CorporetteMoms

Updated: Nov 1, 2018 49 Comments · by

Finally Friday: Zip Back Crewneck Cashmere Sweater

Everyone· Recent Recs

This post may contain affiliate links and CorporetteMoms may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Affordable Cashmere Sweater: Halogen Zip Back Crewneck Cashmere SweaterI somehow missed this highly rated sweater when I rounded up the highly-rated things left in the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale last week — but it looks great for a casual office or just for weekend fun. It’s available in sizes XXS-XXL, too! The sale ends soon (meaning prices go back up to full price) on August 8, so if you haven’t hit the sale yet, please do so. Mamas, what were your favorite things you got at the NAS? Halogen Zip Back Crewneck Cashmere Sweater (L-4)

Sales of note for 9.10.24

(See all of the latest workwear sales at Corporette!)

Kid/Family Sales

  • Carter’s – Birthday sale, 40-50% off & extra 20% off select styles
  • Hanna Andersson – Up to 50% off all baby; up to 40% off all Halloween
  • J.Crew Crewcuts – Extra 30% off sale styles
  • Old Navy – 40% off everything
  • Target – BOGO 25% off select haircare, up to 25% off floor care items; up to 30% off indoor furniture up to 20% off TVs

See some of our latest articles on CorporetteMoms:

Click here to see our top posts!

And — here are some of our latest threadjacks of interest – working mom questions asked by the commenters!

Comments

  1. AIMS says

    This is the kind of sweater I always really like and want to wear but tha just makes me look like a shapeless blob.
    Oh well. But I do want to say that I feel like the featured clothes this week have been decidedly less mom-ish, which I really appreciate. Thanks Kat!

    • pockets says

      I think these types of things (unstructured, slouchy clothing) only look good on the small chested (in the case of bottoms, they only look good on those with no tushy). Otherwise the fabric goes over the largest part of your body and then just hangs down and makes you look much bigger than you are. I have the same problem.

      • Meg Murry says

        Yes, at first glance I didn’t see that, but I think this would be really unflattering on a lot of body types (especially mine). If the model didn’t have her hand in her pocket, I think it would look very blah on her.

        And random exposed zipper + dry clean + semi-sheer + $90 = pass for me. But I could see it working for someone else

  2. Small town troubles says

    I know I’m borrowing trouble here but I’m TTC and I’m already worried about my potential delivery scenarios. Since these would impact who I use as my doctor throughout my pregnancy, I need to make a choice once I am pregnant. I really don’t love any of my options though. Here are my choices:

    (1) Stay with my current doctor who I LOVE. She unfortunately was bought out by a group affiliated with the Catholic Hospital and can only deliver there. I have always felt that Catholic delivery would be a no go for me for ethics reasons. However, they have a wonderful innovative program where babies with health problems still remain in your room with you. My doc swears they have the best outcomes out of the three choices. She fully respects why I am uncomfortable and told me she had the same discomfort being bought out by them but after doing her research felt the hospital provided the best care for her patients. She also interviewed other docs that have delivered there for years and anytime they have had to ask permission to perform a procedure the catholic ethics counsel has granted it. I just have such a problem with the fact that my doc would have to ask for permission. I am professionally acquainted with the GC of this hospital and I could ask him more about the procedures that require permission and their standards, etc. but ugh. I just don’t want to go there. Option 1 is 25 minutes from my house and 10 minutes from my work. I know 2 people that delivered there and had good experiences.

    (2) Go to the private hospital in the same town. It has the only real NICU but as mentioned above, hospital 1 handles many special cases and only the worst get transferred to this NICU. Of the doctors that could end up on call to deliver for me there, one is my client for reasons unrelated to his job and another is a doctor that I serve on a board and professional committees with. While I highly respect both of them and think they are amazing at what they do, I don’t want them to see me in that state since I work with them professionally. There are other doctors that deliver there and I would pick one that wasn’t them as my regular doc but there is no guarantee that they wouldn’t be the on call doc when the time comes. Other con is obviously finding another doctor. I don’t know anyone that has delivered there but my friend did a professional training in their NICU and was impressed by the facilities in general. This hospital is 15 minutes from work and 30 from home.

