A few days ago, I received an invitation from Numa ("new ma") to visit their website and give my honest review of their store and their products. If you love shopping for baby stuff as much as I do, keep reading!Numa is a baby supplies store with a mission: to keep our babies comfy and safe today while preserving the world they will live in tomorrow. That’s why all the products they sell are made with organic and eco-friendly materials.
So what can we buy there? Well, a lot. There are clothes and shoes, bags, toys, slings, carriers, strollers, diaper covers, books, and DVDs, to mention some. But here’s a list of my favorites:
Booby Tubes by Earth Mama Angel Baby. Make no mistake: I love breastfeeding. I breastfed each of my three kids for at least two years. (My daughter reluctantly stopped only on her fifth birthday.)
But I must admit that breastfeeding has it downside too. In my first months, I always suffered from clogged ducts. For relief, I used a hot compress – but those could be so inconvenient to hold in place, especially when you have a baby to take care of.
Booby Tubes solve that problem. These are heating/cooling packs shaped so that you can conveniently insert them into your brassiere. No need to hold anything in place, and no more clogged ducts!
Medela Milk Collection Shells. Ah, I wish I had bought these earlier. These silicon cups are for catching the milk that leaks out of your breasts, especially during the first few weeks of breastfeeding, when your body has not yet calibrated itself to the exact amount of milk your baby needs, thus overproducing at times. In my case, I leaked so badly, breast pads simply were not enough to keep my shirts dry. If I had these then, life would have been so much more comfortable and less messy.
Seventh Generation diapers. I have a confession to make: In the cloth vs. disposable diaper debate, I side with the disposables. I believe the people who say the environmental effect of disposables is just as bad as the effect of all the water and soap and washing machine energy we waste when we use cloth. And unarguably, disposables are more convenient.
But when my babies are newly born, I am compelled to use cloth because my babies’ bottoms get diaper rash from disposables.
Well, for my fourth kid who is coming in September this year, I have discovered an alternative to cloth. Seventh Generation diapers are made with chlorine-free and unbleached material, so they’re not just more environment friendly than your everyday diaper, they’re also much less likely to turn my baby’s bottom red!
FuzziBunz cloth diapers. There comes a point in baby’s life when cloth diapers become ideal: potty training time. The wetness of cloth diapers signals and encourages baby to use the potty.
With my first three, I taught them to stop peeing in bed simply by leaving their diapers off and resigning myself to facing a wet bed in the middle of the night for a few weeks. But with the fourth, I’m going to use these cool cloth diapers with breathable waterproof covers and spare the bed of its nightly “blessing” until the baby’s toilet training is complete.
Boon Mush. This is my absolute favorite – yes, I saved the best for last. It’s a hand-powered food processor! It’s cheaper than an electric food processor (a big plus for me), it’s noiseless, and – here’s the best part – I can use it for chopping onions without tears! Oh, and yes, it’s good for making fresh baby food too, ha ha.
One thing I’ve noticed is that many of Numa’s products are listed at Amazon.com as “can be shipped only within the U.S.” Therefore, if you’re buying from the Philippines, Numa is a great place to buy baby stuff you otherwise would not be able to get from Amazon (or from other online shops, for that matter)!
Now for the downside – yes, there is always one. Because I’m an online shopping junkie, I’ve grown accustomed to eBay, where the items you are buying are often described in full detail. Unfortunately, Numa’s online store does not provide full details. It only provides the name of the product and the picture. If you want to know more about the product you’re buying, you'll need to have Amazon.com open in another window. The price is not listed either. You only find out how much a product costs when you add it to your shopping cart. (Of course, if you think it costs too much, you can simply take it out of the cart again.)
As far as the online store is concerned, I would say this lack of details is where Numa's greatest room for improvement lies.
On the other hand, the brick-and-mortar Numa shop is a cushioned, cozy, warmly lighted little nook that is pleasure to behold. I've also read from Manila Mommy's blog that they serve free oatmeal cookies in the store! So perhaps, the online store’s lack of features is Numa’s way of encouraging us to visit its beautiful offline shop.
To shop at Numa, you can visit their online store, numa.ph, or visit their brick-and-mortar outlet from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Saturday, at the AEK Building, 40 E. Rodriguez Sr. Ave. (between Welcome Rotonda and St. Luke’s), Quezon City, Philippines. For more information, you can call them at (632) 732-1522 or 711-9636.
Disclosure: This article is sponsored by Numa. All images belong to Numa. All views and opinions expressed in this article belong to me; they are uninfluenced and unbiased.
