Kiddopotamus Tinydiner Placemat

I've sort of belabored my hatred of germs (HERE), so I don't feel that I really need to go into a big long spiel again.  When Little A was just learning to eat, we mostly did baby-led weaning, where she fed herself.  Great for teaching hand-to-mouth coordination, allows the baby to lead the way on how much they would like to eat - and is easier for lazy parents!

Because of that, going out to eat at restaurants was a little bit of a situation.  I worked as a waitress in the past - I know that most places just put a rag in some already-dirty water and wipe off a table with it.  I don't know if there's been a Mythbusters on this or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are more germs on the table after it's been wiped down than before.  Other places will use bleach water - which is great in theory, except when your child is going to put their food down when the table is potentially still wet.  Eating bleach doesn't sound like an awesome idea for a 9-month-old, but I'm not a gastroenterologist, don't quote me.

Anyway.  We were at Babies 'R Us, and found this item -- which instantly means I got it for about a 40% markup (LINK):

When it's unfolded, it is about 18 inches wide - the sides and top flap fold up to make it fit a little easier in a diaper bag or such.  It's pretty thick plastic, and wipes down very easy.  That little jobby down at the bottom that looks like a pencil case is a little cup area that catches the inevitable food that falls out of baby's mouth.  (It also catches baby barf, which is both a positive and negative.)

What I liked best about this is that it also has suction cups on the back (on each of the flaps) that keep it on the table even when your little one sweeps their arm back and forth on the table or grabs at it.

We used the heck out of it - we used to try and go to breakfast a couple of times a month with my parents, in addition to other trips, and so it got a ton of use:

(Those are hash browns, in case anyone is wondering what the heck we're feeding her.)

After a while it didn't fold up quite as nicely, but the suction cups still made it a lot more useful than the little plastic placemats that you can get that just lie on the table.  Plus, I liked that it was reusable, it seemed more environmentally-friendly.

We don't use it anymore now that Little A is fine eating off of a plate, but it was well worth $9.  I would throw it in the dishwasher for a deep clean, it was super-easy.  It was a bit bulky in the diaper bag, even folded up and then with some additional rolling, so I guess it really depends on how big your diaper bag is and how crazy you are about germs.  My answers to those were "huge" and "lots."  

Dr. Brown's Microwave Sterilizer

Sometimes I feel it's fair to preface a post with a disclaimer on my level of crazy.  It's just fair to let someone going in know from where my actions and opinions are formed.  It's a service I provide.

So, I'm a little weird about germs.  And by "little," I mean that I hate the shopping cart with the fiery passion of a million suns.  There are somehow more poop germs on the shopping cart you use at the grocery store than there probably are in all of your bathrooms in your house combined - you know, the same shopping cart on which you put your hands, and some babies try to suck the handles.  And I just want to know how all of these poop germs got there.  I mean, I don't necessarily actually want to know the specifics, but is there a hand or some other item acting as a middleman?  This disturbs me on levels that I can't explain.  When I was pregnant with Little A, I used so much hand sanitizer that I got little blisters on my fingers.  (In my defense, my immune system is terrible from previous health issues.  But still.)

So, let's keep that all in mind.  I know I couldn't prevent all germs from reaching her, but I felt like I could control the majority of the items she put in her mouth (at least for a while, until she started putting everything she could reach in there).  I wanted to keep bottle nipples, the bottles themselves, and binkies all sanitized and sterile, as free from germs as possible.  Because, as we all know, I'm pretty sure that all pacifiers actually look like this if you look at them close up:

So, I did some research.  When Little A was little, my husband worked second shift (from 2 to 10 p.m.) and I worked early (7 a.m. to 4 p.m.) so that we could minimize daycare needs.  This meant that we were both a little short-handed and didn't have a ton of time to sterilize bottles, binkies, and nipples on the stove.  We found the perfect solution - the Dr. Brown's Microwave Sterilizer (LINK):

It runs about $24 on Amazon, runs full price around $33 at BabiesRUs.  Basically, you put X number of ounces into the bottom of the sterilizer, put all of your already-washed stuff you want to sterilize on the tray, and pop it into your microwave for the specified amount of time (in accordance with the wattage of your microwave).  For us, this was about two minutes, and we had a whole tray full of sterilized bottles, binkies, and nipples all ready to go!  No more dead bugs and hair and germs on the bottles, no germs from the dishwasher or sink left over, sparkly clean and bacteria free!

I should provide a safety clause here.  They provide those tongs for a reason.  You're gonna go ahead and burn the crap out of your finger if you try and grab something out of there without giving it a few minutes to cool down first.  We would usually take it out of the microwave, take the lid slightly off, and let it cool for about five minutes before starting to put stuff away.  We'd actually usually only get out items that needed to be used immediately, though, because they are all pretty damp - anything that wasn't needed immediately would sit in there overnight to dry off.  This was partially because I was lazy and didn't want to dry everything, and partially because I felt like using either a towel or a paper towel on a newly-sanitized item sort of undid everything we had just accomplished by introducing germs back on there.  That's sort of defeating my desired end game.

So, anyway - I really, really liked this item.  We used it up until Little A was almost a year (which is, if I estimate correctly, about 11 months longer than normal people sterilize stuff).  I will admit that I have done the total gross Mom thing when out and about and we only had one "bee-boo" (A's word for her binky) where I put it in my mouth and "cleaned" it if it fell, and then gave it to her.  THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA, DON'T DO THIS.  Adults can transfer their decay-causing saliva to their infants and cause their teeth to sort of rot (LINK) - I mean, this will probably happen as soon as they start kissing when they hit puberty if their kissing partner's parents shared saliva with them, so you're really only buying yourself about a decade or whatever, but still.  That is my tooth PSA for the day.

Value:  Between $24 and $33.  For me, using this every 1 to 3 days for a year, it was a very good investment.  If you're able to exclusively breastfeed without having to pump, or don't think you'll sterilize for that long, you may want to consider how much you'll use it first.  

Child entertainment level:  Not applicable.

Practicality:  I think this was incredibly practical for us, as we were essentially two single parents who happened to be married, didn't have time to sterilize on the stove, but I was still crazy about germs.  It didn't take up much room, was easy to use, and was not costly.  10/10 for us.