    (3) Third choice is a hospital 10 minutes from my house. One of my closest friends delivered there and another friend will before I have to. A third friend was hospitalized there for other issues and received great care. A coworker also moonlights there but not in labor and delivery. I will need to find a new doctor. My friends love their doc so I’m good with going to her but their doc was also just bought out by a big practice group so now instead of having a rotation of 4 or 5 potential docs it is more like 10 or 15. Also, they say that the practice lost its individual feel after the doctors had to move into the big new building. My biggest concern with this option is I have had to take my husband and another friend (separate occasions) to their ER and both times I was not pleased with their care. I found it very neglectful and borderline malpractice. I had to really step up as an advocate for them to get them what they need. Since then a young girl died from the same time of alleged neglect/malpractice and the family is suing the hospital. I know labor/delivery is a different department than the ER but it still just makes me so nervous.

    Beyond that, I’d be looking at driving an hour or more to any other hospital and I don’t want to do that. If these were your choices, what would you pick?

    • RDC says

      I don’t understand the qualms about the catholic hospital (although I admit ignorance as I’ve never thought about it before). Are there specific procedures that are off-limits? (Presumably abortion, but I don’t know what else?) That one otherwise seems like a great option so I’d inquire about specifics. It could be that you aren’t interested in the prohibited procedures or they wouldn’t be relevant to your situation.

        • Anonymous says

          +1

          Sometimes you aren’t “interested” in certain procedures but you need them to save your life and you don’t want to be somewhere that will sacrifice your life for the baby’s unless that’s the decision you have made.

          • Anonymous says

            And in many of these situations (e.g., ectopic pregnancy) there is no way the embryo/fetus/baby will survive anyway, but you still won’t even be notified of potential options that might be safer for the mother.

      • Pogo says

        Oof, yeah. You don’t know what you’re “interested” in until you and baby might die!

        And I disagree about these procedures being ‘unlikely’… I know plenty of people who’ve had D&Cs after missed miscarriages. I would assume Catholic hospitals don’t do those (especially if your miscarriage was later term and fetus has to be partially delivered, etc). I wouldn’t want additional Catholic guilt on top of an already incredibly traumatizing situation.

        You’re not silly for thinking about these things. FWIW, I chose a hospital-affiliated doctor which is private (non-Catholic) and has as a level 3 NICU but is definitely NOT in a big city. They will airlift you if it’s something they can’t handle, but this is incredibly rare. I also did not want to drive an hour to the hospital, so I went with the non-Catholic close by one (happily I like all my doctors there – OBGYN, PCP, etc but I think I got lucky).

    • Spirograph says

      I have delivered twice at a Catholic-affiliated hospital, and although I have qualms about how some worst-case scenarios could potentially play out, the chances of those happening are slim enough that it wasn’t a huge factor in my decision not to find a new OB.

      I’m not an MD, but I believe most of the complications where a life-threatening prioritization of fetus over mother is possible are much earlier in pregnancy than full term delivery. Once the fetus is viable, it’s emergency C-section, whisk the baby off to the NICU and then treat the mother. My solution has been to plan to deliver at the Catholic hospital, but tell my husband that if I have a medical emergency pre-viability that I want to be taken to one of the non-religiously affiliated hospitals nearby. Yes, this means I won’t be treated by my normal OB practice, but I’m ok with that. A board-certified doctor is a board-certified doctor and I’d rather have him or her making decisions about my care than an ethics board.

      • pockets says

        This seems like a reasonable solution. The issue with Savita Halappanavar seems like it was because the entire country is pro-life, so nothing could be done. In your situation you could just choose to go to a different hospital for pre-delivery complications, or insist on being moved to a different hospital.

    • quail says

      I shared your concerns about a Catholic hospital and chose my practice for this reason even though the Catholic hospital has a crunchier L/D approach which I prefer. I feel and felt quite strongly that I did not want to have to worry about the approval process if my life was in danger (I believe that’s how it would usually come up in L/D ). For the professional reasons you mention, I would also stay away from option 2 – the potential crossover would be worrisome to me. The possibility of getting a professional acquaintance doctor would probably bother me more prior to labor than actually while in labor (gonna be honest, can’t say I was thinking about who was my doc at the time) but anything to reduce anxiety/stress about delivery is good in my book. I guess that leaves option 3, which sounds fine. I had to go with a very “cold” practice because I didn’t get a chance to shop around and it was fine. My practice didn’t even give me a “main” doctor. Since none of the options (except option 1?) guarantees you your regular, chosen doctor, I think it doesn’t matter and since your friends had good experiences in L/D, I’d call it good.

      I guess I’d try to do more intel on the various OB doctors/ experiences at option 3, meet with them, and see if the “feel” is a dealbreaker. If it is, you can address the Catholic question again and maybe make some difficult decisions between 1 and 2. And while it’s a little bit borrowing trouble, it’s good to do the research before you are in a pickle of having to pick somewhere for your first appointment, feeling terrible, and perhaps having to miss work a bunch in a short period to meet with all these doctors (not to mention the actual appointments).

