Hippie Mom in a Preppy World

Posts Tagged ‘cloth diapers’

I have been very pleased with my parenting decisions so far but there are a handful of things that I would do differently next time, nothing major.  This list is not comprehensive but it gives you an idea.

Would they get done?  Maybe some….

What I would do differently

1- I would hire a post partum doula and/or accept cooking/cleaning help.  The first few weeks were brutal, specially after hubby went back to work and I would spend the bulk of the day alone with baby while recovering from surgery.  Nothing got cleaned, I barely ate and it was just a miserable time.

2- I would get a real high chair, booster seats are not the same.

3- I would make sure that my husband has a carrier that works for him, babywearing rocks and I want him to experience it too.

4- I would get professional professional newborn photos.  We have hundreds of cute Shammy pictures but they’re all amateur shots.

5- I would not listen to the incorrect breastfeeding advice given by the nurses at the hospital, instead I would follow what I had already learned.  This would have saved time, headaches and sleep and Shammy wouldn’t have lost as much weight at first.

6- I would give elimination communication a fair chance.  I barely did it and got promising results almost instantly but laziness among other factors made me drop it.

7- I would research BLW more and try it.  Making my own baby food was fun but messy and he didn’t like purees all that long.

8- I would not limit the number of baby costumes that I buy for the 1st Halloween.  Gotta take advantage before I loose the ability to choose what to put on.  There are way too many cute choices out there!

9- Join the playgroup circuit sooner.  The only thing that has stopped me this time is not having a car.

10- I would not skimp out on newborn cloth diapers and get good tiny cloth diapers like Lil’s Joeys.  I tried to go cheap with prefolds and covers and Shammy couldn’t stand it so we had to use sposies until he grew into his one size diapers, don’t want to have to do that again.  With enough planning I can purchase them little by little and they have a good resale value so it would still cost less than sposies.

11- Take sign language beyond the basics, we did very good with it at first and once again laziness and life got in the way and I just stopped using it.  Shame on me.

12- I would fight for my placenta. It was Shammy’s roommate for over 9 months, it kept him alive and they just toss it?! It’s standard procedure for the hospital to take the placenta away and I tried to fight for it while I was lying open on the operating table and was so overwhelmed with suddenly being a mother that I didn’t push the subject after I was in recovery. To this day I feel a sense of loss about it and wish that I could get it even though I couldn’t encapsulate it I would still do art with it.

 

Things that I would totally do all over again

1- Labor at home.  I’m now high risk and wouldn’t quality for a homebirth in most cases but would like to still labor at home for as long as possible.

2- Have a doula.  My husband was awesome but he’s just one guy and great for some things but clueless on other, a doula provides the perfect complement and balance.

3- Skip on Vitamin K shot and eye goop.  No regrets about skipping it, it wasn’t hard for me to take the Vitamin K drops and passing it through the breastmilk.

4- Skip/delay vaccinations.  I don’t regret this one bit, in fact I’m tempted to take things a step further and delay/space them out even more.  Either way I’m definitely repeating the no shots until 6 months part.

5- No circumcision (if boy). If I need to explain this one you need a Prepuce Information Pack.  Heck, I’ll lend you mine!

6- Breastfeed.  I am so glad that I was determined enough to overcome the speed bumps and successfully breastfeed exclusively for 6 months and continue breastfeeding today (9 months and counting).

7- Co sleep.  Our bed isn’t big enough for traditional cosleeping (although Shammy made it work by kicking his daddy out of the bed and sleeping with me, lol.  I would buy a king size mattress and just put it on the floor.  Easier than attaching the bassinet/crib to the bed.  I’ve never come close to rolling over Shammy and in my sleep my mother’s 6th sense has been known to stretch out my arm and stop my husband from rolling over.

8- Babywear.  Babywearing saved my sanity during the first few months by being the only thing that would calm a screaming Shammy and even though it’s not necessary anymore I still thoroughly enjoy it.  I would like to get a better hang of ring slings though.

9- Cloth diaper.  So cute, so economical, so environmental.  I would love to have the wallet to be constantly trying new styles but have a good working stash with that I have.

10- I would again stay home as much as possible and not accept visitors outside of family for the first 2 weeks.  I am glad that I instituted this rule and stuck by it.

11-  I would still refuse to cry it out.  I can’t understand how someone can let their child scream for hours.  And for those that use the modified method of 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off, glad that it works for you but it’s still not for me.  It’s still contrary to Attachment Parenting and 1 minute is too long.

12- Use consignment sales. The only new clothes that we bought were on clearance, the rest were gifts or purchased on consignment, same for all of the gear and most toys.

 

The title may sound arrogant and if there was indeed a grading scale I would not have a perfect score (more than once I put him in PJ’s and forgot all about the bath) but at least I’m good on the important parts.

For the past month I’ve been dealing with child proofing blues.  It’s something that we should have done long ago but kept procrastinating on. I look at our house and it feels like a baby death trap, there is so much to do that I don’t know how to accomplish it all without moving half of the house into storage/ dumpster.

