Cloth Diaper a Newborn- 1 week old

Allow me to first introduce Paige-

She was born on February 21st, 2012, weighing 8 lbs even and was 20 inches long. She was much bigger than her older sister was at birth, and even the doctor laughed and asked where I was hiding all that baby. I know 8 pounds isn't very big as far as babies go, but for me it certainly seemed huge.

I figured I would write a quick post about our experiences with cloth diapers so far. My plan was to  use cloth from the first day home from the hospital. I bought a newborn-sized stash separate from the one-sized stash that we'll hopefully start using soon. I didn't buy any disposables beforehand, even though I was unsure if this was a good idea. I figured in the very least, I'd take home the rest of the pack from the hospital and have those.

Well, first of all, I definitely enjoy the diapers. If I'm being honest, prefolds intimidated me a lot. I couldn't get the hang of it while practicing on stuffed animals and I was nervous about trying to learn on a squirmy, scrunchy newborn. And the first couple of days were rough, I won't lie.

I couldn't figure out how to maneuver the cover and fold the prefold in a way that worked with her legs still so scrunched up to her body and the umbilical stump still attached. It seemed that no matter what I did I was irritating that damn stump. I tried different folds and nothing seemed to work, so for the first couple of days I settled on just tri-folding the prefold and laying it in the cover. It worked, but I found that poop was ALWAYS on a cover that way so we wound up going through covers like crazy. I was doing wash a couple of a times a day just for those.

We did use the disposables a couple of times while washing was being done. It was these first couple of days home that made me realize I definitely should have a pack of disposables on hand.  I wasn't going to 'cave' because disposables were easier and that no matter what, I loved using the cloth at this point. Having them wasn't going to somehow ruin the love. But running out of diapers, however, would be a disaster of a different kind, so I went out and picked up some sposies for the just in case situations. I'm glad I did, even though I've only used one of them since I bought the package. I feel better knowing that I won't somehow be stuck waiting on laundry to wash and dry. I should have just gone with my gut instinct to begin with but on the advice of many people I didn't. Oh well, live and learn, I guess!

So here's what I had for my stash-
2 Bummis super whisper wraps- Size NB

1 Bummis Super Bright-  Size Small

2 Thirsties Duo Wrap- Size 1



24 Green Mountain Diaper prefolds- Orange Edge Newborn size


And a few snappis.

Part of my one-sized collection is two diaper covers from the WAHM shop called Twinkletoes diapers. On their smallest setting, they have worked as covers already.

That's it! I also have some Sunbaby pocket diapers in Size 1 that may fit once the stump falls off, but as of right now they are definitely not working yet. They weren't really intended as part of the NB stash but I already had 12 size 2's so I decided to try some size 1's as well.


So out of all the covers, the Thirsties Duo covers work the best. I ordered two more, actually. They fit best and I like the double leg gussets. I wish that they were a little more- I don't know- fun, though. They're so boring and the selection of colors and designs is horrible.

The Bummis Super Bright is alright, but it seems a little wide for her as of yet.

The Bummis Super Whisper Wrap is actually my favorite of all of them, but I just don't like how there's only a single leg gusset. I'm positive that once her poops get more explosive, I'll have leaks more often than with other covers. For now they have worked great- but I haven't actually had any leaks at all yet. This cover just feels nicest. It's a little heavier and for some reason just feels like a higher quality than all the others.

I also am surprised to find that I like the velcro closures much more than snaps so far. This may change as she gets older, but the velcro has made life a ton easier. I opted for all snaps on the rest of the collection of diapers because I was worried about her being able to take her own diaper off as she got older, but I certainly would get velcro if I could somehow ensure that wouldn't happen.

Washing hasn't been a problem at all. The only issue, which I don't really care that much about, is that a couple of the diapers have stains from the meconium. I'm not overly worried about it at this point. The rest have washed wonderfully and I can't complain at all. We have been using Ecos Free and Clear, the same that we were using with Kayla's night diapers.

I guess that's pretty much it. I am really happy with how things are going so far. If I could do it again, I'd probably just keep some disposables on hand like I wanted to originally. Everything else has worked out pretty much to plan, and now that I'm getting the hang of the snappi situation I officially can say that I enjoy diapers as much as I thought I would.

I can't WAIT to rub the fact that it's working out in the faces of all the haters! To everyone who told me point blank that I would hate using them, and that they were disgusting, and that they thought I was weird. Yea, what now, nay-sayers?!

Here are a a couple of pictures I managed to take during the first few days:

These are a couple in her Thirsties Duo size 1 diaper cover and a GMD prefold. As you can see in the first one, they were perilously close to the cord stump and it drove me nuts. It looks really big, but there was never a leak.