      • Small town troubles says

        I keep trying to reply and deleting to re-write. Thanks for the responses. You are right that I have to go where I am most comfortable and will have the least anxiety but I’m struggling to figure that out. I’m in the unpleasant situation of knowing too much. I did a quick gut check. Despite what I know about the ER, there is a good chance that I’d still take a friend or family member there because it is the closest and who wants to travel another 20 minutes when you need emergency care. I’d just make sure to advocate for them. I just need to trust that I have someone that can advocate for me to my standards, be it my husband or a doula. And I need to remind myself that the same people that work the ER don’t work L&D.

        I still have a lot of mixed feelings about leaving my doc though. Maybe I’ll walk around inside both facilities, take tours if they have them, and see where I’d feel most comfortable, gut wise. I think #2 is out for the professional reasons and I don’t get warm fuzzy feelings at that hospital either.

    • ChiLaw says

      I have an ob/gyn whom I love … at a Catholic practice. And I’m halfheartedly shopping for care elsewhere, because though this woman is whipsmart and respectful and relatable, when I asked her if she could provide me with a new copper-T or a cervical cap, there was this awful, awkward pause and then she said, in a small voice, “this is a Catholic practice.” She followed up quickly with offering to prescribe hbc or even minera, because those can be used for more than just birth control, but she literally could not give me those other options. Right now that works fine for my life, but I don’t want her to be my doctor if things get more intense.

      (It’s 2015 in Southern California and my doctor won’t prescribe birth control. What a world.)

  3. Formula to Milk transition says

    How/when did everyone switch their baby over to whole milk?

    My 10.5 month old will be transitioning to the toddler one’s room at the end of September and they don’t allow bottles/make(or give) formula in the room. My baby has started to decrease the amount of formula she drinks this week on her own, but is still around 24 ounces.

    Should I start mixing in whole milk / wait until we get closer to the switch? Any advice?

    I am going to ask our Dr. about this fwiw, but wondered what everyone on here has done.

    • HSAL says

      I’m interested to read comments – my doctor told me at our last appointment that we could start introducing whole milk at 11 months (she’s almost 10 months) and I have no idea how to start. She chews on her sippy but I’m not even sure she gets any water out (we also use the bite/rimless cups but I don’t think those are any better). She’ll move to her toddler room in October and I know they say drinking out of a cup is something they work on, but maybe I need to be a little more aggressive with it.

      • Anon in NYC says

        Our pediatrician told us that we could start introducing whole milk at 10 or 11 months if my daughter was otherwise getting a well rounded diet (she was). We waited until around 11 months to slowly transition. We started by mixing whole milk into her normal bottles. So, if she was getting a 6 oz bottle, we started with 1 oz whole milk and 5 oz breastmilk. We just played around with the formula for a while – the next week it might be 2 oz whole milk and 3 oz breastmilk, and so on. After a few weeks of this we started eliminating 1 bottle at a time (she was drinking 3 a day) and replacing it with a straw sippy cup of plain whole milk. At first she only drank about 1-2 oz of straight whole milk (often it was 1 or 2 sips). Now she drinks about 8-12 oz a day.

        We have a few of the rimless cups, but for us it was far easier to do all of this with the straw cup. We have the OXO Tot straw cup and the Thermos Foogo straw cups, and both are easy for her to drink from.

    • NewMomAnon says

      I would ask daycare how they handle it too – since they have this policy they must know how they make it happen. My daycare did all the heavy lifting on getting my kiddo off of bottles and using sippy cups. We had played around at home with cups, but daycare put my kiddo over the edge. Probably something about all her friends drinking out of cups and the teachers being super encouraging.

      As far as formula transition to whole milk – we did a week of decreasing amounts of bm mixed with increasing amounts of whole milk until it was 100% whole milk. Our daycare wouldn’t do bm in a sippy cup, so we had to transition the milk before we could transition the cup. I could see doing both transitions at the same time though.

    • quail says

      We started the transition at 11 months by mixing bottles of whole cow’s milk and b-milk at daycare. I don’t remember how gradually we did it – kid appeared not to notice. I continued to nurse at home until a year. Since the one year mark, he has only drunk cow’s milk.

      At a year we also tried to switch to a sippy cup but daycare still gives him a bottle before nap and a sippy cup at snack/meals (he’s now 18 months) and going bottle free is not a battle we want to fight with daycare. At home we only do sippy cups or open cups (which he can do about 75% of the time time – 25% results in a sopping shirt). And for a sippy cup we use the valve ones with a spout at day care for spill prevention but at home we use the take-n-toss straw cups.