Now that Shammy is mobile and getting into everything, it was time to get into gear. I’m very watchful of Shammy when he’s playing but sometimes I need to not be hovering so much without interrupting his play, like when cooking dinner or doing laundry.  Plus I am trying to find a balance between keeping him safe without being too overprotective and letting the kid crawl and explore.

We had wanted to get a playard aka baby jail for a while and found a very good deal on it at a consignment sale but once put it together I felt like it was too much like jail despite being so large.  So then it was time to sit down with the husband and decide on which room of the house we were going to surrender to the baby.  The natural choice would have been the baby’s room (which is currently only used for diaper changing and baby stuff storage, lol) but I didn’t want him to be isolated when playing.

We finally decided to surrender the dining room, the table had not been used for dining in months anyway and Shammy would get to enjoy the nice view to the backyard.  And so we started the process of relocating furniture and a bird to transform part of the space into a fun haven.

 

Now that he’s becoming more independent I am actually starting to get stuff done at home besides the bare minimum.  It’s still nothing close to spring cleaning and it will take a while to recover from all of the months of spot cleaning and tidy messes.

I am very proud to have achieved the 8 month breastfeeding milestone, it was touch and go for a little bit there on the exclusive factor.  I no longer have a freezer stash and Shammy’s schedule since daylight savings time means that I never have an opportunity to pump at a time when I would get a decent output.

Shammy has never tasted formula in his life but I have reached the point where it’s not the end of the world if it comes to that, he’s older than 6 months, he’s eating other foods, it’s not the end of my philosophical world anymore.

No, I’m not done breastfeeding, not even close.  What I’m close to being done with is stressing over how many ounces are in the freezer vs how many he will need while hanging at grandma’s.  Stressing doesn’t lead to a good letdown and that leads to tiny pumped amounts, it’s a horrible cycle that I’ve been stuck in for a couple of weeks.

Nothing is official but the current tentative plan is that I will continue to breastfeed full time and pump while working but supplement to make up the difference when I’m not around.  95% or more of his milk will still be breast milk, I will still pump when away from him for more than 5 hours.  I have not made any purchases, but I already researched brands.  We’ll see…  I’ve said it before and I’ll say this again, I bow down to exclusively pumping mamas, I don’t know how they do it, here I am stressing myself dry over occasional pumping.

I’m glad to wean off the pump except for work but not yet ready to wean my son.  This week I cried along with a heartbroken mama whose toddler self weaned this week.  She had no idea that it was the last time when it happened.  Every time I nurse Shammy I try to savor it because I know that it will be over before I know it and will miss it too.

 

 

For the past few weeks we have been dealing with mild separation anxiety.  One of the things that I have found to help is laying the shirt that I wore that day in his bed, I have found that he sleeps better that way.

Now that he has learned to call me Mama I can no longer tell my husband “it’s your turn”.  He says that Shammy has quickly learned that saying that equals fast response and that is fine.  I’d rather him know that he can call me and I will come than having to resort to crying to get the attention he wants.

 

For a few weeks Shammy would eat from anyone that wasn’t me, it was challenging since I would be the only one available during the weekdays most times.  This made me consider BLW (Baby Led Weaning- where you skip the purees and let baby feed himself)  so I experimented and it was a success.  I can’t say that I’m a total convert but I will probably do it here and there.

 

 

Something interesting that I’ve learned over the past couple of weeks, the first diaper to go in the pail after I put in a load of laundry is always a poopy one!  I wash diapers every other day and this has been accurate for 3 weeks and counting, lol.  So I guess that if I want him to poop on command I just need to throw some diapers in the washer.

 

This week’s rant is a short one:

If you’re thinking of breastfeeding your baby, be warned: People will think you’re stupid. That’s right, a recently published report highlighted not one, but three studies that found people think of women who breastfeed as less competent than “otherwise identical women.”  Seriously?!

In my opinion a woman that breastfeeds is smarter than a woman that formula feeds (by choice, not circumstance) because it means that the nursing mama is well informed about the benefits of breastmilk over formula and knows that it’s way easier to lift up a shirt in the dark than hunt for a bottle you hopefully remembered to prepare at 3am.

 

 

 

 

 

We have been having some interesting weeks lately.  We recently took Shammy to his first Pagan festival, normally we would camp but we are glad we didn’t as it was too cold for comfort.  He seems to have enjoyed it overall but did seem homesick which affected his sleep.  I have never seen him so happy to be back home.   Hopefully he will sleep better at the next camping festival in April.  He also got to experience the Renaissance Faire and loved it.

He has given me several nights where he doesn’t wake up to nurse, that has signaled my body to bring about the return of Aunt Flo, boo!  It had been over a year and didn’t miss it one bit.  After that he has decided to go back to waking up once during the night to nurse, figures!

I’m now working on a semi regular basis.  I have been fortunate enough to have found a decent client, I doubt that any company could have been as flexible as I need.  I enjoy being self employed and although I don’t make much after setting aside taxes it is better than nothing.

