Useful Products to Make Breastfeeding Easy - Upspring Baby Review

Sponsored By: MommyCon's Parent Squad

UpSpring Baby Product Review

I recently signed on with MommyCon as a blogger for their Parent Squad! I am one of a group of parents who will receive exciting products to test out. My first assignment is this wonderful box from UpSpring Baby! This collection of products is to support nursing mothers. The goal is to help maintain a healthy milk supply without unhealthy GMO additives. I thought this box was perfect for where I am in my Mama life as I tend to have a dip in supply around the 5-month mark of my baby’s life.

Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve tested these products to give you my honest opinion and overall, I think this company is the perfect one to look into. I think for parents, it’s great to find companies that offer a wide variety of products that are safe and natural. Now more than ever with environmental toxins, we need to be more careful with what we’re putting IN our bodies.

In the box, I received a shaker cup! The best thing about this cup is that it has a plastic screen in the top area so if you’re drinking ice water, the ice doesn’t come through the top, I’ve done this many times with other blender cups and so far, I think this one is the best I’ve used. In addition to the cup, MommyCon included packets of Milkflow in three different flavors, alcohol breastmilk strips, coconut oil, nipple cream and prenatal vitamins!

My Favorite

My favorite item in this box has to be the prenatal vitamin. No matter which doctor we see, they always ask “you’re taking your prenatal right?” My answer, Honestly? No. I hardly ever took the prenatal vitamins with my last baby because there was conflicting information online about folic acid. I took a look at the label for this brand and it says Folate (L-Methylfolate Calcium Salt.) This means that the body won’t need to work as hard to break it down. Instead of four steps to reaching the good part of Folate, you’re getting the real deal right away.

I love wine and I just so happened to be going out the night I received this package so the first thing I tried was the Milkscreen Breastmilk Alcohol Test Strips, these worked great! When I posted about it online, a friend said that milk screen test strips don’t actually work. They had tried them in nursing school and it said that they were over the limit without even having a drink. This gave me the idea to test the strips to make sure that this wasn’t the case here and I was correct. The test was negative when I tested my milk without having had a drink. (Pictured below) The test strip on the left is the one without having any alcohol, the test strip on the right is the one where I had 2 glasses of wine.

<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-version="7" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BQWh1IXApxU/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">This is a great prenatal vitamin, I take it while breastfeeding to keep my own vitamin levels up. I like that this product has L-methylfolate instead of folic acid. For those who don't know, folic acid is not the ideal ingredient for prenatal vitamins and since it's like peanut butter, it might be harmful for some who can't process it properly. Being one of those people, I paused prenatal vitamins until I found these. Folic acid takes 4 steps to break down into methylfolate and so to just have it in the vitamin broken down, your body will process it more naturally like it does when eating food. I also like the taste, at first I thought wow this about knocked me off of my feet but after the dose was finished, I realized that I like it. The gummy is a peach mango flavor however I mostly taste the mango which is a flavor that I love! This is a two part prenatal, the pill is the alpha omega and that doesn't have a taste and isn't too big to swallow! Thank you @mommycon #parentsquad for sending me this to review! The vitamins are by @upspringbaby #upspringbaby</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A photo posted by @theblackandwhiteblogco on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2017-02-11T00:57:27+00:00">Feb 10, 2017 at 4:57pm PST</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>

I thought the berry had a great taste, I am automatically drawn to berry flavors (I eat all of the reds and pinks out of my starburst candies :))

Chocolate was my least favorite of the three but I am more of a dark chocolate type of person. I also like the thick consistency that chocolate drinks have and since this has a water base, it lacked that.

I normally do not eat the yellows or orange candies but this actually had a great taste. It didn’t have the overly-sweetened aftertaste and I liked that.

You can’t ever have too many different types of coconut oil, at least at my house you can’t, so when I saw both of these in there I was really excited to try them out. First, let me mention that the packaging on all of these products is well designed, I’m a graphic designer myself and I love how everything is laid out and readable. In the green container, you have your coconut oil, the stuff you can put on just about anything. In these dry winter months, all the lips are chapped and since my kids like to lick the chapstick off of their lips, this was a good solution. I also put this on my hair to do a coconut oil mask and that helped to restore the balance and moisture in my hair.

I don’t suffer as much from dry nipples while breastfeeding but I did like to use the nipple balm too, it did provide relief for the small amount of dryness that I had and I think that made for a better nursing experience for my little guy.

About the author…

Hi! Thank you for reading my blog posts, I’m a mother of five with twin boys set to arrive very soon! My days as a photographer began in Southern California where my friends and I had walls full of photos printed from our adventures. I currently shoot with a Canon 5D Mark IV but for the last 5 years I have used a Canon 70D Crop Sensor DSLR because it’s the person who makes a good photographer, not the equipment. I strive to document life as it is, to #sustainchildhood is my ultimate goal for you and for me. If you’ve found my article interesting or helpful, please consider sharing this page and using the hashtag #sustainchildhood so that I can see your work!

Alice

Photographer & Blogger, The Black and White Blog Co