    • POSITA says

      How many meals is the daycare doing now? With my toddler, we had to go up to 5+ meals per day for her to shift from bottles to table food. We did breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, occasionally with an extra breakfast or dinner if she was up early or late.

      Once we started feeding her enough at meals, she stopped finishing her 5-6 oz bottles. And once the bottles were down to smaller amounts, we just started replacing them with additional meals accompanied by cups of milk (3-4 oz). We never did any sort of mixing. She drank the cows milk fine and didn’t object to getting a cup. (For what it’s worth, she was really a boob girl and only ever reluctantly accepted bottles as it was.) We did get the silicone-topped sippies that are the closest to bottles. She was able to drink most efficiently from them at the beginning.

      We started the transition at about 11.5 months and were done transitioning in two weeks. It was pretty quick since she didn’t seem to care.

      • NewMomAnon says

        I forgot, the silicone-topped sippies were a good transition from the bottle to a sippy cup. The hard-topped sippies and the Miracle 360 cups were not a hit at first. We tried both the Munchkin Latch and the Nuk soft sippy. I liked the Nuk better because it had fewer parts and was easier to clean. The Munchkin held more and maybe had measurement lines on the side too?

      • Formula to Milk transition says

        This is a great point…

        Baby currently gets a full lunch at daycare now (sits at a table and everything!) and an afternoon snack.

        Last night she had spaghetti, cottage cheese, and applesauce for dinner. We offered her a bottle about 30 mins before bed and she only drank 1 ounce of it. So I think as she increases the actual amount of food she eats you’re right that it’ll go down.

        She hasn’t done super well with the sippy cups but is pretty proficient at a straw. I’ll keep trying other sippy cups… it might just be the ones we’ve tried.

    • EP-er says

      We made the transition from breast milk in bottles to whole milk in cups starting around 11 months. I was big on “no bottles after a year” (although really, why? Maybe I was just tired of washing all of those Dr. Brown parts…) For us, that meant offering whole milk in sippy cups at every meal. (My kiddos both did best with straw cups.) Bottles were only for breast milk & whole milk/water was only for sippy cups. We weren’t doing middle of the night bottles any more, so the big thing was just the before bed bottle. And since I was pumping, when the breast milk was gone, so were the bottles.

      We weren’t in daycare at the time, however — I would take their lead on it. There is also some toddler “formula” that you try in sippy cups if you are worried about the nutritional aspect of moving from formula. Lots of kids in our day care have their own “milk” (organic/soy/whatever) that they bring from home if they don’t want whole cows milk.

    • ChiLaw says

      So, our kid barely drinks any milk because we barely do, so grains of salt, but here’s how I thought about it, because it might be helpful.

      When she was a baby, b-milk/formula was her only food source. Then she started eating food, so she was getting most of her nutrition from b-milk/formula, but increasingly, some of it was coming from food. She started drinking a little water at the same time. Eventually, the % of her nutrition and hydration from b-milk/formula was decreasing, and the % from food/water was increasing. Now she is getting 100% of her nutrition and hydration from food/water. I think of cow’s milk (or the almond milk she has in her cereal) just as part of that, a food, not a replacement for b-milk/formula.

      So I am glad daycare gives her some cows milk because I don’t know how her calcium intake is at home (do goldfish crackers have calcium? because that’s all she predictably eats), but I have never thought of cows milk as a replacement for b-milk/formula.

    • SoCalAtty says

      Reading comments as well. My 11 month old still gets most of his nutrients from pumped milk – he IS eating solids, but no way enough to sustain him over a full day at daycare.

      I have that Munchkin 360 cup and another one, and he still hasn’t really mastered the sippy cup. I’m in trouble if the toddler room won’t do bottles…I guess I better find out!

    • Anonymous says

      I am in Canada and the recommendation is whole milk is fine to start with at 9 months as long as baby is getting a varied diet. My LO wasn’t a big meat eater yet so we held out until 12 months. I did about a week of mixing milk and formula and then switched cold turkey since the formula container was empty. Cue bad tummy problems for LO. Saw an allergist, confirmed no milk allergy, and were told to introduce more gradually. One week of 6oz formula with just a splash of milk; next week 4oz/2oz split, then 2/4 and then full bottle of milk. No more tummy issues. All of this is to say- give yourself some time to do the switch just in case your LO also needs some time to gradually get used to milk.
      My LO is 13.5 months and only drinks a bottle in the morning and a bottle before bed- 12 oz total (next goal is to get rid of the bottle) Water in a straw cup the rest of the day. I was told the max amount of milk per day is 18 oz- otherwise LO may not be inclined to eat real food, and milk can hinder iron absorption. So it is also an option for daycare to just be giving LO water during the day.