 This is a Twinkletoes diaper cover and GMD prefold. It's a one-size cover but still fit her even i the first few days weighing under 8 pounds.

And since I wrote this originally, her cord fell off! YAY! And here's a picture in one of her itti bitti d'lish AIO diapers, size small. Fits pretty well! It's a tiny big big still but didn't leak when she had a breastmilk explosion in it so that's all I can ask for! Plus, these diapers are so unbelievably soft that I used to walk into the nursery just to rub them. 

Valentine's 2012 and Miscellaneous stuff

So, like I mentioned in the last post, we have taken an indefinite break on the preschooling stuff until I deliver this baby. I've been having so much false labor on top of being just exhausted in general. I can't keep up with Kayla in general and just don't have the energy to follow a schedule. I managed to get to story time with her last Monday but yesterday I didn't have it in me.

I've only done a handful of Valentine's things with her. I mostly just let her go hog-wild with hearts and glitter and foam stickers and what not. But we did make some cute heart flowers and a little vase for them and I'll post pictures of it below.

First of all, my new favorite craft supplies- these awesome hole punches. Expensive as all get-out originally (I think this one was 18 dollars?!) but since A.C. Moore is awesome and sends 40% off or more coupons each week, I picked one up. Fun stuff.

Valentine's things:

Valentine's tree-

Valentine's flowers- 

(this is an old olive jar)

(Put some colored rice in there so the flowers stood nicely)

I think it looks cute! 

I also decided to pick up this book:

Was sort of a whim. There are some cute things in there, and she went through several pages already of them. My only gripe with it is that she actually seems to know a lot of the stuff in there really well already. That's just my bad. I didn't look through the book too much before buying and skimmed. Had I taken more time to see the stuff it covered I would have known that it's very basic, but all in all, it's a nice way to review some of the more basic things we've covered already. Perfect for our hiatus from curriculum things, too. 

Another thing she really enjoyed was this counting thing we did. She is pretty good with her numbers up to 20. She can identify them all easily, but when counting she always skips 14 and 16. So I made these little pipe cleaner things and we used pony beads to put the correct number of beads on each one. 

That's all for now. Off to wait for real labor. After a night of horrible, painful false labor I've all but given up hope of it actually happening. 39 weeks today and more pregnant than I ever was with Kayla. Really didn't expect to go this long, but Paige had her own plans. Mommy is ready to get this started! 

A trifecta of natural induction methods

I unintentionally and piling a few natural methods of inducing labor on top of one another day. Did a lot of walking, picked up some red raspberry leaf tea, and Brian is cooking some spicy food tonight. If I was a braver woman, I might even add some alone time later tonight with the hubs, but I'm just not interested in that at all. Three is enough for one night, anyway. Maybe the 6th really will wind up being baby day after all?


Update: So far, at 10:41 AM on Feb. 6th, there is no baby in sight. Boooo. I had another cup of that tea, feel some more contractions, but they're definitely not real labor contractions. With all this exercise my uterus is getting with these Braxton Hicks labor better be a breeze.

Anywho, off to story time. Hoping that my water doesn't decide to break there!

A few things

Our preschool stuff has been put on a hold for the time being. Well, not entirely, but I decided to stop trying to follow the curriculum until I can get this baby out of my belly. I'm 37 weeks and 4 days today and finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with anything, really, especially a crazy little 3 year old and her activities. I still have been doing a few random things with her, but definitely not enough to call it schoolwork. 

As far as the pregnancy is concerned, I've been ready to get this show on the road for sometime now. It's sort of strange. I spent the vast part of this pregnancy paranoid first about miscarriage, then about preterm labor, but now that I'm term I am so anxious for it to end. I'm not nearly as uncomfortable or miserable as I was with Kayla at this point. With her, I was crying pretty much every day, almost all day long. After 9 months of non-stop nausea and intense rib pain that sent me to the ER, I spent most nights curled in a ball begging for labor to start just to end the torture. I somehow KNEW that I couldn't possibly make it to 40 weeks with her. There was just no way. I feared it! But there was always something in the back of my mind telling me that my body was just not going to make it that long. And I was right. She was 10 days early and raring to go.

