth diapering fun (and expensive!!).  When I started cloth diapering N, there were only a couple of local brands available.  When it was E's turn, I noticed that more and more local brands have been developed and are now readily available in the market.

I am excited to introduce cloth diapering moms to a new local brand - Earth Baby Cloth Diapering System.  What makes this brand unique is that it carries two types of diapering systems - a pocket and all-in-two (AI2)!  Pocket diapers are fairly common so let me focus on the AI2 diaper.