    • Carrie M says

      We thought about mixing, but one day just gave her a straight cup of whole milk. I think she was about 11 months. She liked it, so we went with it. We offered a small amount, straight up, for a couple weeks (always in cups), then started giving her more milk and less pumped milk / formula. She was already into (and efficient) at sippy cups, so we never put milk in bottles. She was fully transitioned off of bmilk / formula and bottles just after her first birthday.

    • Formula to Milk transition says

      These are great comments everyone! Very helpful! and a lot of food for thought (ha).

  4. NewMomAnon says

    Does anyone have strategies for a toddler who is afraid of thunder? We had a big fireworks display on the 4th of July, and it was right outside our windows. Ever since then, kiddo is terrified of thunder and worries about whether fireworks will wake her up. We use white noise and black out curtains, and she has several nightlights within reach of her bed.

    • Anonymous says

      How old is your toddler? My son is 3 this summer, and it helped a lot when I gave him a full-on scientific explanation of how thunder and lightning happen and are related (I did it mostly for my own entertainment because pint-size processing of intangible ideas is adorably hilarious). Obviously a lot went over his head, but he did take away that thunder is just a big noise, but lightning can hurt you if you’re outdoors during a storm, so he just needs to stay inside and everything will be fine. He tells me this every time it rains, now. Since fireworks are what started it all, maybe an extra note on how fireworks aren’t an all-the-time thing, but only for special holidays, too?

      It’s always hit or miss whether logic works on a toddler, but it’s worth a shot.

      • NewMomAnon says

        She’s two and a half – I’ve tried explaining that lightning makes thunder and that we can count after the lightning hits to know how far away it was. That went WAY over her head. We’ve watched fireworks videos on YouTube, and she loves them.

        Maybe I can find a YouTube science video about it or something. I wish Daniel Tiger had an episode about thunder…she finds those little songs so comforting.

        • Another BigLaw Parent says

          There is a Daniel Tiger episode on Amazon Video (Free with Amazon Prime) in Season 6 that talks about a storm. I only got 3 minutes in before my toddler wanted to switch to something else, but you might want to see if that episode covers thunder.

          • rakma says

            The Daniel Tiger episode about fireworks has helped my daughter with ‘LOUD’ (as she calls all uncomfortable noises)
            Also, Banz kid size ear protection. She puts them on when the landscapers come, and whenever there’s an extended loud noise. She knows where they are, and will ask for them if she’s uncomfortable. Once they’re on, she’ll go back to playing happily.

        • JayJay says

          Unbeknownst to me, my husband told my boys that thunder is just the clouds farting. As much as I hate it, it worked and my boys thought it was hilarious.

          • Anonymous says

            lol, that’s great! My husband unhelpfully told my son that thunder is monsters coming to get him if he doesn’t stay in his bed and be quiet at bedtime. If he’d picked something funny instead of scary, I might not have corrected it so quickly.

    • mascot says

      I’d start with the logical explanation process above, but if that fails
      Can you get her some hearing protection (like the over the head ear covers) or even ear muffs? Show her how to use them and tell her that if the thunder it bothering her, she can put them on. Just knowing that she can do something about it may be enough to calm her down. You can go take them off when she’s asleep if it bothers you. From about age 2 on, my son didn’t like fireworks, ball games, etc because they were so loud, We got him some ear protectors and he is so much happier about those events.

    • hoola hoopa says

      I haven’t used it for this purpose, but the book “The Invisible String” is based on the premise of a fear of thunder. (It’s not the best written or illustrated book out there, but my kids have really enjoyed it and the message is truly good enough to make it worth owning).

    • Lorelai Gilmore says

      Thundercake, by Patricia Polacco. My daughter (now 6) loves it, but I think we started reading it when she was closer to 2-3.

      • Lorelai Gilmore says

        Also, if you’re really on your game, you can actually make the “thundercake” (which is a chocolate cake) and forever associate thunder with chocolate, which in my experience is an excellent way to get rid of fears.

  5. Betty White says

    Just want to thank everyone who commented yesterday about my idea of traveling to Patagonia with an 8 month old. I think we’re going to hold off for a few years!

ABOUT

WORK WITH US

SERIOUS STUFF