This time around, Paige just feels comfy where she is. I don't have that searing rib cage pain, I can breathe easily (I assume I carried very low all along), and the nausea hasn't been an issue at all since the first trimester. There are days when I have a ton of contractions and swear that it will be THE day, but then they slow down and stop hurting and I go back to idly sitting around just wondering what's happening in there. I was convinced that I'd never make to to term for several reasons. I had some early bleeding, and I've read that bleeding early on in the first and second trimesters can increase the likelihood of preterm labor. I also was diagnosed with irritable uterus, and several statistics have said there is a significant increase in chance of preterm labor because of that. My cervix is also very friable- and I don't think there's any literature on that causing preterm labor, but I just had a hunch that it wouldn't be able to hold her in as well as a cervix that was strong and not overly sensitive. Aside from that, Kayla was so early, and it's also common for subsequent pregnancies to go even earlier than prior ones. All of those things combined had be scared to death of preterm labor, and any sign of contraction or blood I was calling the doctor and going to the ER.

Well, here I am, considered term at 37 weeks and 4 days. A recent ultrasound showed my fluid levels and the baby are both doing well, but the doctor does believe she dropped since my uterus started suddenly measuring 3 weeks behind. At 35 weeks my cervix was soft, but not dilated. I don't know if that's changed. I've been experiencing insane and unfair contractions. All Braxton Hicks, of course, but they're so frequent I don't even both timing them most of the time. Most places will say to call the doctor when you get 4 an hour- I get at least 10 every single hour and have for months now. And when I don't get so many of them, I'll get fewer, but ones that actually last for 10-15 minutes straight no matter what I do to stop it. Just walking around with my stomach contracted. There are periods of time where they will start coming with some sort of consistency, but don't get progressively stronger so I never call. That's not to say they don't hurt- oh no. They do. Two days ago, from 9AM to about 6PM, I experienced painful contractions every 3-8 minutes. They lasted about 30 seconds long each, some a little longer, some less. But since they didn't get stronger, I assumed they weren't real. When I talked to the doctor that night they slowed down and were about 20 minutes apart. She told me that if they ever got so frequent again, even if they weren't getting stronger or I was otherwise convinced they weren't real, that I should go into Labor and Delivery anyway just to check. That night they started up again, more painful, but not so often. The next morning they were back to be completely random. So I've come to the conclusion that my body is just screwing with me and I'll be that person that gives birth on the kitchen floor because I didn't realize when real labor started.

I know, I know- there will be a difference that is noticeable, I'm sure. And I'll probably have more than enough time to get to the hospital, even if it does take me a long time to realize. But I've been spending so long now forcing myself to essentially ignore ALL the signs that have come before now that it could be labor that I am worried I'll miss it when it does happen. And for the record, although it's not common, some women really don't realize they're in actual labor. People really DO give birth in their cars and homes and on the side of the road just because their contractions weren't textbook or there was so little warning or a fast labor. Even if it is an uncommon occurrence, it's not entirely unheard of and therefore is a genuine concern in my book!

But since that day with the crazy contractions there hasn't been another like it. I'm still super curious about whether I've made any progress or not, but I probably won't find out.  I get the impression my doctor probably won't check. No big deal since it doesn't really mean much, but at the same time, it'd be interesting to know whether all the annoying contractions are for nothing.

In the mean time, with Kayla, I've been keeping her preoccupied with some very lazy sort of things for me. She does a lot of coloring and painting, puzzles, and playing with her blocks and other things. As much as I am embarrassed to admit it, TV has been on much more than I might normally keep it on. On a normal day she will get TV while she's eating (it for whatever reason has helped get her to eat her food more if she can watch TV while she does, and she was a ridiculously bad eater before so I do whatever it takes). Even when the TV is on she often times wanders away to do other things- so I take that as my sign that so far it's not an issue. I can't wait until I have the energy and strength back to get back into doing the more creative and fun things.

I thought that I maybe had a burst of nesting today, though. I woke up with an absurd amount of energy compared to the past few months. I hopped out of bed, got Kayla up, we went downstairs and I was cleaning more than I have in two weeks.

Kayla's preschool stuff isn't the only schedule that's been nixed for the time being- my cleaning schedule has just been entirely ditched temporarily. The house is a wreck and I just don't care at the moment. Brian actually has asked me to stop cleaning the bathrooms because of there's no ventilation, and the last time I tried to really get in there and clean I almost passed out from both fatigue and the smell of Lysol.

Well, anywho, I did a ton of laundry, surfaced clean in the kitchen, actually went around and picked up the toys in the living room that I've been perpetually just kicking to the sides of the room and out of the way. Felt so good! I did still avoid the chemicals because that was sort of scary last time, but I did wipe things down and freshen up the place a bit which felt nice. I'm hoping this little unexplained burst is another sign something is happening soon.

