The Longest Shortest Time

Why I Chose Season 2’s Sponsors

So far, the Longest Shortest Time has been a pretty solitary endeavor. I mean, aside from talking to all of you, which is why I do this in the first place. Thanks to your enthusiasm, this show has reached about 100,000 listeners, mostly by word-of-mouth. Which is hard for me to even believe. The thing is, when it comes down to it, if I want this project to keep going, I’m going to need the audience to be much bigger. And that kind of outreach is impossible for me to do while also producing the show full-time. What I realized, as I prepped for my Kickstarter is, this project will only be sustainable if I engage both the audience and sponsors.

I started thinking, Who would I want to sponsor this podcast, if I could have my pick of anyone? Three brands came to mind immediately. I had a peripheral relationship with one of them, and the other two I cold called. I was blown away when all three answered with a resounding yes. If my Kickstarter is successful (and it will be, right? Because you will help me continue to spread the word?), you will hear me pitching these brands at the end of the show, and I want to tell you why I will be more than happy to do so.

Before I begin, I want to point out that Diapers.com very generously put up a $5000 challenge grant today. Once I hit $10K (at the moment, we are just $1800 away!), Diapers.com will kick in another $5K, bringing us to $15K—more than halfway to our ultimate goal of $25K. Medela and Music Together have helped tremendously in getting me very close to getting Diapers.com’s donation. And now I’m counting on you for the rest. Please help me spread the word in any way that you can!

Okay, let’s go deep on our sponsors.

Season 2 Sponsor: DIAPERS.COM

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Diapers.com hardly needs an introduction. But believe it or not, when I had Sasha three years ago, I had never heard of them. If you read my very first post on this blog, you know the story about how I couldn’t walk for the first two months of my life as a mother. And how my bedroom was on our apartment’s second floor and the bathroom was on the first, so for those two months I lived on an air mattress in our living room. Our very dark living room. The dim light is what I remember most, when I picture the moment that my husband Jonathan and I realized for the first time that we were about to run out of diapers. (Our first batch was donated to us by a colleague of my brother’s, who gave them to him to carry all the way back to us on a flight to NYC from North Carolina.) Anyway, I distinctly remember the Oh, shit! setting in, and Jonathan saying something like, There must be someone that will deliver diapers tomorrow, but not at all sounding sure about it. He did a little Googling and pretty quickly was like, Aha! We can get them tomorrow, and we get a discount from our first order, too. Of course, the site he’d found was Diapers.com.

Ever since then, I have used Diapers.com and the other Quidsi brands for last-minute diapers and wipes orders, and for all kinds of other things, too: shoes (OMG, she grew a size overnight!), sleepsacks (OMG, she is crying all night because she can’t figure out how to stay under the covers!), dishes (OMG, I broke a bowl we got for our wedding!). I have also found Diapers to have the best customer service of any online store I have ever encountered. We once received a misprinted book and they sent me a new copy, no questions asked, along with a handwritten note.

So, yay. Diapers.com!

Episode Sponsor: MEDELA

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Let us revisit those dark early days. The second thing that comes to mind, after the dimmness, is the feeding. The many ways of feeding.

Sasha was in the NICU for the first three days of her life, and the lactation consultant at the hospital gave me very brief instructions on how to use the breastpump, and left me with a single valve. She neglected to tell me that if I wanted to build my supply while my baby was not physically with me, I’d have to pump each side for 15 mins every hour on the hour. So I just didn’t do it, because I felt like I’d rather spend my time holding Sasha in the NICU. But then the nurses gave me the green light to breastfeed and my nipples got all torn up and I couldn’t breastfeed from the infections and the pain. So a just before I left the hospital, a new lactation consultant set me straight—told me not to try to breastfeed until I had healed, and to pump exclusively for awhile. She sent me home with a Medela hospital grade pump, and told me to keep it for a month.

The pumping seemed to be going fine, and I was soon able to breastfeed again. But then I saw my midwife just after having my episiotomy recut and stitched. I was raw, inside and out, and she asked me exactly how much milk my pumping was yielding. I can’t remember how much it was, but it was minuscule, and the midwife gave it to me straight: If you want your milk supply to not dry up, she said, you’ve gotta be pumping after every single feeding. She said she’d completely understand if I just wanted to give it up. I did not want to give it up. At that point, breastfeeding was the only thing I had left. (That said, I know everything would’ve been fine if I hadn’t been able to—it was just an urgent emotional need I had for some sort of connection and achievement.) Through a combination of breastfeeding, pumping, bottle-feeding pumped milk, and topping off with formula (all methods employed for every single feeding!), I was eventually able to exclusively breastfeed. I 100% believe I was able to accomplish this only because of my Medela hospital grade pump.

When I was not pumping or breastfeeding, my boobs lived in Medela. I had only a few bras during that year (all Medela), and I wore them literally day and night. I can remember the first night I slept without a bra, after I had stopped leaking, and how weird and young I felt. I also used Medela lanolin for my cracked and infected nipples. And when that was over, I used it for bad cases of diaper rash. It was the only thing that would clear things up quickly.

So, yay. Medela!

Episode Sponsor: MUSIC TOGETHER

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Once Sasha and I could get out of the house, I was anxious to meet other moms. So when she turned 6 months old, I quickly signed us up for a mommy & me music class with Music Together. That’s where we met Anne Sailer, who I had the honor of interviewing for episode 1 of this podcast, and who also wrote this wonderful post on observer learning. Anne created an environment in her classes that made bonding with Sasha easy. And bonding was something I needed desperately, after all of the early craziness. She made me notice things about Sasha’s development that I would’ve otherwise overlooked: the fact that her relentless stare during class meant she was mentally recording everything that was going on, and that she’d “press play” once she got home; the fact that toddlers respond better to your request to brush teeth or stop at the corner if you sing it to them; the fact that if you leave off a word at the end of a phrase in a familiar song, they’ll fill in the blank.

Anne’s tips gave us fun activities to do at home, using Music Together’s CDs as a starting point. And, perhaps the best thing of all, Anne’s class gave me something to look forward to each week. Even during our roughest rough patches, when Sasha was refusing to poop or bathe, or when she was going through a screaming phase, I knew that Tuesdays at 10:30 we would have a fun hour of shaking tambourines and dancing our tushies off. Sasha and I went to Music Together for a full three years, and we now own every CD collection of theirs in existence. The only reason we have stopped going is, Sasha is now in school 5 days a week. Sometimes she’ll start randomly singing a Music Together song that I’m sure she has long forgotten, and it brings me right back to Anne’s class and I feel all warm and fuzzy all over again. I can completely see how, even though we’ve aged out of Music Together, the songs and the things we’ve learned as a mommy/kid team will continue to pop up in our daily lives for a long time to come.

So, yay. Music Together!

Interesting side note: both Diapers.com and Music Together originated in the town where I live: Montclair, NJ.

Okay, now that you know why I love these brands, please help me make these amazing partnerships actually happen by 1) pledging, if you haven’t already, 2) sharing our Kickstarter link on Facebook and Twitter, or emailing people directly who you think would benefit from this project’s longevity, and 3) ordering *spark*cards for free, to hand out to said people who would benefit from this project.

Thank you!

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