Monday, December 29, 2014

The Wonders of Online Shopping as a Stay-At-Home Mummy

As a newly minted Stay-At-Home Mummy, my past 9 months journey to motherhood has been an exciting and challenging one. I would say support from HIM has been the most important element to my daily survival against the unknown (including alot of unsolicited advice from alot of people)!

There are moments when I would just burst out in a rage but HE would just dodge all these 'bullets' and continue on with his parental duties (changing the little one for bed, tending to the night feeds, doing the baby laundry etc). Most importantly, his willingness to keep the little one entertained while I attend to my duties as an Exclusively Pumping mummy.

Both iHerb and Qoo10 have became my favourite online shopping haunts. So far, I have tried hard to resist the lures of Taobao although there are so many items in my cart waiting to be checked out. I love online shopping as I can shop anywhere anytime (when expressing out milk... when the little one is finally napping... when pooing... oops!), make payment using HIS credit card (whenever I can justify the purchase) and wait for delivery.  Don't have to squeeze with the crowd while baby-wearing the little one plus carrying a humongous diaper bag.

Every ding-dong of the doorbell makes me so excited (except when it wakes up the little one from her nap)!

Here are some of my favourite buys from iHerb:

1) Baby Puffs

- Her favourite snacks are the Happy Yogis ones (the round one in the image below). The star-shaped one is from Plum Organics and the doughnut-shaped one is from Happy Puffs.

- We usually prepack a mixture of these snacks before we head out even on short trips as they are practically our life savers. 

Grumpy little one on car trips, pop one into her mouth...
Fussy little one when we are eating, pop one into her mouth...    

- These snacks helps in training the little one's pincer grasp which is an important part of the fine motor skills development. It is also very entertaining to see how 'determined' and yet how 'frustrated' the little one gets in her eagerness to consume these snacks.

- We have tried tasting these snacks and both the Plum Organics and Happy Puffs ones are quite tasteless. The Happy Yogis ones are really yummy!   


2) Munchkin stuff

- Bought their Formula Dispenser and Small Snacks Container Combo, Snack Catchers and Soft-tip Safety Baby Spoons. So much cheaper than the ones sold in Singapore.

3) Essential oils

- There are quite a number of people using Young Living essential oils but so far, I am quite happy with my hoard of 'budget pricing' essential oils. 

- I diffused a mixture of Eucalyptus and Lavender essential oils when the little one was down with high fever and phlegmy cough. It seems to help in improving the quality of her sleep.

Source: healthyfoodsandmore.com

** For 1st time customers on iHerb.com, you can use this discount code VTN247 to enjoy $10 off your first iHerb order of $40 or more! **
As for Qoo10we are constantly on the lookout if our favourite Jeju wet wipes (800 pcs for less than S$20 with free delivery) and Bosomi cotton diapers (less than S$0.30/pc of M size diaper) happened to be on sale. For our little one with slightly sensitive skin, these 2 items are working out well so far.

Each piece of wet wipe is slightly bigger than palm size and it is wet enough to clean off messy poo. There is also no weird smell as compared to the Pigeon wet wipes which we have 'downgraded' to wiping our hamster cages. 

As for the Bosomi diapers, they are quite absorbent and the back of the diapers is high enough to contain any explosive poo. Even though the absorbent layer is made of cotton, each piece of diaper is quite thin, comparable to the thickness of a Merries diaper. We alternate this diaper together with the Merries ones.