I shouldn't be so anxious to get her out of me, but the more time I have to think about labor, the more nervous I get. Last time labor was so easy for me- 4 pushes and she was out. I'm worried about a few things. 1.) What if it's harder this time? What if I can't do as well with pushing as I did last time? What if it takes more than 4 pushes? I said it was easy, and it was, but by 4 pushes I was already EXHAUSTED. That's embarrassing to admit, but it's entirely the truth. The doctor actually yelled at me because after the 3rd push I told him I was too tired and couldn't do any more. I'm sure after seeing women labor and push for hours, hearing someone who pushed 3 times say they couldn't do any more is annoying. But I'm no athlete. I'm way out of shape, even though I look nice and thin. No muscle tone whatsoever on this frame. And the herculean feat of pushing a person of out me is seriously worrisome. I can't even climb a flight of stairs without being out of breath.

More concerning to me is that last labor resulted in several very painful and long-term problems with my bum. I had hemorrhoids, which are normal and generally go away after a few weeks. Mine did not. I also wound up having an anal fissure that went undiagnosed for 3 years. I had to have surgery on it by the time they discovered it, and only after experiencing some of the worst pain in my entire life. I'd give birth 10000 times before ever wanting another fissure. On the list of my most painful things I've experienced, it ranks as #1. I had just recovered from the surgery when we found out I was pregnant. The idea of pushing and possibly causing that to happen again is frightening to the point of anxiety. I don't even care about tearing in my girly-bits. As long as I don't cause any tearing any where else I'll consider it a miracle.

So yes, I'm a little apprehensive about the labor and the longer it takes the worse it gets. But every time I contract and it hurts, I actually like it. Not in a sadistic sort of way, but the pain like that would mean things are rolling, so I keep hoping for that pain when I know it's the real deal. Ask me how I feel about that statement when I really am in labor.

So, that's basically the update of things around here. I got a lot of gift cards to Barnes and Noble between Christmas and my birthday so I've been dividing them up between myself and Kayla. Bought her some new books and have been trying to decide which books she has to have. So far the only one we received in the mail was Princess Smartypants. It got good reviews, but I didn't read all of them, and I realized quickly that I unintentionally bought Kayla her first bit of feminist literature that borders on Femi-nazi stuff. I didn't read it all yet but.. sheesh. I'll have to get back on how I feel about the book when I do.

So for now, just keeping focused on the goal.. my eyes are on the prize... and hopefully soon I can update with a picture of our new little one and get things back on track around this place.

Coloring Rice

So I thought I'd share my first experience trying out this whole colored rice thing. I was planning on using rubbing alcohol since most of the recipes call for that, but I wound up having none even though I could have sworn we did. So I decided to try it with vinegar. I read on one site that vinegar marks for lumpy rice, but I figured I'd give it a shot with a small batch and see what happened.

I used vinegar, white rice, food coloring. 

Preheat the oven to 175. 

I had some cheapo plastic bags to mix it in. I know many places suggest using an empty butter tub or something, but the bag worked fine for me. I also liked squishing it around in there. =)

I used about 1 -2 tbsp of vinegar (sort of just splashed some in the bag, I didn't feel like measuring exactly), 1 cup of rice, and a few drops of food coloring. This coloring is supposed to be pink, not red... just so you don't think it was too diluted. This was exactly the color it was supposed to be! Yay. 

Smoosh it around. It feels cool. 

If I was a nicer mommy I may have let Kayla help. But I didn't feel like dealing with spilled rice, or ripped bags of food coloring, or anything else. Perhaps another day now that I know it works. 

Then I laid it out in as flat a layer I could on a tin-foil covered cookie sheet. 

Pop in the over for about 10 minutes or until the rice is dried. The first batch was entirely dry by the time 10 minutes was up. The second batch I made I think I used a tiny bit more vinegar (downside of not measuring, I know) so it needed an extra 5 minutes. 

Pour into a container- I used an empty coffee creamer container. I think when I have more colors made this is going to look really pretty all together. 

Tada!

As a note- the color seemed to come out fine to me with the vinegar, and while I did note a small amount of the clumping I read about, the rice fell apart easily once dried so I didn't think it was an issue at all. I'll try rubbing alcohol next to see what the difference winds up being. I've heard the colors are more vibrant. 

It's a less annoying alternative to glitter in pictures and when made in large enough patches can be used in lieu of sand. Put into a small plastic bottle with other small objects, it can be a find "find the objects" sort of game, or used in sensory boxes as a neat feeling filler. Personally, I am thinking some 'sand art' is in order.

 I'm mostly just waiting on some more empty creamer containers to make some more colors. Need to drink more coffee, it seems. Twist my arm a little harder, why don't ya!