I do have lots of flexibility and a private space to pump while at the client’s office but since pumping time is not billable time I limit it to 1 pumping session per day. The challenge with that is that I’m not pumping enough to make up for what Shammy drinks while at grandma’s house, not because I don’t produce enough but because I need to pump a second time.  This has led to a rapid reduction of the small freezer stash that I had so we may enter a breastmilk crisis soon.  I’m proud that he has never tasted formula but admit that the idea has crossed my mind if I can’t settle into a pumping schedule that will meet the demand.  I would much rather use donor milk but I always think about preemies and adopted babies and feel that they should have priority for donated milk.

I miss him so much while I’m working though.  Thankfully I have plenty of distractions but after a few hours I can’t stop thinking of him and have to hold back tears.  Now that he has consolidated his poops to one major one during the day I even miss wiping his poopy butt.  You read right, the woman that was terrified of changing a diaper pre-baby actually misses dealing with poop.  The day that I shared this with my husband through misty eyes Shammy took pity on me and delivered a nice load of poop for me to clean, so sweet of him!

Speaking of poop, I never imagined that my hippie son would be capable of tie dye poop but that is exactly what he delivers on days when he eats different colored foods the day before, lol.

Another interesting turn of events was the death of the washing machine interrupting our cloth diaper use.  I was able to wash the already dirty diapers at Grandma’s house and had considered doing future washes at the laundromat but it was not logistically possible and would have been very expensive.  So for the time being we used disposables and you know what?  I hate them… with a passion…  can’t stand the plastic paper feel, I hate the fact that they get thrown away and couldn’t wait for a new washer so that I can go back to my beloved cloth.

It took us to weeks to find a washer that we could barely afford and I cried out of joy when I was able to use Bumgenius once again.  This passion for cloth makes me want to participate in the Great Cloth Diaper Change, an event created to host awareness for cloth diapering while setting a Guinness World Record for the largest number of cloth diapers changed at one time.

The response to this blog has got me thinking about a related book, this idea is in its infancy and it may never grow beyond a rough draft but I’m curious if this is something that anybody would find interesting.

Some women are afraid to breastfeed in public for fear of harassment. I used to be waiting for someone to dare say something but not anymore.  Maybe they can sense the “dare to say something and you’ll regret messing with mama bear” vibe that I emanate or more likely they just don’t care.

We mostly hear about bad experiences nursing in public so I want to share a sample list of places that I have been able to breastfeed in public, without a cover and nobody bothered us:

Disney’s Magic Kingdom
Downtown Disney
Renaissance Faire (with a Broward County Sheriff on duty sitting next to me)
at the entrance to the exhibition hall at the county fair
many different restaurants  (even while the server was taking our order)
various department stores
various parts of the mall
the supermarket (various aisles)
the library
various outdoor parks
while shopping at garage sales
the circus
Turnpike Service Plaza
I-95 Rest Stop
bookstore
various parking lots and more

I wonder if it’s because I don’t use an eye catching nursing cover that screams “look at me! I’m breastfeeding!”  (nothing wrong with covers if you feel you need one).

 

Coming soon, adventures in chasing a mobile baby, but first!  I must babyproof.

 

This episode’s rants:

“The Doctors”, a TV program viewed by millions of people across the globe, has gotten out of hand, especially recently with their breach of professional conduct.  These doctors humiliate, demean, and belittle members of the public for their circumcision status.  It does not make any sense for doctors to improperly promote unnecessary surgery and the abusive treatment of minors, to satisfy their preferences.  A letter of complaint was sent to the Medical Board of California – Central Complaint Unit.

“Doctors are supposed to  treat  valid medical problems, not alter functioning healthy parts of a penis just to satisfy the customs and culture of a certain population”

I “could” get on board with justifying a Jewish doctor in a Jewish community but here we are talking about mainstream media directed to the not always very educated masses that look up to these “experts” to tell them what their opinions should be.

 

My other rant was inspired from the following read in one of the online parenting groups that I belong to:

“I’m glad that I didn’t pass my GD test because I got 8 ultraounds instead of 2 and got induced a week early so I got to pick the date and time and doctor.” ::SLAP!!!::  that is what I want to do when reading this.  Could this be any more selfish and ignorant?

Let’s ignore for a moment the inherent risks and dangers from many ultrasounds and from being induced, if you really wanted that you don’t have to have gestational diabetes to get it.  There is no shortage of OB’s that will happily give you as many ultrasounds as you like and prefer that you make an appoint me to “deliver” than risk being late for dinner.

I understand that a lot of people don’t see diabetes as a big deal, and for the most part it isn’t.  But do you really want to put yourself and baby’s health at risk for complications and other not so fun stuff just for convenience?

 

And a carryover from previous weeks is my annoyance with people’s obsessions with baby’s weight.  I’m shocked to see how many people don’t think a baby is healthy unless they’re 90+ percentile for weight.  I recently read a study that indicates that a baby in the 85 to 90 percentile is “at risk” for obesity while a baby at 95 or above is obese.  Is that the healthy start that we want to give our children?  No wonder a recent study found that 1/3 of babies are obese by 9 months.