There’s one thing that unites almost all parents, and that’s wanting the best for their children. Very few people plan to start a family without giving some though to how they want to bring up their child, and for a lot of new parents, a lot of consideration goes into whether to breast feed, and if so, how long for.

Science and medicine say that breast is best, but there’s been increasing doubt over recent years (largely thanks to the internet) about just how much difference that it makes.

As with so many things, there are experts who will tell you that feeding naturally is something that you should never consider omitting from a baby’s routine, whereas others will tell you that it makes no difference whatsoever.

So, who should you listen to? Sadly, there’s no single correct answer, but we’re going to look into both arguments in a lot more detail, and also give you some more help with different ideas for improving life in a new family.

Too many new parents suffer a poor diet as they grapple with looking after a new baby. Particularly if it’s your first, trying to do your best to adapt to the needs of a newborn can be all consuming, but it’s important to remember to look after yourself too. It’s similar to the counter intuitive feeling of being told on a plane to fit your own oxygen mask before that of your child – if you’re not functioning well, you’re less use to your child.

Today. we’re going to have a look at making soup, and specifically tomato soup. It’s a simple and fast to prepare food, and offers mum and dad a nutritious meal to keep your energy levels up through the day whatever that little one throws at you!

Tomato soup is often considered to be nothing more than a soup made from canned tomatoes. It can of course be served cold or warm in a pot and can be created in a number of different ways. For those of you who enjoy cooking from home and being able to make your own food, this article is for you.

The first thing to know when cooking tomato soup, is that it doesn’t have to be the exact same as soup you would normally make at home. Sometimes you’ll find that canned tomatoes are more expensive than fresh ones, but they will taste great. If you aren’t familiar with what’s in the different brands of the cans, here is a list.

One of the main ingredients in tomato soup is tomato pulp. This fruit pulp is one of the things that gives tomatoes their flavour, and what gives the soup its thick consistency.

Water, a teaspoon of sugar, a quarter cup of water, one tablespoon of salt and three cups of water is the basic recipe for a good bowl of soup. This recipe can vary a bit by manufacturer, but it is the basic proportions of these elements that we use for making most tomato soup recipes. When cooking tomato soup, always remember to add enough water to keep the soup at a proper temperature. When the temperature of your soup drops too much, it will be less than what it should be.

Tomato soup can also contain added flavourings. Some of them are added to the soup at the beginning of the process, but you can also put things in after the soup has been prepared.

The most popular thing that people add to their tomato soup is sweet potatoes. These are sometimes known as yams but are sweeter and not nearly as fibrous as yams are. Adding them to your tomato soup can make a difference in the texture and the taste.

You can also add vegetables, such as carrots, peas, celery and parsley to your tomato soup. These foods can add colour and flavour to your dish.

No matter what type of tomato soup you choose to make, you will have plenty of options for the seasoning varieties that go into it. You can use any kind of seasoning that you like, but if you want something a little bit more exotic, then you might want to try something that is out of season. Italian or Greek seasoning.

Another seasoning you might consider adding to your tomato soup are dried herbs. These are generally considered to be authentic Greek and Italian herbs, but are much less expensive than their fresh counterparts.

For those who are afraid of onions, mayonnaise is another option. Add a little bit of mayonnaise to your tomato soup and your onions will be scared off.

Another great thing about mayonnaise is that you can mix it with a cup of milk to make a tasty dip that you can serve with your soup. If you are serving it with crackers, it will really add to the flavour. your table.

If you aren’t very fond of mayonnaise, you can make your own. Simply use a cup of mayonnaise and a tablespoon of lemon juice. Just mix it up, heat it in a small skillet, pour it over the top of your soup and let it cook for a couple of minutes.

It doesn’t have to be difficult to make a mayonnaise dip. All you have to do is add your pasta, a few breadcrumbs and some vegetables, some cheese, and some pepper. Serve your tomato dip with crackers and enjoy.

When you’re making soups, it can feel like a bit of a laborious and time consuming process. Fortunately, there is a solution here – and it’s the wonderful march of technology that delivered it. Whereas we once needed to chop and blend ingredients ourselves while following recipes, now you can get your hands on a soup maker to do the heavy lifting.

The idea is that you load them up with all your ingredients, and set it on its way. It follows an automatic soup making programme, which does the chopping and heating all on auto pilot, preparing a delicious soup based on the ingredients you provide. Choosing one’s quite easy too if you know where to look, and thanks to the wonders of the internet you can find all of the best soup makers in one place.

What’s more, there are loads of great recipes available on the web too, along with sites that talk about the best deals to get great prices too. Great prices are always welcome for new parents when you’re buying hundreds of nappies, bottle sterilisers, formula and everything else a tiny human needs.

For mums, delicious soups offer a great way to get the nutrition you need from a calming and hearty meal. It can also provide a calm break from the stressful moments that early parenthood brings. As all parents know, moments of solace are important to savour, whether it’s a well earned break as baby takes a nap, or perhaps your partner takes over with a screaming child that can’t sleep with colic.

We hope you get a few ideas here for treating yourself to a small treat that warms you up on a cold winters day.

breastfeeding

A common breast feeding venue is the parental bedroom or the child’s nursery.

Breastfeeding has been a controversial subject since humans stopped roaming free across the undeveloped world. There’s a regular fierce debate about whether or not mothers should be able to openly feed their baby in cafes and other public spaces, and while the vast majority of people believe that it’s fine to do, there are still a small section of society that feel uncomfortable and even offended by the practice. On the other hand, there are a significant number of mums that feel too self conscious to entertain the thought of presenting their bosom to their child in public, and even make sure they’re alone at home when feeding. We could understand the public dislike if you were feeding an eight year old, but preschoolers surely couldn’t be more natural!

This post is entirely about breastfeeding, but nothing at all to do with the views of society. We’re going to talk a little about how technology keeps your baby safe, but at the same time might break the privacy you seek if you fall into that last category as a mum who likes to feed baby quietly with no-one else around. After all, it’s a special time of bonding for you with your baby, so don’t feel anything but the fulfilment of looking after your little one.

Baby monitors seem to have been around forever, possibly since we were children ourselves. Now though, they come in video format, meaning that you can watch over your child sleeping from the same handset that you’d previously have only listened to. That means that there’s a camera in their room as well as a microphone. If you’ve had children before, or been at the home of someone who has young infants, you’ll know how easy it is to overhear a private conversation up in the child’s room, undoubtedly either leading to amusement or embarrassment (or both). Where video baby monitors and breast feeding meet, though, may result in your guests getting an eyeful that they’re not expecting when glancing at the monitor! Naturally, you’re likely to close the curtains or lower the blinds before feeding if you’re in easy view of the neighbours or passers-by, but the electronic eye of the video monitor is often overlooked!

Naturally, most people will just look away and think no more of it, but that doesn’t mean you won’t feel a little self conscious when you realise what’s happened. These devices are, on the whole, very useful and can even be seen as safety devices to monitor your child. You can read more about them in the product guides at videobabymonitorzone.com, you’ll discover all sorts of incredible features that you’d never have thought possible. They’ve come a long way since the crackly gadgets we remember listening to when our younger siblings arrived in the world!

Camera

Creepy or reassuring?

There’s actually an irony in the fact that most of us find the amount of surveillance in the world slightly creepy, yet we’re keen to install a camera in our child’s bedroom. When you consider that it communicates wirelessly to get the images to you as a parent it’s even more surprising that mums and dads don’t worry more about these devices and how secure they are. Having said that, it’s got to be balanced against the additional safety they provide to your child, especially where added extras like Babysense are included, Motorola’s breathing detection system which watches over your sleeping child.

From the moment your child arrives, you’ll be looking out for them in a way that you never thought possible. The parental genetics kick in without warning, letting you see danger everywhere and giving you the insatiable urge to wrap that little bundle of joy in cotton wool at every turn. You’ll hear a lot of stories about the best things to do for your child, including the fact that science has proven beyond question that kids that are breast fed for longest are much more likely to succeed and achieve more at school. Of course, that’s a line pushed by many of the pro-earth-mother type parents, but when scientists everywhere agree, it’s probably worth listening!

What a lot of seasoned parents have realised, though, is that you have to let kids make their own mistakes, otherwise they’ll be completely lost by the time they reach school age, or worse still become that kid in the class that screams the place down if they don’t get their way.

Education isn’t all about books and formal teaching, it’s just as much about learning how the world works, interacting with others and developing the skills needed to integrate comfortably with society. If you think about the most successful people, they’re rarely the best educated in the schooling sense – they’re far more likely to be good at influencing others – what we typically refer to as being a people person.

Those skills are incredibly tough to gain as an adult as they virtually become part of our DNA, foundations for all of our perceptions of the world and beliefs. Helping your child to get those building blocks settled early in life in a way that helps them work with other children (and to a degree adults too) will be far more valuable than teaching them their alphabet and numbers – all that will happen at school or at home later on.

Learning to communicate effectively and with good influence is something that young children really enjoy too – rather than robbing them of the fun of childhood with an excessive focus on education.

Being a good parent means different things to every mum or dad you ask, so aside from the essentials of keeping them safe, it’s down to you to do your best, and help your babies grow into adults that fulfil their full potential.

Coming shortly after (in popularity) the question of whether to breast feed at all, tends to be how long breast feeding should continue for. We’ve all heard stories of all of those kids that seem to continue way beyond an age that most of us would consider normal, and in extreme cases see kids making it to the age of eight or nine and still latch on regularly. We should point out that no-one’s suggesting that’s normal before we continue.

When we say breast feeding for as long as you can to give your child the best chances in life, we don’t mean indefinitely, more that up to a year or so is better than giving up after a few weeks.

Ending Breast Feeding With The Least Impact On Your Child?

Stopping the breast feeding process is relatively straight forward, at least compared to learning to feed to start with. Your child will begin to need to transition towards solid food, and that time will be fairly obvious. It may be that they suddenly start to appear unsatisfied after feeds, or they may begin to chew, whether they’ve started teething or not – ouch!

This is where weaning comes in – soft foods are key – generally very healthy natural produce are the best, boiled and mashed up to a paste where appropriate. You don’t need to instantly stop feeding from the breast either – make it as fast or as slow a transition as is comfortable. Your child may even lose interest in feeding from you altogether, but that’s not always the case.

Is It Easy To Stop Breast Feeding?

You might find the urge to feed your child naturally is greater than that shown by your child. If it becomes too much, and your child is showing no interest (or you fear that weaning may go backwards) you can turn to expressing milk with a breast pump to slowly reduce your production over time. Sorry to refer to your bodily functions as if you’re a cow, but you’re probably feeling a little nice one at times!

Some mums keep on breast feeding for other reasons too – it’s a well known fact that it assists in weight loss so will help alongside exercise to drop a few pounds, so there are other considerations too in deciding when to stop.

Adult Breast Feeding and Lactation

It’s getting less common these days, but is perfectly natural for your partner to be your breast pump. What’s more, some ladies actually feel a little uncomfortable in finding the process a little too enjoyable! Don’t worry though, that’s nothing unusual, and if you think about it, in terms of the length of time that humans have evolved, the vast majority of that time you couldn’t nip down to the supermarket to buy a pump! What’s more, listening to your body is wise, as it’s probably telling you that it’s time to start enjoying a little more mummy and daddy time again – something that was probably the last thing on your mind a few weeks ago!